Did God Create Man, Or Did Man Create God?

There was a time when anyone who posed such a question would have been dragged before an inquisition and condemned to death at the stake or stoned in the town square. Even in our times, in some places where the church is master over all that it surveys, such horrid responses have changed but little. Like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Gandhi and many others, I am a deist. I deeply believe in the existence of a supreme being. Now what? Do I look to the Bible, Qu’ran, Torah, or Tipitaka to acquire perfect knowledge of this supreme being? Maybe I should just hang my faith on the perceived divine omniscience of the Pope, Dalai Lama, rabbis, priests, gurus, or ayatollahs. I heard about a shaman, who many swear is supremely gifted with divine wisdom. Should I grovel through life as penitence for my part in perpetuating Original Sin or handle poisonous snakes to display my spiritual courage? Perhaps, I may best serve the supreme being by speaking in a tongue presumed to be known only to him, or her. Of course, finding God would be less taxing and simpler if I would only fashion my faith from the nuggets of divine dispensed by the likes of Pat Robertson and T.D. Jakes. But, being a deist, requires only that I conduct my life as best I can, and, prayerfully, receive my marching orders directly from The Source.

I am also a doomsdayer. I don’t dress in morbid black and walk around with my countenance fixed in a somber scowl. I am not a fan of the human race, but nor am I misanthropic. Such optimism that I doggedly retain resides with the belief that humanity will collectively realize the fatal course it has chosen and change direction before it steps onto an icy patch of fanaticism and slide helplessly into extermination. That is why the question that I pose may well be the most important question confronting humanity in these turbulent, violent times. I sincerely believe that only knowing the truth about the existence of God will save us.

At one end of this discussion are the atheists. Their point of view must certainly be respected. For it is far, far better to deny the existence of God than to squander one’s faith on sanctimonious allegories, fear quaking mythologies, and shamelessly dispensed poppycock, imposed at the point of guns and threats of damnation. It is also far better to deny the existence of God than to subject one’s power of reason to the demeaning, embarrassing, stifling manipulations of those who claim to know what is best for our souls. For about five thousand years, in most of the world, the life expectancy of a publicly declared atheist was less than a week. Perhaps, the stridency in their tones is due to the fact that they have much ground to make up, and little time to do so. Atheist have long been the missing piece in the puzzle in our quest for perfect knowledge about the conceptual source. They are the advocates of truth and reason. As long as they stand their ground, only revelations supported by truth will drive them away. Atheists, may succeed in tracing the natural evolution of things back a trillion years and argue their refutations of the existence of God until their brains explode, but there will forever exist the simple logic that this universe could not have come into being and sustain itself as it has without the presence of a conceptual source. But proving it. Ah, there’s the rub.

Religionists purport to know who this conceptual source is and that they alone can draw from its powers. They set themselves above inquiry and are often violently intolerant of demands for proof of their assertions. The workings of God are beyond the powers of men to comprehend, they argue. To question the dictates of the church is the ultimate heresy. To expect God to yield His inner most secrets to scientific methodologies is an unspeakable abomination. Besides, religionists rightly argue, only religion can calm man’s savage nature. A point well taken, were it not for religion’s propensity for exploiting man’s savage nature when it serves the church’s ends and interests. We need only gratefully wallow in our ignorance and accept the existence of God on faith alone to realize his eternal rewards, is the essential theme of every religious faith. But, even in the mind of God, ignorance never flatters faith. Ignorance only subjects faith to humiliation, if and when the truth is brought to light.

We are sentient, mortal beings. That would suggest that whomever or whatever brought us into being endowed us with the faculties of reason; therefore, it is perfectly logically to assume that the conceptual source will not do our thinking for us. The conceptual source does not expect us to know everything about the universe, but it does expect us to realize that all things about it exist to be known. This does not necessarily mean the conceptual source will abandon us when we are confronted with circumstances that fall beyond our range of comprehension. Assuring us of this seems the proper role of faith. Faith is hope in what we do not know, not in what we choose not to learn. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable to believe that all religions are creations of a conceptual source. But it is critical that we understand that what religions have become is of their own creation, and therefore, their responsibility.

So where are we in our pursuit of the truth concerning the existence of God? In a word, nowhere. And we’ve been there for at least four thousand years. Egos and obstinance prohibit atheists from lighting candles to explore the spiritual darkness to learn whether or not God exists. We deists accept the existence of God as a fait accompli. No sense wasting precious candlelight re-affirming what we presume to already know. Religionists will light a million candles, but each to illuminate faces that spew out enigmas wrapped in piety, propelled by self interest. Over the millennia, religionists have been conditioned to plunge to the depths of their theologies in search of confirmation while ignoring or rejecting those empirical truths that lay just below the surface. Atheists celebrate the exposing of such truths, but adamantly refuse to credit their origins to a conceptual source.

As a creation of man, God is an amorphous, abstract entity given form and substance according to our wants and agendas. He is expected to fulfill our desires and protect our interests. Each religion has decided that God will receive only congregants of its faith into Heaven and condemn all others to Hell. He is expected to forgive our most monstrous transgressions and to punish the slightest peccadilloes perpetrated against us. Despite their assertions to the contrary, religionist perceive the Creator functioning as little more than their manservant, Santa Claus, footstool, boody boy, and step `n fetchit. The faithful need only ask to receive. Religionists can rationalize and justify the iniquities and evils they embrace, even as they condemn them in others. They are doing these evils in God’s name. He is a benevolent and forgiving God. He rubber stamps every whim and fancy of the faithful. Such are the glorious benefits of the illusion of having a personal God.

But suppose, just suppose, we are truly creations of a conceptual source and put on Earth to functions as its stewards. Suppose, it detests the arrogance and impertinence of his most inspired creation, and has grown weary of it playing him for a chump. Maybe, it has decided, that a housecleaning on planet Earth is very much in order. Maybe, the conceptual source is the soul of compassion and is willing to forgive and forget our transgressions, given the proper incentives.

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