If you study the evolution of our ideas about God, you'll find that our ideas about God have changed dramatically over the course of centuries and millenniums.
While today many and perhaps most people in the world tend to be subscribe to monotheistic religions and "belief systems," hundred of years before Christ, the trend was quite the opposite, with the majority of people in the world apparently having more polytheistic beliefs, worshiping many gods instead.
When the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ikhnaton declared circa 330 BC that there was only "one God," most of the people thought he was a bit of a weirdo, for example, since such an idea was rather uncommon. Today, it's the other way around.
But the hubris of human thought to conclude that our finite and feeble understanding of that which we describe as "infinite" in every way, stands as a testament to just how much like a god we humans think our "beliefs" really are.
Think about it: How can we know what most people will believe about "God" 5 thousand years from now?
Will polytheism be back in vogues, long after the major monotheistic faiths have slaughtered each other and the whole world, our of their blind devotion to their "one true Gods"?
Will we eventually see an age of atheism before that, where people will actually recognize, and have the courage to admit, what they truly do NOT know?
Will we be willing to admit that our understanding of any concept of god or no-god is only ever as finite and fleeting as we are, no matter how much we want to believe that our "beliefs" are tethered to some infinite and immutable truth?
That we dare to claim that our "beliefs" are locked on to an infinite and immutable concept of truth about God, is only proof of just how insecure we feel in the absence of holding on to the apron string of such an idea. How else can we explain the hubris that comes from the conviction that Jesus, or Mohammad, or Buddha, or Joe Smith, or whoever, somehow stands as the FINAL statement about a God for all of humanity - end of story!? Talk about human hubris!
This does not mean we are wrong to believe what we believe, nor does it prove anything about the presence or absence of a god or gods. But it does tell us far more about how our own minds work, than it reveals about our ability to have access to "divine" understanding or "infallible" truth.
While our beliefs about God and gods will undoubtedly continue to evolve as we do, especially with the advent of AI and whatever other inventions or alien encounters we may engage in in the future - from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism to atheism to singularity-ism to whatever and back again - our "beliefs" about how "right" we are to have whatever beliefs we have will no doubt stay the same.
In short, our "beliefs" and concepts of God will only continue to evolve, but it would take divine intervention indeed, to ever save humanity from the hubris of it's own "beliefs."
While today many and perhaps most people in the world tend to be subscribe to monotheistic religions and "belief systems," hundred of years before Christ, the trend was quite the opposite, with the majority of people in the world apparently having more polytheistic beliefs, worshiping many gods instead.
When the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ikhnaton declared circa 330 BC that there was only "one God," most of the people thought he was a bit of a weirdo, for example, since such an idea was rather uncommon. Today, it's the other way around.
But the hubris of human thought to conclude that our finite and feeble understanding of that which we describe as "infinite" in every way, stands as a testament to just how much like a god we humans think our "beliefs" really are.
Think about it: How can we know what most people will believe about "God" 5 thousand years from now?
Will polytheism be back in vogues, long after the major monotheistic faiths have slaughtered each other and the whole world, our of their blind devotion to their "one true Gods"?
Will we eventually see an age of atheism before that, where people will actually recognize, and have the courage to admit, what they truly do NOT know?
Will we be willing to admit that our understanding of any concept of god or no-god is only ever as finite and fleeting as we are, no matter how much we want to believe that our "beliefs" are tethered to some infinite and immutable truth?
That we dare to claim that our "beliefs" are locked on to an infinite and immutable concept of truth about God, is only proof of just how insecure we feel in the absence of holding on to the apron string of such an idea. How else can we explain the hubris that comes from the conviction that Jesus, or Mohammad, or Buddha, or Joe Smith, or whoever, somehow stands as the FINAL statement about a God for all of humanity - end of story!? Talk about human hubris!
This does not mean we are wrong to believe what we believe, nor does it prove anything about the presence or absence of a god or gods. But it does tell us far more about how our own minds work, than it reveals about our ability to have access to "divine" understanding or "infallible" truth.
While our beliefs about God and gods will undoubtedly continue to evolve as we do, especially with the advent of AI and whatever other inventions or alien encounters we may engage in in the future - from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism to atheism to singularity-ism to whatever and back again - our "beliefs" about how "right" we are to have whatever beliefs we have will no doubt stay the same.
In short, our "beliefs" and concepts of God will only continue to evolve, but it would take divine intervention indeed, to ever save humanity from the hubris of it's own "beliefs."
Comments
Post a Comment