God Bless us every one! I need a God to believe in so I'm building one.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

And of course it means that much more coming from a post Christmas party tipsy atheist. I’d rather not be an atheist, but there’s really no way around it. Old school beliefs centered around omnipotent superhuman power beings just never seem to pan out, blind watchmakers aren’t very appealing and the quasi-animist stuff is just comical. If only there were a God that spoke to me.

God: “Hi Astro here is my message for you!”

Astro: “Thanks God!”

Given the lack of appealing choices extant I’ve decided it’s time to roll up my sleeves, break out the ontological erector set and build myself a God. I’m going to need a set of commandments or directives to begin with. I also need to define the nature of this God, i.e. perfect or error prone, happy, sad, vengeful, easygoing, human like or far beyond human understanding, fingers or flippers, gendered or ungendered etc. etc. etc. I need input.

What kind of God would you like? What should he, she or it look like? What kind of rules would this God have? When you kneel down on your day of worship what message would you like to hear from the pulpit?

2

Female, humanoid and sassy. Make her old enough to be a little bitchy and get away with it. Sort of a Molly Ivins type. Prayer meetings would be so much more fun.

3

Hey, no fair!

I was on the verge of starting my own world religion with some snappy name, like *The Word of Shirley * or some such nonsense. Maybe we can combine forces. You do the Diety stuff, I’ll take care of the lemmings…errr…stooges…the people.

Basically, here is the gist of what I want to start if I ever get drunk and charismatic enough:

  1. It will be a religion based on techology: no large expensive churches to haul your butt to on Sunday’s and look at dreary stained glass. You, my pilgrim, will *call in * and listen to voice mail options depending on your level of guilt that week. It will be a 900 number. Have credit card handy.

  2. The 10 Commandments are severly out of date. My To-be-Named Religion will address real issues for the day. Here is a sampling (but not limited too): Stealing office supplies, flipping off people in traffic, conspicious spending, comfort eating, smiting, indecent lawn maintenence, fat women wearing lycra, butt crack men, Paulie Shore Fans, failure to grasp the concept of parallel parking, talking on a cell phone about mundane things whilst shopping/using a public toilet, fowarding glurge email, unprotected sex, sex while drunk, anal retentive-obsessive-complusive behavior, going of meds because you don’t need them when you clearly do, going on meds when you clearly just need a beating with a dead mackerel, whining, bigotry, sexism and any joke that begins with ‘so a guy walks into a bar’.

Instead of listening to dull music, it will be a wide range of newer music, for example: * You Can’t Always Get What You Want * is a far better tune to console a broken heart than *Onward Christian Soldiers * . *Love Stinks * would also suffice.

Naturally, the more aggregious the guilt, the more mula you pay. And since it is on your credit card automatically, with the right line of credit can be earning frequent flier miles or cash back.

I like to think of it similiar to a health club membership for your soul. You pay a monthly fee to never attend.
:slight_smile:

(and I am completely serious)

4

Cosmic Muffin - always stoned, always happy. Be cool, let it slide - that kind of thing.
Except when somebody’s chain really needed jerkin’…

5

Female, definitely. Suffers fools, but not gladly. Wry, dry sense of humour.

Message I would like to hear from pulpit: “I gave you a brain for a reason. Do your best to figure things out. And remember: Every little t’ing, gonna be alrigh’.”

6

You called? :smiley:

7

Female definetlly. The bulk of current/past gods have been male and frankly they haven’t come up to snuff. There, it needed to be said.

Stick in something about things happening in a random manner. In the long run, IMHO, it will save you a lot of explaining and making up of theological mumbo jumbo.

8

Well, I don’t care whether God is male or female, but I definitely think it should be purple. Or at least wear purple clothes.

Why? I don’t know, I just like purple. And it’d be even better if it vaguely resembled Grimace from the McDonald’s commercials. Except more coherent.

9

First thing. Any god I worship has got to understand what it’s like to be human. That includes farting, throwing up, itching, and waking up feeling generally cranky. No sitting up there on a high and mighty throne saying, “Oh well. Stuff happens!” I want one who says “Yeah, that is rough! I’ve been there. Stuff happens.”

Worship: I’m with astro. Good music must be a part of it! And dancing! Choirs are good, but so are sing-a-longs. No getting anal retentive about who’s singing off-key during the latter. I think I’d like a bunch of options for styles. Gatherings of a bunch of people are great, but there should also be forms for solo work for when there’s something you want to take up with God personally without telling everyone else about it. Also a way to work with someone else and God so that you can get some real world input. I also like the idea that in some contexts, sex can be holy.

Consequences. I lean toward the idea of karma or the Wiccan Rule of Three, what you put out comes back to you three times over, rather than the old-style Christian sin and redemption here. Basically, this religion should have some notion that the actions you take have consequences. If you don’t like what you think those consequences will be, don’t do it.

Gender. If we make God female, the men will complain; if we make God male, the women will complain. Since English doesn’t have a decent neuter, singular, sentient pronoun, we’re in trouble. A Trinity ala Christianity might work, but in Christianity, the idea of the Holy Spirit being female seems to have gotten lost. Is there any chance I can get gender dismissed as irrelevant?

