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Saturday, May 23, 2015

Another Title

Christopher Hitchens wrote a well-known book entitled God is Not Great which, as far as I can tell from scattered knowledge never left the realm of the literal and so-called fundamentalist in terms of what the word god stood for. From glancing at the book a few times, reading some articles, and hearing him interviewed and so forth, what I've gathered is he wrote mainly about bad things institutions have done in the name of an imaginary god.
In that case, no argument with that title. But it wouldn't work for how I understand the word god. I think of the word god as being synonymous with the Chinese word tao or dao. When ancient wise folk were pondering what word to use for the dao which they agreed can't be named or described accurately, they decided on a word which translates into English as great - though they indicated we shouldn't get hung up on that word - just the best they could do. So in that case we could write a book named God may Tentatively be Called Great. - dc