The Body & Mind of 'God'.

Where is the body of god? 

Does the Holy Trinity reside in any specific place?

Where did it reside before the creation of the universe?

Outside of space?

Outside of time?

Outside of space and time; what is that? 

If such a concept cannot be understood or conceptualized by the human mind, how can it ever have been conceived as an answer to the question ‘Where is god?’

The body – and physical nature – of god is related in the both the Old and the New Testaments of the Bible. 

Does that ‘god’ have a mind? 

Apparently so as Christians often speak of the ‘mind of God’.
Does ‘god’ have intentions and desires? 

If it created the universe, it – god – must have desired to do so. It must have intended to make the universe. It follows then that the creator-god must have had a mind. Was it a physical mind? If it was a physical, extant mind, then it must have existed in space. Existence necessitates both time and space.

Where did this mind (with its desires and intentions) exist before it had created space/time?

(By the way, if ‘god’ was an absolutely perfect, being – wholly and truly perfect, content, complete and self-sustaining without need for anything more than it was before the creation of the universe, there would be no logical reason for such a perfect being to desire anything more than itself.)

What is Faith?

What is Faith?

Faith is immaterial.

Faith has no atomic weight.

Faith has no mass.

Faith has no charge.

Faith is not an object; it is NOT something one has or possesses.

Faith is an element of a personal heuristic; Faith is part of one’s epidemiology. 

It is only by analogy that one can speak of ‘Faith’ as something one has. 

Those who claim to ‘have’ Faith are deceiving themselves. 

Faith is a delusion; Faith is analogous to a lens through which one sees the world. That world, then, also does not exist except within the heuristic formed by this delusion. God, demons, angels, miracles and so on are elements of the deception that a Believer asserts is true.

As Matt Dillahunty has asked many times; ‘Is there anything that cannot be accepted on Faith?’

The Wrong End of the Telescope

It is woefully hilarious that 'Believers' justify their nonsense by saying that it's 'natural'.

You know, like arsenic and volcanic eruptions.

The basic problem that 'Believers' have is that they persist in looking through the wrong end of the telescope. For them, the world was made expressly for the sentient puddle to inhabit. 

Religion may have been necessary in the earlier ages for civilization to coagulate around but, since the scientific revolution, religion has become a nuisance at best - an obstruction at worst.

Ask Giordano Bruno. 

Ask Galileo. 

Ask Copernicus.

Meeting the Goddess

 An encounter with the Netherworld? (or business as usual?)

Went to a number of temples this week; it being Chinese Lunar New Year (新年 ) - CNY. (A sidebar: It has been said that CNY is the largest annual migration of humans in the world.)

 

Visiting my wife’s family in a small Taipei town of XinWu, we went to a Temple dedicated to Matsu – goddess of the oceans whose name means ‘mother ancestor’. (For more on Matsu (Mazu): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazu )

 

For background, I’ve long since resigned to going with the flow during family functions and at Lunar New Year (新年: Guo Nian) and being a prop (an accessory to the matter at hand) . I’m typically given a bullet-point schedule on the fly. I’ve learned to leap into action without more than a moment’s notice. 

 

This particular encounter with a goddess wasn’t even on the bullet-point. We drove by a temple to Matsu and saw a company of young woman singing (chanting) while performing a choreographed display with electric torches. 

 

Since this temple was in the neighborhood of my sister-in-law (Da Jie) and is one of her favored sites, we returned to the Temple for the midnight ceremony welcoming in the New Year.  

 

All of the following happened in a flash. 

 

There I was - the unwitting witness to the summoning of the goddess by the temple high priestess. First the priestess – a woman in her fifties – dressed in red garments (auspiciously befitting the season), intoned a prayer while holding a fasces-like  bundle of very long joss-sticks. As the joss burned and gave off incensed smoke, the priestess wielding the bundle of joss sticks like a calligraphy brush, writing words in the air above a square of perhaps 900 wicked candles in jars set in straight rows. While ‘air’ writing, the priestess intoned an invocation to Matsu. 

 

When this task was complete – and Matsu had inhabited the priestess - temple workers lit the candle wicks in a very orderly manner – from the center to the edges of the square.  In the meantime, the priestess returned to her place at the end of a long table set before a statue of the goddess, Matsu.

 

It was then that I was ordered to raise my hand – to volunteer for something. Explanation was not forthcoming but I did so as a dutiful accessory to the festivities. I was quickly informed that because of my age, I was to go to the priestess (who was now the goddess, Matsu) and I that I should be properly deferential in accepting the goddess’ beneficence.

 

I was chosen by the temple assistants to come into the presence of the goddess (who had channeled herself into the body of the priestess). I was to be given a red envelope and a small bracelet as a beneficence from the goddess. 

 

Before being persuaded to raise my hand and receive beneficence from the ‘goddess’, I had had a conversation with the son of the priestess. This conversation put a new perspective on the proceedings. After I had gotten the bracelet and red envelope, I was sitting having some hot tea when the priestess’s son, Leo, engaged me once more in English conversation expressing his surprise that I was the only foreigner he’d ever seen at any temple activity. He went on to say that their previous temple had been located in a larger city and they had moved the location to a locale that had fewer restrictions and ordinances regarding temple activities. I found this intriguing but held my questions out of deference to his apparent belief in the goddess herself.

 

However, in this brief conversation, I deduced that the temple was a family business (as many temples are in Taiwan) and that the temple was where he had been raised. I also sensed that Leo and his mother, the priestess, had a matter-of-fact, business-as-usual approach to the dealings of the temple. Leo was clearly unimpressed by his mother being the vessel for the visitation of the goddess, Matsu. 

 

Personally, I could not accept that his mother had been channeled by Matsu or that there was any spiritual significance to the ceremony I had witnessed. I assumed a non-committal, detached role as I thought an anthropologist might do. 

 

The festive mood intrinsic to Chinese Lunar New Year swirled and I partook in the joyous clamor by wishing everyone I encountered with the phrase ‘Shin-nien-quai-leh’ (新年快乐:Happy New Year). I also accepted the congratulations of the temple-goers and my family for having met and received beneficence from the goddess, Matsu. 

 

It was an innocent subterfuge on my part, I felt. I also think that I could ‘dine out’ on this tale for some time. And I have a prop: the friendship bracelet from the goddess herself!