30 + 1 Renowned writers speaking about God & Small Gods

1. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction Writer
2. Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Laureate in Literature
3. Professor Isaac Asimov, Author and Biochemist
4. Arthur Miller, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright
5. Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate in Literature
6. Gore Vidal, Award-Winning Novelist and Political Activist
7. Douglas Adams, Best-Selling Science Fiction Writer
8. Professor Germaine Greer, Writer and Feminist
9. Iain Banks, Best-Selling Fiction Writer
10. José Saramago, Nobel Laureate in Literature
11. Sir Terry Pratchett, NYT Best-Selling Novelist
12. Ken Follett, NYT Best-Selling Author
13. Ian McEwan, Man Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
14. Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate (1999-2009)
15. Professor Martin Amis, Award-Winning Novelist
16. Michel Houellebecq, Goncourt Prize-Winning French Novelist
17. Philip Roth, Man Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
18. Margaret Atwood, Booker Prize-Winning Author and Poet
19. Sir Salman Rushdie, Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
20. Norman MacCaig, Renowned Scottish Poet
21. Phillip Pullman, Best-Selling British Author
22. Dr Matt Ridley, Award-Winning Science Writer
23. Harold Pinter, Nobel Laureate in Literature
24. Howard Brenton, Award-Winning English Playwright
25. Tariq Ali, Award-Winning Writer and Filmmaker
26. Theodore Dalrymple, English Writer and Psychiatrist
27. Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-Winning Novelist
28. Redmond O'Hanlon FRSL, British Writer and Scholar
29. Diana Athill, Award-Winning Author and Literary Editor
30. Christopher Hitchens, Best-Selling Author, Award-Winning Columnist

Number 11, Sir Terry Pratchett and a highly successful author of fantasy novels, has recently written an lightly entertaining book called 'Small Gods' which tackle the topic of religion and intolerance. It's based on a fantasy world called Omnia, where the Great God Om is worshipped and is probably the kind of book children should be given about god and religions rather than religious books themselves ... and especially delivering children to teachers of religions.

The god Om has a great need for worshippers ... as belief is the food of gods ... but cannot understand the religion which they built up in His name. On the other hand, the followers of Om actually have very little, if any need for the god. The hero of the book, called Brutha, is considered unintelligent having never learned to read, and rarely thinking for himself but one day become beset with confusing voices. The voice claim to be from the great god Om but Brutha at first refuses to believe it.

Om starts out proud and arrogant like most gods, but is humbled by being trapped in a body which does not suit him and forced to learn lessons about humanity.

Does it all sound familiar?

It's a world in which gods need human beings to believe in them and gamble on the lives of humans in order to gain or lose belief. For example, in one scene, Brutha and Om become lost in a desert and encounter ruined temples where small gods have become faint ghost-like beings yearning to be believed in to become powerful again.

The book satirises religious institutions, people and practices, and the role of religion in political life. Omnianism is a fear based religion. Its adherents are taught that the world is a globe, that there is only one god. Should anyone display the slightest example of free will its priesthood threatens terrible punishments.

"Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think."

"He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at."

"'What's a philosopher?' said Brutha. 'Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting', said a voice in his head."

"The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led."

"The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done."

"It's hard to explain," said Brutha. "But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave... you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time."

"His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You cannot trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink'."

Someone, not me, reads a passage here ...

... as belief is the food of gods ...

I have never read Terry Pratchett but many speak highly of his work. His long term success has to mean something, so I may give him a go. Pratchett's name came up in the credits of a novel I have just finished reading for the second time (good books need at least two readings to extract what they have to offer).

"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, who thanks Pratchett for taking the time to help him resolve a difficulty in the plot, has a theme with similarities to Pratchett's "Small Gods" in that the olds gods, many now living in America, were brought over to the "New World" in the beliefs of the immigrants, but they are diminishing, mostly leading shabby and poor lives as their believers dwindle or the circumstances that sustained them disappear, the main threat is people's 'devotion" is now going to the ever-more-powerful new gods (including, for example, Media - who wittily parallels the legendary Medea - i.e. both will kill their own children if it serves their purposes).

Gaiman also dedicates the novel to the late Roger Zelazny, whose only book I read, a long time ago, was "Lord of Light", in which an expedition goes from earth to a planet that can support human life to set up a colony. They discover inhabitants there to whom the crew appear god-like. The crew split up and each becomes a ruler over the inhabitants of different parts of the planet, they find that adopting the persona of an earth god/archetype - Jesus, Ganesh, Allah etc gives them an easy template to project and maintain their authority from, which leads to ...

A different variant of the theme is one of my all time favourites, "The Sparrow" by Maria Doria Russell - with its almost-as-good sequel "Children of God". The hero is a Jesuit priest, the only survivor of an expedition sent to explore the first planet earth has ever picked up signals of intelligent life from (a kind of music - a sirens' song?).

