I used to read the comics in the newspaper a while ago. This was back in 2002-2004, when the internet wasn't as archaic as it was when I was in junior high, but not the mammoth marketplace of information and entertainment that it is today.
When I went off to college in 2004, I stopped bothering with the actual newsprint and started reading all my comics in one place: www.comics.com.
One day, to my utter horror and dismay, my favorite comic strip was discontinued. The disclaimer notified me that the author had decided to start his own website...so every day I would visit two sites; one for the usual newspaper comics and one for the guy who just had to be a loner. As the days went by he started expanding past the usual 3-4 panel strip and started running full Sunday sized comics in the middle of the week. I was dumbfounded. How on earth was this strip going to run 6 large frames in a normal newspaper? It wouldn't fit, and no newspaper I knew would allow it.
It was then I realized that this was a new breed of graphic medium, and I had stumbled onto something that I never even thought could exist:
The webcomic.
Ordinary people with more than ordinary artistic abilities were able to run a comic on a website and make a living from doing so. I knew people like Scott Adams and Jim Davis had become rather famous (and wealthy) from the popularity of their strips, but that was because so many newspapers carried them that they were able to publish strip compilations and branch into novelty advertising (anyone remember those suction-cup footed Garfields in the windows of stationwagons?)
But this, this was different. This was one comic, on one website, funding the artist's livelihood through the power of the internet and the strength and generosity of the fanbase. To me, it was unbelievable; and today, it's a growing market.
The following are my personal favorite comics, with a little something about them or why I like them. Most have their own lists (on site) of their own favorites, so if you feel inclined to check one out feel free to expand even further.
Comics.com
-Pretty self explanatory; any comic you'll find in your newspaper, you're likely to find there.
Ctrl+Alt+Del
-A very heavily gamer based comic, it follows three friends and the impact gaming has on their lives (with an alternate, fairly rare science fiction story arc). I am by no means a gamer, but I've held my own in serious conversations with gamers just from reading this one.
Hijinks Ensue
-I have a love/hate relationship with this one. The dialogue is so bizarrely witty that I eventually wander back to it from time to time. The artist claims that it updates three times a week (changed from "Every Mon/Wed/Fri"), but most times you're lucky to see 1-2 comics every week and a half. The artist gets his inspirations from actual technological/gaming/entertainment news though, and I suppose that's a plus.
PvP Online
-Started out as another gaming comic (I seem to like them), this one slowly digressed into more of a social/popular technology critique with sitcom drama overtones. Odd description, but it makes for a fun read.
Least I Could Do
-If you ever wanted a comic about a man-whore with a very candid personality, this one's for you. Not necessarily NC-17, because the artist never really draws anything risque, but I wouldn't recommend it for young children.
Looking For Group
-Written by the same duo who do Least I Could Do, "Looking for Group" is a World of Warcraft/Dungeons and Dragons spoof comic featuring an altruistic elf and an undead warlock with ZERO morals. Great dialogue, but again not for young children.
Sheldon
-This is that spinoff that opened my eyes to the world of webcomics. It follows the exploits of a 10 year old boy who becomes a multi billionaire after writing a program that speeds up internet traffic, the grandfather that raises him, and his anthropomorphic duck. Very, very witty dialogue and amazing use of shading and fonts to convey emotion through written word. I highly recommend this one.
AF Blues
-If you're in the AF, you should know this one- the unofficial webcomic of the US Air Force that follows Capt Ken "Barbie" Dahl, F-22 pilot extraordinaire. Funny for those who aren't militarily inclined as well.
Wondermark
-If they had webcomics in the Victorian era, Wondermark would be the chief among them. The artist uses digitally scanned wodcuts and illustrations from the 1800's and adds his own script. Hillarity ensues. If you like steampunk, the 19th century, beards, and top hats, this one's for you.
XKCD
-Who knew stick figures could be so well drawn? What this one lacks in "art" it makes up for in content. Combining mathematics, computer programing, statistics, poetry, physics, popular culture, and (believe it or not) romance, XKCD makes for one complete black and white package. I used to hate it (thinking it drawn too crudely), but I've come to include it amongst my favorites.
