Yahoo has just bought the domain name “OMG.com” for a cool 80K. They plan, it is assumed, to use the URL for their newish entertainment portal, which serves up “celebrity gossip, news, babies, couples, hotties, and more—omg!”
Oh my God.
It is certainly safe to say, at the very least, that the word “God” is the most vacuous word in the English language. In 21st-century America, no other word is so empty of meaning that it can span linguistic usage from the most profane text messaging exclamation to the most sacred name describing the Almighty in monotheistic traditions.
And God is constantly in the news: from evangelical sex scandals, to orthodox Jews trading in organs, to atheists trying to preserve the purity of science, and politicians competing over who is the most pious of them all. The political battles over the proper perception of God in the world around us can be strident, like the debates over Obamacare, as well as silly, like the fear that some people see Obama in divine terms.
If we all agreed on the meaning of the word “God” and reserved its application to, say, a supreme being who created the universe, there would be no confusion about its proper usage. Unfortunately, universal agreement about its reference is impossible; anyone familiar with the history of monotheism knows that consensus around a shared understanding of God is a pipe dream.
In principle, the three Abrahamic traditions pray to the same God. In reality, the differences within each tradition, let alone among the three, are vast, confounding, and indeed incommensurable. Reform Jews have more liberal views of God than Orthodox; Protestants and Catholics disagree about how to factor Jesus Christ into the God equation; and progressive Muslims understand Allah in a radically different light than fundamentalist Muslims. All this internal theological diversity for each religion makes agreement across traditions a lost cause.
According to many polls, close to eighty percent of all Americans believe in God, an extraordinarily high number compared with other industrialized nations. But what are the characteristics of this God? Do all Americans base their beliefs on a literal reading of the Bible? Is it the same God if some Americans use the term in its personal, theistic sense referring to a transcendent God in heaven and some use it to refer to a pantheistic, immanent power that infuses all of nature?
God-hating atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others of their narrow-minded ilk have made a killing tearing down a God worshiped by childlike, blind followers not rational enough to follow lock-step behind the true idols they worship: science and secularism. God-fearing fundamentalists in the Islamic, Jewish, and Christian traditions are empowered by their vision of a wrathful deity who will distribute justice and initiate the apocalypse when people like Dawkins, Harris, Hitches, and the rest can look forward to an eternity in the burning pits of hell.
Certainly political leaders in this country work with drastically different conceptions of God. The God of Nature and Nature’s God identified by the early founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence are worlds apart from the God George W. Bush appealed to when responding to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and justifying the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and the ambivalences and valences of Abraham Lincoln’s invocation of God during the torturous American Civil War is miles away from current President Barack Obama’s easy evangelical sensibilities about faith in his God.
God is My Homeboy
Of course beyond all of these vexing theological questions on the political scene are the numerous ways the term is deployed across the popular cultural landscape. Rappers often find time to praise God, or the Lord, or Jesus, and incorporate familiar religious imagery into their music, personas, and everyday language, effortlessly mixing sacred and profane in a manner that seems to subvert the meanings of each. DMX’s first album in 1998, It’s Dark and Hell is Hot, gives props to a very special figure in the making of the album: “I am thanking my top dog, my Lord first,” a popular “dog” for many celebrities generally. Tupac sang about “Black Jesus” and was known to speak quite eloquently about theology. Queen Latifah declared in a Beliefnet interview that “God is my homeboy.”
In movies, God has been played by George Burns in the Oh God series, Alanis Morissette in Dogma, and Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty. On TV’s The Simpsons and South Park, God is satirically mocked as an old giant with robes and gray hair and a strange looking, insect-eating rodent, respectively. The smash sensation video game, God of War, is now in its third incarnation, showing once again how human glorification of violence often goes hand-in-hand with religious imagery and symbolism.
Sometimes the most intense physical experiences bring God to mind, or are understood as a form of divine embodiment, and cannot be fully described in any other language than God-talk. Mystics and mysticism in the monotheistic traditions, but also the most space-age New Agers, rely on the word “God” to convey encounters with transcendence and spiritual transport, transformative powers and holiness. Young people who dance through the night at raves may resort to God-speak to designate their spiritual insights and extraordinary experiences with the music and the movements. Hallucinogenic drugs can also be a bridge between individuals and God: indeed the Peyote Church of God legally mixes drug consumption and Holy visions in the institutional liturgy.
