Sunday, May 30, 2010

Is God an Under-Achiever?

Have you ever wondered why prayer doesn't seem to work? Yet, what if it did? Does God not answer prayers on purpose? Or does He, but you don't like what His answer is for you?

Some have said that God is evil. Is He?

Or, is He just a flawed, like the rest of us? If we were indeed created in His image, well....

Of course, getting back to prayer now, if you pray for having your own personal Nation, or something possibly impossible like world peace, you're just fooling yourself; because you're simply not going to get it. Are you.

Now, I'm not really saying you'll get anything at all, no matter what you ask for.

I'm just speculating, what if?

Did you ever consider that perhaps prayer not only works, but what if it works every time? Maybe you just can't see what you're getting for your prayers.

Does God even pay any attention at all?

What if the answer is something as simple as how God passes through Time being different than how we do? Perhaps He is even passing through Time in an inverse orientation to us, His creations? What if as a joke, he created us, but in the opposite direction from how he was traveling in Time.

What if Time is God, and He is only a symptom. Holy books everywhere say we cannot understand God, so maybe we need to consider these "ridiculous" concepts.

What would this mean to us? What could it explain for us?

Sometimes it really helps when trying to understand the un-understandable, to break "out of the box" of one's normal thinking processes, and go into a more oblique angle-of-thought. To leave what we normally consider to be rational. Because sometimes, actually many times, doing this can give us insights that we would otherwise not have been able to achieve. It's just a kind of trick for those wanting to achieve transcendent thought on-the-quick.

Let's say you were having a rough time of it, financially. So in your desperation, you prayed for money. Now if God were passing through that particular moment and heard you (or decided to hear you), and He (also) decided to give you, say, a winning lotto number; well, how lucky is that?

OK, now consider that it had to happen before you prayed for it, not after. Remember? If God passes through time in a completely different and possibly unknowable direction from how we do (and what if its laterally?), that might well be expected to happen. Perhaps He is not unlike Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and is simply, "unstuck in time". He is God after all. Why SHOULD he be stuck in time like we are?

Speaking of the Great Divine One, do you see God as a male or a female? Do you adhere to this small anthropomorphism or as something greater than and outside of that? Or does that really have no relevance at all?

If in the beginning, there was only God, He wouldn't have a need for sexuality. After all sexuality is really there just for reproduction, pro-creation (and therefore, also for bonding purposes). If He did split out parts of Himself to create us, He'd realize that we needed to reproduce, being mortal and needing replacements to continue on, or it would be a rather short term experiment, wouldn't it? Not to mention, He'd know we are weak and need another, where he possibly doesn't. Or does He? Besides, gender can be a symbol as well if you think about it.

So then, regarding gender, what does one call an omnipotent being? "Him". "Her"? "It"? Does it even matter, really?

"It", somehow seems rather disrespectful. But going with the bible in that "He" created Man in "His own image", perhaps I'll just go with that for now until further evidence rears its questionably aesthetic head. It just makes it less clumsy for prosaic and lecture purposes. Don't you think?

Now, perhaps in winning that aforementioned lotto money, you ended up like many lotto winners have in the past by making the same mistakes they made and ending up in debt after having won all that money. Got what you wanted? Sad, isn't it?

So now, there you were, praying for financial salvation and there God was, in his infinite wisdom and reverse forward motion, grants you the answer to your prayers. He gives you a great grandiose grouping of funds. But as that would have to happen before you needed it, you would forever wonder why God never answered your prayers when you were in such dire need. And that's my point, that regardless of this ludicrous scenario, things could be happening that you can't see.

I'm not trying to argue for the existence of God here, just pointing out how damn ignorant we can be in the overall universal size of things.

However, remember now (getting back to it), He did answer you when you had asked, just not in the order you might have expected (and isn't that just like God?). That concept is important. You might think (in hindsight), that winning that lotto money ate up all your good luck and therefore you ended up "eating it" in the end, for all that good grace bestowed upon you.

But that would make no sense at all, would it? Not to you, not at that time. Because in actuality you only ended up with what you reaped for yourself. We do after all, have free will. Most of us just don't make proper use of it, do we? Too often, we tend to do what we think we needed to do, or what others expected us to do, rather than what, deep inside, we really knew we should be doing.

God on the other hand, has no such compunction to follow a group or trend (much to our great dissatisfaction at times, too). For he has no cohorts, no peers (and no, the Angels don't count). Having been passing backward through Time at the moment that you prayed to Him, God would have been completely unacknowledged by you in any efforts He would have made on your behalf.

