Right. So, creativity. I will not make a general statement about how creativity is what separates man from beast or any nonsense like that because 1. Those statements are never turn out to be as accurate as we hope and 2. man is distinguished from beast for having a collection of traits which happened to propel us to exceptional technological advancement in a set of given circumstances. Hell, there were less than 2,000 of us at one point in prehistory: a single tiny plague could have made homo sapiens just another footnote in biological history.
Luckily for us, this did not happen. Some would say that it was ordained by God even, that humans were meant to be fruitful and multiply. That this was our DESTINY! *thunder clap.* To whom I say: no. While the fact that humans survived a crazy population bottleneck and then grew to become the most dispersed and adaptable macroorganism on the planet, having an r-type population growth despite demonstrating K-type behavior is ridiculously unlikely, it is still far more likely than beings of cosmic, reality warping power taking an interest in some puny tribe of pseudo-monkeys on a pale blue dot in fuckall-nowhere, Milky Way, which itself can't be that important since it's 14 billion light years away from the center of the universe in which the Milky Way is only one of billions of galaxies (and all that's just the puny tribe of pseudo-monkeys can observe from their pale blue dot in fuckall-nowhere). The entire thing smells distinctly of wishful thinking. I'm not saying that there aren't beings of cosmic, reality-warping power, but the idea that the 3- 4 lbs. of wobbly pink porridge we keep in our heads can either accurately comprehend them, or understand their motivations is absurd, especially considering that I can't even understand differential equations, let alone a being that literally is differential equations, goes sideways in time and eats zucchini for breakfast.
So then, why do gods fascinate us so? Why is it that I can make these claims and still walk into the the chapel naught a hundred yards to my right and be struck with transcendental awe? Well, I think it has mostly to do with humanity's desire for understanding and control. I think over time, as humanity was becoming aware of things, not just perceiving them but understanding them, we became aware of our ignorance. Our collective first thought after this transcendent event was probably something along the lines of: "Well this is bullshit. Somebody's got to know what the fuck is going on." I've noticed time and time again that everybody, religious or skeptical, wants to know why? There is a never ending desire for somebody to explain this bullshit. Of course, we have a good method for physical phenomena, at least. Hell, back in the day, flinging lightning around and causing a plague or two were the only requirements for being a god. Hell, that's easy. I'm using lightning to power my magical wizard box right now, and if I were so inspired, I probably could make half a dozen plagues in my bathtub. Of course, we don't consider those things to be particularly godly now. Plagues are caused by germs and lightning is caused by
Of course, the second reason humans are so interested in gods is that knowledge is power. The second thing humanity collectively thought is "Whoever knows what's going on, I bet he'll change it if I give him a goat." When humans are confronted with an environment that is unsuitable to them, it is in their nature to fix it so that it is. That's why we have tools and clothes and that sort of thing. But when things are entirely out of our control, like the weather, those placeholders that we just put up would be mighty useful if they were real. And I mean, if you did sacrifice a goat to the gods who might possibly exist, what do you have to lose, (except for the goat, obviously)? It's Pascal's wager, but with goats. And of course everyone forgets that Thunderus, goat-eating god of weather, is a placeholder for human's ignorance of meteorological patterns and chaos theory and all that jazz (not that they knew what they were ignorant of, just that they were ignorant) as soon as they do the mental arithmetic that Thunderus would be much more useful if he did exist. Of course, as time went on Thunderus stopped wanting goats, and wanted the tasty souls of the righteous, which was much more convenient, because it gave a concrete reason to be moral. You may not give a shit about the random guy who's skull you caved in, but Thunderus does, and that makes him sad. You don't want to make Thunderus sad do you? Even after he rained on your crops just for you? Bam. Two birds with one stone.
It should be noted that all of this shaky logic is entirely subconscious. A lot of philosophy is describing the intuitions we already had, and religion is no different. The human mind is too clever by a half, it knows cause and effect, and so if it sees effect without cause, it puts one there. Case in point, the "first mover" argument in the origin of existence: God is the cause for everything else. In this argument, Cause (mighty be his placehold), not God, is the true power and God can be shoehorned into Cause's mighty slippers (mighty be their metaphor) because His powers are vaguely defined enough that there's no way to prove He's not Cause (mighty be his placehold).
So what am I saying? That there are no gods? Well, yes and no. What I'm saying is that it is entirely possible that there are beings of cosmic power so great and far reaching that we are only aware of them in the way that fish are aware of water, but even with that power it is no reason to worship them, because what is the point of worshiping things anyway? I am also saying that the powerful, if easily manipulated, anthropocentric beings which we commonly define as gods are fiction, placeholders for human ignorance and proxies for phantasmic control over aspects of our lives which we so desperately cannot tame. Yet.
Sincere Regards,
Michael Coffey
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