God or Mother? Thoughts on Early Infancy and Faith

[Will Torbald]

We've all been touched by God. That omnipotent and ever loving being.
Beyond all comprehension, larger than ourselves, yet merciful. God loves us.
God protects us. He answers to our prayers when we call him. He will never leave us, and will be with us always. God made us, and we all come from God. But most important of all, God is our mother. Literally.

To our newborn self, defenseless, unable to do anything to save himself, there is nothing left to do but pray. Prayer in the form of anguished cries for help, for food, for comfort, for salvation. And they are answered in a warm embrace. That giant, beautiful, all powerful being called breast. Called mom. Called God.

It is in this state where the relentless and ever powerful force of faith and prayer to a higher being arise. We fear, we cry, we pray, we are nurtured. We are rewarded for our make believe. We are praised when we give all our hope to a supreme giver in this age. We learned, and we never forgot. Ah, but we forgot its name.

Some of us come to realize that the inner feeling, that intuitive certainty that there must be some kind of loving and powerful super being, is actually for our mother. Some of us don't, and we are left with a lion without a leash, the gut wrenching feeling that our super care taker is no longer with us. Having grown up and become powerful ourselves we see that God is now absent, ah, but it isn't - for if we remember it we can create it. If we pray for it we can bring back that feeling so jovial of being nurtured by the Super Being. If we believe it, we can see it.

In the adult, that eternal essence we call "soul" is that inner child, the inner newborn. He never grew up, and is still inside our deepest memory. The "pure" soul. The "innocent" soul. God's creation. Mom's creation. Mother's child. I child. Me. And the I wishes to be united with the God from which it came from. Heaven is the womb, from which we fell. That Eden where there was no harm, no evil, no cold, no hunger, no pain. Only the soft lining of an ever present. Only eternity in our softness. There is no night and no day. No time. Only love. If only we could go there again. If we obey our God we can, and he will be with us. If we obey our mother, she will be pleased with us. But will we ever return to that haven?

 

Our god is love, say some, as their mothers were tender. Our god is a war god, say some, as their mothers were ruthless disciplinaries. Our god made the universe, and then left it alone, some say as their mother went to work. These are the thoughts on the origins of faith, prayer, and loving ever powerful gods by maternity.

[Donnadogsoth]

Close but no cigar.

 

As Copleston reports St. Thomas Aquinas held, "...the essence of the Beatific Vision consists in the act of the intellect rather than in the will's act, on the ground that the intellect is the faculty by which we possess, the will the faculty by which we enjoy the object already possessed by the intellect."

 

In other words, Mother retreats and can never be possessed by the infant after this retreat, because Mother-as-God is not an intellectual object as such.  There can only be the enjoyment of Her at the moment of infancy, and the memory of such enjoyment and the feeling of lack.

 

The solution to this bereft condition is attaining to the intellectual essence of God, which can then be enjoyed by the will.

 

Mother becomes not an archetype for God, but an archetype of the Witch, patterned after the Arch-Witch otherwise known as Satan.

[Mister Mister]

I don't understand the point you are trying to make Will.  It sounds nice like 19th century poetry, but I don't see what philosophical claim you are making.

[Will Torbald]

Close but no cigar.

 

As Copleston reports St. Thomas Aquinas held, "...the essence of the Beatific Vision consists in the act of the intellect rather than in the will's act, on the ground that the intellect is the faculty by which we possess, the will the faculty by which we enjoy the object already possessed by the intellect."

 

In other words, Mother retreats and can never be possessed by the infant after this retreat, because Mother-as-God is not an intellectual object as such.  There can only be the enjoyment of Her at the moment of infancy, and the memory of such enjoyment and the feeling of lack.

 

The solution to this bereft condition is attaining to the intellectual essence of God, which can then be enjoyed by the will.

 

Mother becomes not an archetype for God, but an archetype of the Witch, patterned after the Arch-Witch otherwise known as Satan.

 

What I'm getting by this is that you're arguing that the Mother doesn't become God, but the Devil. You're not refuting the argument, merely adjusting it. I like your conclusion, though.

 

I don't understand the point you are trying to make Will.  It sounds nice like 19th century poetry, but I don't see what philosophical claim you are making.

 

Have you heard the certainty by which theists argue about God? How the Pope compares insulting someone's religion with insulting his mother? It's because in their minds, the basic unconscious mind, it's the same thing. The philosophy of knowing why they think they know something to be true when it's a fantasy - yet it "feels" true to them. Because it was true that a superior being existed for them, it's just a childhood dream.