Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Why I Am Not Divine


Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we're having trouble with our headline machine. If anyone knows how to fix it so we can title these things again, please advise.


There are any number of religions out there, and not a few atheists, who think each of us has a spark of divinity within. Do you feel god and/or goddess impulses flowing around inside of you?


Conversely, there are many pantheons that are brimming to the plimsol line with gods and/or goddesses with human traits. Pulling one out of the hat here, I get "I am a jealous God." A jealous God? Aren't gods supposed to be above and beyond jealousy?


We at "The Gods Are Bored" decided to take a poll. First we present ourselves as Exhibit A, and the bored gods/goddesses as Exhibit B. Let's see what we have in common:


EXHIBIT A: ANNE



Athlete's foot? YES

Flatulence? YES

Depression? YES

Suspicion? YES

Bad Hair Days? YES

Inflamed Gums? YES

Constantly Living with the Good of Humankind at Heart? NO

Fairly Nice, but Not Perfect YES

Good Parent? NOT CONSISTENTLY

Jealous? NO (pretend to be sometimes to make Mr. Johnson feel good.)



Okay, that's Anne. Now I pose the same questions to a random sampling of bored gods and goddesses from multiple pantheons across the globe. (They were thrilled to be asked to fill out a questionnaire. It was a welcome break from finding needles in the amber waves of grain.)



Athlete's Foot? NO

Flatulence? NO

Depression? NO

Suspicion? NO

Bad Hair Days? NO

Inflamed Gums? NO

Constantly Living with the Good of Humankind at Heart? YES

Fairly Nice, but Not Perfect? NO

Good Parent? YES

Jealous? NO


Time did not permit us to conduct a statistically significant survey, so the only conclusion we can draw from this little experiment is that Anne is human and the bored gods don't experience flatulence or inflamed gums.

3 comments:

Jeff Lilly said...

In the interest of fairness to all gods, bored or not:

The word "jealous" is from the King James version, which was written around 1600, and the language has changed a bit since then. Back in the day, "jealous" basically meant "zealous". So what Yahweh was saying was that he's a live wire, he likes to get things done, and therefore he's going to get down and do some serious smiting. That's my reading, anyway. ;-)

Examples like these are probably why the Druids never wrote anything down. It just causes more trouble than it's worth.

BBC said...

It's just a spirituality, not an omnipotent critter that lives in outer space. And it is an evolution, and we are it. Hugs.

Nightmare said...

Well, I would have to disagree with some of these ;)

Bad Hair Days? (or similar "ugly" days) Yup

Constantly Living with the Good of Humankind at Heart? Not necessarily

Fairly Nice, but Not Perfect? Yes and no. Some are fairly nice, some are jerks. Nothing and no one is perfect.

Good Parent? Umm, Zeus ;)

Jealous? On occasion, some more than others.

But then, I'm a polytheist anyway ;)