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The Gall of Imagining God’s Reality
How to be more than superficially religious.
Most of us aren’t very philosophical. We rarely think about our assumptions or doubt their validity. We’re too busy or we’re afraid of what we’d find and what we’d lose by taking a cold, hard look at what we’ve been so busy accomplishing.
As a result, we often operate on autopilot. We absentmindedly perform our chores and social routines without wondering whether all is as it seems to the senses and to mundane conceptions. Or even if the world is as it seems to us, we seldom consider what the world would seem like to another, more mature life form.
How, for example, would God evaluate human norms? Obviously, without being divine, we can’t know. But we can stretch our minds and imagine how a saint, an angel, or a god would think of what passes for our typical social interactions. In other words, we can imagine what the world would be like if religions were true.
To be sure, most of us are religious so we assume that some religion is indeed true, that there are miracles, a war between angels and demons, and an eternal mind underlying everything else. But because we’re not so philosophical, our religious practices are often absentminded. We don’t think through the implications, feel the gravity of religious beliefs, or live as though…