RE: Did God play peek-a-boo?
March 16, 2023 at 10:08 am
(This post was last modified: March 16, 2023 at 10:42 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Believers claim many things, and believers in the abrahamic god have long held it to be super powerful and whatnot - but just like contemporary apologists limit their allegedly omnipotent god to what is logically possible, god botherers have always understood that some things are not possible for their god.
Famously, it doesn't handle iron working human worms very well, just like it can't snap it's fingers and "forgive" everyone. Hell, it failed to best just one lame jew in single combat over a creek.... The god stories..not just the abrahamic but all of them..are ridiculous, sure. That gods have to follow the rules of magic to employ magic is probably the least ridiculous part, though. Answering your question directly, we could assume from the text (running for shits and giggles with the idea that god is existent and jesus was a real boy) that god cared enough to spend his time in a womb because that's what he had to do to make the spell effective.
My opinion? To the extent that believers have abandoned any of these well established constraints on their gods, sourced from their own magic books and traditions, that reflects the fact that the faithful have come to desire more from god than said god ever promised them or would be capable of providing -even on the god stories own grounds-. God is late. God is a fuckup, and their wants/needs have been increasing and compounding since the last time he screwed the pooch and got himself killed. To put a really fine point on it, that dynamic has been causing the faithful to reach out into other traditions and beliefs, hoping to plug the gaps with other religions promises, as a majority. The majority of christians today are intentional heretics to their own self professed faiths. This is a near exact replication of the circumstances that lead to christianity's emergence as a new faith among lapsed or disaffected subsets of the roman world as classical paganism collapsed. Christianity has already given way to "New Age" religion, even amongst christians, and ironically..that new age religion is in large part a resurgence of classical pagan beliefs.
Something like this also happened in the pacific - where a population that was well into the process of christianization abruptly assumed beliefs more in line with their previous faiths in the form of idol construction and worship in return (they hoped) for "cargo". Long story short, theism is a necessarily transactional belief system. When the gods don't hold up their end of the deal, people make new deals with different gods. For a specific example, look no further than the american se (or broadly red areas in general) where historically protestant white cultures are incorporating things like reincarnation, theological race realism, sympathetic magic, "natural cures" and terrestrial authoritarian radicalism into what they mean...when they say "christian". These things speak to their particular and current fears and hopes (and, fwiw, the failures of our society - just as roman society) in ways that hippie jesus simply does not. They want the mystical wargod back, but they'd prefer he not be jewish or otherwise brown this time around.
I also enjoy the whole noma bit. It's a consolation prize. A negotiation between the faithful, having been demonstrably proved wrong in every positive claim, and a society they wish to continue to impose their beliefs upon.
Famously, it doesn't handle iron working human worms very well, just like it can't snap it's fingers and "forgive" everyone. Hell, it failed to best just one lame jew in single combat over a creek.... The god stories..not just the abrahamic but all of them..are ridiculous, sure. That gods have to follow the rules of magic to employ magic is probably the least ridiculous part, though. Answering your question directly, we could assume from the text (running for shits and giggles with the idea that god is existent and jesus was a real boy) that god cared enough to spend his time in a womb because that's what he had to do to make the spell effective.
My opinion? To the extent that believers have abandoned any of these well established constraints on their gods, sourced from their own magic books and traditions, that reflects the fact that the faithful have come to desire more from god than said god ever promised them or would be capable of providing -even on the god stories own grounds-. God is late. God is a fuckup, and their wants/needs have been increasing and compounding since the last time he screwed the pooch and got himself killed. To put a really fine point on it, that dynamic has been causing the faithful to reach out into other traditions and beliefs, hoping to plug the gaps with other religions promises, as a majority. The majority of christians today are intentional heretics to their own self professed faiths. This is a near exact replication of the circumstances that lead to christianity's emergence as a new faith among lapsed or disaffected subsets of the roman world as classical paganism collapsed. Christianity has already given way to "New Age" religion, even amongst christians, and ironically..that new age religion is in large part a resurgence of classical pagan beliefs.
Something like this also happened in the pacific - where a population that was well into the process of christianization abruptly assumed beliefs more in line with their previous faiths in the form of idol construction and worship in return (they hoped) for "cargo". Long story short, theism is a necessarily transactional belief system. When the gods don't hold up their end of the deal, people make new deals with different gods. For a specific example, look no further than the american se (or broadly red areas in general) where historically protestant white cultures are incorporating things like reincarnation, theological race realism, sympathetic magic, "natural cures" and terrestrial authoritarian radicalism into what they mean...when they say "christian". These things speak to their particular and current fears and hopes (and, fwiw, the failures of our society - just as roman society) in ways that hippie jesus simply does not. They want the mystical wargod back, but they'd prefer he not be jewish or otherwise brown this time around.
I also enjoy the whole noma bit. It's a consolation prize. A negotiation between the faithful, having been demonstrably proved wrong in every positive claim, and a society they wish to continue to impose their beliefs upon.
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