monotheism

Feed The Unstable God

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I’ve been thinking about religious evangelism lately due to, well, large chunks of human history and too many chunks of current history. Most of my thoughts are about evangelizing by believers in Anthropomorphic Monotheism, those who worship a god they insist is infinite and all knowing yet has the same traits and biases as humans. It seems a lot of people want us to follow their Big Daddy – or else.

The funny thing is for so many people proclaiming their undying faith – and being willing to spread it by the sword and the bullet – evangelical Anthropomorphic Monotheists seem peculiarly insecure about their deity. Considering a core part of their believe has a conflict between “infinite in all ways” and “just as petty as I am” it’s not surprising. You can feel that instability.

How do you resolve belief in a being of infinite power and potential with the idea they’re worried about, say, what bathroom they use or what day they worship at? How do you reconcile all the conflicts with experience, holy texts, other believers, and so on? A believer in an all-to-human infinite “god” has to spend a lot of time making excuses or a lot of time ignoring the conflicts – the world will mock them by existing.

This conflict is familiar to me – believing in a god both petty and transcendent is a challenge that is faced by enthusiasts for media, like fanfic writers. Every new show, every season, every episode the staff may dump a new load of continuity or retcontinuity on you. You have to constantly revise your ideas due to new input and instability – but whereas fanfic writers admit they have “a take,” believers in Anthropomorphic Monotheism have to act like everything is real.

And this I think is one reason for the rampant evangelism. The world is constantly leading you to question your beliefs as your beliefs are fundamentally unstable and unsustainable without effort. So what do you do? You convert the world, you make the world believe and act the way you think it should so you don’t face conflicts.

Anthropomorphic Monotheism is inherently unstable to a level that is painful in the mind of believers. To resolve that pain they have to change the world so they don’t have conflict, so everything lines up, so everything is it should be. At some levels this evangelism is a kind of Gray Goo, Von Neuman’s Catastro-deity. It just chews up the world to replicate itself.

And, yes, the reasons for religions evangelism are more than just resolving conflicts by eating the world, but I think the inherent instability and need to convert are worth examining. Maybe it explains people’s need for an Apocalypse – they need a fundamental point where unresolvable conflicts are resolved, and are fine to watch the world die to have it.

So next time you see believers in Anthropomorphic Monotheism enragedly trying to convert people, ask how much of that is them trying to resolve the inherit instability of their religion. And ask yourself how much of the world they’d burn to fuel it.

-Xenofact

The Iron Prison of The Incoherent God

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I continue to speculate on the future of Christianity and “anthropomorphic monotheistic” religions. Mostly Christianity because I live in America. I’ve started looking at some of the utter crazy I see, from Christian Nationalists, to conspiracy theorists, to politicians who manage more than two faces. I’ve started thinking it’s a kind of prison.

Let me back up a bit.

First, when I discuss monotheism, I’m describing anthropomorphic monotheism, which assumes an all powerful omniscient deity who is also possessed of identifiable human traits and idiosyncrasies. I’m not talking the more abstract or neo-Platonic or transcendent ideas, but “ultimate power that in its true form is basically a superpowered person.” I find it’s an idea people who believe rarely question theologically despite the fact it’s hard to reconcile considering.

Anyway, I noticed people who had these beliefs also contain a heavy amount of weird instability if not outright insanity. It finally struck me that be it true believer or religious scam artist, this idea will drive you nuts as it’s about prison.

If you truly believe in a god that is all-powerful, all-seeing, and as biased and emotional as you that’s utterly terrifying. There is no escape from them. There is no bargaining with them. They are just as messed up as the average person and they control the universe. To believe in such a god is to believe you are permanently trapped and at their mercy.

You are in prison you are never getting out and the being in charge is is just as erratic as anyone else. Try figuring how people cope with that.

But let’s say you’re a megachurch pastor or conspiracy podcaster. Truth doesn’t matter a lot, as you’re here to make money. You just have to talk about the Superpowerful Man Who Controls all, but you don’t have to believe. You might not even be able to believe considering your career in bullshit.

But you’ll still go a little crazy and definitely sound crazy because you’re still in prisoni

If you’re just a religious scam artist who praces anthropomorphic monotheism, you essentially have a writing problem – your prison is the tales you spin.. You have to explain why the god you don’t believe in is like they are. You have to explain their human side and their omnipotent and omniscient sides. You are essentially managing the theological equivalent of an extended cinematic universe, mixing marketing and continuity, and almost certainly failing. Your theology is going constantly need maintenance.

This is going to be hard. There are always going to be holes in your story and you’re always editing and re-editing your theology. After awhile that will probably make you a little unbalanced, as you’re always changing and always under threat at making a mistake. This probably explains why so many “religious” public figures seem to give up after awhile and just mouth platitudes.

I think in our complex modern world, facing so many challenges, with so much knowledge, it’s hard for anthropomorphic monotheism to continue. The rapid changes of the world are hard to explain. The theological challenges difficult. The burden of mass media “keeping up” is hard.

I think there future of Christianity is going to be more crazy from people coping with the prison experience and the constant rewrites. But I also think there’s going to be more shrugging and mouthing platitudes because people who are faking belief are tired and figure they can just lie and get away with it. Hypocrisy and insanity.

Our world is more complex than limited theological ideas. Ramming it into such a mold is madness, and the wages of such activity is madness as well.

-Xenofact