But Modern Man feels he no longer has a need for God. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say he’s replaced the Almighty God with the almighty dollar. Or rabid politics, or other unholy things. God has not appeared and interceded in any obvious way in any of the affairs of Mankind, nor has He directly punished Man since biblical times. So Modern Man believes he can get away with anything as long as he doesn’t get caught. Man believes if there even ever was God, He no longer watches us, no longer cares about us. He is a God in absentia.
The sad truth is Modern Man has mocked, ignored and shunned God to death. “God is Dead” declared Nietzsche as far back as 1882. So, intellectuals replaced God with Science. After all, reliable, repeatable, practical Science performs what seem like modern day miracles. But even if Nietzsche was right, in order for God to be dead, He must have been alive at one time. So, what has become of God?
Texts of ancient civilizations all around the world are filled with tales, myths, even observations of advanced beings who were described as gods. They are described with different names, different appearances, different powers, and different creation myths. But if there is a one true God, Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, He or It is not one of these.
None of the ancient gods claimed to be the only god. In fact many of them warred among one other. Perhaps one exception is Jehovah, Yahweh, the god described in The Old Testament. Jehovah claimed to be the creator of the heavens and the Earth. Which would mean he also created all those other gods.
Before some begin to scream that Allah is the one true god, allow me to point out that Jehovah and Allah must be one and the same. This god appeared to Abraham in The Old Testament. Jew and Muslim both consider Abraham to be their patriarch. Judaism and Islam are both monotheistic – each believes there is only one true God. Therefore both must accept that the one god who appeared to Abraham – the god who promised his two sons each would be the progenitor of great nations – must be one and the same. Otherwise The Old Testament account of Abraham makes little sense.
To understand the mystery of the gods, it is important to understand that all ancient gods, An, Bal, Isis, Thoth, Viracocha, Zeus, The Jade Emperor, et al., were human-like beings possessed of highly advanced abilities, most certainly of a technological nature, though not necessarily technology as we define it. Seeing the wonders wrought by this technology, our ancient ancestors naturally believed these beings were divine, come down from “up there.” Perhaps. Or they may have been survivors of a much earlier, much more advanced civilization which developed here on Earth. According to the creation myths of ancient Sumer, they created our human ancestors for the purpose of relieving the gods of manual labor. They accomplished this by manipulating the genes of primitive Earthlings.
It seems, for some unknown reason, that all the ancient gods and their offspring, after being here for at least 13 millennia, left our planet sometime around the 5th Century B.C., half a millennium before the appearance of Jesus. The existence and activities of the ancient gods here on Earth are cryptically revealed to us through verbal history, myth, and ancient texts.
According to Sumerian, Akaddian and other seminal creation epics (of which the biblical Genesis, is a later recension) a group of gods built the earliest cities, starting in Mesopotamia, where most likely the biblical Garden of Eden was located. Under the strict tutelage of the gods, during this period the new Mankind began to flourish.
Many generations later, disgusted with the evil ways of Mankind, one of the gods appeared to the biblical Noah (called Utnapishtim, Ziusudra, Atra Hasis and other names in the earlier texts) instructing him to build an ark in order to survive the coming Great Flood.
Much later, in the Third Millennium BC, he appeared (more than once!) as a human, face to face to Abraham. Centuries later, he appeared to Moses. However Moses and his tribe were not allowed to see this god face to face. But he laid down the law – Commandments – and brought about many wonders in the Exodus. In later years, he seems to have revealed himself only in dreams and visions to Hebrew prophets such as Jeremiah. Forcing us to believe the words of prophets... or not.
Why do we no longer hear from these gods? Or see them? Or wonder at their miracles? Is this why so many today no longer believe in any kind of god... they need some simple proof? Let me be clear: I have been describing highly advanced beings the ancients thought of as (lower-case “g”) gods. These are not to be confused with the notion of (the capital “G”) God, Who if He or It exists is the First Cause, the Creator of all things.
I have the deepest respect for theoretical science in its search for answers to the deepest mysteries of our existence. But science is no closer to answering the deepest mystery than were ancient philosophers: what is the origin of our universe? How did all this come to be? What was the First Cause in Aristotle’s philosophy? Not how did it evolve – science has a good handle on that – but how did it come into being? The idea that the vastness of space and all its contents created itself out of nothing, inflated, banged and evolved in some natural process, the multiverse theory not withstanding, seems as improbable as it being created by some omnipotent sentient force we call God.
Perhaps these questions are less important to us as individuals as the question, if there is a God, does He hear our prayers, does He intercede in the affairs of one person, does He watch over us and keep us safe? Does He still care about His creation, Mankind? And if He doesn’t, what difference does it make whether we believe in Him or not?
Many who believe in God have a difficult time understanding why everyone doesn’t believe in God. As a believer, I clearly understand why atheists don’t. Is it possible to reconcile a scientific view with a belief in God?
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Let us return to that extraordinary and seminal claim, known to a majority of the world’s population: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.”
It is the very first sentence in Genesis, the first chapter of The Old Testament, the Torah, the Bible. Variations of this claim appear in the ancient writings of virtually every civilization on Earth. Hebrew tradition claims Genesis, along with the next four books of the Old Testament, were written, or at least inscribed, sometime around the 15th Century BC, by Moses. The earliest Sumerian creation texts date to at least 4000 BC.