Even sex can be related to the Divine. “Oh god, Oh God, OH GOD!” is a common refrain in many porno clips, a verbal expression of otherworldly ecstasy and deep personal fulfillment. The intimacy of God with orgasm was wonderfully demonstrated by Meg Ryan in the notorious diner scene in When Harry Met Sally. Today there is a thriving sex manual industry for evangelicals and other religious adherents who look to enliven marriages by fusing fornication with godliness, fantasy with divinity. Hell, even Timothy Leary proclaimed that “sex and God are one.”
So, the word God means many things to many people, with no fixed essence or form, and no one authority to regulate its proper usage. Does the acknowledgment of this strange brew of disparate meanings and confounding associations—emanating from the most sophisticated theologies to the most entertaining popular cultures—automatically lead to the conclusion that there is no God, or that the biblical God has been eclipsed by gods unfettered by sacred scriptures? Absolutely, for some; absolutely not, for others. But for those of us in the atheist camp (that is, folks who are not “anti”-theist, against God, but more like those who self-identify as “a”-political, or “a”-sexual and are therefore indifferent to the theistic arena), God is just a word, not The Word, that can refer to just about any experience that is hard to describe with other words.
While many equate religious belief with belief in one God, it is time to recognize that religious diversity in America is a messy, complicated, and confusing social reality not limited to one theological vision of a Father in Heaven, or a Creator of the Universe, or a Lord who is the Supreme Ruler. God can be found in sex, drugs, and rock and roll; God is love, peace, and war; God lives in anything, everything, and nothing at all; God evolves, is eternal, and is an illusion.
Tags: god
The term is almost useless. I avoid using it.
A provocative and interesting piece. However, the notion that "Protestants and Catholics disagree about how to factor Jesus Christ into the God equation" is, largely, inaccurate. Protestants and Catholics, on the whole, agree on an orthodox understanding of Jesus as the unique son of God, second person of the Trinity. Perhaps the author is confusing "Protestants" with "Unitarian Universalists"?
most people have a belief in a personal god that is all powerful and cares and/or is interested in them.
An interesting article on the origins of this belief can be view here.
"God-hating atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others of their narrow-minded ilk have made a killing tearing down a God worshiped by childlike, blind followers not rational enough to follow lock-step behind the true idols they worship: science and secularism."
This statement contains two glaring errors. First, you can't hate something you don't believe exists. Second, none of these individuals "worship" either science or secularism.
Have you actually read their material? If so, it seems that your own filters are so strong, that you cannot see what they are actually saying.
Do you even know what the term "straw man" means, or do you just use it because you've been indoctrinated? Did you not notice that the author isn't building up a fake view of their opinions in order to refute it? Did you also not notice how the statement is juxtaposed with those of a more "religious" bent in the next sentence? Did you choose to ignore the fact that the author describes himself as being "in the atheist camp"?
You don't sound as though you've read their material either. All they do is rant and rave about how awful belief in God is. Sounds pretty hateful to me.
Stop perusing posts merely to find mention of atheists and then vengefully strike back in the comments crying "straw man! straw man!"
If you notice towards the end, the author seems to be an atheist himself. I read that part and was at first unsure if it was sarcasm or the author was being a jerk... it was sarcasm. So, in short, read the whole thing.
He's not being a jerk. He's not a jerk. And he is an atheist...as the phrase "for those of us in the atheist camp" clearly indicates.
Personally, I think this is why when people make offhand comments about God, especially in the realm of "I don't believe in God," etc., we should ask them to clarify what they mean. God definitely means a million different things at this point, *especially* to people who are serious about religion.
To TSkidC: True, the "neo-atheists/agnostics" don't hate God, but I think it would be fair to say they hate religion - or are extremely opposed to religion. Also, maybe "worship" is too loaded a word, but I think they do give an extraordinary amount of devotion to science and secularism, which, to many people, seems similar to the adherence to God (whatever that means, haha) exhibited by many religious people.
*Also,* I definitely agree with this essay that Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens have been tearing down a God that few serious religious people actually believe in -- again, leading to the need for clarification of the word "God."
Good article. The word "God" has become so meaningless/meaningful that it is almost impossible to have a conversation about him/her/it/not/him/not/her/not/it with out first having a conversation about which God/Not God you're going to have a conversation about! We just end up talking past each other instead of to each other.
As for the "God-hating atheists," as I've said before the only people who believe in the god that the "new" atheists don't believe in are fundamentalists and, well, the "new" atheists! And I think maybe it is TSkidC that needs to reread Dawkins et al; have you read their material? Do you think that their "science" comes without "filters?" At the very least it can certainly be argued that they do indeed "hate" God - at least their own rather narrowly defined version of him/her/it/not/him/not/her/not/it. Of course, could just be my "filters" talking . . .
