Saturday, February 16, 2008

God needs us more than we need him

We've all heard the saying "If a tree falls in the forest, but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?". Well, does it? The air pressure differential created by the impact would say yes, but the lack of receptor organs (such as ear drums) to quantify that impact would say no. An interesting question about a natural phenomenon. Can we ask the same question about a supernatural phenomenon?

If god were to "say" something, but there were no humans to "hear" him, does this mean he actually "said" anything? Stated another, perhaps more clear, way; Assuming creation to be true, god has an audience, but what if there was no audience? What if we were never here, would there still be god. What would be the need of a god in an existence that includes only him/herself?
Christians make lots of assumptions, indeed the entirety of their faith is assumptive, but perhaps no one is bigger than this: Christians believe that god existed before we did. The only accounts we have of this are the holy texts, which were written by men. Even if we allow the premise of divine dictation, the words themselves were originally written down by men, not god. Since no one was alive to see a god dictate these texts, it is an assumption to say we know he existed before we did, an assumption based on text written by the creation of this eternal being, but not by the eternal being itself.

I say, what point is there for a god without an audience. How would an omnipotent being demonstrate omnipotence if there were no one to convince? Without someone to ooh and aah over the tricks of a magician, there are no tricks, only rehearsals of slights-of-hand. A magician can't fool himself, he needs someone who does not know how the trick is done to impress. Without such a person, the magician has no career. Without a creation to parade his godliness in front of, god is not god. He could be everything, but without a created humanity, he would be simultaneously nothing.


There are two ways of looking at our existence. We were either created by an omniscient god, or we are the most recent evolutionary waystation. I suppose there are really a myriad of ways to explain our existence, such as extraterrestrial implantation, but I think the two most dominant areas of discourse on our origins are the two I mentioned above, so we'll stick with them.


If we were created by an omniscient god, then he must have had no choice in the matter, in that without us he would be not be omniscient. He couldn't be. If there are no uniscient (non-omniscient) beings to compare omniscience with, omniscience cannot exist. If it's the only game in town (being omniscient), then exaltation this element would be absurd since having this trait would simply be the norm (again in an existence with only god). Since we are indeed here to discuss this, then of course the christian god had to create us, if we are to believe in his most divine characteristics of omnipresence, omnibenevolence and omniscience. If god had no choice but to create us, then he is in no way immune to the governances of human logic and semantics. His subjectivity to these governances requires an explanation. Either our disciplines are unsatisfactory to describe god's existence, or he is a fraudulent mixture of humanity's least positive components. If our disciplines are unsatisfactory then, all disciplines must be, including our ability in recognizing god in the first place. If we cannot design suitable regulations for the understanding of the existence we all have, and the surroundings we are all among, then how could we possibly be able to design a system of recognition with which to distinguish the divinity of god? He is the result of the primitive minds of primitive men who were obviously incapable of designing constructive, optimistic and self-reliant societies (the exception being of course the great greek civilizations). Men such as these relied on the fear of the unknown to establish control of the masses, because it was easier than thinking completely through problems. Humans don't need a god. We don't claim the unclaimable, so we need no audience to display to. We do however, have as large an audience as we like, but it certainly didn't come from a creator. We arrived here on our own and rightfully so.

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