Jamie123 Posted September 5, 2023 Report Share Posted September 5, 2023 I don't suppose many of you are familiar with Alan Partridge. Alan Partridge is a comedy character on British TV, played by Steve Coogan. He is the worst chat-show host imaginable: he is rude, ill-informed, badly researched, self-important and foul-tempered. He only has two real friends: Liz and Michael, who are about the only people stupid enough to put up with him. In the later series he also has an Eastern European girlfriend with an obsession for teddy bears. Anyway, in one memorable episode Alan is interviewing a Christian lady. It went something like this: Christian Lady: Alan, do you believe in God? Alan: Er... (thinks about it for a moment) ...yes I do. CL: How do you see God? What is he like? Alan: God is... God is... (temporarily stumped, but then has a sudden inspiration) God is a gas! CL: What??? Alan: Yes! Well... he's not a little gas. He's not like Calor Gas. He's a Big Gas... Like Oxygen! Or Carbon Dioxide. Oh no... that's bad isn't it? That's the Devil! I always think of people who pooh-pooh the idea of a personal God as the "God is a Gas" crowd. A few years ago my wife really wanted to go to the spiritualist church in Kingston, so I took her. I hated - not least because it had all the trappings of a church (including the Stations of the Cross and Holman Hunt's "Light of the World" above the altar) but hw many times do you think Jesus was mentioned in the service? Not even once! Anyway, afterwards I went out into the little garden at the back and started talking to this bloke who was sitting there. When I asked him if he saw God as a person, his attitude was definitely "pooh-pooh" - as if he couldn't believe anyone could be so backward as to believe such a thing. Then he started driveling on about how "God" just means the same thing as "good"... and how the two are really the same thing. This is exactly what I mean by "God is a Gas": if all God is is "good", what's the point of God? We already have (if you'll excuse the pun) a perfectly "good" word for "good" so why do we need "God" too. We might just as well say that the Smurfs are God because they were good and Gargamel was bad...etc. Anyway, I told all of this to our vicar at the time. As well as being our priest, she was also moderately famous on the radio - though I don't think I ever listened to her. I was surprised to find that she was "God is a Gas" too. She seemed momentarily shocked I should believe God was a person... but then checked herself and said (rather patronizingly I thought) "Well OK I guess if that's how you want to see God..." That helped me put a few other things she'd said into context too... about the "afterlife" being no more than the memories our friends and families have of us. There was something else she said too about how she was convinced of the existence of "God" (whatever the word "God" actually means to her) by pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope and "Oh the colours! The beauty!) Well just as much beauty is to be found in the Mandelbrot Set and yet that is just z=z^2+c. And the Golden ratio? Just the limiting ratio of terms in the Fibonacci sequence. Is God merely mathematics? Is that all our Heavenly Father amounts to - just numbers? He might just as well be "A Gas"! NeuroTypical, zil2, mordorbund and 1 other 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zil2 Posted September 5, 2023 Report Share Posted September 5, 2023 Come to the dark side1, @Jamie123! Not only do we believe God is a person, we believe his is literally the Father of your spirit - the very definition of personal and approachable. (And we have cookies - at 7pm, in the gym....) 1By which, of course, I mean the light, aka, the light of Christ. Vort and MrShorty 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie123 Posted September 5, 2023 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2023 1 minute ago, zil2 said: (And we have cookies - at 7pm, in the gym....) Chocolate chip ones? MrShorty, Vort and zil2 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeuroTypical Posted September 5, 2023 Report Share Posted September 5, 2023 I don't fault others for having a different concept of Deity than I do. There's a lot of "everything is all one, and heaven is to rejoin the ether", and "there is only a single being out there, and it splits itself into what we think of as the universe so it can understand itself better" type stuff out there. Fine by me. I'm quite satisfied and grateful to have my conception as God as my literal Father in Heaven, with parts and passions, who knows and loves me, and is also the Author of all love and goodness in the world. Vort, MrShorty and zil2 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie123 Posted September 5, 2023 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2023 (edited) 13 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said: I don't fault others for having a different concept of Deity than I do. There's a lot of "everything is all one, and heaven is to rejoin the ether", and "there is only a single being out there, and it splits itself into what we think of as the universe so it can understand itself better" type stuff out there. Fine by me. Fine by me too. I won't attempt to shut down Kingston Spiritualist Church any more than I'll interfere with congregations who pray to a six-armed elephant-man. I'm treading on thin ice here I know, so I'd better stop digging*. *And mixing my metaphors. Edited September 5, 2023 by Jamie123 zil2, NeuroTypical and Vort 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zil2 Posted September 5, 2023 Report Share Posted September 5, 2023 19 minutes ago, Jamie123 said: Chocolate chip ones? Pretty much guaranteed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie123 Posted September 5, 2023 Author Report Share Posted September 5, 2023 And while we're on the subject of pooh-pooh... zil2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zil2 Posted September 5, 2023 Report Share Posted September 5, 2023 Blackadder was one of my favorites! (Or does it have to be favourites?) Jamie123 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vort Posted September 5, 2023 Report Share Posted September 5, 2023 5 hours ago, zil2 said: Blackadder was one of my favorites! (Or does it have to be favourites?) Extruaneous U's toutally rulue! MrShorty and zil2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnsonJones Posted September 5, 2023 Report Share Posted September 5, 2023 If I believed as some do regarding the Trinity, and that The all seeing Deity was Omnipresent as well as all powerful and someone asked me out of the blue what I thought he was like... Saying that he is a Gas is probably as apt a description as anything else. You have an omnipresent being that is everywhere and everyplace, outside of you, inside of you, beyond your line of sight...etc. Obviously it's not empty space...so how would you describe such a thing? Something that is there, invisible to your eyes, but still present and takes up space, can be everywhere and in everything and beyond everything... It's not the worst description I've heard in regards to trying to give a physical description to deity. Of course, as has been stated already, we believe in Deity with a physical form and body...but if one did not...it could get interesting on the various ways they may describe him. Jamie123 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie123 Posted September 6, 2023 Author Report Share Posted September 6, 2023 (edited) 15 hours ago, JohnsonJones said: You have an omnipresent being that is everywhere and everyplace, outside of you, inside of you, beyond your line of sight...etc. Obviously it's not empty space...so how would you describe such a thing? I do agree with you - it's eerily close to the vague wooly unvoiced ideas many of us have about God for it to be recognizable, and the crass way he puts it makes it funny. (Not like Calor Gas!!!) It's rather like the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where they meet God along the way. At 14, having vaguely imagined God as an irritable white-bearded guy on a cloud, I found this quite disturbing and also VERY funny! Edited September 6, 2023 by Jamie123 JohnsonJones 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.