Messages. Here’s what I’d like to hear:
[ul][li]You’ve screwed up, but you’re going to be OK.[/li][li]It’s all right to be hurt/angry/scared.[/li][li]Trust me. It is under control. [/li][li]Anything which will get me to think more deeply about my religion.[/li][li]Yes, I know what X did. Don’t worry about it. It’s not your concern.[/li][li]Stuff happens, and you can’t know why.[/li][li]I’m sorry stuff happens.[/ul][/li]
I’d like communication from this God to be a bit more clear and open. It’d save me a lot of time saying, “I don’t know why He hasn’t shown himself to you.”

Rules:
[ul][li]Love me.[/li][li]Love others.[/li][li]Look after those less fortunate.[/li][li]Don’t be arrogant.[/li][li]Don’t be cruel.[/li][li]Show people respect, whether they deserve it or not.[/li][li]Don’t be a jerk.[/li][li]Don’t be a fool.[/li][li]Consider everything a person is before you go making judgements.[/li][li]Anytime you condemn someone to eternal punishment, you come one step closer to condemning yourself.[/li][li]Whether you suffer eternal punishment is up to you. I’ll be here when you’re ready. [/li][li]Remember Me once in a while and say hello.[/li][li]Admit it when you screwed up.[/li][li]Anyone showing cruelty, hatred, or ripping people off and doing so in My Name gets blasted![/li]Oh, and to borrow from Heinlein,
[li]Don’t insult people.[/li][li]Don’t be easily insulted.[/ul][/li]
Oh yes, any God I worship had better have a sense of humour! I admit I cheated, and this is pretty close to my actual religion, but if it weren’t, what good would that religion be?

CJ

10

Okay, female, and uhhh…purple, yeah good. Sassy and understanding, lots of music and possibly consecrated sex. That’s all very nice but I’m still afraid that when I die I’ll just “switch off.” Can we have a cool afterlife or heaven or something? It can be sassy and purple, or we can be stoned ghosts, whatever…but something else besides goodbye brain waves. Oh and I don’t like getting up early to go to church, can we option for late night gatherings in a pub type atmosphere? Can I get drunk?

11

I vote for purple, also.
Here’s a commandment for you: It is a sin not to question my actions and/or motives. If you think I screwed up, tell me. I’m always open to suggestions because, while I created the whole shebang, you people have to live in it.

12

Oh, great. Who just deified Sassy?

Astro can your God do me a big favour and cast a pox on those evil parking enforcement people? Just so that for every unfair ticket they write, they lose a tooth. Just drops right off from their gums. Just to keep them in line, they tend to be pretty weasely.

And can I be the one who gets to carry around the collection plate in the Church of the Astrogod?

13

I misread this as, " In the Church of the Astroglide " and now have herbal tea gushing from my nose. Oh, I HOPE you are happy !!!

:stuck_out_tongue:

Cartooniverse

14

Oo!.. The Purple Church of the Astroglide. Now that has some appeal!

15

I want to be able to convince people of my godly powers…All worship Monica!

16

:wink: It was past time you all realized who the Goddess is.

17

I’ve always wanted to have sex with a god, so perhaps he could be inclined toward sex with mortals. Yeah, that’d be good.

18

Gods are more impressive with steamy nostrils, and glowing eyes.

Less vengeful, more forgiving.

God needs better environmental controls: fewer floods, earthquakes, etc. More uniform distribution of rainfall and productive soil.

God also needs more effective trademark protection. Athletes and politicians who claim God is on their side should get badly burned for a first offense, and utterly destroyed on the second.

God needs MUCH better quality control in human production. WAY too many whackos and idiots around.

19

How about a God[dess?] who’s got the sass-yness of a Jerry Springer guest [and the problems too] who, when you kneel down to pray to her, she says with a swivel of her neck and a click of her finger “Honey…sugar-plum, you ain’t gots no problems sugar! You just gotta keep it real! Oh, and my man ain’t yo’ baby’s daddy!”

It’d be like watching a talk show as well as getting all of the street-sassy advice you need!

20

Hmmm… thanks for your input the God outline is taking shape nicely.

My God is going to be a surging quantum wave breaking against the endless shore girdling the boundaries of reality. My God will be the embodied force of anti-entropy, his strong hands holding the reins of chaos in check. My God will smell like cedar wood and newly mown grass when he is present and in a good mood. If he is in a bad mood he will appear as a whirling ball of flame and emit hard X-rays.

My God will a have beautiful and terrible, yet compassionate wife who rules over the day to day doings of the Earth and the solar system while he takes care of the more distant and abstract stuff. It’s very important to keep her happy as she is both more and less tolerant about certain things than God and it’s our job to figure out which. It is useless to appeal to God when she makes a ruling as her word is law on Earth. She will smell like fragrant roses or fresh baked pumpkin pie when you are in her presence.

And yet for all this my God will not be omniscient or all-powerful. He will be like Tom Bombadil and this galaxy will be his sacred forest.

My God and Goddess would prefer people to be reasonable, but they are not busy body micro managers. It will be up to us to move beyond the random quantum smears of our existence into higher levels of understanding. They will not provide any intellectual booster seats as they are busy and have a universe to run.

Mr. and Ms. God will love music, but she especially. She loves to dance in the morning and evening twilight sky and he just likes to watch her dance. (He threw out his back wrangling a bunch of black holes a while ago). Music that produces joy brings special favor from her.

I’m going to need some commandments next. Please keep suggestions coming! If you want to roll your own God please feel free.