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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Another "naive" reply to "Thou Art God"
Message-ID: <1548@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Dec-83 11:26:48 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1548
Posted: Sun Dec 11 11:26:48 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Dec-83 12:12:06 EST
References: <1941@fortune.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 59

Me here. As usual, I agree with Tim.

What difference does it make if one develops psychic powers of if one
develops technical powers (assuming that  both are possible)? How
does power actually *get* you anything?

I think that power is only attractive when it protects you from things.
This means that any attempt to get *real*, *personal*, power stems from
insecurity. This is not, in itself, a terrible thing, since I have yet
to meet somebody who is not insecure to some extent, though I am quite
sure that they have and do exist.

Everybody considers "what would I do if I could do whatever I wanted"
sometimes. Everybody tries to protect themselves from other people to
some extent (again, though I am perfectly willing to admit that this is
not the only way it can be). 

The problem comes in designing a religion to comfort the insecure. If you
read any 'history of religions and war' type book you will notice a 
frightening co-relation between religions which get used to comfort the
insecure and horrible acts. If you look around you will see that the
Christians who think that "place all your trust in Jesus and your problems
will go away" is the keynoter of Christianity have a very different
flavour than the "whosoever wants to save his sould must lose it"
crowd. Or, if you would rather not read about Christianity, try --
"Buddhism goes to Japan and becomes entangled with the Samuri", a wonderful
example of how you can take "what you want" from a religion. I still do
not know how you can put the arts of war into a religion that had stressed
not killing any animal or insect (let alone a human being), but the
Japanese found a way.

I have been able to find this trend in every single religion I have looked
at. The religion becomes "established", and gets used as a crutch for
insecurity, rather than a vehicle for spiritual growth. The results
are very frightening.

What I believe you were proposing was personal power for the placation of
insecurities. This strikes me as horrible in the extreme. Power, contrary
to polpular belief, does not make you secure -- just more jealous of your
power. We are tons more powerful today than we ever were (just look at
them nukes!) and I haven't noticed any great decrease in insecurity.
Thus this is the old trick of the worm Orobous eating his tail -- in
ammassing power to try to become more secure you need more power to become
more secure you need....)

The usefulness in such exercises is to discover that they are futile and stop.
Bootstrapping yourself into Godhood won't work. If you are a God then you
are a God *now* with all that that entails. If you are a God then there is
no need to be insecure. However, there is a great need to understand how to
be a moral God.

I have a simple test for Gods. I ask them "what would they like to do if
they could do anything". If your answer comes back as something other
than "make everyone else Gods" or "end world hunger", then I think that 
your Godhood is based on insecurity -- and you are still caught biting
your own tail.

laura creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura