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Goodbye Jesus

Why Is God So Human?


ExCanadianReformed

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Here's a quote from a letter I wrote recently answering a question of a friend who's still a Christian:

 

Have you ever meditated on the supposed attributes of God? Really thought about it? We use words like ‘spirit’ and ‘infinite’ for God but does this really make sense with what we believe and read in the Bible about him?

 

Science has shown irrefutably that emotions like love, anger, jealousy, depression etc are all controlled solely in our brains through neurochemical processes. An obvious application of this is antidepressant or anti-psychotic medications which would never work if we had a non-physical soul controlling our emotions or thoughts. How could a pill, which works through chemistry, work on a non-physical, non-chemical soul? It couldn't.

 

If God is completely eternal and outside of the physical realm, how does he feel anything at all? How can he feel love or jealousy or anger? These emotions are all very physical and natural. You need to be a modern animal with a highly developed brain in order to feel anything at all! An eternal spirit-being would be unimaginable to humans and would be so far removed from our concept of ‘reality’ as to make it irrelevant to us. It makes no sense that God would have a ‘son’ - an eternal spirit-being couldn't have a physical son, it just doesn't make sense. Where does God’s sperm come from?

 

You can’t have it both ways because you end up with nonsense. To say things like “God can do anything” doesn't help because it’s not true. God can’t sin. He can’t create a rock he can’t lift. He can’t go against his own nature. This also applies to his non-physical nature. He can’t go against it. It doesn't work. The ancients realized this and that’s why their Gods were all just super-humans. They didn't get into the mess of a spiritual being. Where did God’s sperm come from when he impregnated Mary? Does God’s DNA have 46 chromosomes just like a human? Obviously, because it would have to split into 23 in his scrotum just like a human male in order to get Mary pregnant! So even the Christian God becomes depressingly human in the end.

 

What does make sense is that humans always invent Gods that are more human than god, simply because that’s what we can imagine. We can easily think of an angry or loving God who looks human or can take human form because that’s the type of God humans have always been interested in. Christians are no different than the ancient Greeks or Romans or our earliest African ancestors. We all seek to worship a ‘superhuman’ - someone who can do all the things we wish we could do ourselves. And of course he / she / they are more useful if they’re on our side, fighting against our opponents.

 

The yearning that so many people think God has for a relationship with us is really a reflection of the yearning we have for there to be meaning in life where there isn't any and a better life waiting for us when there isn't one.

Wishful thinking never has anything to do with Truth. Wishing and hoping for a better life after this one is a complete waste of this one! It’s so sad that so many are wasting their one and only life chasing virtual butterflies that live only in their fantasies.

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  • Super Moderator

By Jove, I think you've got it!!!

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     Yeah, well, unless magic.  I win.

 

          mwc

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That bit about medication not fixing a non physical condition blew my mind a little.

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Guest Babylonian Dream

God is so human because in the beginning, Man created God in his image after his likeness he created him.

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That's one of the things about the Xtian God that led me to eventually become an atheist. I always wondered why he acted out the worst of human attributes. Jealousy, anger, murder, genocide, rape (did he ever ask Mary for permission?), pride, arrogance, greed, etc. I always thought a "perfect god" would be extremely humble and good and have qualities far above our own. He wouldn't be so vain as to demand our worship and adoration under threat of eternal suffering and torment...It is now far too obvious he was a manmade construction to give power and control to the men who created him.

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