ON GOD AND PRAYER.
Enq. Do you believe in God?
Theo. That depends what you mean by the term.
Enq. I mean the God of the Christians, the Father of Jesus, and the Creator: the Biblical God of Moses, in short.
Theo. In such a God we do not believe. We reject the idea of a personal, or an extra-cosmic and anthropomorphic God, who is but the gigantic shadow of man, and not of man at his best, either. The God of theology, we say—and prove it—is a bundle of contradictions and a logical impossibility. Therefore, we will have nothing to do with him.
Enq. State your reasons, if you please.
Theo. They are many, and cannot all receive attention. But here are a few. This God is called by his devotees infinite and absolute, is he not?
Enq. I believe he is.
Theo. Then, if infinite—i.e., limitless—and especially if absolute, how can he have a form, and be a creator of anything? Form implies limitation, and a beginning as well as an end; and, in order to create, a Being must think and plan. How can the ABSOLUTE be supposed to think—i.e., to have any relation whatever to that which is limited, finite, and conditioned? This is a philosophical and a logical absurdity. Even the Hebrew Kabala rejects such an idea, and therefore makes of the one and the Absolute Deific Principle an infinite Unity called Ain-Soph.[14] In order to create, the Creator has to become active; and as this is impossible for ABSOLUTENESS, the infinite principle had to be shown becoming the cause of evolution (not creation) in an indirect way—i.e., through the emanation from itself (another absurdity, due this time to the translators of the Kabala)[15] of the Sephiroth.
Enq. How about those Kabalists, who, while being such, still believe in Jehovah, or the Tetragrammaton?