Scenes from a Multiverse
-This one is the newest of the bunch, but still good. Mon-Thu you see a humorous glimpse at some random zone in the multiverse we live in, and on Fri the artist uses a "repeat destination", which is chosen by the voting readers. Anyone can vote, and anywhere can be Friday's strip. Good gimmick (because it keeps the readers participating in the production process), and it feels a bit like a Rubes or a Far Side (with its lack of solid story arc and constant re-invention).
Evil, Inc.
-This one had a great opening idea: what if supervillians were tolerated because they ran their businesses legally? Evil Inc. was formed, and that changed how villains and heroes interacted. Unfortunately, the comic has slowly become a bit of a soap opera (replete with extremely long story arcs), and it's lost that original creative spark. Maybe it'll come back with a good business merger.
Questionable Content
-This one is the antithesis of any gaming comic out there, and it's arguably my favorite. Take one part Seinfeld, one part Friends, one part indie subculture, and absolutely NO political correctness, and you have QC. The women in the cast far outnumber the men (which may or may not be a bonus, depending on what you like) and the art is continuously improving. Everytime the artist is sick, he substitutes your normally scheduled comic for a static bird (ironically named "yelling bird") who says things that would make Sara Silverman blush.
If Least I Could Do was not for children, this one should be kept higher out of reach of the little ones. The strip's title is not just for decoration.
I grew up on Dilbert, The Far Side, Garfield, Peanuts and most importantly, Calvin and Hobbes. From time to time I find myself amazed that I consider most of the webcomics I read to be more interesting, if not simply better drawn and written, than the old black and white paper funnies. Times change. People change. I'm sure the comic industry will change right along with them. Who knows what we'll be reading in 10 years? Who knows what we'll be reading next week?
As long as it interests us, we'll keep our eyes on it; and if it's funny enough, we'll keep coming back for more. Thankfully it doesn't cost me 50 cents a day to read Questionable Content, and I plan to get my daily dose of that one for years to come.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Part 1: Thoughts on God
Six years ago I bought a copy of the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching for you folks who don't use military time). I read it, liked it, didn't understand it, and forgot about it.
Five years later I was finishing up my Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science and found myself in its capstone class. I realized that after two years of intense political science education (most of which involved either statistics or yet another re-examination of Plato's allegory of the cave) I found myself completely inundated with Western political philosophy and zero exposure to Eastern political philosophy. Frustrated that I had been taught endless abstract theory and had virtually no education on either the machinations of our own political system or how our opposites in the Orient think, I decided to write my senior thesis paper on the differences between East and West. Thankfully, the topic of the class was "Empire", and since I knew nothing of East Asian politics (or history) I decided to teach myself.
My paper, I decided, would include something very few people at my college of choice talked about and something no one in the polisci department ever mentioned...religion. I would examine how religion influenced the concept of empire in both China and Europe (the answer I'll save for another posting).
After reading the entire section in my school's library on both Daoism/Confucianism (which I still don't fully understand) and Christianity, as well as the history of imperial Europe and China, I wrote my paper, submitted it, and turned my attention towards studying Christianity.
Very few people have actually read the Bible, and I find that sad. Having read it cover to cover three times, I can admit that actually reading it is no small feat...but if you say you're something you should back it up with a little work.
Three questions bugged me to the point of indescribable frustration. First, why would a solitary God be jealous? Second, why are Christians so adamant that there is only one God when the old testament mentions several? And finally, who are the Nephilim?
Those questions lead me to turn my attention from Christianity to religion as anthropology. Not the anthropology of religion, which studies the anthropological aspects of religion, but religion itself as an anthropological tool. I wanted to study the history of gods as a history of humanity. I devoured A History of God, The Case for God, The Evolution of God, God is Not One, The God Delusion, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Religion, Your God is Too Small, The Crisis of Islam, The City of God, St. Augustine's Confessions, and There is No god but God (just to name a few), along with the Bible, the Qur'an, the Daodejing, The Chuangtzu, The Jade Emperor's Mind Seal Classic, Confucius' Analects, the Upanishads, the Bahgavad Gita, The Book of Mormon, the Tanakh, The Bhuddist Scriptures, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, sections of the Popul Vuh and the Adi Granth, The Satanic Bible, The Corpus Hermeticum, The Druidry Handbook, The Secret Doctrine, Witchcraft Today, and anything else I could get my hands on. If I had paid someone to sanction all that I could have at least earned a masters by now.
