If horses could conceive of the gods, they no doubt would conceive of them in the form of horses. – Xenophanes
Things known are known in the form of the knower, said Thomas Aquinas. His idea helps us understand “anthropomorphism” – the depiction of the non-human in human shapes, or with human experiences. My thesis here is that most everything important to us carries in it some human attribute or characteristic. Many of our activities have some anthropomorphic aspect. Some examples include:
Cloud-watching. You’ll see clouds obviously in the form or shape of things we know. David Hume agrees with Aquinas: “We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds.”
Movies about aliens. Usually friendly aliens arrive in human form, sporting human emotions (e.g., “E.T.”, or “Close Encounters”), and the hostile ones are more unrecognizable. They’re easier to hate.
We esteem animals as “cute” or “useful” in direct proportion to how they correspond to human understandings of these two categories. Meanwhile we blithely neglect the vast masses of the animal world because of their apparent non-human form or function.
Rule #1 in human relationships: If it ain’t inside us, we won’t recognize it outside us. If things known are in the form of the knower, then things unknown are things not recognized – data not in the form of the knower.
An important issue arises. Aquinas’ thought applies to the category of god. By definition, god is indefinable. “God” has to be so different from humans and our “stuff.” There must be a continental divide (“intellectual distance,”) between “god” and our wars, our Hitlers, our destructive passions.
Jewish and Muslim faiths are the most aware of this holy difference between the divine and human. Each faith imposes severe restrictions on depictions of the divine, so the two categories shall never suffer an identity crisis.
However, many religions in the world rather blatantly concocts recipes for divine images using human materials. We like our god(s) familiar, and so give god a family: Father God, Mother Mary, and Son Jesus.
We infuse these heavenly persons with essential human qualities. A short review of the traditional Western attributes for the divine will confirm this: all-powerful, -knowing, and almighty; loving, merciful, wise, good, beautiful, just, friendly, and even territorial. We usually see divine beings with gender (and if THAT’S not anthropomorphism, I don’t know what is!). Finally, we render this divine personage very similar to us in our dominant desires, hatreds and passions. What society feels important gets torqued into the idea of the divine. Marx is our guide here: “the ruling ideas of each age are ever the ideas of its ruling classes.” Feminist Mary Daly makes some sense: “When the male is god, then god is male.”
I’m not proposing god is female, or male. Gender is a human category uploaded into the divine. What other human categories do we confuse with the divine?
Genesis 1:26 says God made humans in the divine image, but I wonder if we’ve not returned the favor and rendered “him” in ours? Ideally, “god” is a placeholder name for our experience of the transcendent and the sublime. But when we make “him” the root of our nationalisms, or the heavenly Wanter of all we happen to want, have we not just made an idol of ourselves? When our idea of god becomes pretty much one-on-one with our own human ideas, is god really in our ideas? How different from us does god have to be, to be divine?
What is god, after all? Makes one think, doesn’t it?
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I made a comment a long time ago to your first post, it contained this bit:
ReplyDeleteWe are like the blind men examining the elephant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant). Is God a spear? a pillar? a wall? or something else?
You say "By definition god is indefinable." This is a nice paradox, similar to the oft quoted line in the media "The experience was indescribable."
"Definition" means making something finite, attaching limits to it. Most concepts of God do involve a limitless, infinite aspect so, the paradox is applicable in that sense. But I disagree with the other interpretation that we cannot define god. I think we do that every day (and MUCH too frequently and offhandedly) and I think many people see god not so much as what they are, but as what they think they should be.
I think, for many people, God is not, in fact, anthropomorphic. I had a recent experience in which I got a new perspective on God (actually, became re-acquainted with a perspective I had in my youth).
I now have 8 hens. I feed them every day and gather their eggs. From the very first time they started laying, I said "Thank you, chickens," when I took the eggs. It was reflexive and I didn't think about it much at the time.
Later I learned that some farmers (and bee keepers) develop psychological problems around the fact that they are essentially stealing the food, children, or flesh of their livestock. One of the primary treatments for this is to encourage them to say "thanks" to the animals, before taking their honey, eggs, etc.
This is, ostensibly, a type of anthromorphism. Attibuting human qualities to the bees or chickens, assuming they can understand your gratitude.
But, in fact, I think it is not that at all. It is giving the gatherer a chance to anthropomophose himself -- to think of himself as a man, a good man. A good man shows gratitude when he is given a gift, especially good food for his family.
I was silently saying grace (I don't typically do this) over a meal made from the eggs of my chickens. I felt good that I had thanked them, but realized there were other ingredients, meat from animals, even leaves from plants, for which I had not (until that point) given thanks.
Then I realized that, among all the other things that God may or may not be, he is a kind proxy, a spirit that carries my gratitude for what I have been given to the people, animals, plants, mountians, rivers... to the thousands of entities who help me and my family live every day.
I don't think this absolves me from saying "thank you" to my chickens or to anyone else who gives me help in life (i.e. it doesn't legitimize robbery). (So, thanks, btw, for letting me post this.) But it is a way for me to thank those who are already out of earshot, some of whom, knowingly or not, have given their lives to help me.
That's superhuman, that's non-anthropomorphic. That's God playing the role of ubiquitous spirit, of gratitude-relay.
I think we don't really know what we are. We have no true mirrors. We don't truly know what being a human is about -- we make it up as we go along. But that thanking God for the grace and the million kindnesses that He conveys; I think that anthropomorphoses us.