4th
The Lard Moves In Mysterious Ways
Yesterday on Telegraph Ave the bible thumpers were out, yelling at passersby. Standing on a milk crate for extra annoying height, a loud angry insane man hurled hateful psychobabble while his friend (colleague? fellow “saved” person?) held a huge sign that said simply, “FEAR GOD.” Now, I grew up here, so I’m used to seeing wingnuts of every possible stripe shrieking at pedestrians. They choose Berkeley in general and Telegraph Avenue in particular as their venue to rant invectives and monumental ignorance at people, it’s nothing new, but somehow this sign struck me. Because I think it’s precisely wrong, the real opposite of wisdom.
The argument of whether there is or isn’t “god” or “gods” is silly, because that is all, 100% semantics. When we claim to define, with words, what “god” is, we commit a sort of hubris, though I don’t expect to be struck down by a comic lightning bolt fired by an angry giant winged white man in the sky with a harp.
We make it all up. All of it. We don’t know anything about god, our entire understanding of god consists of stuff we believe. Belief, while it may have its merits, is not knowledge. Fundamentalism, is belief taken to its logical extreme: in which I say that my insane crackpot beliefs must now be yours - and your sister’s, and everyone else’s. And me and my crazed violent crackpot friends will attack you if you don’t become raving idiots like us. What a thing.
I revere and love that unknown infinite timeless glorious perpetuity of light, matter and void that is our maker, destroyer, home and destination. Why should I fear this entity or non-entity that I cannot presume to begin to understand or define? And why would god care one way or another, if I did?