All that made me more informed, but also more confused. I eventually realized that no matter how much more in depth my research went, I would always believe in the existence of a god. I use the lower case because though I believe, I'll can never have the certainties that the truly faithful do.
An old chemistry teacher of mine (douchebag as he was) taught us every day that chemical reactions neither create nor destroy matter; rather, they change matter's form. That, along with the second law of thermodynamics (concerning the state of entropy in a system not in equilibrium), has me convinced that this very chemical universe of ours could not have been created from absolutely nothing and that order could not have been made out of chaos without a guiding hand. Human beings are one near perfect piece of bio-engineering, and there is no logic in believing that they are a miracle of happenstance.
The above two paragraphs solidly qualify me as a Deist, but there's no church for Deists and I want to do something on my Sunday mornings (sleep being overrated). That, along with my need for a qualitative label leads me to search for something to call myself. That's one thing I noted in my study between East and West; the East just does- they don't care much for labels. We in the West have it firmly engrained in our psyche that labels, categories, and boxes are needed so that we know who and what we are. Once you put a label on something, you know how to interact with it, and you know how it's likely to interact with you.
Makes sense, right?
The following are my three conclusions on the existence of God. I wrote a comprehensive list of questions I had developed over the course of my studies, but to list all my questions alone would give me enough material to write a book, and I'd rather not do that. These posts are ridiculously long as it is.
I. There is no G/god.
God doesn't exist. Every religion we have is an evolution of our primal need to explain what we can't understand, and as science evolves (just like we did) we'll be able to explain everything we used to view with superstitious eyes. One day, we will no longer have a need for the adult version of an invisible friend.
Yeah. Tell that to near death experience survivors, the non-medicated people who have seen demons sitting by their beds at night, the people who have heard the voices, those who have seen their prayers answered, and the ballsy few who mess around with the astral plane.
If you're going to look at all possibilities, you have to include this one. As mentioned earlier, though I see this as a possibility, I view it with little to no probability. There are too many unexplained phenomenon, too many "perfect coincidences", too many records, accounts, historical customs, and traditions that involve "god/God/gods".
If you stop to take the time to research every historical creation myth you'll notice that the creator gods are often given credit for creating the cosmos. While I firmly believe that someone or something created what we have now, I've often wondered if a cosmic creator is a bit too grand. Giving credit to one being for creating everything in our known universe is an easy way to rationalize and justify what we find, but I believe it to be more plausible for credit to be given for the creation of life on earth (or, at most, the earth itself).
I believe in micro-evolution. It's hard not to. But to deny the existence of any being or beings that created us, guide us, and deal with us after we die doesn't make sense to me; and, to be honest, I find that stance a bit arrogant. Are we and everything we have and see really just one big accident? Even if there really is no one out there, a little humility goes a long way. I can honestly say I know very, very few humble atheists. Acknowledging a grander scheme (at the very least) works wonders for how we view things.
The other side of the coin is that there is no G/god because what we call religion is really the planet's greatest cargo cult (this one's for all you X Files fans). Go watch enough of those Ancient Aliens shows on the history channel and you'll start noticing some odd stuff we can't explain. This is where hairs start to split; if we really are here because of aliens, then indeed there might not be a G/god...but that means we aren't an accident.
Perhaps it would be better to say "God doesn't exist", because that gives us a qualitative- and leads me to the next point.
II. God does exist.
Here I use the capital, but there are two possibilities.
First, he exists as the monotheistic faiths imagine (I'm not going to discuss/compare/contrast them here). What we have is only one overarching God who will punish the wicked and unbelieving after death because...he's God. It doesn't really matter if it's fair for God to send people to hell for their unbelief. He made the rules, he made the board, he made the pieces...it's his game, and you rolled the dice. He can be all loving, but what truly loving parent doesn't punish his or her children for making the wrong choices? Maybe God's punishments are summed up and passed after one final judgement, and we all need to sit up and pay attention.
Is this option possible? Yes, I think it is. Ask a Christian anything theological or existential, and he'll give you an answer. You might not agree with it or like it, but that's not the point- the point is that there is an answer.
Is this option plausible? No, I don't think it is. Pre-Babylonian exile, no major or minor civilization (with a recorded history) on earth was purely monotheistic. If God in the singular did exist, then he'd be most like the God of the second possibility.
