Just for the sake of argument, or exploration, let’s take seriously this claim that atheism is a little idea and god is a big one.
Atheism has become a very little idea, an idea that has to be shouted to seem important. And that is a shame, because God was a big idea, and the rejection of the existence of God was also a big idea, once upon a time.
Was god a big idea?
Perhaps I’m not taking it seriously after all, because I can’t honestly see that it was.
Really. I can’t. It seems to me that god was and is a very little idea, and a very boring one (which shows how little it was and is). It has no moving parts to think about. It has no detail to think about. It’s like a smooth mound of ice – only less interesting because not organic.
I can’t think of anything that is about god that’s at all interesting – any book or description or analysis, I mean. That’s why movies like Oh God! and Dogma show god as a person, I should think – to make it interesting enough for people to watch.
God is almost never a character in literature, and when it is it’s boring. The only way to make it not boring is to make it like a human – which just shows how boring it is as itself. God is nowhere near as interesting as Hamlet or Dorothea Brooke or Abraham Lincoln or Emily Bronte.
Why not? Because it’s not a big idea, it’s a little idea – it’s simple. It’s just omni-everything…which is as boring as it gets.
This is one reason Jesus is such a big deal, by the way; ditto Mo. They’re there for the interest. Things happen to them. What can happen to god?
All this is in human terms, obviously, but then that’s what we’re talking about. We don’t have access to other terms.
Humans want to go somewhere. That’s built in. We want some kind of improvement. There are a million versions of improvement, just as there are a million versions of happiness, but we pretty much all want it in some form; it’s our engine. Poor god can’t want that, because it’s already perfect. What could be more boring? Big is not the same as interesting, to be sure, but I think the littleness is the source of the lack of interestingness. It’s a little idea because it’s just a formula of words, and it’s one that doesn’t go anywhere. God is perfect; end of story.
One orthodox version of heaven is an eternity of gazing on god, in bliss. That’s always sounded like torture to me.
What am I missing?