Deity based divinity, especially the anthropomorphic variants, beg the question as to whether such divinity or divinities were the creators, or were, in fact, created by those who worship him, her, it or them.  That he, she, it or they are derivative emanations made manifest and empowered by at least some of us ourselves.

If the latter case, then it seems that they were created through the energy expended by their earliest worshipers amplified through mass rituals and, unfortunately, at least for us, because negative energies like fear and hate and fury and envy are stronger than positive energies such as love, compassion, generosity and empathy, the prevalence of furious, jealous divinities like YHWH, deities who seek to control everything and impose drastic punishments for disobedience makes sense. 

But making sense is not the same as justification.  And perhaps if they are our creations, we can also de-create them, eradicate them by refusing to acknowledge them as our masters and by refusing to obey their commandments, by replacing them with our own morals and ethics, hopefully positive ones, with or without mythic archetypes who require veneration.

Perhaps, rather than a guilt ridden refrain, that’s what occurred to Friedrich Nietzsche when, reflecting Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Heinrich Heine, Philipp Mainländer and others he proclaimed: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?”  I wonder what Mark Twain would make of all of this.

The foregoing seems especially relevant in hypocrisy ridden times like ours when “genocide” is being considered by many as a positive, as a harbinger of the beginning of the end, as sign of an impending apocalypse for which they yearn, perhaps one in the form of a nuclear holocaust.  

Something on which to at least ponder.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.