Occasionally, people come up to me to talk about these posts.
It's really wonderful. I love talking about these topics.
I had a person come up to me this week and talk with me briefly about my last post thinking about God.
Basically, she said that she understood where I was coming from. But she disagreed with me.
That encapsulates God so perfectly. "I understand. But I disagree."
One of the coolest parts of God is contradiction and dichotomy. Being able to hold two opposite things simultaneously.
The easiest, most tragic example of this is a child's death:
Children die. God is good.
If ever there were seemingly opposite realities it would be both of those things.
So, we say things like: "We can't understand God's will."
People who believe in reincarnation and karma will say things like: "You get what you give (but sometimes you have to wait until another life)."
I would love to bring the words to this page to make sense of dichotomy for you. But I'll never do it justice. And, that's actually the point.
God is weak. God is strong.
God is nothing. God is everything.
God is dark. God is light.
These are truths that are actually the reason I came back to thinking about God.
There are people who suffer greatly and caring for them is pure beauty.
I care for homeless out of a foundation of selfishness. It feels good. If it didn't feel good I probably wouldn't do it.
Dichotomy and contradiction.
Good out of bad. Bad out of good.
And then that brings me back to the word "God" itself.
In my last article I struggled with how humans have maligned the word God. Have made it small and divisive.
You can't deny the truth of that. When someone stands up and says "God hates fags," that's a raping of the truth of God. Yet it draws a line in the sand that makes some people say, "Well, if God hates fags I hate God." And I agree. I would hate that God too. Any decent, rational person should hate that God.
So, is God small and divisive AND huge and encompassing?
Probably.
God is Hitler and Gandhi.
Other religions do this nicely.
Hinduism is the 4th largest religion on planet earth with about 1.15 billion followers.
That's double the size of Buddhism, for example and far older. Hinduism can be traced back 4000 years.
How OLD Are the Religions? - Religion 101
Hinduism is a stew of organically grown ancient theology.
This is a nice summary of Hinduism if you are interested: The Diversity and Contradictions Of Hinduism
The sections of that article I just linked to are mind boggling:
Quite frankly, they do a better job of attempting to encompass God than the Christians do.
We like to say there is one AND ONLY ONE way to God.
Hindus will say there are many ways to God.
The truth is: there is only one way to God which are countless ways to God.
I'm not trying to play word games here. I'm trying to do the best I can to expand and bend the tiny human mind and language to somehow get a glimpse of the everything that is God.
I love the title of this book: "The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?"
It's written by Leon Lederman, Ph.D., a 1988 Nobel laureate in physics.
And check out the title of this article from Space.com: Did Gravity Save the Universe from 'God Particle' Higgs Boson?
In that article they write: "The recently discovered Higgs boson, which helps give particles their mass, could have destroyed the cosmos shortly after it was born, causing the universe to collapse just after the Big Bang. But gravity, the force that keeps planets and stars together, might have kept this from happening, scientists say."
The Higgs boson particle helps give mass to all elementary particles that have mass, such as electrons and protons.
It appears God nearly destroyed our universe before it even began. I'm quite sure the God particle has destroyed countless universes in the multiverse... just as gravity has destroyed countless universes in the multiverse.
There is little more mind blowing for me these days than pondering theoretical physics. The scientific truth of the universe is insane.
In known scientific reality:
The truth of the universe is the truth of God. (Please don't jump to the Bible being right all along. It is not right. And of course it's right.)
Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of my scientific heroes. He describes the universe so magnificently.
He has an interview where he says this:
Every description of God that I've heard holds God to be all-powerful and all-good, and then I look around and I see a tsunami that killed a quarter million people in Indonesia, an earthquake that killed a quarter million people in Haiti, and I see earthquakes and tornadoes and disease, childhood leukaemia. I see all of this and I say 'I do not see evidence of both of those being true simultaneously. If there is a God, the God is either not all-powerful or not all-good. He can't be both.
He is SO close. "not all-powerful or not all-good." That's right. But his scientific mind doesn't let him hold both of those simultaneously. So he concludes: "He can't be both."
YES GOD CAN, NEIL!
And of course he's right, if we limit God and then say "this is what God is, take it or leave it" then of course you become an atheist. It's nearly a forgone conclusion.
But that is not God. That is a HUMAN telling YOU what God supposedly is.
That's just silly.
I hate the word 'God' and the word 'God' is Good.
The word 'God' is a contradiction. It is used to start wars, murder innocent people and send other people to hell. It is also used to so elegantly to represent the everything and the nothing. To represent the most beautiful love, kindness and compassion possible. It is all of this and much more. It is things that don't even happen on Earth yet most certainly exist.
It is a terrible and beautiful and beautiful and terrible word.
And that's why it is a perfect word. 'God' says it all.
In a way, by using the word 'God' as a wedge humans have added to the complexity of God.
Another topic on my mind now is: If God is everything then why do we focus on love?
But that's for another time.
The word 'God' is fine and may be near perfect.
A person says 'God' and instantly ideas and emotions flash in your mind. And they are right. And they are wrong. And that is the point.
If I can make one suggestion: Fight with the word God. Struggle with it. But please don't ignore it. Once you ignore God you ignore, what I think, is the most magical, amazing part of being human. I don't know if any other living being gets to ponder this incredible, mystical struggle.
Don't miss out on it. It's REALLY cool.
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