Because after all, we are such minor creatures, being mere Human Beings. I mean, because of our not being able to move about in Time and all; like God can? What with his traveling through time all cockeyed in relation to us, perhaps this might even be a good argument for Angels. After all, someone has to take care of the day to day matters, feed the fish, water the garden, empty the garbage and all that. And keep us from figuring God out. Yes?

God they say, works in mysterious ways.

This paradigm of interacting with us, would generally appear to be, simply put, insane. Yet He has complete control, doesn't He? He can openly and freely manipulate Reality, perhaps even on a daily or minute, moment by moment basis. Yet remember, only in reverse Time, or simply in some other order of Time to whatever (y)our desires and understandings are.

Comprehension, you see, only comes when you see everything, both in as well as out of order. Enlightenment after all, is a transcendent realization that requires one to see everything. Every, Thing.

While we as people can only be in the here and now, never existing in the before or the after of this moment right here (whoops, and there it goes again, gone as we're suddenly in the next moment, and the next, on into our finity). This single moment that we permanently exist within; God on the other hand, well, is GOD, in part because He can be here and now in every moment other than this mere, but most important moment: Now.

Perhaps He can't even really be in this moment with us, but always in all other moments. Perhaps that is why He is so difficult to contact, because He is always one step away from showing four bars on his celestial cell phone. Or perhaps he isn't on Verizon, or Cingular. Maybe he has the GodFone network from Celestial Enterprises or something, and so, no free minutes with us. Maybe we're not in his Network.

On the other hand, perhaps what makes him God is that He is in every single moment all through time. Only He is experiencing it in reverse (or some other form, or) order, that may not be linear as we tend to experience time. We need linear time as were not sophisticated enough to handle things out of order.

So what if He were "unstuck" in time.

But, why would God do that? Would it even be a matter of God doing it? Or is it just that, because of how he set things up in the beginning, that's how it worked out for him in the end.

Or at the beginning, for that matter.

Well, He is God after all, isn't He?

Isn't that what makes him so all Mighty Great and All Powerful? That He can be everywhere and everywhen, all at once, even?

So, perhaps when we finally and for the first time can "fold space" upon itself in order to travel vast intergalactic distances, we'll not only be able to travel to the ends of the universe in a moment, but also see God at the same time? Perhaps that will be at the end of time. If there is such a thing.

If as one theory goes, by warping space and time to travel around the universe, we could be in all existing points at once, then just choose the one we want to be in, and instantly be in that elsewhere; or "elsewhen". Well, isn't that what they say about God, too? That He exists in all places, at all times? But it appears, to all people as completely different, perhaps according to your cultural contexts.

Consider this: what if you could create a computer that could alter quarks, atoms, molecules; basically altering, Reality?

Think on this: a keyboard attached to supercomputer, with a Star Trek like "transporter" that can alter (or create) matter and therefore, scenarios. Much like the "Holodecks" on later episodes in the Star Trek "Universe". Consider that you could somehow attach a PC to the galaxy itself. Whatever works for you to help you visualize these things.

Then, what if you could type something into that keyboard and the computer would then generate whatever you wanted by manipulating space? Space after all is merely comprised of differing forms and densities of matter or energy and time after all and is merely another form of those. And Time doesn't exist until you create matter and energy anyway. Matter and energy may only be condensed pieces of space. These are the ever Holy building blocks of the Universe; the body and blood of Christ, if you will, using the standard earthbound cannibalistic religious references.

Now, what if someone then wrote a virus for that computer? One which sought out and destroyed everything that God had created in one massive chain reaction across the Universe(s)?

But of course, it could not touch God. Or does changing the Universe(s) change God?

Anyway, the virus would destroy all of God's great works; all He had done in those what, first seven days, was it? Well, with this paradigm, maybe he has a backup somewhere too?

No wait, it was SIX days as I remember it. Because He had to rest on the seventh. Because like everyone else, apparently God gets tired, too. Evidently. Now the bible didn't say God was breathing hard or breaking a sweat or falling asleep from exhaustion or anything, after all that creating. But perhaps, just maybe, He was bored with all that effort and needed some "rest"; some time off, a little while away from creating all this STUFF.

Or, simply He just needed some time to go and walk around to enjoy his creations.

Maybe. Maybe He's still gone, of on a "walkabout". And that's the real issue.

Actually, it was only after the third day that there even were days to begin with. So, how can he have created all this in six days when days didn't even exist for a few days in the beginning? How one can even say the heavens and the earth, lightness and darkness and such were created on a day before that day?

