One of the most striking coincidences of God is how "he" is understood in entirely purely human form, with even the "he" exhibiting a gender that not only implies the existence of both a physical body as well as a the existence of a "she" - hence, calling 'God" a he is to implicitly deny monotheism - but which is a qualification we never give to any other ideals, or source of energy like light, gravity, wind, etc.
This universal willingness to assume that, if indeed any "god" exists at all, that "he" must exist in a way that all human beings can relate to, even if that God is infinity superior to us in every way, is the basis for all religions that "believe" in one god or another. It would surely be impossible to create a religion that worshiped a God that everyone thought was impossible to relate to, which would be like creating a religion to a frying pan. What's more, by being "infinite," we are admitting that such a God would necessarily be equally every other species of plant or animal, alien or intelligence, ghost or goblin, as "he" is said to be like ourselves.
God, in other words, is as much the amoeba as "he" is the fruit fly, the bonobo as he is the bald eagle, and the atom as much as the cosmos, and everything in between.
The greatest heresy there can ever be, then, is to ascribe purely human understandings to a God that is by his nature, said to be so infinite as to be beyond our ability to even begin to grasp, let alone "understand." For every assertion of what God is, or what God wants, necessarily reduces an infinite abstraction (at least to our mind) to some quantifiable certainty, with which we can beat each other over the head, as we each assert how right our "beliefs" are over those of anyone else.
The pope who declares himself the "vicar of Christ" has no greater grasp of an infinite God than he has of infinite numbers, yet he pretends to have some profound insight into the nature of the former that far exceeds the ability of those who have never even learned how to count. If this is not the height of human pride and arrogance, then nothing is!
This universal willingness to assume that, if indeed any "god" exists at all, that "he" must exist in a way that all human beings can relate to, even if that God is infinity superior to us in every way, is the basis for all religions that "believe" in one god or another. It would surely be impossible to create a religion that worshiped a God that everyone thought was impossible to relate to, which would be like creating a religion to a frying pan. What's more, by being "infinite," we are admitting that such a God would necessarily be equally every other species of plant or animal, alien or intelligence, ghost or goblin, as "he" is said to be like ourselves.
God, in other words, is as much the amoeba as "he" is the fruit fly, the bonobo as he is the bald eagle, and the atom as much as the cosmos, and everything in between.
The greatest heresy there can ever be, then, is to ascribe purely human understandings to a God that is by his nature, said to be so infinite as to be beyond our ability to even begin to grasp, let alone "understand." For every assertion of what God is, or what God wants, necessarily reduces an infinite abstraction (at least to our mind) to some quantifiable certainty, with which we can beat each other over the head, as we each assert how right our "beliefs" are over those of anyone else.
The pope who declares himself the "vicar of Christ" has no greater grasp of an infinite God than he has of infinite numbers, yet he pretends to have some profound insight into the nature of the former that far exceeds the ability of those who have never even learned how to count. If this is not the height of human pride and arrogance, then nothing is!
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