Theme: Religion

GODS AS UNITS OF MEASURE

—“Curt, when you say ‘A GOD is a unit of measure’, what do you mean? This idea hit me strictly from the judeo christian “god made man in his image”. Like a blue print. But i have found that referring to god as a unit of measure only seems to offend christians jews and muslims. My point was never meant to insult. Yaweh , Allah, Odin, even Satan are units of measure. Where as men we are meant to measure ourselves against as to see how and where we need to grow to become better. …i had to quit talking about this at work.”—

First, while most people consider the big ideas, very few people think very deep thoughts. And the vast majority who try (like anything else) fail catastrophically. I tend to avoid such conversations unless others start them and make some error that I feel they would benefit from, or the commons would benefit from, correcting.

And then, it might be better to say that a god or gods function as a system of measurement, by which people of the same god, make the same measurements (judgments), because those measurements are commensurable (compatible).

Different gods require different sets of measurements, producing different judgements, that are internally commensurable (compatible) but externally not. So in this sense it’s a system of measurement we are referring to.

And that is because anthropomorphism is much easier for we simple human animals to work with that reason science, and calculation.

There are some relatively universal traits among all gods, but there are many differences. Particularly when ‘gods’ are ‘spirits’ or ‘ancestors’ rather than fictional characters.

Those gods we ‘thank’ and persist their investments in us (ancestors), those gods that are like fickle humans and fickle nature for us to thank for the good, and outwit for the bad (european), those gods that provide wisdom (buddha), those gods that are slave-owners (abrahamic), each function as a system of measurement by which we understand, judge, and act in response to the universe and gods and politics and each other.

The western Method of math, logic, Science, Economics, Law, History and Literature is a better system of measure – for an aristocracy of the middle class and higher. It does however require a great deal more training for a great deal longer, than children’s stories and anthropomorphic systems of measurement.