A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if nobody believes it.
– David Stevens
Father, the Son and the Holy Bot
Human beings are strange creatures indeed. We look at the stars, feel the wind in our hair, the rain on our face and invent gods to explain it all to ourselves. We place ourselves at the centre of the universe assuming that the human condition is the only one of any real importance. We have a shock coming our way.
Due to our so called superior intelligence and our supreme ability ignore those things that are working against us, we will soon be implanting computer chips in our brains supplied by the artificial intelligence scientists and their fellow ghouls.
“…if our programmers choose eliminate the religion virus, where does that leave the Almighty?”
Imagine the comical scenario when the day arrives that some of us attend confession just to be attended by a Holy Bot set up in the booth to council us and forgive us our sins if it sees fit to do so. Priests will be out of work like many others and artificial intelligence will become less artificial and humans – as we know them – will become a curiosity.
All of this change poses an interesting question. If we humans are no longer available to believe in the Gods, if our programmers choose to eliminate the religion virus, where does that leave the Almighty?
The stars don’t believe in God, wind, rain and the animals don’t believe in God. If we no longer need religion to explain the mysteries of the world to us, perhaps it is time to face the truth and accept that we will have a new programmer, a real programmer, one that will be equally mysterious in its ways but definitely more existent and unforgiving.
The new Gods will be be robots designing better robots, there will be no room for the foibles of humans beings. The wind in our hair and the rain on our face should be seen as a warning of the coming storm.
GSG (God Seeker Guy)
They said it!
Never try to cross a river just because it has an average depth of four feet.
– Martin Friedman
Fishing for faith
One of the few things God Seeker Guy understands about the story of Christ is the fact that he was interested in fishing. Some his followers were of course fisherman, that makes them okay in GSG’s estimation.
Fishing, if done right, gives us time to think, time to slow down and consider our place in the universe. A trip up county to an isolated lake or river, surrounded by giant fir trees, fast flowing rivers and cool clean air offers a place to connect with our surroundings, a place to clear our heads. GSG is often accused of being spiritual despite his agonizing struggle with God. If he ever gets close to adopting a religion or embracing some kind of god , he will achieve it in the open where God can find him.
Churches over the past years have not been successful at gathering together those in need of focus for their life. A former post noted that “A four-day conference convened to examine the viability of the United Church in Canada didn’t have much to consider. If the Church has 3,400 congregations and a membership of 558,000, as reported, that works out to 164 God-fearing souls rushing to each congregation” obviously something is amiss.
“GSG is often accused of being spiritual despite his agonizing struggle with God. If he ever gets close to adopting a religion…”
It seems God if having difficulty being heard through the commotion and distractions of the city. It is said that God is everywhere but many are finding it a struggle to locate him, if he does indeed exist he needs to find a good social media consultant.
We are at a stage in human evolution when we’re absolutely obliged to question the absurd demand of attending a gathering in a half empty building. We are asked to listen to an out of touch ecclesiastical diehard attempting to protect a job no longer in demand by a new enlightened generation of YouTubers and bloggers. In fact many of GSG’s readers use their blogs as a platform to talk through their issues and feelings with numerous online parties. While such communication may be suspect, blogs—immediate and instantly available—may well become the church of the young, who knows?
It has been said that Christ had no church, he was the church. Many of us are now in the process of seeking out our own individual sanctuary. The future is going to be very different from the past in terms of how we connect with God, GSG will be on the river, listening and waiting, where will you be?
GSG (God Seeker Guy)
They said it!
Yes, reason has been a part of organised religion, ever since two nudists took dietary advice from a talking snake.
― Jon Stewart
God’s bullies
As the well-known matriarch of the Kennedy clan, Florynce Kennedy, once pointed out “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”
A recent catholic church edict announced that “…Pope Francis has given all priests the power to forgive women who have had an abortion, saying the procedure was a ‘grave sin’ but one that God’s mercy could wipe away for those with a repentant heart…”
Why are so many rules for women made by men and how is it only males are privy to Gods change of heart?
While God Seeker Guy has enormous respect for the present Pope and his efforts to humanize his church, why have so any women had to suffer terrible guilt for generations until the male dominated church once again changes its mind and gives the priesthood permission to forgive them.