Speaking of that kind of ill-logic, let's skip forward a few years to a Church founded by a guy that just wanted everyone to be nice to one another and look at God as a Father figure and not a mean son of a bitch he had always seemed to be:

"The fundamental tenet of Spiritualism is that the path to God can be found not exclusively through the Church, but through direct communication with God. Pope Paul IV interpreted Michelangelo's Last Judgment, painted on the wall of the Sistine Chapel twenty years after completing the ceiling, as defaming the church by suggesting that Jesus and those around him communicated with God directly without need of Church." *

Well...skipping around a little some more, The Bible, Genesis, Chapter 1:

God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. [then he did some other clever things and....]

There was evening and there was morning, a third day.

Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and so, well, it was so.

God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. But we know now that the lesser light at night is really the sun; but I guess God didn't realize that.

God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,
and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.

There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

Genesis, Chapter 2

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the DAY that the LORD God made earth and heaven.

But you do wonder too, don't you? If God created everything in multiple days, how then in Chapter two could he have done it all in a single day?

Getting back to being all powerful and never tiring, I mean, if there were an Olympics for Gods, could another God do it all in five days? And perhaps not even NEED any resting on the seventh? Maybe, a black God, being a better athlete and all. Or, was God black to begin with, after all, considering the cradle of civilization and all, I mean, you don't really believe Jesus was blond haired and blue eyed do you?

Genesis, Chapter one again:

By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.

Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

All this shows here really, is simply not to use the bible as a reference.

Now consider this, wouldn't you think that if your computer, the aforementioned one, had destroyed the Universe and all God's Works, then God would simply have to start it all over again (let's skip the idea of a backup copy for now)?

Why you say?

Well, He, in His infinite wisdom, or so I'm told, did do it all in the first place. I mean, didn't He? So I assume He'd feel a need to do it all over again. Pan Dimensional Beings are quite like that, you see. Or so I've been told anyway.

And speaking of which, have you ever had to start something all over again from scratch? I mean like a project, maybe building a table or roofing a house or something. However, nothing like remarrying though, because everyone knows that's one of those things we all will do, all over, again and again, incorrectly. Even though we now know all the wrong things not to do again. Still, we can't seem to stop ourselves. Pity, that.

But usually, don't you take the lessons learned from the first effort and put them into the retuning of the second? As well, second time around, don't you get done in a sooner amount of time rather than later? Because, you've been over that ground once before already.

Or perhaps in this, God would be an Over-Achiever? And do it in six days again or more, but this time do it far, far better. Perhaps this time, dolphins would rule the world. Or that notorious Australian platypus would have more cohesion and focus in its design this time around. You know? You really have to wonder if that wasn't one of His last creations. After all, God might have been just a bit "burned out" or bored by that time (He did rest on the seventh day, remember? So what do you think was his last creation and how well formed was it?).

As for those dolphins, they did after all turn out with bigger brains than we, somehow. And if we're God's chosen, then how do you explain THAT? Well, sometimes that kind of thing just happens when you're creating huge systems such as the Universe. Or yes, even a smaller, mere planet sized ecosystem. Things like that, just happen, I suppose.

Artists experience this kind of thing all the time.

As a writer I've seen fiction story characters grow far beyond what I was originally intending to create and saw them growing far beyond what I was originally seeing in them. Sometimes in the end, you find that some minor character is actually the better character overall. Then you have to write an entire other novel about that one individual! And they can be quite demanding characters at times like those. They were after all, important enough to have a novel written about them and they can get quite haughty at times.

So, couldn't God simply decide that second time around, we're just not what we were cracked up to be and therefore He might just redo things more perfectly next time around? Perhaps not basing everything so much on chaos theory this time; or not so much with the number 23 in everything; or this time around, not use the Mandelbrot as a template in nature, but perhaps create another, possibly sillier, or maybe even more stringent, theorem?

Perhaps, as we've seen example after example of, God is actually an Under-Achiever (consider that platypus thing, or worse, the Chihuahua, a prime example of an Under-Achiever's creation). Not to mention, if YOU were doing the creating, would you really choose yourself as a template to follow when creating a race of beings, as God allegedly did? Or would you want to improve upon it? Doesn't the concept of "evil" seem just a little bit to you like an Under-Achiever's way of creating a system; then just saying:

"Oh, evil. Yeah, well, its necessary because, um, oh, well so people can see the difference between what is good and not. You know, you can't have dark without light! And all that, rot." (Sometimes I think God is British)

OK. Hmmm, sure. Whatever.

