Monday, September 05, 2005

monotheism: maybe not such a good idea




I remember late in elementary school, we learned about Greek and Roman mythology. One boy in the class asked if people "really believed" in Zeus and Apollo. When the teacher answered "Some did," the class giggled about "how stupid" people were.

Well, the kids I went to school with were mostly catholics and methodists, I knew. Good little atheist that I was, I remember thinking to myself, "how is this that much different than what you believe?"

But now I think, maybe the Greeks and Romans were on to something.

Because monotheism just doesn't work all that well. Not as an explanation for why the world is the way it is, anyway. It would be much easier to explain if there were, like, TWO gods at least.

Then we could have one god creating homosexuals to piss the other one off. The second god could then retaliate by sending hurricanes to the first god's favorite cities. One god could lure the other's high priests into molesting children, then for vengeance the second could could stir up some of his followers to fly planes into god one's big buildings...

Of course we have the notion of "satan", but that's not very satisfying, logically. Because if god is supposed to be all powerful, there's just no way he would let that s.o.b. loose around the planet. A child of six could figure that out! No, the more logical way to make the idea of god "work" is to have a couple of gods, equally powerful, that don't get along all that well.

After all, we have more than one religion, whose followers don't get along that well, all of whom insist that their god is REAL. Heck, if one could be real, why couldn't they ALL be real? If we could just accept that, maybe we could find peace.

2 comments:

M A F said...

Jill,

I must say that I am glad that I decided to visit your blog. I found your comments about monothesism to be wonderfully sarcastic and irreverent!

I too have a blog, but I have chosen political cartoons to make my statements and would love to have you stop by for a visit, if you would be so inclinded.

I realize this is only my first visit, but maybe we could exchange links.

ConnieMom said...

Thanks for the great compliment! Saw some amusing stuff over on your site; you show a lot of promise. We all have to keep fighting the good fight, don't we.