you are correct… if god can mean anything, it does mean nothing…
and to continue along… in my study of the middle ages for my research into
philosophy, the average medieval person felt god as a literal presence…and
if it wasn’t god, it was one of his agents or one of his foes… the very air was
filled with all sorts of divine and not so divine beings and the medieval person
felt that in their very bones… god and his agents were all around, everywhere
you went… you couldn’t escape god… he was there every minute… and everyone
felt it and knew it…
today, today is quite a different story…a person who feels the same way
as the medieval person would be looked at quite differently by their peers…
but no one pays attention to such a person because they would be considered
slightly off if not outright mad or insane…now the interesting thing here is
that people feel Jesus as an immediate presence, but somehow don’t feel god
in the same way (and yes, I know all about this trinity bit, the father, the son
and the holy spirit) I don’t understand how many say, accept Jesus as the way to
salvation, but god is almost an afterthought…what does it say that Jesus has
more influence and power in people’s thought then god does…Jesus still holds
sway but god doesn’t… rather weird I think…
now for most people, in past times of troubles, they would pray,
which is a form of hoping, that god would come down and straighten things out…
I suspect, (with no proof I admit) that the number of people who do that today
is far smaller then ever before and I think the reason is, people have given up on
god and his influence in the modern world…which coincides a general loss
of feeling that there is no one who is fighting for the common man anymore…
work screws you over and there is no one who will fight for you and
the government screws you over and there is no one and society screws
you over and there is no one and if life screws you over and at least previously
you had god there, but who feels that today?
we feel powerless in this world and there is nothing to help us think
that we might find justice in this world or the next…
I suspect this accounts for the rise of the superhero culture we
have today… batman and superman and the flash, are all signs that
we need to think or we need to hope there is actually superhero’s out
there that look out for us, because god and jesus aren’t there…
I don’t see them or feel them or can trust them to be there for me…
and so all we are left with is… pretend superhero’s because
we so lack the faith that there might be a god or Jesus to avenge us
or at least give us some sort of comfort in our times of trouble…
we feel isolated in this world, isolated from each other and isolated
from the government and isolated from society and isolated from
god and jesus and other religious forms of hope…it has been in the past,
these times of despair that people have turned to religion but not now…
not now…and so it looks like we have no place to turn…
but we do and it is in knowing that we are down to our very atoms, connected
to everything… it doesn’t require a religious understanding but a
scientific understanding that we are atoms and our atoms, the very same atoms
in me and you and everyone has been around since the beginning of time,
recycled over and over and over again and we will continued to be recycle
until the end of time… my next existence will be many in nature… part of my
atoms shall exist in the water and the sky and animals and trees and part of
my atoms shall exist in another human being and that is the true being born again…
not as some mystical event but far more surely… I may not be conscience of my
next existence but as sure as I exist today, I shall exist tomorrow and forever…
it is not religious mysticism that drives this understanding of the nature of reality
but a scientific understanding…perhaps this recycling explains the
existence of child prodigies… they remember… their cells, their atoms remember
their past existence and thus allows them to feats that we marvel at, like
Mozart’s ability to play the piano at an early age and the child who out of nowhere
seems to have the ability to play the violin or the piano or speaks French or has math
ability that is beyond the average child of the same age…
we cannot discount such possibilities… and we still stay within the realm of
science…so where would god fit into such thinking?
no where and where does god fit into our modern world? no where…
we cannot find a home for god because god no longer answers our questions
or even fits into a question that we still care about…
we have left god because he no longer speaks to us… has nothing to say to us,
and we have nothing left to say to god…
Kropotkin