"That's not what I mean when I say 'God,'" Revisited

Years ago I posted an essay on this blog entitled "That's not I mean when I say 'God,'" in which I vented some frustration because belief in God came in so many different forms, some of which didn't seem like theism at all to me.

I'm not frustrated about it anymore. I'm come to appreciate much more the slack which is routinely cut me by others, and I am much more glad to cut others slack, when it comes to religious beliefs. Who am I to tell other people what's what about such things? This represents a great change for me.

Some theists believe God is a man, or that God is male. Others think God is female, and still others think that the concept of gender does not apply to God. Some believe that God is a conscious, omnipotent being who created everything, knows and sees everything and cares about every living creature. Others think that God is an idea, which might sound to some of us atheists as if they are atheists, but no, they call themselves theists or Christians or Muslims or Buddhists or what have you, and when they talk about God, often they sound very much like the ones who think that God made everything and is a man with along white beard who sits on a throne. 

It would be nice if there were some sort of general agreement about what people mean when they say "God," but there isn't. Not even close. This of course makes everything very frustratingly murky and inconsistent to some of us when we try to have some sort of rational debate with theists about God. But it's been this way for somewhere between 500 and 3,000 years, or longer (we don't know how long monotheism has existed). So perhaps -- and I do mean perhaps! I'm not trying to tell you or anyone else how to go about things -- perhaps the first thing someone should do, if they want to talk to a theist about God, is to have them explain what they mean when they say "God." and sit comfy, cause it might take a while, and if they are able to explain it to you at all I'm not saying that this will be enough to permit a nice logical conversation -- imagine! Theism conflicting with rational discourse! -- and I'm certainly not encouraging anyone to debate theism with anyone.

Dream Log: Western Movie

I dreamed I was an actor in a Western movie. Two families were feuding, one headed by Brian Dennehy, the other by Johnny Depp. I was playing Johnny's loyal cousin and number-two in our family's chain of command. 

The two families' houses were very close: sometimes within a quarter mile or so, at other times literally parts of the same building. The fight scenes were often room-by-room gun battles.

For the most part, everything in the movie, countryside, sets, decor, costumes, was classic Hollywood Western, inspired by a notion of the late 19th century. However, my revolvers, instead of the historically-accurate long-barreled single-action variety, requiring that the hammer be cocked before every shot, were double-action snubnosed .38's of the kind seen used by plainclothed cops in mid-20th-century movies and TV. The hammer on a double-action revolver can be cocked between shots, resulting in a trigger which shoots with a lighter pull required -- single-action -- or the shooter can pull harder on the trigger with cocking it first, and the gun will still fire -- double-action. I was packing two of those snubnosed .38's, each about half as long as an authentic single-action revolver of the Old West. 

Partway through the script, Dennehy's character devolved into a plain coward, and the action consisted mostly of us chasing him through his, house, firing enormous amounts of bullets at him -- and always missing, or else the movie would have been over too soon. 

At one point we had him cornered inside a glassed-walled segment of a room in his house. Several of us stood outside the glass-walled compartment, about a dozen feet square, and pumped dozens of bullets at the glass. The glass not only didn't shatter -- it was barely scratched. I felt this to be a particularly unrealistic bit of movie-making, and began to lose faith that this might turn out to be a good movie.

Suddenly all of the actors, those in Dennehy's family and in Depp's, stopped acting, and instead they just sat around and turned into Marxist jerks who were unkindly, and wholly inaccurately, criticizing me. They all agreed that I was the sort of person who would go to Milan during peak tourist season, fetishizing the ultra-expensive cars of the super-rich, and their boats on Lake Como.

Their criticism could barely have been less accurate: I don't like crowds, I like crowds of tourists even less, I don't envy ultra-cars, in fact I find them rather ridiculous, I lost my fascination for them decades ago, and the next time I really enjoy being on a boat will the first time.

But before I could begin to defend myself from this inaccurate Marxist criticism, I woke up.