Good God BAD GOD

[peterfredson]

GOOD GOD, BAD GOD.

By Peter Fredson

I watched a detective story on TV and saw a variation of the Good Cop –Bad Cop routine. This involves having one detective act harshly to a suspect, threaten to do him bodily harm and put on a show of public humiliation to the suspect. The other detective acts kindly and sympathetic, says he will shield the suspect from the wrath of the bad cop, perhaps offers a drink or cigarette, and pretends to be highly sympathetic. In this way the suspect responds cooperatively and will eventually confess his culpability.

Then I turned to a show about space in which an “entity” with unusual abilities was able to prevent a space ship from escaping its domain. The abilities given this “entity” by the writers included a long list of attributes which were eventually contradictory. But imagination acknowledges few barriers to creation of entities.

This made me wonder if I could create my own entity. The starting point was to consult Roget’s Thesaurus. I would pick all attributes that seemed “nice” and all attributes that were “nasty.” I would add “omni” to some attributes to make them universal, eternal and infinite. After making two lists I noticed that both categories were interesting, were complimentary, and could present a picture of duality that encompassed everything in the universe.

In this fashion I created two separate entities, seemingly sufficient to explain all of the varieties of why good and bad things and processes occur. I liked the Ying-Yan oppositions and the fact that they are all interrelated, going round and round together. This could be a theory of why bad things happen to good people.

The Good God attributes would include: Omnipotence - unlimited and universal power. Omnipresence - the quality of being everywhere present at the same time. Omniscience - Infinite Knowledge. Omni-good, Omni-beautiful, Omni-truthful,Omni-patient, Omni-just, Omni-righteous, Omni-spiritual, Omni-intelligible, Eternal, Supreme, Infinite, Immutable. He commands people to be “good.”

The Bad God attributes would include: murderous, sadistic, pitiless, lustful, whimsical, unjust, deceitful, lying, torturous, violent, intolerant, mercurial, capricious, inconstant, and violent. He evaluates everything by his feelings, heeding no objective values or ideas. His ardent followers display intolerance, hate, jealousy, spitefulness, insecurity, and other attributes of evil and weakness. He commands people to have fun, watch nekkid people do things with their organs, to lie, cheat and steal.

I was fairly pleased with inventing two separate entities, and wondered if that was sufficient for me to be the founder of a new religion. But then some wise-ass blogger told me, “It’s been done already.”

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

[Swamp Gas]

Reminds me of Dragnet, the version from the 50's, in San Francisco. Friday was always playing both sides. He would always want "the Facts", but somwtimes the people were really not criminals in the murder, robbery, rape category. Pot smokers and hookers often got the good cop/bad cop dicotomy.

This applied to the "god" Operating System or concept allows the believer to do basically anything to the accused, especially when the accused is a heathen.

It would be nice if people stopped believin in myths and pay more attention to the arts and science. Passion and Logic. They keep each other in check. Religion has no logic, and it's passion is turning into fear and hatred.