there is no god

let me clear this from the start: i belive in god

but ... there is no god. ( now don't jump on my head and let me explain :) )



so quickly onto the explanation before someone - hello I. - jumps on my head:

you see, there is a difference between reality and what you- or me - percieve; it's highschool philosophy; i know; but this leads me to belive that at the root of this there is a semantical problem;


Tao Te Ching (that is The Book of Change or something along those lines) begins with something like: "The Tao that can be named is not Tao". that single statement has been translated in so many many ways ...

such as "the path that you can speak about is not the real path" ... or "virtue that is virtue for the sake of virtue is not real virtue" ... (or, if you want to, "god that can be named is not the real god") well ... i gues it depends who's translating ... but the number of translations was not the point i was trying to make anyway;



the point was that we all have some idea of who and what god is ... and when we say god, we relate to that idea; if there is a god, our idea has no relationship whatsoever with it/him; the idea has a relationship with what we've been told, or what we read or what we thought or what we accepted (from what we read and thought) ... or whatever else ... that may or (most probably) may not have had at some point a relationship to the god that exists (god, that sounds complicated!).

sometimes you may reach a point when you feel that there's something more to it all than you can possibly perceive ... like when you loose yourself in the eyes of someone ... but to go from there to "i felt the sacred presence of god" ...

well, that sounds like the perfect definiton of a leap-of-faith;



for many (that is: for some people i know, startig with my religion teacher in primary school) god is some old, vengefull dude, who, if he listens to your prayers at all will say yes to some, no to some more and maybe but not unless you're a good boy (or girl) and eat all your cereal at breakfast and do what mummy tells you to to all the rest;

and this god will not teach you what love is until you're twenty-something (since you're not supposed to know about that till you marry; if you try to find out before then, you live in sin - especially and most definitely if you are a woman! god forbid!); yet during all your life you're suposed to love him and nobody more then him or your soul will ever burn in hell and suffer eternal damnation, amen. (and yes, you'll burn in hell even if you don't know how to love and even if that's because nobody told you).

Oh, Yeah, And You'Re Not Allowed To Write Of Him Except If You Write Everything About Him With A Capital Letter. Especially his Name. (ooops!)

and in case you didn't catch on, NO, i'm not mocking god, but someone's ideas about him (which might or not have a real relationship to the ... yada-yada ... we-ve covered that already).



for nietzsche(if i remember correctly) god is dead. well ... good for him! because for god, nietzsche is very dead :)



for some others god is not dead, god is an energy field; so all of a sudden we'll have god-powered batteries, or what? guess they didn't think about that ... or did they? i honestly have no idea.



for this guy, there is no god (and if there IS, do not call him god because "god" has become an ugly name - so many ugly things having been done in his name; that's sort-of something i ... well ... tend to ... sort-of agree somewhat with ;) ); so if you want to call that-which-is by a name, a better name would be "Nature" (with a capital N), again, acording to the old guy in the link above.

that seems preety accurate actually, because if nature is "all there is", and god exists (that is "god is something that IS") ... well ... you do the math.


so if you define god as something you think he might be, then god as you define him does not exist; if you define god as what you can imagine, then that god does not exist;

maybe you can define god as whatever you might imagine plus whatever there might be beyond your imagination ... but then, that applies equally well to god or a pink fluffy rabbit with white paws and a blod-thirst problem, so that's not much of a definition, is it?

so yes, there definitely is something more than you (or me) perceive ... but making it a "him" and naming him "god"?

you might as well accept that god - however you define it - does not exist (as long as you define it, that is). and never did. and never will.