Whose God is it?, Part II: The One True God?

God has been around a long time.

In the Introduction to her book, A HISTORY OF GOD, Karen Armstrong puts it this way, “… my study of the history of religion has revealed that human beings are spiritual animals. Indeed, there is a case for arguing that Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. Men and women started to worship gods as soon as they became recognizably human; they created religions at the same time they created works of art.”

Oops, I think I just lost some of the FC (Fundamentalist Christian) crowd … if I had any … probably not a crowd even if I did … but that “human beings are spiritual animals” probably shooed them away. My goodness, “ANIMALS!? That does it. I’m outta here.”

Maybe not. Maybe I’m being a little prejudicial in my conclusions about FC’s being able to think critically. Let’s simply glide over the hump and if you’re still here, we’ll go on together. If not, I’ll go on with whoever is still reading.

So, where were we? Oh yes, God has been around a long time.

Note: To warn you, the following is a sort of heavy stuff. In this draft I am getting my ideas down. Over time I will come back and keep rewriting it to try to get it a wee bit more presentable, like in a little lighter tone and voice. But I have this damn style of writing that was taught to me in classrooms … that I have to purge as I go along.

Back to the subject at hand, I can accept that God has been around for a long time. There are any number of interesting, well-written books such as Joseph Campbell’s—including THE POWER OF MYTH—to document the history of religious beliefs and rituals and their organizing influence on the human experience going back beyond anything we know about as to the way humans have lived. That’s a fact whether we are Evolutionists or Creationists or what? … Buddhists?

But … is it “God”—a specific, definable being—that has been around for a long time or that humans have had the “idea” of God for a long time? Hang on, we might lose another bunch of the FC crowd right about now.

FC’s believe their God of yesterday, today and tomorrow is an unchanging “omni” being, like in omnipotent, omniscient, and so forth and so on ad infinitum.

But really, folks, have humans always viewed God as this unchanging “omni” being? Even the early followers of the God of Abraham?

(Ok, here’s where we REALLY lose ‘em!)

The answer is: No, there is no historical record of a continuous, unchanging view of an “omni” being--not even in the original texts of "The Bible". However, the human record is replete with documentation of an ever changing (evolving?) view of God, or “the gods”. Even the emergence of YAHWEH in the early biblical scriptures (as in The Bible) was as a choosing between the existing gods of the period.

Armstrong writes, “This book …(is) a history of the way men and women have perceived (God) from Abraham to the present day. The human idea of God has a history, since it always meant something slightly different to each group of people who have used it at various points of time. The idea of God formed in one generation by one set of human beings could be meaningless in another. Indeed, the statement ‘I believe in God’ has no objective meaning, as such, but like any other statement only means something in context, when proclaimed by a particular community. Consequently there is no one unchanging idea contained in the word ‘God’; instead, the word contains a whole spectrum of meanings, some of which are contradictory, or even mutually exclusive.”

OK, by now, I’m probably preaching to the choir: there aren’t any FC’s left reading this.

Why do I suspect that? Because I was one. And I firmly believed at the time that to question or doubt was to allow Satan (a real being, powerful and in opposition to God) a beachhead in my mind.

But there might be someone who is emerging into doubt and who has questions, as I did, for whom my relating my experience in breaking through religious fear into rational enlightenment may be helpful … so I press forward.

The basic script for when someone says, “I believe in God.”

Respond, “Which one?’

If the other person then says, “The one true God.” Or words to that effect.

Respond, “Says who?”

And, as the sages say, therein lays the rub.

The problem—to telegraph a later section—is that FC’s believe their God will say so in the Battle of Armageddon. (Think Elijah and the Priests of Baal here.) They do not shy away from the destruction of the world as we now know it in fire. They forecast it. Remember this when you think about George W. Bush having his finger on the button that triggers the bomb and we move forward into the Battle of Good versus Evil—according to his definitions of Good and Evil.

Next: The Fear of Doubt