Is it just me, or does anyone else have a problem with the “humility” touted by monotheism? I’ve seen this sort of stuff all over the internet; about how all the problems of the world boil down to humanity’s “arrogance” and how everything would be just peachy if we all simply admitted our “lowly” status and submitted to the will of the almighty (fill in name here).
The contention is that humanity is “arrogant” because we have failed to acknowledge (fill in name here) as our creator and He (why is it always “He”?) is so pissed off about this that he is making our lives miserable – or allowing us to make our own lives miserable, which amounts to the same thing for an omnipotent, omniscient being, a factor which the God Squad never seem to grasp (thank you Epicurus).
My point is, why is it “arrogant” for people to refuse to believe in an all-powerful deity that has remained steadfastly invisible in any meaningful or verifiable way for all of human history, but not arrogant to assume that such a deity would focus its entire attention upon us?
I mean, don’t the God Squad get it? They believe that there exists an immortal, eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being which has existed forever (if that term has any meaning), that yet bends all its attention and will upon us – humanity. They believe that this inconceivably powerful being created the entire Universe and everything in it expressly and solely for the purpose of giving the human species a place to live. They believe that this being focusses its attention so completely on our species and ours alone that it actually cares what we do, what we think, and who we have sex with.
Some of them even think that this being is so enraptured with humanity that He manifested Himself on Earth as His own son in order to offer Himself as a blood sacrifice to Himself so that He could forgive humanity for the sins He allowed us to commit in the first place – they consider this to make perfect sense.
As if that is not enough, the God Squad further believe that they are members of a select group – actually, a range of groups, all of which disagree with each other – with whom (fill in name here) has a special and personal relationship; that this group is so special to (fill in name here) that they and they alone will be taken into His presence on Judgement Day or its equivalent, while everyone else is consigned to (check one):
- burn for all eternity in a Lake of Fire
- suffer the Second Death
- be cast into the Eternal Darkness
- all of the above.
They also think that they and they alone are the ones who know “The Truth”, are the “Keepers of the Flame”, are the “Soldiers of The Lord” and so forth, and that (fill in name here) takes the time to speak directly to them on a daily basis. Somehow, they consider that this truly astonishing level of self-aggrandisement is, in fact, a sign of their self-effacement.
Can these people honestly not see how perverse and distorted their world-view is? What degree of twisted logic must it take to perceive what is clearly the highest level of egotism as abject humility? What is worse, they have the infernal (and I use the term advisedly) gall to claim that those who do not so believe are the ones who are “arrogant”. These people must have egos the size of Jupiter to think that any such deity, even if such existed, would give a small, brown rodent’s rectum about them, their thoughts, or their peccadillos. It would be funny, if the consequences of this distorted and self-centred belief system were not so devastatingly serious. They have managed, by a combination of good luck and clever politicking, to spread this psychological distortion of reality all over the planet, and even though the power of their institutions is finally waning, the effects on humanity have been and still are deadly serious.
Personally, I can’t wait until the last of them has gone to “meet their maker”; if He actually exists, I wonder what He will make of them?
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