classwords

I used to be an atheist, but I grew out of it. Anyway, it's too inconvenient. Even if I was still an atheist, I'd go out of my way not to tell anyone. However, I have encountered some explanations of God that contributed, over time, to my accepting that being an atheist, particularly of the knee-jerk variety, might be a little narrow minded.

One idea about God that I found unusually provocative came from Alan Watts, I think. He starts with the Biblical idea that God created man in his own image. Therefore, we can get an idea of what God is like by observing human behavior. A behavior that Watts was interested in was the disposition of humans to lose themselves; hence, children like to play hide-and-go-seek, read books, and (more radically) spin in circles to become dizzy (disoriented) or even unconscious. Drugs, he supposes, are used at an older age out of a similar drive. Sometimes, people lose themselves so thoroughly that they can't ever find their way back. All this, according to Watts, is very God-like. The entire universe is basically God losing himself in various ways. When we die, it is basically just God returning to his essential identity. God is basically a child playing hide-and-seek with himself, but in ways far more "creative" and potent than we can imagine.

This kind of thinking about God went beyond what I got exposed to in Church, and made it seem much less narrow not to be an atheist.

heh, thanks for the interest! Your own comment is very interesting. I have wondered something similar recently, though I probably would have struggled described what it was i was thinking. I certainly wouldn't have put it as well as that.
"God is basically a child playing hide-and-seek with himself, but in ways far more "creative" and potent than we can imagine."
I suspect there is some truth in that.