Friday, September 03, 2010
“God” as Good luck
This is a test: In any situation where someone speaks of “God” (as, it seems, no two persons ever imply the same meaning for the term ‘God’), substitute “luck” or “Good luck” (capping the ‘G’ to express high esteem for goodness). That gives fictional God a proximal connection to realism that better complements the psychology of Faith and the anthropological nature of worship, part of our cultural evolution which is expressive of our ultimately evolving developmentalities....
“Thank [Good luck], the storm didn’t come through here.” Actually, there’s a scientific explanation for why storms change paths. When a disasterous result is borne, the so-called “act of God” is actually an abandonment by any goodness of luck, if not a punishment by personified luck (analogously as the notion of royalty is amplified to universal proportions—deemed divine—and “found” to have punished its subjects via exclusive, excommunicative, condescending disdain).
“I pray to [Good luck] that s/he beats the cancer.” But access to leading health care is more relevant.
“In [Good Luck] We Trust.”
A NY Times column last month noted that Abraham Lincoln said that “the Bible is the best gift [Good luck] has ever given to man.” And woman. Actually, the development of the Bible has a very discernible history of cut-and-paste, revision and redaction—a lucky formation, in fact (among texts that didn’t survive, among cultures that didn’t develop writing as well as did luckily-hybriding Mediterranean societies). Like the sedimented character of all great stories, sagas, and wisdom culture, the Bible is a freestanding combine [previous posting here].
Indeed. There’s no transcript of what the rabbi named Jesus said. Writers with agendas made versions for decades before a council decided on what versions to accept (and ordered other versions destroyed throughout their kingdoms). “Jesus” is as much a hybrid figure—a literary formation!—as is any sense of “the” singularity of “God.” The well-known, now-very-senior Biblical scholar James Robinson went looking for the best case for what the composite rabbi was saying and caps his (Robinson’s) career with a report on his “historical search.” The message of Jesus is: “[T]rust [Good luck] to look out for you by providing people who will care for you, and listen to [Good luck] when [Good luck] calls on you to provide for them....This radical trust in and responsiveness to [Good luck] is what makes society function as [Good luck’s] society” (viii). The “reign of [Good luck]” is a humanistic union (“kingdom”) of Good luck.
“In the beginning, [Good luck] created the heavens and the Earth.” Indeed, theoretical physics now commonly toys with notions of multiple universes and the great improbability of one in which matter prevails over anti-matter (or vice versa) at its Big Bang, such that there arises an expansive universe (that doesn’t annihilate itself at inception). We are—the universe is one that improbably happened. We reconcile ourselves to the incomprehensibility that we Are by writing stories about resulting from Intentional Design (enough of which we hope for our lives—that they last long). The tiny number of us with exceptionally good luck explain their status as essentially linked to the Good luck of there being anything As If they are ultimately intended, too, thus deserving of their improbability as some special—Yea, specie-al—entitlement.
But increasingly likely, the happy mix of factors that resulted in Earth (life and intelligent life) may be replicated countlessly in inaccessible star systems among the greatly larger array of star systems with bad luck in this universe.
