Philosophy: Christianity
The Three Faces of Jesus
How a backwoods preacher became the creator of the cosmos
As a student of philosophy I’m always interested in how people perceive the cosmos in an organised way. A shared view of how the universe works relies on a certain amount of faith. If someone says that lightning is made by a thunder god, and they say it convincingly enough, they will be believed, and then they will be at odds with another group of people who believe in electricity and charged particles and so on. The two groups get together, sparks fly.
There are a great many religions, and they all have some things in common and some things in opposition. For example, all seem to agree that the earth was created in some fashion, but there are a great number of views as to how that happened, exactly. It’s always entertaining to read various creation stories to see how the topic is approached.
And, of course, there has to be a creation story. It is not enough for a priest to say, “Well, I dunno” or “it exists, enjoy”; no, there has to be a divine being who shaped the mud, or pulled light down from the sky, or hocked out a loogie or whatever. And once you go down that rabbithole of gods and divine actions there’s no stopping a fanciful priest.
