{"id":671,"date":"2010-10-22T15:50:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T15:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/10\/gods-multiple-personalities.html"},"modified":"2010-10-22T15:50:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-22T15:50:00","slug":"gods-multiple-personalities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/10\/gods-multiple-personalities.html","title":{"rendered":"God’s Multiple Personalities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Let\u2019s say I have two friends, one named Cosmo and one named King.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
Cosmo and King are both very rich and powerful guys.\u00a0 Cosmo is a bit of a recluse, living on the top of a distant mountain.\u00a0 His affairs are managed by a huge network of people who don\u2019t really have too much contact with the boss, save the occasional memo.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
King on the other hand is hands-on all the way.\u00a0 He lives in the city and gets down and dirty in his business.\u00a0 He\u2019s kind of strict and the employees work very hard, always trying to stay on his good side.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
Now what if I told you that Cosmo and King were the exact same person?<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cNo way!\u201d you would say, \u201cThat\u2019s not possible unless the guy\u2019s got some kind of multiple personality disorder in which case he sounds like he could use a little therapy.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
This is the same response I have when people talk to me about God.\u00a0 Paul Froese and Christopher Bader have a piece about this on HuffPost<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
In our book, America\u2019s Four Gods: What We Say about God and What That Says about Us<\/i>, we demonstrate that Americans can be divided into four distinct categories of believers. For purposes of this brief essay, we only discuss two groups of believers \u2014 those which most closely reflect our political party divisions. They are believers in an Authoritative God, who tend to be overwhelmingly Republican, and believers in a Distant God, who tend to be largely Democrat.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
\u2026Believers in an Authoritative God view God as rigid in His [sic<\/i>] (these believers tend to think of God as male) moral judgments and very clear in His demand for our obedience. The Republican Party platform attracts believers of an Authoritative God for logical reasons, especially when considering how conservatives adopt a stance of moral absolutism in their opposition to abortion, gay marriage and gays in the military. For these believers, God has laid out what is immoral and our leaders should do likewise.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
This gets to the very root of my non-theism.\u00a0 Everyone has his or her own version of God.\u00a0 When we talk about God in our society we\u2019re usually talking past each other because some people are talking about Cosmo and others are talking about King.\u00a0 Yet they\u2019re all pretending that it\u2019s possible for him to be the same exact person.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
You know where silliness like this is permitted?\u00a0 In fiction.\u00a0 God is a product of the human imagination so the deity comes off as anything one imagines it to be.\u00a0 This is why proofs of God\u2019s existence are so useless.\u00a0 Most of the time no one knows which god a person is talking about.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
I used to go to interfaith clergy meetings where everyone would nod piously and agree that Yahweh (whom the Jews would only call Adonai or Hashem), Allah and Christ were all different words for the one true god we all believe in.\u00a0 What a bunch of baloney!\u00a0 Even the followers of each of these gods can\u2019t agree on what they are.\u00a0 This is not surprising considering the findings of Froese and Bader. \u00a0Deities are projections of our own desires and personalities.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
(P.S.\u00a0 Some people have asked me why I sometimes capitalize the word god and sometimes I don\u2019t.\u00a0 I only capitalize it when it refers to God used as a kind of name, rather than the generic deity.\u00a0 To make this work I alway substitute the name Sneezy and the word dwarf.\u00a0 If Sneezy fits, then I capitalize.\u00a0 If dwarf would fit, then I don\u2019t.)<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s say I have two friends, one named Cosmo and one named King. Cosmo and King are both very rich and powerful guys.\u00a0 Cosmo is a bit of a recluse, living on the top of a distant mountain.\u00a0 His affairs are managed by a huge network of people who don\u2019t really have too much contact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6,30],"class_list":["post-671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-atheism","tag-non-theism"],"yoast_head":"\nGod's Multiple Personalities<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Let\u2019s say I have two friends, one named Cosmo and one named King. 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