Then again, if God really is just the "C" student type, it might have explained a lot of things over the years. Like our once, Vice-President Quayle. Or President Jr Bush. As a comic once said, "Do you really want the guy who used to hold the service end of the hose on a keg at the frat party, to one day have his finger on the nuclear button?"

The bible says that God created us in his own image. Really!? Well, I know I wouldn't have were I Him. I'd have found all the faults in the design and try to create something far better. But then again, He IS God isn't He, and by definition, that means perfection. Or does it really? If by definition, we are indeed perfection, as God sees things, well, it really calls into question a lot of other things, doesn't it?

For one thing, does God not know what will happen in the future, when comes the end? Does He even want to know where this is all going to end up? Wouldn't that be pretty boring? Perhaps, defeat the purpose of all this? I mean if ALL is already written, what's the purpose? Going through all eternity already knowing the ending? What does that say about someone? And where IS that book where all is written anyway? It must be a huge tome of work! What IS the use in that any how? So, you have to ask yourself, what the Hell IS he doing?

So, what? You say? (O' apathetic one)

Who cares? You say? (O' dispassionate one)

First of all, try not to be such a pessimist. (O' pessimistic one)

Now, you know it really is quite possible that God has had no hand in dealing with Humankind since our creation. If ever at all. And if that's true, then what if all these many and varied and in some cases, purely silly religions are just so much stuff and nonsense? Pap and smear?

Maybe God's sitting around his God-study, waiting to be God-smacked when someone finally gets the right idea! Yet here we all are still, after thousands of years, flailing around miserably lost at all that!

Would it indeed finally take a Sci Fi writer to create a religion reasonably close to what God was waiting for? And what about that "party boy" and slightly psychotic, bigamist Joseph Smith? Did he really believe that Salt Lake City was the chosen land? REALLY?! Or was he just looking for an easy way to get all his magic underwear cleaned? And if he created Adam and Eve, naked, eating the forbidden fruit notwithstanding, what is the burka all about?

IF God allows a religion to be created in His name, don't you think He'd know where it would end up and not allow certain things to happen? I mean, its His reputation on the line there. Like what about the crusades? That was no way to win the "heathens" over to the Son of God's religion, so let's slaughter them all. Or like the Christian missionaries having caused the destruction of so much more than one autonomous people and their entire culture?

And what about these Islamic terrorists who think they are on God's side and get so many virgins when they martyr themselves by killing innocent groups of God's peoples? Bombs are indiscriminate and there are quite frequently some of what the bomber-martyr considers to be His own people getting dissipated.

I'd so much rather have one good hooker attend to me in heaven than 72 no doubt very annoying, virgins. I mean, sexually speaking, have you ever had to deal with ONE virgin? Besides, how many of those virgins, by the way, are over 65 and toothless?

Even if God didn't want to see the future Himself, in some cases, even we can use our brain to work it out, hardly without even thinking, what the end result would be of say, jumping off a 10 story building. That really doesn't take any supernatural abilities whatsoever. Does it? With a brain the size of God's, being someone that knows everything all the time (that's what omnipresence means after all), one would think it would take Him little effort to work things out for Himself.

So, in considering all this one could see how next time around, God might indeed give us more substance and less bravado. And try to improve on "perfection".

Because after all, bravado without substance is what? A Texan? Just a political party, you say?

Since you brought up political parties, what IS the deal with so many President's lately coming from the South? Of the last five President's, four were from the South? Can't the North produce a decent Presidential candidate anymore? Did JFK burn that all out during the Love decade?

Anyway.

Maybe we are indeed the pinnacle of creation in the Universe. Sad though if that's the case.

Maybe.

But I just hope, that should the "Creator of all" decide (or need) to one day recreate everything He had done before, I do simply hope that He will put more thought and corrective effort into it all. And lean toward being an Over-Achiever.

The next time around.

But then, what do I know.

Next time around, the platypus could be in charge.


* quote by Dr. Douglas Fields, Chief of the Nervous System Development and Plasticity Section, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
From his article, posted: May 26, 2010 09:40 AM at :
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-douglas-fields/michelangelos-secret-mess_b_586531.html?ref=fb&src=sp

1 comment:

  1. God is an underachiever. When its a bad thing he works in mysterious ways. When something good happens it is his will. I see he was too busy to stop all of the bbies that were killed Friday here in Newtown CT. Or perhaps he was busy too busy to look at 18 innocent babies and say oh no not them.

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