Dear All,

I promised that we would take some time to look at some ' false' ideas of God. My thoughts on this topic are not infallible, but I will try to simplify and organize the matter in digestible form.

The first false God of all is the God of the atheist. He comes in two flavors : the unnecessary and the unacceptable.

The unnecessary god is a relic of a time in human history when science or philosophy of algorithmic thinking were too undeveloped for humans to feel comfortable in the face of all that they obviou sly did not know and could not control, avoid or fix. Now that we have become modern and are the possessors of more information that we could ever use, we no longer need a god who keeps us safe from our own ignorance .

This false god has a close cousin in th e god of the rationalists /deists. Unable to escape the great question of why anything exists at all, these folk admit that someone had to make the whole universe; but he did such a good job, that all we need to do now is to study his work and we will be alright.

I say that these are false gods because they are so obviously the product of arrogant human satisfaction with the content of the human mind, the human library or whatever. A sculpture of this god would look just like a human brain ... or some sort of computer chip!

The unacceptable god is a failed version of the protector deity of the pre-scientific mentality. This god leaves children to die, earthquakes to destroy and so on. This kind of atheist does not actually deny the existence of god; he punishes a god who does not measure up with an emotional capital punishment. God exists, but he shouldn't. The iconic forms of this god might be a huge bleeding heart, or massive scales of justice. In any case, the idol would look like the worshipper's image of his own best self.

Atheism exists - and atheists, too - because humans want to be the biggest and best in the universe. Atheistic communism and national socialism and a lot of contemporary political discourse and posturing make it clear that when there is no one greater than the individu al, or his ideology, there can be only competition , rival ry, slander, and, eventually murder.

And there is no one for us nincompoops and victims to tum to for deliverance from the high priests of egoism or the egotism of the high priests of the non-god.

Really and truly and theistically yours,

tm