Second, he exists as the overarching "Great Spirit"; singular in true nature, but vast in numbers of form and function. Thor, Isis, Ra, Shiva, Kuan Yin, Zeus, Mars, Papa Legba...they're all very personal, very human, ways to see bits and pieces of the one true Godhead. A four star General has a different face, a different facet, a different personality for his office, his old college buddies, and his family, but in the end he's still the same being. There aren't many different Generals...just different ways he's seen, and different ways he does business.
This model would be most in line with the Hermetic concept of the Nous (or big, all encompassing mind) of God. "Is God many? Don't be stupid. God is one", The Hermetica says- but caveats that God is too incomprehensible to us to be fully understood, and how we imagine God is just our smaller, weaker minds trying to grasp the infinite.
Is this option possible? Yes, I think it is. Plausible? Also yes. Our concept of God has become more spiritual and less literal, more vague and less dramatically defined, more universal and less ethnically inclined than it was in Jesus' day (and even before)...and yet people still see the effects of this "God" and feel it's presence. Go read heart surgeon Dr. Maurice Rawling's To Hell and Back (or listen to/view the documentary here and you'll be a little more convinced that not only has God not gone away, but he more closely resembles the Hermetic model than the Judeo-Christian model.
III. Gods did/do exist.
Odd as it may sound to you, this is the one I'm most inclined to believe, and I even have my own synthesized theory (thanks Doc Carmone...)
Cargo cult originators, extra-dimensional beings, true gods; whatever you call them, the socio-historical records of every single human civilization mention them. I cannot believe that every single human society in history "invented" the concept of higher deities, especially when the more advanced ones had stories, tales, and records of physical interaction with them (Egyptians, Summerians, Babylonians, Hebrews, Chinese, Norse, etc). As Steve McNallen, founder of modern American Norse reconstructionism (Asatru) explains here - people during polytheism's heyday survived through practicality; if the gods didn't have a practical use, then there was little use for them at all.
The big questions are "What now?" and "Why does this matter?"
Here's where my theory comes in. It's based, oddly enough, off of Warhammer Mythology and a single page from James Lovegrove's Age of Ra. The gist of Warhammer Mythology is that there are many gods, each one being equally real, and that whomever a person choses to follow has authority over the follower's soul in the afterlife. If you chose to follow one god, you go to that god's heaven after death as payment for service in life. Age of Ra is set in a future where the whole world worships a very real Egyptian pantheon, because the Egyptian pantheon won the war. Each god we have in the world now did, at one point, exist, and they fought amongst themselves for human worship. A god's progress was measured by the extent of his following; the worldwide spread of Christianity showed that God was triumphing over Allah, Buddha, Olorun, and everyone else.
After all, didn't God say that he is a jealous God and thou shalt have no other gods before him? Didn't Jesus tell his followers to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? God sounds like quite the expansionist, doesn't he?
This, to me, makes the most sense, but also requires the most faith. The universal God we have today wasn't created until the Babylonian exile, and even then he was in the infant stages. Many different gods have many different heavens to offer those who worship and serve, and as the denizens of the world becomes more aware of their neighbors the gods and their servants clash. Maybe the violent contact is only at the human level, and the strife is over our bull-headed and selfish interpretations of what our culture or religion believes is the correct way to see the all encompassing God. Maybe there is only one heaven, and each view is just a different lens through which we look at the end picture.
But the problem with the Hermetic model is, oddly enough, God himself. YHWH is the most unique god in the history of our race, because unlike every other god governing parts of the earth he chose his people. No other god ever chose a group of humans; in fact, many humans chose which god to worship, where, and when. YHWH picked his people, then helped them when they followed and shwacked them hard when they went astray. He was jealous, selfish, vindictive, warlike, powerful, violent, possessive, and most important of all: faithful. He was the god of his people, and that's what leads me to believe this third model is plausible.
If all pantheons were similar in structure but different in name (Zeus is Ra is Odin is Jupiter is Amaterasu is The Jade Emperor is whoever), then there lies the possibility that the gods are just a coincidental aspect of the human psyche made form...but we have the rogue. We have the one oddball, the lone god who threatened the current pantheon (see Psalm 82:6) and went into business for himself. Why on earth would one small band of beleaguered, outnumbered, outgunned nomadic screw ups invent a single god (when a whole pantheon would have been psychologically stronger)...unless there was some shred of truth to the whole thing. And where you have two different examples of pieces in a system, you cannot simply discount the whole system as fictitious. We have an A, because pantheons were popular, and we have a B because there was reason to break from the traditional polytheistic model.