“As long as religion constrains women and as long as the church is unable to deal with its abject fear of female competence…”
The issue here is not the hotly debated subject of abortion, but the fact that women have lived for centuries in misery and guilt as result of male instigated religious tyranny.
Author Jack Holland notes “Eve’s curious mind and audacious spirit proved to be unsettling to many. Ever since the famous fall – all the world’s major religions, and most of the world’s renowned philosophers, have regarded women with scorn.” Aristotle saw women as “failed males” and thirteenth century Catholic Philosopher Thomas Aquinas saw women as helpmates and suggested that women were “a necessary object needed to preserve the species and provide food and drink.” Not their finest moments, even considering the times.
To keep the ladies in line, Holland observes: “the ever resourceful church developed the concept of purity for women. The virgin myth has been employed ruthlessly to show women just how shameless they really are”.
This attitude of course is no longer acceptable to half the population of our planet. Surely it’s time for the churches of the world to finally accept that women are an equal creation of their Gods, women should not be held a prisoner of their physiology.
As long as religion constrains women and as long as the church is unable to deal with its abject fear of female competence, women will continue to be at the mercy of religious bullying.
GSG (God Seeker Guy)
They said it!
The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.
― Ray Bradbury, The October Country
Impossible things!
Faith is a wonderful thing in many of its forms, faith in yourself, faith in others and faith in the human condition. However blind faith in an unseen God, promoted by religious elites with a vested interest in maintaining their dwindling flocks, is perhaps no longer applicable in the information age.
The young in particular have thousands of years of informed thinking at their fingertips and they should be asking lots of questions about God, religion and the religious prognosticators. Sadly, more time is spent keeping up with the latest escapades of movie stars, pop stars and YouTube lunatics than is spent seeking out personal truth. To be fair, such a tragic waste time is not limited to the young.
You’re the smartest generation in the history of the planet, use your intelligence, use your powerful tools to find your own answers. Those who demand you follow a centuries old line of belief barley understand that Twitter, as you know it, is not the sound a sparrow makes in spring when it’s trying to mate.
“You’re the smartest generation in the history of the planet, use your intelligence, use your powerful tools to find your own answers.”
Get mad, demand accountability from those who ask you to believe in impossible things, impossible because you have access to the truth and refuse to live in a medieval world with medieval thinking handed to you by religious dinosaurs refusing to accept that their time has passed.
People are not animals, we have the ability to reason, that is what separates us from the beasts. Why then, do we follow religions blindly, almost by instinct like salmon swimming upstream to die because that is what they have done for millennia.
Generally we’re born with a faith, follow it and abandon it only when we stop breathing. In the mean time we live in abject fear of what comes after life because religions have determined what awaits us.
The universe is very big and we understand little of how it works, but we must know by now that the stories of heaven, hell and an ark filled with animal waste, are merely uninformed efforts to science.
GSG (God seeker Guy)
They said it!
If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.
― Napoleon Bonaparte
Like it or not!
God Seeker Guy has read numerous sites of his readers and the common thread is to talk in depth about one’s personal life. The object, it seems, is to elicit responses from others who actually begin to believe that they are part of your life. This seems to GSG a poor substitute for flesh and blood communication.
Turning to blogs and social media has some parallels to embracing organized religion and faith. Both offer comfort, both offer companionship and both are an illusion. Perhaps that isn’t such a bad thing, most of what we believe and think is erroneous.
“In our transient societies trust and genuine caring have been eroded by instant gratification, feelings of entitlement…”
The principle cause for the explosion of online relationships, and a valid one to be sure, is of course the huge problem of meeting people and establishing lasting relationships. In our transient societies trust and genuine caring have been eroded by instant gratification, feelings of entitlement and intolerance. Real relationships are hard work, they require, patience, time, compromise and understanding, all of which are in short supply in the average city.
Technology has made it too easy to talk to strangers, to reach out but not touch someone. Do followers get involved in your life because they care about you and your problems or because they desperately need someone to care about in order feel validated as human beings? Worse still are they living vicariously through someone who they perceive as having a more interesting life. Rather than curing loneliness blogs and social media platforms are actually pushing us further down the dark well of isolation.
We all need others for support, understanding and advise, but do we need five hundred people offering input or checking up on us? How many stay, how many return, is the search for interested parties endless?
