Typhon

Of gods and garden gnomes

While I'm still unsure what to call myself (see my earlier post, Am I an atheist?), my belief in the nature of gods is far easier to explain. Looking around as a student of history and a card carrying member of the species, I can say with good conscious and a high certainty, that all the gods imagined by men, are just that, the imaginations of men.

It is strange that many theists will agree that SOME gods, mostly ones that are of a different time period or region/ethnic background than their own, are but the creations of the imagination of our species, and yet swear up and down that THEIR god of course, is the only one NOT made in this manner. This is in my own wording, the theology of god and garden gnomes.

The theory goes something like this:

Say I've been watching you for six to ten millennia, building and erecting various pieces of lawn statuary in your back yard. You've made thousands of them, perhaps millions, over the many years. Pink flamingos, boot-brush hedgehogs, cement deer, stone snails, glass balls, and of course, the ubiquitous ceramic garden gnome, to name but a few of their many incarnations. Their quaint shapes adorn your patio, your flower gardens, bits and pieces of them ground to dust along the path, potsherds of them buried beneath the layers and layers of topsoil where your tomatoes grow.

One day you pause in your labors, or say while we're having a cup of tea, to point out a particular garden gnome. Gesticulating excitedly, you bustle me over and set me down. You claim it is the only True Garden Gnome, that it (unlike all the others) existed at the moment before the garden was created, and in fact is the source of all creation, garden, gnomes, and garden gnome builders alike. The Great and True Garden Gnome you explain, has always existed, always will, and is a real Gnome, with omni-Gnome-like powers.

Looking closer to see what you're so excited about, I see that the statuary in question appears almost identical to all the other gnomes in your garden, ones that's I've seen you working on, discarding, and eventually admitting you built them in the first place. Making your proposition even more dubious, is the fact that now that I think about it, you've said the SAME thing about before, that this one or that one was the True Garden Gnome or the One Pink Flamingo, or the Vengeful God of Cement Squirrels.

Still, you're quite adamant. You were wrong all those other times, and those were other gnome builders who put you up to it, and they hadn't been privy to the Big Gnome's divine and shiny plan. They were but worshipers of False and Idolatrous Statuary, never mind they said the same thing about previous holders of the title at the time. Peering closer however, I see that your One True Gnome is even obviously and rather badly patched together out of several broken gnomes that used to be something else, a bit of a pink plastic flamingo here, a clay hedgehog there, a metal sun-dial there. I point this out, but you grow angry and threaten to smite me for not seeing the inherent True Gnome-nish of the piece of statuary, which should be enough, if I really had faith and wasn't the spawn of the Evil Anti-Gnome incarnate, to look past these glaring inconsistencies.

But what am I to do? I've seen you making all these gnomes for years, applying paint and shellac, breaking them up and gluing them back together, and ordering thousands more from pottery outlet stores, in their bland, unpainted masses. Uh-huh, sure, I mutter, as I back away from the ugly thing with its ruddy cheeks and cornflower blue eyes, hoping that you'll put the trowel down before things get scarier, and offer me some more of that seed cake. No luck, sensing my disbelief you start arguing, refusing to use logic or even common sense, and at best, quoting from a book that was written by a bunch of gnome builders who happened to have sent you parts for the Big Gnome, and later recopied and reinterpreted to fit the molds of a dozen or more cults of Gnome Worshipers. What's a clear headed man to do? I nod vigorously, slurp the last of my tea, pocket one of the cakes for later, and run like mad for the garden gate.

Gods are and have been created like gnomes for a garden. Sure, there are reasons why people like to put them in their gardens, but I don't. Furthermore, some people really like to think they're something more than they are. This makes them feel special, safe, protected, or lets them sneer and wave their gardening trowels at gnome disbelievers. But no matter what they do, they can't take away the fact that I and my clan of infidels, have been watching them build the damn things like crop circles at night.

So in the end I have to wonder, why anyone who knows much about the history of people, and the biology of the mind, and the needs and structure of society (and who has bothered to watch these gnome builders at work, even today), thinks that being highly skeptical about the validity of such Gnomish claims is so shocking. I for one find it only logical.

.T.

[ April 09, 2002: Message edited by: Typhon ]</p>

Asha'man

Very nice. Bravo. <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

hyzer

And since there are lots of nice gardens without gnomes . . . .

Wyrdsmyth

Yes, that's the irony of the whole thing. Theists can recognize that other people have made gods up out of thin air, and built a whole false religion around their imaginings -- yet they refuse to consider that this is exactly what they themselves are doing also.

I just love it when a theist laughs at the 'superstitions' of some aboriginal tribe:

"How could anyone possibly believe that a camera flash could steal your soul?!? How patently absurd. There's absolutely not basis in reality for such a belief. What primitive savages they are, to harbor such a superstition."

Yeah, right. Look in the freakin' mirror.

[ April 09, 2002: Message edited by: Wyrdsmyth ]</p>

GunnerJ

Great parable, Typhon! <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> I think you'll fit in just fine here.