And if there were at one point many gods, and what we have today is the evolutionary result of a struggle between one breakaway deity and the others, then maybe there are many gods...
And maybe whichever one you pick will let you into his or her heaven. As the Grail Knight said: "Choose...wisely."
In the end, what does this all mean? Who knows. I don't. In fact, I've given up wondering and thinking and trying to figure it all out. If I ever find an answer, I'll let you know. If I don't, and I die before I pick someone...
...and there is no god/God, then it won't matter. I'll never know.
...and there is a God (first example), then hopefully my faith that he exists at some level is enough.
...and there is a God (second example), I should be fine.
...and there are Gods, and I don't settle on one...
maybe I'll get to hang with Morr. He seems like a nice guy.
Five years later I was finishing up my Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science and found myself in its capstone class. I realized that after two years of intense political science education (most of which involved either statistics or yet another re-examination of Plato's allegory of the cave) I found myself completely inundated with Western political philosophy and zero exposure to Eastern political philosophy. Frustrated that I had been taught endless abstract theory and had virtually no education on either the machinations of our own political system or how our opposites in the Orient think, I decided to write my senior thesis paper on the differences between East and West. Thankfully, the topic of the class was "Empire", and since I knew nothing of East Asian politics (or history) I decided to teach myself.
My paper, I decided, would include something very few people at my college of choice talked about and something no one in the polisci department ever mentioned...religion. I would examine how religion influenced the concept of empire in both China and Europe (the answer I'll save for another posting).
After reading the entire section in my school's library on both Daoism/Confucianism (which I still don't fully understand) and Christianity, as well as the history of imperial Europe and China, I wrote my paper, submitted it, and turned my attention towards studying Christianity.
Very few people have actually read the Bible, and I find that sad. Having read it cover to cover three times, I can admit that actually reading it is no small feat...but if you say you're something you should back it up with a little work.
Three questions bugged me to the point of indescribable frustration. First, why would a solitary God be jealous? Second, why are Christians so adamant that there is only one God when the old testament mentions several? And finally, who are the Nephilim?
Those questions lead me to turn my attention from Christianity to religion as anthropology. Not the anthropology of religion, which studies the anthropological aspects of religion, but religion itself as an anthropological tool. I wanted to study the history of gods as a history of humanity. I devoured A History of God, The Case for God, The Evolution of God, God is Not One, The God Delusion, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Religion, Your God is Too Small, The Crisis of Islam, The City of God, St. Augustine's Confessions, and There is No god but God (just to name a few), along with the Bible, the Qur'an, the Daodejing, The Chuangtzu, The Jade Emperor's Mind Seal Classic, Confucius' Analects, the Upanishads, the Bahgavad Gita, The Book of Mormon, the Tanakh, The Bhuddist Scriptures, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, sections of the Popul Vuh and the Adi Granth, The Satanic Bible, The Corpus Hermeticum, The Druidry Handbook, The Secret Doctrine, Witchcraft Today, and anything else I could get my hands on. If I had paid someone to sanction all that I could have at least earned a masters by now.
All that made me more informed, but also more confused. I eventually realized that no matter how much more in depth my research went, I would always believe in the existence of a god. I use the lower case because though I believe, I'll can never have the certainties that the truly faithful do.
An old chemistry teacher of mine (douchebag as he was) taught us every day that chemical reactions neither create nor destroy matter; rather, they change matter's form. That, along with the second law of thermodynamics (concerning the state of entropy in a system not in equilibrium), has me convinced that this very chemical universe of ours could not have been created from absolutely nothing and that order could not have been made out of chaos without a guiding hand. Human beings are one near perfect piece of bio-engineering, and there is no logic in believing that they are a miracle of happenstance.
The above two paragraphs solidly qualify me as a Deist, but there's no church for Deists and I want to do something on my Sunday mornings (sleep being overrated). That, along with my need for a qualitative label leads me to search for something to call myself. That's one thing I noted in my study between East and West; the East just does- they don't care much for labels. We in the West have it firmly engrained in our psyche that labels, categories, and boxes are needed so that we know who and what we are. Once you put a label on something, you know how to interact with it, and you know how it's likely to interact with you.
