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The God of Atlantis

In the same way there is no greater sense of irony than the idea that an all powerful being would create a universe that is necessarily infinitely inferior to itself,  so too there is no greater impediment to understanding what the word "God" actually means than the definitions of "God" offered by religion. 

Once the mind is shackled with such indelible labels, it is prejudiced forever after in favor of them, and agaisnt any other concepts that seem to challenge or in anyway contradict that first impression. Those labels become the first coat of paint, as it were, upon the blank canvas of our mind, for conceptualizing some vague notion in our head of what we think the word "God" means. From that first conceptualization, we are forever chasing and refining the notion of this word "God" that is forever limited to our experiences, ideas, and environment.

It never occurs to us that any and every such concept we have, or have had, or ever will have, will remain at least as distant from and as incompatible with  what such a word may in fact be pointing toward, as our understanding of whatever existed prior to the "big bang," some 13.7 billion years ago. 

  What we "fall in love with," as a result, is not the thing behind the concept of the word "God," but whatever concept of the word "God" itself we happen to prefer. This then is like falling in love, not with a destination but the road sign that points toward that destination. Going to church and worshiping "God," therefore, is like a person who loves to travel driving to the airport and falling on their knees and worshiping a poster of Hawaii.

In fact, to venerate a bible that describes and defines God is like an art lover venerating a dictionary in which the word "art" is defined, more than any artist that has ever lived or any piece of art ever created. Indeed, it is like a marine biologist who shows their undying love for the ocean by driving to the local library once a week to spend an hour venerating a book of stories about the lost city of Atlantis. 





   

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