RE: The Sects of Atheism
November 4, 2021 at 8:41 am
(This post was last modified: November 4, 2021 at 9:23 am by The Grand Nudger.)
I always read that as a clever joke about his alcoholism. As for the one true god in nature being a natural god - we have to say from the outset that it's his detractors who complained about this. He may have simply offered some criticism to unethical priests like "yeah..your trashgod pulling chariots of fire across the sky, that's garbage, the sun isn't being pulled by a chariot you massive douche canoe. Give the people their stuff back and do something good with your life" - and whatever we know about him was the arglebargle that fell out of a pissy god botherer's mind on account of someone having the audacity to mention what was manifestly true even then.
Like here at AF. Like this thread.
Imagine a modern day analog to the priests of the charioteer who pulls the sun. They were massively invested in that imagery, to the point of using the funds they bilked out of poor people to buy chariots..you know, to glorify chariot god and adorn chariot gods temple. Like, how can you even jesus properly without three bentleys and a jet? The Joel Osteens and Creflo Dollars of the world have always been with us, any god story is just as good as another to them.
However, tackling the idea head on, it's not all that remarkable. The vast majority of pagan gods are and were closer to natural gods than supernatural ones - and there's wiggle room in perception because people haven't always believed that the things now held in the category "supernatural" belonged there. They would get lonely, sick, they could die..... they were vulnerable, in short. There are remnants in contemporary monotheism ,we have reason to wonder...is god's allergy to iron supernatural, or is it just the kryptonite to his superman? What's the deal with wrestling jacob, and losing, like a common ford troll? It's the notion that any existent god in this universe is just as subject to the laws of the universe as we are. More powerful, maybe, more intelligent (again, maybe..debatable with respect to the stories and the fact that many gods seem to exist only to be had by our trickster heroes). Has abilities that we don't - but none of them conceived of as something other-than. More generally, that what we believe to be supernatural falls into one of two categories. Wrong on the facts, or a misapprehension of a natural fact. That the gods, and their godpowers....just like clark kent, were part of nature. If not nature itself. That they just know where the levers are, and we don't - or were born with that spoon in their mouth when we aren't, even. Greek society, before it's fall, had gone through something akin to modern day religious indifference and secularization. At the end, it couldn't really be said that the position of the classical intelligentsia was maintained from the time of it's pre-mythical origin. The overriding consensus turned into something like "our society had gotten it all wrong - god's aren't x..they're y." X defined as the contents of their narrative vehicles as then-traditionally stated.
Christians would later use naturalization as a diminutive prism for competing gods. Effectively branding gods as a thing that should be supernatural (whatever that is) and positioning themselves as the sole supplier of quality supernatural gods. People tend not to purchase jeff, the god of biscuits, who lives in a hut in the middle of the forest..when the genie of the lamp is also on offer on the same shelf. That's not just bad for Jeff, it's bad for people too - as unrealistic expectations and demands breed unethical behaviors and responses - which is what antisthenes was most concerned about in his own words, such that we have them. It's only because people can very easily be made to believe in unrepresentative demands and expectations that smooth operators can take them for everything they have. It's only because we expected (and, indeed, demanded) that our rituals to some god would work that we go looking for the witch that spoofed our spell when they don't, in order to burn her..as examples.
Ultimately, a natural god and a religion of nature share one important quality. That all of the divine and sacred is made manifest by, and in, mere reality. That mere reality is grand enough to have gods, or to have sacred meaning. In the formulation cicero was complaining about - that all of those other allegedly supernatural gods were actually just borrowed pieces of the numinous that exists in nature or as nature. There's no need to invoke a supernatural realm to explain it, and..in fact, invoking a supernatural realm doesn't go any way towards explaining any of it in the first place.
Like here at AF. Like this thread.
Imagine a modern day analog to the priests of the charioteer who pulls the sun. They were massively invested in that imagery, to the point of using the funds they bilked out of poor people to buy chariots..you know, to glorify chariot god and adorn chariot gods temple. Like, how can you even jesus properly without three bentleys and a jet? The Joel Osteens and Creflo Dollars of the world have always been with us, any god story is just as good as another to them.
However, tackling the idea head on, it's not all that remarkable. The vast majority of pagan gods are and were closer to natural gods than supernatural ones - and there's wiggle room in perception because people haven't always believed that the things now held in the category "supernatural" belonged there. They would get lonely, sick, they could die..... they were vulnerable, in short. There are remnants in contemporary monotheism ,we have reason to wonder...is god's allergy to iron supernatural, or is it just the kryptonite to his superman? What's the deal with wrestling jacob, and losing, like a common ford troll? It's the notion that any existent god in this universe is just as subject to the laws of the universe as we are. More powerful, maybe, more intelligent (again, maybe..debatable with respect to the stories and the fact that many gods seem to exist only to be had by our trickster heroes). Has abilities that we don't - but none of them conceived of as something other-than. More generally, that what we believe to be supernatural falls into one of two categories. Wrong on the facts, or a misapprehension of a natural fact. That the gods, and their godpowers....just like clark kent, were part of nature. If not nature itself. That they just know where the levers are, and we don't - or were born with that spoon in their mouth when we aren't, even. Greek society, before it's fall, had gone through something akin to modern day religious indifference and secularization. At the end, it couldn't really be said that the position of the classical intelligentsia was maintained from the time of it's pre-mythical origin. The overriding consensus turned into something like "our society had gotten it all wrong - god's aren't x..they're y." X defined as the contents of their narrative vehicles as then-traditionally stated.
Christians would later use naturalization as a diminutive prism for competing gods. Effectively branding gods as a thing that should be supernatural (whatever that is) and positioning themselves as the sole supplier of quality supernatural gods. People tend not to purchase jeff, the god of biscuits, who lives in a hut in the middle of the forest..when the genie of the lamp is also on offer on the same shelf. That's not just bad for Jeff, it's bad for people too - as unrealistic expectations and demands breed unethical behaviors and responses - which is what antisthenes was most concerned about in his own words, such that we have them. It's only because people can very easily be made to believe in unrepresentative demands and expectations that smooth operators can take them for everything they have. It's only because we expected (and, indeed, demanded) that our rituals to some god would work that we go looking for the witch that spoofed our spell when they don't, in order to burn her..as examples.
Ultimately, a natural god and a religion of nature share one important quality. That all of the divine and sacred is made manifest by, and in, mere reality. That mere reality is grand enough to have gods, or to have sacred meaning. In the formulation cicero was complaining about - that all of those other allegedly supernatural gods were actually just borrowed pieces of the numinous that exists in nature or as nature. There's no need to invoke a supernatural realm to explain it, and..in fact, invoking a supernatural realm doesn't go any way towards explaining any of it in the first place.
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