Makes sense, right?
The following are my three conclusions on the existence of God. I wrote a comprehensive list of questions I had developed over the course of my studies, but to list all my questions alone would give me enough material to write a book, and I'd rather not do that. These posts are ridiculously long as it is.
I. There is no G/god.
God doesn't exist. Every religion we have is an evolution of our primal need to explain what we can't understand, and as science evolves (just like we did) we'll be able to explain everything we used to view with superstitious eyes. One day, we will no longer have a need for the adult version of an invisible friend.
Yeah. Tell that to near death experience survivors, the non-medicated people who have seen demons sitting by their beds at night, the people who have heard the voices, those who have seen their prayers answered, and the ballsy few who mess around with the astral plane.
If you're going to look at all possibilities, you have to include this one. As mentioned earlier, though I see this as a possibility, I view it with little to no probability. There are too many unexplained phenomenon, too many "perfect coincidences", too many records, accounts, historical customs, and traditions that involve "god/God/gods".
If you stop to take the time to research every historical creation myth you'll notice that the creator gods are often given credit for creating the cosmos. While I firmly believe that someone or something created what we have now, I've often wondered if a cosmic creator is a bit too grand. Giving credit to one being for creating everything in our known universe is an easy way to rationalize and justify what we find, but I believe it to be more plausible for credit to be given for the creation of life on earth (or, at most, the earth itself).
I believe in micro-evolution. It's hard not to. But to deny the existence of any being or beings that created us, guide us, and deal with us after we die doesn't make sense to me; and, to be honest, I find that stance a bit arrogant. Are we and everything we have and see really just one big accident? Even if there really is no one out there, a little humility goes a long way. I can honestly say I know very, very few humble atheists. Acknowledging a grander scheme (at the very least) works wonders for how we view things.
The other side of the coin is that there is no G/god because what we call religion is really the planet's greatest cargo cult (this one's for all you X Files fans). Go watch enough of those Ancient Aliens shows on the history channel and you'll start noticing some odd stuff we can't explain. This is where hairs start to split; if we really are here because of aliens, then indeed there might not be a G/god...but that means we aren't an accident.
Perhaps it would be better to say "God doesn't exist", because that gives us a qualitative- and leads me to the next point.
II. God does exist.
Here I use the capital, but there are two possibilities.
First, he exists as the monotheistic faiths imagine (I'm not going to discuss/compare/contrast them here). What we have is only one overarching God who will punish the wicked and unbelieving after death because...he's God. It doesn't really matter if it's fair for God to send people to hell for their unbelief. He made the rules, he made the board, he made the pieces...it's his game, and you rolled the dice. He can be all loving, but what truly loving parent doesn't punish his or her children for making the wrong choices? Maybe God's punishments are summed up and passed after one final judgement, and we all need to sit up and pay attention.
Is this option possible? Yes, I think it is. Ask a Christian anything theological or existential, and he'll give you an answer. You might not agree with it or like it, but that's not the point- the point is that there is an answer.
Is this option plausible? No, I don't think it is. Pre-Babylonian exile, no major or minor civilization (with a recorded history) on earth was purely monotheistic. If God in the singular did exist, then he'd be most like the God of the second possibility.
Second, he exists as the overarching "Great Spirit"; singular in true nature, but vast in numbers of form and function. Thor, Isis, Ra, Shiva, Kuan Yin, Zeus, Mars, Papa Legba...they're all very personal, very human, ways to see bits and pieces of the one true Godhead. A four star General has a different face, a different facet, a different personality for his office, his old college buddies, and his family, but in the end he's still the same being. There aren't many different Generals...just different ways he's seen, and different ways he does business.
This model would be most in line with the Hermetic concept of the Nous (or big, all encompassing mind) of God. "Is God many? Don't be stupid. God is one", The Hermetica says- but caveats that God is too incomprehensible to us to be fully understood, and how we imagine God is just our smaller, weaker minds trying to grasp the infinite.
