Knowing God to death

When my daughter was about six or seven, she asked me if I believed in God. I told her no, and she asked me why.

I don't see any evidence, I told her.

"He's not a person, Dad," she told me. "He wouldn't come down and leave any evidence."

Why would he? Why would God want us to "know" him? Our knowledge of him would diminish him -- he would no longer be perfect.

And furthermore, can we say of a perfect being that it would "want"?

"The more we refine our concept of God to square with natural law, to explain what we know, the more pointless it seems." -- Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory.

God as designated knower

People have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what's worth knowing, said Oscar Wilde. "Newspapers provide that service."

I like to know things but there are many things I don't want to know, like what goes on in a slaughterhouse.

We make God in our image and require Him to know all the things we don't care to know, and to love them.

God, what nonsense

"The extreme of human knowledge of God is to know that we do not know God." -- Saint Thomas Aquinas.

God wants me to be the best I can...God has a plan for me...God will tell me what to do...

Any anthropomorphic statement about God is senseless. To attribute human characteristics to God is to limit him, to deny his Godhood.

If we know the will of God, he is not God.

God's Bodkins

How odd
That God
Would demand
A hand--
Applause--
Just because
He's on high.

What a guy!

Who craves
Our raves?
The almighty!
Aphrodite,
That hussy,
Wasn't as fussy.
Nor
Was old Thor
Up in Norway.
Only Jahweh
Desires
Great choirs
Of praise.

Heavenly days!

For the love of---

"God wants me to love Him." How pathetic. The ugliest girl in my high school wanted me to love her.

God's principle attribute: Insecurity.

Preaching to the choir

Bill Maher gives skeptics a bad name. His sophomoric rants about the absurdity of the Jesus story ("God sent him on a suicide mission...") probably make the faithful even more adamantine. He's smug and, frankly, creepy.

What was the question again?

"Jesus is the answer."

Shouldn't it be "Jesus is the question?" Jesus didn't have any answers; whenever someone asked him anything, he responded with another question, or with a statement that prompted further questions.

"Nicodemus saith unto him, 'How can a man be born when he is old?'

"Jesus answered, 'Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God...'

"Nicodemus answered and said unto him, 'How can these things be?'

"Jesus answered and said unto him, 'Art thou a master of Israel, and know not these things?'"