Re: Atheists and God

From: Simon Hibbs <simonh_hibbs_at_my-deja.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2000 09:25:22 -0800


Peter Metcalfe :

>I have big qualms about this. Zzaburism is supposed to be all
>about the use of one's logical faculties whereas stating that
>it's similar (even superficially) to Kaballah or the Golden Dawn
>(both of which are anything but rational) undermines this
>philosophical basis.

I don't think practicioners or Kabbalism would agree that it isn't rational (although I accept that you might not take their word for it). Kabbalism is based on a few fundamental assumptions, but is pretty rigorously thought out.

Peter, from a previous post :

> >IIRC Kaballah sees the cosmos in essentially human terms (ie
> >crown, head etc) which would be rather inappropriate for the
> >Zzaburi in general with their view of God as impersonal.

God is not 'a person' and so is impersonal. However if god is ultimate conciousness, that does not mean that god is 'a conciousness'.

>>Kaballah sees the forces of the cosmos as being reflected
>>within the microcosm of the human, not the other way around.
>
>Which makes little difference either way as the Cosmos is still
>conceived in essentially human terms.

I don't think the evidence of the nature of Glorantha bears this out. Human beings are not the only concious beings in Glorantha, so to say that God is some kind of meta-conciousness is not to humanise God any more than it Aldram-ifies, Mostal-ifies or Grotaron-ifies Him. Conciousness is a universal phenomenon in Glorantha and Kabbalism is among other things an analysis of the structure of conciousness.

Having said that, I'm sure the Zzaburi do consider themselves to be more in the image of god than other thinking beings, who they would imagine to be flawed.

I think the Zzaburi see God as a universal, archetypical template for Conciousness and Being, rather than as an instance of such. In Kabbalistic terms the En-Soph, the unknowable essence of God, is beyond human experience, or contact, or even description.

Interesting tidbit - According to Kabbalism the world we know is not the only possible world (or Universe, in modern parlance). The world is flawed yet God is perfect, so how could the world come about? In order for the world to be created, God withdrew one of His attributes from a part of His Being. The attribute he withdrew in order to allow the creation of our world was Justice.

Simon Hibbs

End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #111


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