Who built this house?

If you wanted to build a new house, you would hire a contractor, right? But when the house is finished and someone asked, “Who built that house?”, nobody would say the name of the contractor. You’d say: “I did.” In fact, very few would ever know the name of the contractor unless they specifically asked for it.

For those of you who believe the Holy Bible when it says God created our universe, I want to assure you that I’m raining on your parade. When the Holy Bible says God created our universe, it’s simply saying that God commissioned it to be built, but didn’t necessarily do the work Him/Herself. Personally, I think God had a lot more important things to think about than creating an in-patient rehab center for “judgment junkies.” But I’ll bet S/He had time to hire a general contractor, give them the overall plan, and delegate the work. I’ll also bet S/He also had time to occasionally take a look at the progress and say to that contractor, “Let there be light” — make it sunny and bright and cheery, not some dark and dreary environment. And checking back later, “God saw the light, that it was good.”

But just because the Holy Bible doesn’t name the contractor, it doesn’t mean that God did the work Him/Herself. I’m sure this is why, nearly 2400 years ago, Plato came up with the word “Demiurge” to give a name to that general contractor. Stephen Hawking said, “Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation.”

So, I think it’s time we set the record straight, because for too long, too many people in too many religions around the world have based their daily decisions and actions on a false premise: that God created our universe, meaning that S/He did all the actual work. And by now I hope we all know the dangers of using a false premise because of the flawed outcomes it will produce.

Believing that God did all the work creating our universe is what I call “model misassignment.” The traditional “God Model” — where God created the Heavens and the Earth and all the animals and humans on it — while widely accepted, predicts features that are not objectively observed and fails to predict features that are. Rather, it is human beings who have misassigned the creation of our world and misunderstood its purpose, and so made up bizarre stories and beliefs to try to explain an apparently flawed and ill-conceived universe.

In fact, rather than what I’m suggesting being a criticism of God, it is a glorification. I am simply saying that a God who is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, and infallible (like my God is) could not possibly create the world we see around us — S/He is both smarter, more capable, and more loving than that — and to suggest otherwise is not only illogical, but an insult to Him/Her. And obviously, Christians are not the only ones who have made this serious mistake. Jews do it, too; Muslims do it with Allah; Hindus do it with Brahma. The Sikhs do it as well, with Waheguru. Only Buddhists seem to have sidestepped this issue and kept any “God” out of creation.

But I think anyone who can let go of their prior beliefs and objectively look at the world around us cannot help but conclude that an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, infallible God would have done a much better job if They had done the work Themselves.

It’s true that someone did an incredible job of creating the Earth Experience environment. There is little controversy in noting that the Earth is visually and structurally extraordinary. Its magnificent landscapes display immense variety, symmetry, and beauty. Mountain ranges, oceans, forests, deserts, and polar regions arise from the same underlying physical laws and yet produce radically different environments. The planet is not only stable but productive: it supports chemistry, self-replicating biology, and increasingly complex forms of life over vast spans of time. The oceans alone host highly intelligent, social, and self-aware species such as whales and dolphins (and maybe octopuses). Hats off to whatever architect designed them!

But when it comes to creating “man” or “woman,” no omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, infallible God would have done such a lousy job. As I’ve said before, I’ll admit that the human body is amazing in many respects — like its self-healing capabilities — but it’s also very fragile and very high maintenance. For example, we have to be so careful about what we eat — can’t have sugar, can’t drink alcohol, can’t smoke, can’t consume too many calories or too many carbs; and, worst of all, NO BACON! The human body is susceptible to a number of life-threatening diseases, like cancer — not to mention dementia — and after a certain number of years, it seems that things stop working like they should — usually a different thing every morning we wake up. The list of design flaws of the human body is actually quite long.

I just have a hard time saying the “architect” of the human body was “God.” But if you’re going to give credit to God for all the incredible, fantastic, amazing things we find in our holographic universe, God also has to be the source of the not-so-incredible things. And my God has all those well-deserved adjectives after His/Her name, including “infallible.” At least I certainly hope God is infallible, or we might be in big trouble.

And it seems clear someone or something has to still be involved in maintaining our universe. It wasn’t just “create it and walk away.” What’s happening points to some kind of active participation.

So, let’s talk honestly about this. There are too many things “wrong” in this world for my God to be responsible for creating them. Here are just a few….

· continuous wars killing millions of people for the wrong reasons

· malnutrition and hunger for far too many

· abject poverty for the masses while a few wallow in their riches

· blatant discrimination based on personal choices of gender, race, religion, etc.

· unconscionable emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of children

· humanity on a perilous course of self-destruction for itself and the Earth from nuclear annihilation and environmental degradation

· natural disasters that can wipe out thousands of people at one time

· just to name a few

And on top of all that, whoever is running this shitshow does nothing about any of it — doesn’t step in, make some corrections, or mitigate the damage. The opposite seems to be true: they look the other way and tolerate it all. “God loves His children,” the saying goes. Well, if I saw my children suffering with pain and misery from such horrible lives on Earth, I can’t imagine sitting by and doing nothing. And please don’t give me that “Only God knows why” excuse.

Let’s call a spade a spade. This Earth Experience is operated with moral indifference.

In the past, I have suggested a good reason for that: God was very concerned about all the consciousnesses S/He created that were getting embroiled in biased judgments to the point where it was causing them to be violent and ill, resulting in the above list of “defects.” So S/He commissioned a Demiurge to create an “in-patient rehab opportunity for these “judgment junkies” to “go sober.” And if that were true, it would explain a whole lot of things, especially the moral indifference. A rehab environment designed to eliminate judgment could not itself participate in judgment, and therefore there could be no corrective actions taken to change these things that seem to be out of sync with an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, infallible God. The whole point of a rehab opportunity for a consciousness is for it to come face to face with the consequences of its biased judgments and decide, of its own free will, to give them up. To step in and mitigate those consequences would ruin the whole point of the experience.

So it might be that God really does love His/Her children, and therefore came up with this solution of an in-patient rehab opportunity, especially one located in such a beautiful place as the Earth Experience that the Demiurge created. It also validates the Demiurge and the moral indifference it operates the rehab opportunity with.

I don’t know about you, but I would have a hard time watching as my children suffered in pain, even if I knew it was the best for them. I would much rather delegate someone I trust completely to create and run an experience like we see around us. So, I have to keep reminding myself not to judge God or His/Her Demiurge for what we consciousnesses have created with our biased judgments. And isn’t that the point after all?