Why not--Maltheism? (Religion)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 28, 2011, 14:25 (4685 days ago) @ xeno6696

Many thanks to Matt for yet again opening up interesting new avenues for exploration.-Yesterday I attended the funeral of a 13-year-old girl, killed by a hit-and-run driver (who has been arrested). The chapel was filled to overflowing ... the ceremony was relayed to people outside, and many adults as well as children were in tears. The service was not religious, but the woman who led it said two things that are relevant to Matt's question. This much loved little girl was adored by everyone for her humour, good nature and sheer enjoyment of life. The man who killed her has shown no remorse. The first comment was that the soul of the driver was as full of darkness as Amy's soul was full of light. The second remark was that we could rage against the premature death of this child, or we could be thankful for the 13 years of love and happiness that she had spread around her.-Matt writes: "What I bring to this discussion here, is in recognizing that the basic values of life reverberate through the cosmos. Creation can only come from the destruction of something else. There is no prime cause, unless the prime cause was itself destruction." I find this logic impossible to follow. You can't destroy something until it exists, so how can the prime cause be destruction? -The extreme concept of an evil god seems to me exactly on a par with, and just as unrealistic as, the extreme concept of a loving god. The forces of creation and destruction balance each other in both life and the cosmos, and this is probably the best clue we have as to the nature of a possible god, the inference being that it is the same mixture as we find within our human selves: full of light, full of darkness, creature and creator in the same image. -The dichotomy also fits in perfectly with an impersonal universe. Instead of a conscious good and evil god, you have the same balance without any god at all, or with an absent or dead god. Matt writes: "This is in fact one form of divinity I have discussed in the past: the universe is the result of a dead God. Any order that exists has come at the expense of its own dissolution, but even its own efforts are eventually wasted." Wasted? The conclusion is up to you. Either you are angry at the death of the child, or you are thankful for the 13 years of happiness. (You can be both, of course. Most of us probably view life as a tragicomedy.) Jon Nödtveidt's killing of another man and then of himself was a waste, and so was the killing of Amy, but her life was not. Those who knew her will remember her, there will be unconscious influences, for instance on her brother who may one day have a family of his own, ripples spread, destruction is followed by creation. So long as there is a present and a future, how can we say even a dead God's efforts are wasted? -Worship of chaos and destruction? What is the point? Why worship anything? Being here with the opportunity to flicker for an instant seems to me an end in itself, and it is one which I embrace with relish, whether there is or isn't a god, whether it's good or evil, good and evil, indifferent or dead.