monotheism

30 Oct 2021 02:15 - 17 Dec 2023 09:19
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    • As I child I was subjected to Hebrew School, and one thing I remember getting drilled into my head was the Sh'ma, the most important prayer in Jewish liturgy and a statement of faith. It was impressed on me that its statement of the Oneness of God was the most important thing ever. Judaism is proud of having invented this idea (although they probably didn't; Freud thought they got it from the Egyptians and here's an interesting paper that traces it back to the Assyrians).
      • Analogous belief in Islam: Tawhid
    • Since then I've had some reason to think that monotheism might not be quite what it was cracked up to be. But religious programming from childhood has a way of staying lodged in the brain.
    • Consider the One God Universe: OGU. The spirit recoils in horror from such a deadly impasse. He is all-powerful and all-knowing. Because He can do everything, He can do nothing, since the act of doing demands opposition. He knows everything, so there is nothing for Him to learn. He can't go anywhere, since He is already fucking everywhere, like cowshit in Calcutta. The OGU is a pre-recorded universe of which He is the recorder. It's a flat, thermodynamic universe, since it has no friction by definition. So He invents friction and conflict, pain, fear, sickness, famine, war, old age and Death. His OGU is running down like an old clock. Takes more and more to make fewer and fewer Energy Units of Sek, as we call it in the trade. The Magical Universe, MU, is a universe of many gods, often in conflict. So the paradox of an all-powerful, all-knowing God who permits suffering, evil and death, does not arise
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