Regardless of whatever god or gods may exist anywhere else, there are essentially only two kinds of "Gods” (for lack of a better term) operating in this world, in the exact same way there are two kinds of people in this world.
The two kinds of people in the world are humankind and the corporate-kind, of which theistic religion is the corporate kind. The corporate-kind of person is a legal-fictional person that has all the rights of people and all the powers of gods. In fact, one is the monster created by the other, with the former always finding ways to crucify itself in service of the latter. And the struggle humanity has been forever engaged in is between these two kinds of people, of which the latter is treated like divine royalty and the former like Rosa Parks; or as St. Augustine put it, one is hailed as a King for doing with an armada what the is condemned as a pirate for doing with a single ship. In religious terms it is the differences between the gods we imagine and the human beings we really are; and in modern terms, it's the difference between the financial system as a whole and Bernie Madoff.
So today, there are two kinds of Gods in the world, one which is man-made and the other which made man. There is the world itself, which is the only actual "God" we can claim to know "created" us, and there are all the other "Gods" that we have created, the first and most powerful of which is money, and the rest of which include everyone from Jesus and Mohammad to Google and Goldman Sachs, and virtually all corporate-kind.
If you compare the pantheism and animism of the ancient Americas, Asia and the per-hellinstic Middle East and Europe, for example, to the paganism and monotheism that predominates in the world today, you see this distinction as well, with the former seeing the earth as their mother, and all the latter seeing the mind of man more and more as a strict disciplinarian father. This transition accompanied the transition from nomadic hunter gather societies to agricultural societies, from the freedom of Eden, as it were, into the ledger of the account and the time clock of the machine. And by doing so, the nurturing hand of nature was cut off and replaced with the "invisible hand" of the markets, with the latter taking great pleasure and deriving great wealth, from the cruel lessons it applies to its faithful flock, and the harder the lessons, the greater the love for the teacher.
This distinction can likewise be seen in the foods we eat, with those who eat the foods nurtured by nature living longer and resembling more the statues of Greece and Rome, and those who eat only those foods nurtured by man dying young, and leaving a corpse that resemble the Pillsbury dough-boy.
The powers of the national corporate-gods of Greece and Rome pale in comparison to the multinational corporate-gods of today, of course, who can not only impregnate virgins and raise people from the dead, both literally and virtually, but can destroy the world a thousand times over, impose plagues and famines through capital flight the world over with the push of a button, and reward with unparalleled wealth and power those who increase their profits the most, and punish with poverty and war all those who dare to stand in their way, or question the wisdom and benevolence of the "divine plan" they claim only to be working toward.
If you compare the pantheism and animism of the ancient Americas, Asia and the per-hellinstic Middle East and Europe, for example, to the paganism and monotheism that predominates in the world today, you see this distinction as well, with the former seeing the earth as their mother, and all the latter seeing the mind of man more and more as a strict disciplinarian father. This transition accompanied the transition from nomadic hunter gather societies to agricultural societies, from the freedom of Eden, as it were, into the ledger of the account and the time clock of the machine. And by doing so, the nurturing hand of nature was cut off and replaced with the "invisible hand" of the markets, with the latter taking great pleasure and deriving great wealth, from the cruel lessons it applies to its faithful flock, and the harder the lessons, the greater the love for the teacher.
This distinction can likewise be seen in the foods we eat, with those who eat the foods nurtured by nature living longer and resembling more the statues of Greece and Rome, and those who eat only those foods nurtured by man dying young, and leaving a corpse that resemble the Pillsbury dough-boy.
The powers of the national corporate-gods of Greece and Rome pale in comparison to the multinational corporate-gods of today, of course, who can not only impregnate virgins and raise people from the dead, both literally and virtually, but can destroy the world a thousand times over, impose plagues and famines through capital flight the world over with the push of a button, and reward with unparalleled wealth and power those who increase their profits the most, and punish with poverty and war all those who dare to stand in their way, or question the wisdom and benevolence of the "divine plan" they claim only to be working toward.
And as the former wars with the latter through nature, from changes in climate to ecological collapse, the latter all fight nature in the same way they all fight each other: by sacrificing humankind again and again on the altar of its bottom line, behind the veil of maya we are taught to worship, kill, and die for.
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