Is God Necessary?

Is God necessary?  What might this question mean? 

Is God necessary for the world to contain the exquisitely interlaced layers of design it has?

Is God necessary to establish morality?

Is God necessary to connect with the miracle of living and being?

Is God necessary for the human being to be truly human?

Is God a tool or a crutch, and what determines whether God is used as one or the other?

Does God bring a special kind of humor and equanimity to our lives?

Does God bring acceptance of death and dying?

Is God an idea that some people need more than others?  (More than other people do?  More than they need other people?  More than other ideas?)

Is God the necessary source of thankfulness or gratefulness?

Is the idea of God necessary so that people who rebel have something to fight?

Is the idea of a caring, all-good God necessary so that some (e.g., some Holocaust survivors) have someone to blame for their abandoning religion and trust?

Is love of God a substitute for actual, honest love?

Clearly, that is a lot of questioning of the purpose for God in our culture.  What is equally startling is that all this questioning can happen shy of a clear explication of what we mean by God.  And maybe that is for the best.  Perhaps the best way to understand the reason for God is to arrive at that knowledge implicitly.  Each question, by its very nature, implies a possible understanding of God.  That, I think is the best I can offer.  God’s “description” is a set of possibilities.  And the more we think about those possibilities, the more we are with God.

Can you think about many possibilities?  Is God the source of possibilities?  Are possibilities necessary?

Furious

60 Minutes, Sunday, March 6, 2011: HARD TIMES GENERATION

The story brought me to tears.  Now my heart aches from anger and disgust.  This is not right!  How can we be proud to be  Americans when our country permits families to sink into tragedy?  Is it OK to bail out wall street and general motors, yet allow good American citizens to sink to the fringe of survival?

Here is the story:
    http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7358670n&tag=related;photovideo

It was much worse on TV.  There, you watched it in high definition.  There, you saw the CBS Money Watch message brought to you by XXX immediately following.  There, you gagged at the stream of senseless commercials designed to get people to part with their disposal money.

What about the family that has no disposal money?

What about the politician who is so eager to declare the "recession" to be in recession?

What about the television news magazine that shows the trashing of American values without asking anybody to change it?

Fury
Mindlessness is awareness without anger
Depression is anger without action
Determination is action without uncertainty
Fury is the fearlessness of collective consciousness
Trampling the comfortable toleration of human indignity