Post # XIX - NATURAL DIVINITY: 'WHAT MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND'

Preamble: 

When I find myself informally in the company of another man (eg, sharing a seat on public transportation for an extended period of time), I will often open conversation by saying/asking, "What do you think 'makes the world go round'?"  If he gets past offering a quasi-'scientific' answer such as "gravity", etc. , the question can elicit a 'philosophical' answer such as "money", "people", etc.

Recently, an older man unhesitatingly and enthusiastically proffered the answer, "The Lord" (ie, 'God').

He then asked what I thought and  I replied, "Male-female interaction".

He countered by saying that without God as original Creator, there could not be any male-female interaction.  I replied that, on the contrary, "God" is an  [illusory] consequence or 'side-effect' of male-female interaction.  He disagreed; and I reassured him that his thinking was "normal" and mine was not!  (I do not fear God but do fear another man's fists.)

[When I noted that, in the Garden of Eden story, God never directly told the woman not to eat from the famous tree (because God gave the command to Adam before Eve was made), my friend noted that I was completely wrong: that in Genesis 5-6, sic, it describes God making Eve (from Adam's rib) before He made the Garden of Eden;  and that it was her conversation with the Snake that led to all the trouble.  He encouraged me to read the Bible more carefully and I did not attempt to disagree.]

Nature and Divinity: 

As has been noted previously, the etymology of the term 'nature' has to do with birth-giving.

The term 'divinity', on the other hand, is commonly associated with the concept of a supernatural (ie, beyond nature) god/God.

Yet the verb 'to divine' has a non-supernatural meaning:  to discover something without being told about it.

Perhaps the 'staying power' of Judaeo-Christianity arises from an underlying sense that Genesis 1: 1 really means, "In the beginning, God divined (ie, discovered the natural capacities of - without being told about them) the heavens and the earth".  How did God do this?  By (i) speaking the words, "Let there be light, etc., (ii) observing the results (perhaps the harbinger of a scientific experimental attitude towards nature) and then (iii) declaring the results to be good (ie, 'blessing' the out-come).

Similarly:  Genesis 4:1 "And Adam knew (ie, divined!) Eve, his wife and she conceived and bare a son...".

And then the words of a contemporary song: "To know, know, know [her] is to love, love, love, [her]...".  [Yes, my 'political incorrectness' shows through here:  it is the male role to know/divine the female.]

A Man as a natural Proxy for an illusory (ie, something that is different than how it seems) supernatural "God":       

In the absence of any actual supernatural god/God, a female correctly perceives a male as having the natural function/task/job of divining/knowing/eliciting/effecting her capacities so that she can naturally give birth to babies, realities and futures. 

But the results are so amazing to them and apparently (at least in the past) beyond their natural capacities that they tend to regard the process as produced by a supernatural god/God.  Then, they commonly try to pacify and control this illusion by fear, worship and praise. 

To avoid having to recognize, study and honour the importance of the male intelligently, constructively and respectfully divining, knowing and eliciting/effecting the natural capacities and power of his woman, he/they project this function onto an imagined supernatural Divinity. Worship of this illusion, then, is a lazy man's way of avoiding having to think about and relate to what is actually naturally going on.

Of course, the male phallus is the ultimate anatomical divining rod!  And the male may be perceived as, in effect, an existing natural proxy for the non-existing supernatural illusion noted in Genesis 1. 

Thus: 

The God of Genesis 1 is an off-shoot of male-female interaction, not vice versa. 

But when this blogger declares such, he is suspected of being as crazy as Copernicus and Galileo when they professed to believe that the Earth orbits around the Sun - when common knowledge declared that even a fool could see that the Sun goes around the Earth!