27 September

I sometimes wonder if the modern fights between atheists and believers are down to the fact that we talk about God, rather than Gods. Historically we arrived at God - singular - via Gods - plural. Like the old Olympian gods; a separate God of Love, of War, of Beauty, of Fertility etc. These Gods were a fascinating blend of divine and human. What I think was going on there was that people recognised, correctly, that there are a whole range of transcendences in our lives in these different areas. That we don't get to choose what happens in Love, or Beauty, or Fertility, that in many ways it's out of our hands. Over time all of those transcendences were swept up into a single God, but before that they were recognised separately. The transcendences ARE real, too, and it's there I think the atheists and theists could meet again, on common ground. I call those transcendences patterns. Which is why I go on about patterns so much, and why I say they're the path to God. They're like the old Gods - both transcendent (bigger than us) and immanent (part of us), at the same time. You don't have to believe in God(s) or not, to see and talk about patterns.