Is this option possible? Yes, I think it is. Plausible? Also yes. Our concept of God has become more spiritual and less literal, more vague and less dramatically defined, more universal and less ethnically inclined than it was in Jesus' day (and even before)...and yet people still see the effects of this "God" and feel it's presence. Go read heart surgeon Dr. Maurice Rawling's To Hell and Back (or listen to/view the documentary here and you'll be a little more convinced that not only has God not gone away, but he more closely resembles the Hermetic model than the Judeo-Christian model.
III. Gods did/do exist.
Odd as it may sound to you, this is the one I'm most inclined to believe, and I even have my own synthesized theory (thanks Doc Carmone...)
Cargo cult originators, extra-dimensional beings, true gods; whatever you call them, the socio-historical records of every single human civilization mention them. I cannot believe that every single human society in history "invented" the concept of higher deities, especially when the more advanced ones had stories, tales, and records of physical interaction with them (Egyptians, Summerians, Babylonians, Hebrews, Chinese, Norse, etc). As Steve McNallen, founder of modern American Norse reconstructionism (Asatru) explains here - people during polytheism's heyday survived through practicality; if the gods didn't have a practical use, then there was little use for them at all.
The big questions are "What now?" and "Why does this matter?"
Here's where my theory comes in. It's based, oddly enough, off of Warhammer Mythology and a single page from James Lovegrove's Age of Ra. The gist of Warhammer Mythology is that there are many gods, each one being equally real, and that whomever a person choses to follow has authority over the follower's soul in the afterlife. If you chose to follow one god, you go to that god's heaven after death as payment for service in life. Age of Ra is set in a future where the whole world worships a very real Egyptian pantheon, because the Egyptian pantheon won the war. Each god we have in the world now did, at one point, exist, and they fought amongst themselves for human worship. A god's progress was measured by the extent of his following; the worldwide spread of Christianity showed that God was triumphing over Allah, Buddha, Olorun, and everyone else.
After all, didn't God say that he is a jealous God and thou shalt have no other gods before him? Didn't Jesus tell his followers to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? God sounds like quite the expansionist, doesn't he?
This, to me, makes the most sense, but also requires the most faith. The universal God we have today wasn't created until the Babylonian exile, and even then he was in the infant stages. Many different gods have many different heavens to offer those who worship and serve, and as the denizens of the world becomes more aware of their neighbors the gods and their servants clash. Maybe the violent contact is only at the human level, and the strife is over our bull-headed and selfish interpretations of what our culture or religion believes is the correct way to see the all encompassing God. Maybe there is only one heaven, and each view is just a different lens through which we look at the end picture.
But the problem with the Hermetic model is, oddly enough, God himself. YHWH is the most unique god in the history of our race, because unlike every other god governing parts of the earth he chose his people. No other god ever chose a group of humans; in fact, many humans chose which god to worship, where, and when. YHWH picked his people, then helped them when they followed and shwacked them hard when they went astray. He was jealous, selfish, vindictive, warlike, powerful, violent, possessive, and most important of all: faithful. He was the god of his people, and that's what leads me to believe this third model is plausible.
If all pantheons were similar in structure but different in name (Zeus is Ra is Odin is Jupiter is Amaterasu is The Jade Emperor is whoever), then there lies the possibility that the gods are just a coincidental aspect of the human psyche made form...but we have the rogue. We have the one oddball, the lone god who threatened the current pantheon (see Psalm 82:6) and went into business for himself. Why on earth would one small band of beleaguered, outnumbered, outgunned nomadic screw ups invent a single god (when a whole pantheon would have been psychologically stronger)...unless there was some shred of truth to the whole thing. And where you have two different examples of pieces in a system, you cannot simply discount the whole system as fictitious. We have an A, because pantheons were popular, and we have a B because there was reason to break from the traditional polytheistic model.
And if there were at one point many gods, and what we have today is the evolutionary result of a struggle between one breakaway deity and the others, then maybe there are many gods...
And maybe whichever one you pick will let you into his or her heaven. As the Grail Knight said: "Choose...wisely."
In the end, what does this all mean? Who knows. I don't. In fact, I've given up wondering and thinking and trying to figure it all out. If I ever find an answer, I'll let you know. If I don't, and I die before I pick someone...
...and there is no god/God, then it won't matter. I'll never know.
...and there is a God (first example), then hopefully my faith that he exists at some level is enough.
...and there is a God (second example), I should be fine.
...and there are Gods, and I don't settle on one...
maybe I'll get to hang with Morr. He seems like a nice guy.
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