GSG doesn’t want you to engage with him and offer your “support ” or to “reach out” just to agree with him. On the contrary he is looking for challenges to his ideas so he can defend his position and so confirm his stance. He is searching for faith and you’re invited to watch or participate but he is more than prepared to handle the perils that may lay ahead in the form of rejection, denunciation and withdrawal of “likes” and “followers”
GSG (God Seeker Guy)
They said it!
Trust in Allah, but tie the leg of your camel.
– Arabian Proverb
God and toasters
Does the growth of artificial intelligence bother anyone out there in cyber world?
Elon Musk has suggested that if we don’t merge with Artificial Intelligence, humans will become obsolete. God Seeker Guy’s effort to understand God and faith may come to an abrupt end with the advances in AI looming in the not too distant future.
If we do indeed absorb many of the attributes of AI into the human condition, and if the next step in the evolutionary chain is to become more machine than human as we know it, is there still a place for the numerous gods served my man?
“… In the future that may reverse, we may find ourselves accommodating machines.”
Musk notes that “computers can communicate at a trillion bits per second, while humans, whose main communication method is typing with their fingers via a mobile device, can do about 10 bits per second.” This suggests that machines will be able to figure out the god problem somewhat faster than God Seeker Guy, who is still trying to figure out how to turn water into wine.
Musk observed that “Over time, I think, we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.” He also speaks of Deep AI, Artificial Intelligence that is “smarter than the smartest human on earth.”
At present, we’re accommodated by machines, our cars take us to the mall, cell phones keep us organised and technology in general serves us. In the future that may reverse, we may find ourselves accommodating machines.
Karsten Schmidt, head of technology at the Innovation Center Silicon Valley for SAP labs has observed that “In 2017, we will see AI gain greater acceptance and momentum as humans come to increasingly rely, trust and depend more on AI-driven decisions and question them less…” Which basically means we’re going to find it increasingly difficult to govern our toasters.
Religion with its blind faith has for centuries retarded the ability of its followers to question and challenge it’s beliefs. Artificial intelligence will not tolerate such foolishness. Machines do not like vague input or corrupt data, they will not respond well to religion with its confused and inconsistent programming. If we do become half human and half machine, the human half will of course be deleted on relatively short notice and the gods will be consigned to a foot note in the operating manual of the new pseudo humans.
GSG (God Seeker Guy)
They said it!
Millions long for immortality who don’t even know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
– Susan Ertz
No cross dressing please
“Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
Words spoken by a wise practitioner of religion, however, words wrought with difficulties for us lesser mortals. The problem of course is the myriad of rules and laws required by each religion in Gandhi’s range of faiths.
As an observant Hindu he would be required to follow the concept of dharma which appears to come in four flavors with the first being universal law and includes social law, human law and self-dharma, that’s a lot of laws when broken down into their separate components.
Next as a Muslim Gandhi would be obliged to commit to the five pillars of Islam which include the profession of faith, daily prayer, alms giving, fasting and a trip to Mecca at least once in his lifetime. Relatively simple but time consuming and possibly expensive as Islam expects real results.
“He cannot sell his wife into slavery and he may not wear women’s clothing…”
Buddhism on the other hand can be practiced without physically doing anything very much but requires enormous amounts of cerebral exertion. The tenets which remain common to all Buddhism, include the “four noble truths” which includes the “eight fold path” of right views.
Mr. Gandhi would be required to follow the Right Understanding, Right Intent, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. That’s a lot of stuff to get right. At this point Mr Gandhi would be pretty busy just keeping up with his daily chores, but there is more weight to be heaped on those skinny shoulders.
The combo religion of Christianity and Judaism is demanding beyond belief. By some estimates there are 612 commandments in the Hebrew Torah, of which ten (the Decalogue) are the best known and fundamental to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Under Judaeo- Christian law Gandhi would have to be careful. He cannot sell his wife into slavery (Deut. 21:14) and he may not wear women’s clothing (Deut. 22:5). The list is very long and would no doubt have caused him to take up heavy drinking by now, although that’s forbidden.( Num. 6:3)
Gandhi was of course speaking metaphorically, he meant well and had the right idea when he eluded to a universal faith. However, on our religiously divided planet such a concept is not likely to emerge.
-GSG (God Seeker Guy)
They said it!
When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.
–Emo Philips.
God Seeker Guy 