My Easter message:
Don’t let the religion that traumatized you keep the god they stole from you. The concept of god is fluid, flexible, abstract, limitless, infinite, and capable of taking whatever form you need. god isn’t about whether god is “real” or not. god doesn’t care if you believe unless you care if god cares.
Regardless of the answer to that question, the *concept* of god is real inside your head right now. This is a feature, not a bug. This is the feature they used to steal god from you, by defining god and telling you not to.
You have the power to take god back.
When and if you’re ready (and you don’t have to be), you’re allowed to take back the concept of god and redefine god for your own needs. Limitless, expansive. If they gave you an authoritarian, overbearing father god that you can’t stand, you’re allowed to rip that god apart with your bare hands and start over. Or not. god doesn’t care. Only you do. god is here to serve you.
@corbden Is that better than going a step further and admitting that it's just a made up concept?
@pies It is a made up concept. Everything is, really.
Reality is real. But the reality in my mind is a concept. This phone is real, but my conception of this phone is just a symbol in my mind built upon sensations. I operate the reality of this phone through the filter of my mental concept.
I don’t believe a personal god exists. But that doesn’t change that the concept of god exists *in my mind*, and it will forever no matter what I believe about that concept. Anyone who has ever heard of deity has a concept of god in their mind. I could either let that concept control me (disbelief does not fully free me of it) or I can be in charge of the concept. I chose the latter, so that god is more like my phone, a thing I operate, instead of a thing that lurks in the shadows.
@corbden That's why we invented tools like the scientific method. Your phone actually exists, we can find a lot of evidence for that. There is no evidence for there being a god of any kind.
@pies There isn't evidence of external deities, true. But there is plenty of evidence that archetypes exist inside most human minds. Symbols, metaphors, narratives, emotions, ritual, moral codes, community, these are all foundational parts of the human mind and to deny this is irrational. If we ignore these human needs, then they will be left to the purview of bad actors to define, and people will continue to flock to abusive authoritarian exploitative religions as their only outlet.
I am telling people that they can create those systems for themselves, for their own personal benefit.
If you feel no need for archetypes, symbols, etc. then that's ok. But you're one of the few humans like that, and ignoring this means denying the realit, in which abusive religionists will continue to rule that space, and we won't get the humanist world we want.
@pies You might as well be saying Luke Skywalker doesn't exist so we should stop talking about him or writing stories about him or making movies set in his world. And while we're at it let's get rid of Sherlock Holmes, Spock, and Shakespeare's entire library because they're irrational and can't be proven.
Fiction has a psychological purpose. Spiritual models have a psychological purpose, too, so long as we don't hurt or exploit anyone with them or take them too seriously. I'm proposing nothing more than this.
@corbden I wouldn't know, I've never found the idea of an omnipotent being setting the rules and doling out rewards and punishments to be comforting. Quite the opposite, I find the idea abhorrent on its face and deeply terrifying if you scratch the surface.
But if that brings you comfort, maybe there's others who will too.
@pies I do not find comfort in that idea of god. That’s the kind of god I’m advising that trauma survivors deconstruct, redefine, and/or replace to help us free ourselves. There’s power in striking down that god and making god anew into something that serves us.
Why do you think that’s the kind of god I’m talking about? Is that the only kind of god you’ve heard of or imagined?
@corbden I've heard of many gods, usually characterized by their powers. Again, I don't think that's a useful archetype, but I've never had anything like that to deconstruct, so you may be right on it being helpful in those situations.
@pies The dichotomy that you either believe in god or you don’t is a false one that serves authoritarian religious leaders. I don’t believe in god, but I play with thinking about divinity and sometimes suspend disbelief the same way I go where a story takes me when I’m watching a movie. For a minute I believe FTL space travel is real and those characters are really fighting with light swords because it makes the story possible and interesting.
The benefits of this practice are similar, and in fact, this is the mechanism authoritarian religionists are messing with when they insist the story is ~True~ and must be followed strictly under eternal threat. Dropping the bad of that to take on total freedom in that playground is freeing, not confining. And I can do that without the binary of faith/doubt.
The biggest lie these religions tell is that the opposite of unquestioning faith is doubt. It’s not. It’s unbounded curiosity. That’s what breaks down their control. 2/2
@pies I am an atheist. Playing with the concept of god does not require belief in god’s literal existence.
The idea of god(s) exists inside the head of anyone who has ever heard of the concept. If God was taught to you as a father who abuses & controls, that idea will carry on doing coercive things in your head until you deconstruct.
When I say “limitless,” I don’t mean omnipotent.
Imagining god is in jail for god’s crimes. Imagining arguing w god & winning. Imagining having sex with god. Imagining god approves of you 100% with zero conditions. Imagining god is a marshmallow & you eat god.
Imagining god as all things with the traits of all things. Imagining that this means god is you. Imagining this means the creatures you interact with are also god.
This latter block is an idea I find a great deal of value in and it is thought provoking, and it changes the way I see the world in powerful, positive ways, and it reconnects me to nature which my former religion separated me from. 1/