I think you might be overcomplicating things by bringing in too many gods. In America, Christianity is dominate. If you put a little effort into looking at the picture, it comes into focus. Christians believe in God. The religion speaks to the people, and they hear and believe, and sometimes speak for the religion. The Christian collective is the God they worship. They love the buildings and the literature and the doctrines and the people and the meetings and the traditions. This is their God and they will fight to the death to support it against any attack. It doesn't matter what direction the collective drifts next, they will support it to the end because that is where they have placed their hope.
Too many gods? Indeed. The supposed triumph of monotheism over polytheism is much exaggerated. Not to mention the ongoing "battles" with theism, deism, etc...
Baylor University's surveys show that while most Americans believe in a God, they have quite different beliefs in what it is. I suggest reading the chapters on the ideas of God in Book 4 of the popular free ebook series "And Gulliver Returns" --In Search of Utopia-- (http://andgulliverreturns.info)
Also Dawkins and Harris don't hate the idea of God. It would be absurd to hate a non-entity.
"Also Dawkins and Harris don't hate the idea of God."
Ha! Tell them that.
A truly eloquent rumination on the word and it's meaning.
On a very personal note, I grew up a reformed Jew. Possessing an empirical and inquisitve nature, I couldn't square my real life experience with the concept of God as I understood it. By the time I was 13 I was a confirmed athiest: I took my Bar Mitzvah money and ran.
In my later teens and early twenties a deepening meditation practise brought me repeatedly into a transformative experience which could only be described as "all knowing, all loving, and eternal"; descriptions which I recognized from the Jewish prayerbooks of my youth. Whatever it was I was experiencing however was not something seperate or apart from myself. Indeed, "it" was closer than my breath, a place of unspeakable tranquility beyond my usual feeling of disconent and seperateness.
When I found a meditation teacher (a yogi from India) who could guide me more deeply on this journey he used the word God frequently and at first I was perplexed. Surely this man who I'd grown to love and respect couldn't be referring to what I believed was a figment of our collective imagination, something no more real than the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus? Indeed, he was not. Far from the understanding of "God" as a seperate entity he used this word to refer to an experience of an underlying unity which is itself beyond the realm of words.
Now, all these years later, I have grown to embrace and use this word "God" often even while I understand that my Christian, Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters may mean something quite different. Or do they? Perhaps the word itself reflects our attempt to give name to, to quantify something beyond the normal reach of our minds. Perhaps this yearning for something larger, vaster, more permanent than our small selves is itself an intuition born of the soul. Did I say "soul"? Well, I guess that's another word for another day.
The author is so right to note that the word "god" has become vacuous. Yet we who offer leadership in ministry continue to resort to it without ever taking the time to inquire as to whether or not those in the pews are on the same page as we or not. The truth is, most of us don't want to know. We use that little blip to maintain the roles we've designed for ourselves and, in so doing, are undermining the very positive work that religion can offer to individuals, communities, and the world.
HarperCollins published a book I wrote, With or Without God; Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe in 2008. It's now out in paperback. It didn't come out in the States but is a bestseller in Canada. You can find information on it here . Please forgive the self-promotion! And thanks for the super-easy to use comment page!
gretta vosper
Me too
The inability to define or characterize God reflects the fact that God is hidden. (See, for example,The Hidden Face of God by Friedman.) Because God is hidden, it is not surprising that God is defined in different ways. Prior to the question of how to define God, is the question “Why is God hidden?” Is this a game of hide and seek?
Love as a word is more 'vacuous' than the word God, yet I don't see books written to eliminate it. I don't see dozens of blogs about deleting it from our vocabulary. Few words have the same meaning to every person. So why all the need to focus on the word God? Maybe it pulls more chains than focusing on other equally vacuous words.
It's not quite the same thing to say that the word "God" is vacuous and that it is "ambiguous" or "equivocal" -- it is clearly the latter two, but not so clearly the former. What's most interesting to me is that even the most devoted believers, as well as the deepest thinkers (who are sometimes also the most devoted believers), can have very different concepts of God, even if they belong to the "same" religious traditions. (Just look at the major debates between great Catholic thinkers such as Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham on many many fine points of theology!) For a bit of self-promotion, let me mention my new book The God Question: What famous thinkers from Plato to Dawkins have said about the divine, which presents, in a very accessible way, some of the more interesting, important, and often strange things that great thinkers have said about God (from many different Western traditions and perspectives). It's available at bookstores, on Amazon, etc. For more information, and a related blog, please check out www.god-question.com.
Andrew Pessin
Chair, Dept of Philosophy
Connecticut College
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