Stuff that I have Noticed #62: What About this God Business?

While I wish to cast no aspersions on any beliefs that may be held by anyone who chances to read this essay, it’s likely that should you be an adherent to any of the myriad faiths in a deity (or multiple deities), you may take offense. I wish you no ill. What follows is purely my take on the idea. Feel free to stop reading at any point and pray for my salvation.
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I was raised in a southern baptist environment. It was universal in my circle of family and friends. There was a picture of Jesus in every classroom of my Tennessee grade school. Each day began with a prayer and no one I ever met for the first thirteen years of my life was an atheist or an agnostic.

We believed the (King James version of the) Bible literally. And I mean literally –with one exception – when Jesus turned the water into wine it meant grape juice. A questionable teaching. The Baptists of our ilk had a really slick rule: It was called the “unpardonable sin”. Guess what it was… Questioning! So when small doubts crept into my childish brain I did all I could to obliterate them. I did not want to go to hell and agonize for eternity in a “lake of fire”.

But these frightening thoughts persisted and as I grew older these “sinful” ideas continued to creep into my consciousness unbidden. But fear of hell is a powerful motivation and I desperately clung to the teachings that had suffused my being since early childhood. I was so devout that I even became the president of the Hollywood High School bible club and carried the “good book” with my other schoolbooks every day. My first year of college I was a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (which included several all American football players) who met weekly at UCLA for prayer and bible study. I was very big on praying and the fact that virtually none of my prayers were “answered” did not dampen my zeal.

By my second collegiate year the doubts finally began to edge out the beliefs and my transformation gradually accelerated. As my mind approached maturity the legends and myths began slowly to erode.

Now, at a more-or-less fully mature eighty-seven, the doubts are long gone and beliefs in the existence of the supreme, omniscient, omni-present godhead seem absurd in retrospect.

Mr. Hitchens’ comment really rang a bell for me. I never thought about the god concept this way.

Even after I mentally/emotionally escaped from the christian teachings with which I grew up the concept of prayer as Hitchens put it didn’t occur to me this clearly.

Here’s a bit of my favorite author, Mr. Clemens:
“You have noticed that the human being is a curiosity. In times past he has had (and worn out and flung away) hundreds and hundreds of religions; today he has hundreds and hundreds of religions, and launches not fewer than three new ones every year. I could enlarge that number and still be within the facts.
“One of his principle religions is called the Christian. A sketch of it will interest you. It sets forth in detail in a book containing two million words, called the Old and New Testaments. Also it has another name — The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God — the one I have been speaking of.
“It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.”

In the mid 1970s the experience of Transcendental Meditation launched me on the first leg of my Spiritual (as opposed to religious) journey. I began voraciously to devour books on metaphysical and scientific topics from Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics to Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi . I read Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters, and several other books on quantum physics. I read all of Itzhak Bentov and Carlos Castenada, much of Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking. I plowed through these books and authors and many more of their type between my thirty-fifth and fiftieth years.

One of the things I learned through this exploration was the striking similarity between the theories and discoveries of advanced physics and the teachings of many Spiritual Masters. It was during this period that the distinction between spirituality and religiosity became clear to me. Robert Monroe’s Journeys Out of the Body and Raymond Moody’s Life After Life had profound effects on me. Then came Monroe’s Far Journeys and my ideas about the nature of life, both physical and nonphysical began to coalesce. My six days at the Monroe Institute for Applied Science in ‘85 put the icing on my Spiritual cake.

I have become an omnitheist. That is: I maintain that everything which exists, material and nonmaterial, collectively comprises “god”. This is not exactly a revolutionary concept. I’m just not a fan of orthodoxy. For me the structure of any organized religion with its rituals, rules and what I perceive as herd mentality has no appeal. To me this seems like mind (behavior) control created by a “priest” class for political purposes. There are, no doubt, exceptions to this and, anyhow, if it works for you that’s great. I respect that. As the old saying goes, “whatever gets you through the night.”

I can’t top that.

I do believe that we have non-physical help available in this physical condition we currently inhabit but that’s a whole other essay.