In ancient times, skepticism seems to have been somewhat rarer than it is today. However, in our time, skepticism and cynicism have taken the place of faith. No one is more skeptical than I. And yet, despite walking away from my own religious upbringing, I am a deist. I believe in an Almighty God. Based on what? Is there any actual evidence for my belief? Or is simple faith enough? The God I believe in may find purchase in your own faith.
They say God works in mysterious ways. What mysterious ways? The best we can do is to believe that God intercedes in some way to cause whatever may seem like a miracle. The saying is reduced to a cliche. The bottom line is, if God ever directly interceded in Man’s history, there is no actual evidence of it. One might say, if there is a God, and if God wants us to believe in Him, and serve Him, and love Him, then He might want to think about giving us some tangible proof to fortify our faith. We know Mankind has always operated at a low moral level, but believers want to be certain we are believing in something more than a mythical idea, we want God to give the world some hope that good will indeed triumph over evil.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.” Obviously Moses couldn’t have witnessed the beginning, so how could he possibly have known anything about what happened in “the beginning?” This isn’t a trivial question. After all, Genesis 1:1 is the most important and significant verse ever written!
One possibility is that Moses wrote down what he had learned from Egyptian creation myths, which again were variations of Sumerian creation myths from earlier times. Another possibility is that Moses made it all up. Or perhaps Moses was somehow inspired to write it. But Genesis claims that while Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt and across the Sinai, God (or somebody Moses believed was God) called him up to the summit of the Mount, and dictated, or inscribed many things, including the Commandments.
If this event, allegedly witnessed by hundreds of thousands of Moses’ followers, didn’t actually happen, then perhaps Moses wrote down what had been verbal history. If so, we are left with the same problem. No human could have been there “in the beginning.” So how could this verbal history been anything but myth? But every myth, however spectacular, has roots in some actual event. This one clearly had to have been created by someone in a much earlier era than that which Moses lived.
There are many creation myths which date to centuries, indeed millennia before Moses’ time. Sumerian creation myths come to mind, as well as Indian, Egyptian, Chinese and Peruvian and others. They all present the same insoluble problem. No Sumerian, Indian or Egyptian could have been alive in the beginning to have witnessed it. Logic dictates this cannot be the answer, for if it were, it would mean than Moses – or someone earlier – simply made up the story.
But if Moses and the others made it all up, how could something so obviously “impossible” have survived for so many millennia while being challenged by more humans than any other words? There must be something so seminal about this claim that we humans – at least some of us – feel it in our very bones. In our genes.
Perhaps Moses was somehow divinely inspired to write it. Many in ancient times claim to have had lucid dreams or hallucinations wherein they were visited by superior beings who imparted to them some divine knowledge which they were to pass along to the world. Gudea received specific plans and “blueprints” for constructing a monumental temple to his god. This is how religions start. But if Moses had a dream or an hallucination on Mount Sinai, hundreds of thousands of his tribe witnessed some of this hallucination, all at the same time, from the foothills of the mountain upon which Moses claims he encountered God, or someone he believed was God. It was from here that Moses came down with the Ten Commandments, and much more which his God related to him. Moses was, according to his followers and even the Egyptians, a brilliant and inspired man, but how likely is it that on his own, Moses invented The Ten Commandments, and the genesis of the universe?
Until Science shows conclusively how the universe came into being ex nihilo, from nowhere and nothing, we cannot rule out that Genesis could be literally correct – God, created the heavens and the Earth – and billions of years later, when the time was right, He, or someone representing Him, gave the story to Moses and many other ancient leaders.
So, God, wherefore art Thou? We need You here, now, as a spiritual darkness befalls Mankind yet again. Mammon, and the desperate effort by so many to bow to this false god is corrupting every facet of human endeavor. From the highest holy houses to the political chambers of every nation, and in every human endeavor, corruption is devouring righteousness. Evil has become big business.
I have studied the Old Testament for decades. The more I dig between the lines, the more skeptical I become regarding the goodness not only of the Hebrew god of the Old Testament, but of the gods of all ancient civilizations. The Old Testament is filled with violence and killing on a massive scale. Only in the midst of Mankind’s epic battles such as America’s Civil War, World War I, World War II, do we see carnage comparable to that found in the ancient texts of all these civilizations, the Old Testament paramount on that list.
Do we want to believe in a god who could wreak such terrible havoc on the very people he created? Can we feel good about a god who calls himself by the name Jealous? Who warns his people that he is a jealous god who will surely kill those who defy his commandments? A god who favors one tribe over all others? How can that kind of god, one so vindictive, be the same God who created the heavens and the Earth? I can’t see it. Praying to an angry, vindictive and often petty god does not make me feel holy. Not at all.
Which is why I no longer adhere to any particular religion. I am but a simple deist who believes in an Almighty sentient force which created the universe and exists somehow within it, directing its course by acting on the quantum level, creating fluctuations in the fields, which ultimately manifest themselves as changes in the realm in which we exist.
Of course, God is not a man. He resides in heaven only in a symbolic sense. Although I suppose, should He need to, He could manifest himself as a man. Or a woman. Or a tiger. Or a blade of grass. Whichever it is, I pray Almighty God returns to help us, because we obviously cannot help ourselves.
