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Goodbye Jesus

Harlan Ellison On God


Deva

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I have never been able to rule out the possible existence of  a God or Gods, but I find myself mostly in agreement with Harlan:

 

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Goodbye Jesus

Deva, thank for the great video clip.  I am mostly in agreement with this guy as well.  There really isn't any way to rule out the possibility of a creator, god force, higher energy, etc. etc..  In all reality it isn't the belief that there is more to the universe than we currently know of that is bad, it is the belief that we 'KNOW' what that something is which causes the real problems. 

 

I always think of ants when I'm pondering this subject.  Ants live in their own little ant world also known as the 'ant hill'.  They live there, they breed there, and they die there.  Ants more than likely have absolutely no idea what human beings really are.  They probably don't realize that we think, breathe, have emotions, etc etc.  To the 'religious ant', God is the big ant in the sky.  When a human being carelessly steps on the ant hill and destroys everything the religious ant knows, that same ant might attribute the disaster to the 'big ant in the sky.'  It might think that all of the ants are being punished or something.  On the other hand, the atheist ant would tell all of the other ants that it was nothing more than a natural disaster - the big ant in the sky had nothing to do with it...

 

Here is the kicker, both groups would be wrong and right at the same time.  As you already know, the truth of the whole matter is that the ant hill got destroyed by a naughty human boy who thought it would be funny to kick the ant hill and kill all of the ants that were fleeing for their lives.  The naughty human boy did it for fun.  The atheist ant would be right a sense by claiming the act as a natural disaster.  No matter what the force was that caused the disaster to take place, the disaster is as natural as anything else in the cosmos.  The religious ant would also be right in a sense because the disaster was actually caused by an intelligence that was much greater than that of the ordinary ant.  However, both groups of ants do not and probably never will have the capacity to truly understand the inner and outer workings of the whole matter.  The truth is that the disaster was caused by intelligence, but it wasn't the intelligence of the ant god.  On the flip side of the coin, the atheist ant is also right about the event being a natural disaster, but the atheist ant refused to acknowledge that there was any 'intelligence' behind it.

 

Whew... that was wordy.  My point is simply this:  We as human beings are nothing more than a different type of ant living in our own ant hill that we call planet earth.  At this point in time we are probably better off as a species if we don't know the truth of our existence.  Metaphorically speaking, I'm sure that most of us would not like to think that we are just waiting for some naughty higher intelligence to come along and destroy our hill for fun...

 

Deva, you are a smart individual.  I applaud you for posting this.

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Thank you, Imperialblue.  One of the people who got me to think in a different way about Christianity was Harlan Ellison.  I owe him a debt of gratitude for his stories and his essays, which opened my eyes.   Although I still have my struggles from time to time, I believe returning to my Christian upbringing would be intellectual suicide.

 

What you say about ants made me thinK of Mark Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger".  An allegorical story about God/Satan (same being) that treats humans like we treat ants when we were kids. That book may be hard to find, but once read, it is unforgettable.

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I have never been able to rule out the possible existence of  a God or Gods, but I find myself mostly in agreement with Harlan:

 

Deva, apart the last part of the video (the beating of humans) thought it was an excellent video, thanks very much for posting, He reminded me quite a bit of George Carlin, both on tone and content.

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