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Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell. PHiLOSOPHY and LiFE blog

Monday, November 28, 2005

God is dead: thank God

I feel the need to have a rant (not a feeling I am unaccustomed to). This may be the first of many.

<rant>

Today on Start the Week on Radio 4, Grayson Perry and Jonathon Green were banging on about being ("fundamentalist" in Perry's words) atheists. Their images of God are so outmoded and childish: a god who is a judgemental and a 'grumpy old fellow' 'who wants to make us suffer': it is a projection of the negative father complex.

They do not see that one has to disentangle God from the repressions of particular religious cultures and anthropologies. They cannot entertain a god who is not a person, who is not a thing. I have never yet met a person who said they didn't believe in God who, when I've heard them to talk about the god in which they do not believe, I didn't agree with: I also do not believe in that, so-called, god. Thank God.

Perry read out a piece of doggerel verse he'd penned:

you will die

you are alone

there is no God

upon his throne

impose thy will

upon us, mess

or else your life

is meaningless

no hell below

no heaven above

live life now

and act with love

It is a hymn to love - a definition of God than which there is none better.

Most atheists are simply ignorant of 2000+ years of thinking on the matter and unreflective of their experience. A few are failed apophatic mystics. You so-called atheists, you need to get your act together and update your arguments. Then we might have something worth talking about. In the meantime, it's just not worth any more hot air.

</rant>