An article by Sha'Tara, local writer and friend.

Who Are Your Gods, O Man?

[thoughts from      ~burning woman~      by Sha'Tara]
 
Can anything fresh be said of God, or of the Gods; of their nature and their acts not already expressed, not already thrashed to death by bloated religion and business shysters, detractors, philosophers, historians, archeologists, politicians and military men?  By the common people who parrot their "god-feel-good" or their "god-guilt" to each other?  Perhaps not.  But I would share the following thought, nevertheless.
 
Despite all that has been said of; written about; done in the name of these Gods, I know that all of it, absolutely all of it, is deliberate misinformation that has become the purview of powerful and powerfully ignorant men (sometimes women); the ignorance increasing exponentially along with the global spread of the religious or God-riding apparatus. 
 
Who are these Gods?  Briefly stated, they were people once.  They were long-lived and very powerful.  They knew many "laws" of life which short-lived mortals could not even begin to sense.  These "divinities" were man's makers and owners on planet Earth and they encouraged the people to think of them as gods, as eternals, as all-knowing and all powerful.  They brainwashed their slaves to believe, and that belief turned to fanaticism as the gods fought among themselves and trained their slaves to fight for them.  Few of the slaves ever questioned the inconsistencies of the Gods' teachings and demands versus what they actually did.  While they taught "love" to the people, they warred, enslaved, raped and pillaged at will.  They were ruthless in their punishment of transgressors, defectors and unbelievers.  History, often labeled myth or legend in order to dissimulate these acts, has kept a few records of these things and anyone with a rudiment of literacy can access these.
 
Despite their claims however, these beings were not entirely immortal.  They aged and in time, they either lost interest in their youthful game or lost control of it and they left Earth to the maddened, half-brained Earthians.  The creatures, predictably continued to act as if the Gods were still here, still expecting obedience, still giving commands.  By then lesser divinities, spawns of divine and Earthian sexual intercourse, had taken over.  Abandoned by their divine parents, they were pulled in the power vacuum and seized their place, becoming the quasi-divine priest-kings, queens, emperors, pharaohs, army commanders.  And they did what their parents had done.
 
What is God; what are the Gods to today's believers?  Difficult to answer that question in this short format but an answer can be alluded to.  They are Power: power through events, not through presence: today's Gods exist and act through events and as events.  They are invisible but not dead, living through the legacy of their passage here.  God is powerful because it is a concept, not an actual personage, or being.  It is that which expresses in how "events" (natural or man-made) are ascribed to, linked to, and interpreted by, various believers to their concept of God.  By this simple process, the power of God is endlessly re-instated.  The more impactful the event that is ascribed to God, the more power God (the concept) gains among the multitude.  Hence why God always leads the Jihad or crusade.
 
Ah yes, the multitude.  That motley, restless brute beast, ponderous and ignorant, birthing itself segmentally, ravenously feeding on the rotting carcass of a dying world, desperately scrabbling for its share of meaningless pleasures, ever suffering and ever dying yet always growing; so easily manipulated and driven to excesses by its rulers, its snake-charmers.  That is what gives God its power for the multitude, having no hope in itself, must ever consume its cancerous path into the future.  And the future is that invisible, intangible promise of life beyond death and of something better: God.  As the multitude whimpers and screams its pain/pleasure from billions of individual mouths having fed on caviar and sand, God is heard because God is the infernal din.
 
God is power.  Power expressed from invisibility through events is the ultimate power for the power wielder cannot be held accountable by that which is visible and mortal.  The bastard descendants of the Gods know this and that is why they have always gravitated to places of power where they are hidden, protected, by layers of attendants and bureaucrats, guards and heavily defended strongholds, untouchable by the multitude.  Kings, Lamas, Popes, Presidents, CEO's.  Which one of these ever comes personally before "the multitude" under him before deciding a matter that will affect the lives of millions?  Which one ever consults with "the people" before raising taxes, shutting down plants, declaring war, changing the rules of the game by which people live and die?  Democracies were to guarantee this would happen: was there ever a greater hoax perpetrated upon the multitude?  Yet the multitude believes in its "invisible" rulers because it believes any alternative to what it clings to is bound to be worse. 
 
Rulers, from low-level managers to Secretary Generals of some United Nations, are God by definition of ruling power.  The multitude, cattle in the slaughter house, obedient unto death for having no choice, is there to ensure this system never changes.  For after all, isn't God eternal?