by NSW Reference and Information Services Group

Question: Atheists: why do you consider gods as characters?
I’ve been posing very fundamental questions to my atheist kindred on Yahoo! Answers, because I seriously want to know how their mental processes work. I think I have learned something /very/ telling from the responses: the dominant sort of atheist on Yahoo! Answers considers God a character, as from a story. So, for example, my question about theology¹ was met with the following responses: First, the overwhelming majority of you confused theology with Bible study for some reason. But also, I was told that it would be like “demanding a debate about Zeus, or Odin”, that “theology IS mythology”, and that God is about “the business of their communities rather than the meaning of life or the universe.” [As before, I was also told surprising things, this time about myself: apparently I'm "certainly" an agnostic. Also, as an atheist, I apparently think that theology is bullshit. Also, apparently I haven't read any theology, or else I have very simply seen why it is a joke.]

Now, if there’s one thing stressed by every Catholic priest that I’ve ever talked to, every Muslim I’ve ever had a frank conversation with, it’s that their God is not really that anthropomorphic sort of character, of any kind. God is a supernatural and transcendent entity. I mean, with the Muslims it is especially present: that everything is caused by Allah, who sustains every sort of natural process. A Christian might say “I see God in everything — every sunset, the wind against my face, the song of birds, everything.” This isn’t the sort of thing you’d say of a mythological character of any kind. I mean, to take Hopkins as an example, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; it gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil crushed,” and, “for Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his, to the Father through the features of men’s faces.”

I mean, you wouldn’t say this sort of thing about your brother, your penpal, your potential secret admirer who you’ve not yet met, or Harry Potter. None of the traditional characters who engage your mental life has the sort of characteristics which would allow these sweeping transcendent statements to make any sort of sense. They only make sense if Christ and God, far from being the Mormon “humanoid who lives somewhere amongst the stars,” transcends the entire mortal sphere of space, time, matter, and us. God, the theologians tell us, cannot be familiar to or even contained within human language, the way that characters so eloquently are.

It is somewhat as if a physicist like me was making sweeping statements to the effect of “Nature chooses the trajectory with the least action,” and your response was, “Bah! I don’t believe in nature! That’s all just mythology.” In the most literal sense, that response does make a salient point, but it misunderstands the way that the original statement was being used, because Nature is not some sort of character in some sort of fable, even though I have strictly speaking used her that way in this question.

With all that said as context, here is my question. Why are the gods you reject all (apparently) characters? What do you do with the many gods who many cultures insist cannot be characterized? Why is it that when I ask you guys about /theology/, you reply by talking about “the study of fairy stories,” or “how many beans Jack traded his cow for,” or “mythology,” or “literature… treated as non-fiction”…? In short, why is your rejection of gods limited to bearded men in the sky, and can this limitation be justified with a rational argument?

(As before, those aren’t rhetorical questions: I sincerely would love to see a bright take which would reason out such a conclusion. I like to be surprised.)

¹ My last question: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100727102727AAfQHst

Answer:

Answer by Happy Jesus
Foolish mortal, walls of text do nothing. Repent, and all will be forgiven.

I am the Son of God, kneel down before your master.