On the Anthropomorphization of God
Ascribing human features to a god or gods is something the human species has done ever since the concept of a deity was invented. It comes down to a basic lack of humility leading to assumptions that our species is the center of the universe.
For the same reason, there was an assumption of our planet as the center of the universe. Everything was believed to revolve around us. We are analogous to the spoiled children of the universe because we believe our gift for intelligence to be unique. When we look out at the universe, we still see ourselves as the lead actor out of selfish narcissism.
When we marvel at our assumed superiority in the universe, a fundamental lack of humility develops. I find it extremely doubtful that humans actually know anything about the nature of any deity, if indeed any exist. “Knowledge” about gods, anthropomorphically represented or not, is undoubtedly crafted by human minds in my opinion. Some of those who contributed their imaginations to religious doctrine had altruistic and noble intentions, and created wonderful stories to teach the betterment of mankind. Others injected their own beliefs out of a need for accolades and historical significance. There are many examples of human emotions played out in religious doctrine. This is not because our gods are human-like, it is because these doctrines are written from the human imagination.
Nov 24th, 2008 at 10:58 am
It’s funny, but the early gods/spirits are just glorified personifications of nature. And, in time, going from the animistic traditions in which deities were just sentient aspects of nature, to polytheism, which was similar, but stressed the relationships of each god to one another more, we get a gradual increase in the level of anthropomorphism. And then you get monotheism, where all those old gods are tossed in a blender, swirled up together, and poured into a human-shaped mold to serve as king of reality with a face to reflect our own due to our own perception of being masters of the known world. Obviously, humans, the best form of life on Earth, could only be subservient to something that was like us, only better in every respect. And that is the deity we know today: all the best human attributes pinned to all the observations of our natural world. And the conflicts that result from contrasting those idealized human attributes with influence over the observably less than ideal realities of nature are obvious.
Dec 10th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Something I have been fascinated with along these same lines: How can we pretend to describe a spiritual “experience” like an afterlife? How can we personify the spirit? If the spirit exists, it is surely incapable of experiencing anything without the help of a body chocked full of organs that process and interpret experiences. How could hell be painful with no living brain to feel the pain? To take it one step further, if it is not painful, why fear it? After death, if only our spirit remains, we cannot fear any type of pain because pain is physical and our physical existence has come to a close. On the other hand, if we are to be rewarded in heaven with encounters with long-dead relatives, how will we perceive them detached from the organs that allow all our perceptions?