Thursday, June 26, 2003

The Relativity of God

What isn't often realized is that the idea of God is relative to the observer.  For example, a mother is like a God to her baby, a dog is like a God to a flea, and a flea is like a God to a microbe, etc., for they all live off a more powerful being and depend on it for survival.  Additionally, sometimes these are the only things the dependent creature can sense in their small little worlds, so they don't have much of a choice.  If a God is indeed perceived by all these "lesser" creatures, the idea of one becomes embedded in parasitic beings all the way down the size spectrum, resulting in a polytheistic interpretation of God if we are to consider each species' perceptions as real. 

Take our own perception of God, as it evolved over time.  First the Earth was seen as our God, with many others that were thought to control things like fire, water, and wind.  Once we were able to look beyond the planet, we considered the sun, the moons, all the other stellar objects in the sky, and formulated the idea that God was something more than we could merely perceive on Earth.  About 3,000 years ago, God became everything, even the things we couldn't directly sense, as decreed by the monotheists. 

Religion has evolved furthermore since then, strangely along the same lines as science, its supposed nemesis.  Just as science has revealed hidden truths about the universe, religions adapt to the growing consciousness of the age they are in.  The more we discovered about our place in the cosmos, the more religion expanded.  After the Enlightenment came a religion that integrated all the others, called Baha'i.  Buddhism also spread in the west, a religion that doesn't even have a God.  Recently the New Age movement has taken the ideas from Baha'i and made an even broader spiritualism accessible.  Religion and science are growing up together, hand in hand, though not without vitriol, like two brothers in a sibling rivalry. 

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