Author Topic: God of little things

The Glue Man

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #80 on: March 24, 2006 »
It's Saint Joan and her tormentors all over again, quarks and dark matter standing in for whispering Saint Cat and Micky the Ark. I always fancied the French chick with the bespoke armour. It's a tomboy thing.

Pity the poor Welsh Witch who intervened in the first place. At least they only want to give her a steel hat with some wires sticking out and not lay a bonfire for her vanity. How chatting with dead folks affects the moon shot I can't work out. Sadly, I'm too busy for a while to marshall the troops Sam.

Frenchie

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #81 on: March 24, 2006 »
Facts aren't the point B&W.  Facts can be found in a book. Facts are sterile, a bare rocky place indeed.

Science isn't a body of knowledge.  It is a process.  A damn pointy one.  But I'm not talking about science per se here, I'm talking about rational thought.

A reality which is by its nature not investigable, not testible, irrational, must be not materially manifest, a myth.  Faith. 

If you are talking about something possible but not yet known, that is not in itself inherenetly unknowable.  Just that we haven't looked yet

I think that there are things that are unknowable, but I also think that because of that they must lie outside our experience. Permanently.

I would agree with above. The limits of what lies outside our experience is however only mainly limited by man's imagination, i.e. until someone pushes the envelope a bit further, which science keeps on doing permanently. The lack of understanding does not mean the need for a god, the easy way out in a sense; rather the need for more investigation.

bardsandwarriors

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #82 on: March 24, 2006 »
Having gods is our natural way of dealing with important questions which don't have good answers. MV said that my list were important to me - true, they are; and that is why we have different gods, and even the same 'god' can have different meanings for different people.

The gods are a holding pattern for those questions and concepts, developing and investigating them, until they can be resolved in a better way. So we don't 'need' a god, true - but it can be useful to put unresolved things into a box and give it a name. It's like a black box for all of your black boxes.

I'm not sure yet how small gods fit into this. I think they are important aswell, but relate more to your personal values, than to unresolved issues.

Frenchie

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #83 on: March 24, 2006 »
Having gods is our natural way of dealing with important questions which don't have good answers.

If that was strictly true, why spend so much money/effort on the birth of the universe? dare I ask... Religion is a (social?) code of conduct; and a spiritual matter. Not the answer to the unknown and to everything.

bardsandwarriors

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #84 on: March 24, 2006 »
Allow me to explain. This is because there are 2 types of gods.

(a) The 'explaining'-type gods, which 'hold' explanations of complicated things like the weather, and personal concepts of great import. The Weather Man (bless His Socks) is one of the spokespersons for the Gods of Weather, and there are many who believe his daily words of wisdom. You may think Michael Fish is an actual person, but in fact he isn't; he is an apparition sent by The Weather Girls to help you. (Ask yourself, would a real person have a moustache like that?) If the behaviour of the god explains the system well enough, there is no need for everyone to learn the technical details. These Gods can be very useful.

An ex-explaining god is one which has been officially explained away by science, but is still useful as a handy label. eg. Sod McMurphy and His Famous Law, or The God of Brigands and Robbers.

(b) Other gods are 'aspirational' - they can show you how to behave as a society, or give you idylls to aspire to and idols to imitate. They mean you don't have to take degrees in sociology. Just follow the rules and you'll be fine.

You can select one of the Major Gods off the shelf if you like, such as Allah (bless Him), or Jesus and his Holey Father. The biggest gods explain all kinds of popular things, and give you a profitable, sociable way to live - like a package holiday.

Some types of religion have a whole pantheon of gods, such as the Ancient Greeks. These are Medium-Sized Gods. Before them were The Titans (Very Big, but not omnopotent), and before them The Ancient Ones (also Very Big, but scarier because of being not very pleasant) of whom The Great Chthulhu is one, and rumoured to be awaiting his return from a city under the sea. I am not sure whether Flying Spag Monst is an offspring of The Great Cthulhu, but he has plenty of tentacles, and it would be quite worrying if he is.

But Small Gods are the modern way. They deconstruct life into separate issues, so that you can mix n match a number of them to suit your lifestyle. They include the Small Gods of money, luck, mirrors, travelling safely, good stools, and good photographs. Each has been known by different names in different civilisations, but they are basically the same species.

The God of Cycling Components, for example, appears to some people in a dazzling flash of images of perfect reliability and function, all beautifully designed by wizards, and crafted from the best metals in the hottest fires by master craftspeople. ie. an 'aspirational' god. They are known to work secretly in hidden sheds, and only by joining a secret society (such as acf) and undergoing 2 years training as an acolyte under the best tuition, will you know where to find their hallowed portals.

The Triple Goddess of Cycling is another which some of us maybe familiar with.

The p* faeries (apologies for using your name so frequently of late, oh great ones, for you are very real indeed and I humbly beg your forgiveness) are an 'explaining' type of Small God. It is very useful to know that they are basically random and excitable creatures. They have a powerful sense for detecting tyres where the rubber has been worn thin, especially if they are pumped up really hard. They often live under hedges and spring out when you're not looking; and there are invisible ones who dance around piles of broken glass in the road, trying to stick a tiny shard into your tyre as you go past. Sometimes they will move things into your path deliberately, to catch you out. Strange, but true.

Be sure to have a few explaining-gods and a few aspiration-gods in your portfolio, to help you on your way.

You can also get sacred things for your god(s). They act like a caveman's animal paintings -  an image which can be meditated on, and used to trigger a whole collection of positive thoughts before going out to get dinner. You just need to imbue them with the right characteristics to trigger the ideas that are important to you. The more beautifully crafted or naturally symbolic the sacred things are, the more power they have to become sacred. (Glue Man's amulets are a very fair price, I might add).