It confronts the fact that human assumptions, interpretations of events and paradigms don't always play out as expected. It's largely a metaphor for how colonial/first contact experience affects both the colonised and the colonists, personally and societally, and also looks at the relevance of an earth-born religion in a non-earth context. These three books are, all in their own ways, well-written, entertaining and thought provoking.

I like the image of small gods driven by their requirement of people to believe in them and how they feed off it

It's almost exactly how I see them and the god who attached itself to Lekhraj Kirpalani and first spoke inside his head.

To reference previous discussions of ours, whether these "small gods" which are fed by faith to become bigger are genuinely existent and separate conscient beings (spirits) or are humanity's creation (egregores), it almost does not matter. Both are unprovable concepts but seemingly operate similarly. If spirits were to exist, they may even well manipulate egregores to benefit themselves, like spiders inside the webs used to catch their prey.

The metaphor appears to work on a practical level ... the webs these gods, the BKs' God Shiva, create are mental and yet trap the intended prey who are them bound or paralysed and fed off.

For me, the desert gods of the Abrahamic tradition fit entirely into Prachett's model. It's obvious they who he was thinking of ... warring with and dominating other smaller gods to become the one and only god. What's interesting about the Brahma Kumaris God Shiva is that he is playing the same game of "Uber Alles" ... unlike all of the rest of the small Hindu god who are happy with a little temple or shrine, even a single family house.

Is he the same god playing the same game, or a different god of the same nature? Is there a "School for Gods" where these spooks go to study the history of gods and their theories, and learn the latest techniques of domination?

Of course, you'll say they are all so similar because they are all projections of us and we are so similar ... but sometimes I wonder.

"It was the dreamtime. The unformed time.

The small gods chittered and whirred in the wilderness places, and the cold places, and the deep places. The swarmed in the darkness, without memory but driven by hope and lust for one thing, the one thing a god craves -- belief.

Then there was a day. In a sense, it was the first day.

Om had been aware of the shepherd for some time. The flock had been wandering closer and closer. The rains had been sparse. Forage was scarce. Hungry mouths propelled hungry legs further into the rocks, searching out the hitherto scorned clumps of sun-seared grass.

They were sheep, possibly the most stupid animal in the universe with the possible exception of the duck. But even their uncomplicated minds couldn't hear the voice, because sheep don't listen.

There was a lamb though. It had strayed a little way. Om saw to it that it strayed a little further. Around a rock. Down a slope. Into a crevice. Its bleating drew the mother.

The crevice was well hidden and the ewe was, after all, content now that she had her lamb. She saw no reason to bleat, even when the shepherd wandered about the rocks calling, cursing, and, eventually, pleading. The shepherd had a hundred sheep, and it might have been surprising that he was prepared to spend days searching for one sheep; in fact, it was because he was the kind of man prepared to spend days looking for a lost sheep that he had a hundred sheep.

The voice that was going to be Om waited.

It was on the evening of the second day that he scared up a partridge that had been nesting near the crevice, just as the shepherd was wandering by.

It wasn't much of a miracle, but it was good enough for the shepherd. He made a cairn of stones at the spot and, next day, brought his whole flock into the area. And in the heat of the afternoon he lay down to sleep -- and Om spoke to him, inside his head.

Three weeks later the shepard was stoned to death by the priests of Ur-Gilash, who was at the time the chief god in the area. But they were too late. Om already had a hundred believers, and the number was growing...

Only a mile away from the shepherd and his flock was a goatherd and his herd. The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different.

For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led."

Apparently Pratchett credits Fritz Leiber for the idea of gods literally waxing and waning in power dependent on the amount of worship they have, from his "sword and sorcery" books about Nehwon and Lankhmar. I've not read them.

It's an argument Dawkins often bring up, that in the past many gods have already died as their culture or religions have dies, or been wiped out.

Now there appears to be a big battle for the "one true god" going on ... or is it an industrial merger between the big religious multi-national corporation like Islam, Catholicism at which the Brahma Kumaris want to position themselves and their god.

Islam has the advantage of burgeoning young populations being enculted. The Brahma Kumaris have the disadvantage of not allowing their adherents to reproduce (so far). However, not allowing the burdens on reproduction (time, energy, financial), free the Brahma Kumaris to be far more efficient and purposeful with their limited resources. Instead they cherry pick other families' young to fuel their god's hunger.

Whatever it is on earth, it all boils down to the management and expenditure of energy resources.

Yes, even the Jewish YHWH (Jehovah) was a mere desert dwelling tribal god, a self-acknowledged "jealous god" who said, "Though shalt have no other gods before me" - which means there are other gods, but you have to put YHWH above them.

Only later was YHWH considered to be the "one and only" true god that actually existed, with the rest being mythical or imagined. I'd say that it was Christianity and Islam which allowed that notion to evolve and perpetuate, which prevented YHWH going the way of MakéMaké and being seen as just another primitive tribes' god.

If the Jewish people had died out before Christianity - well, there'd be no Jehovah, no Christianity and no Islam as we know them. Maybe Zeus or Jupiter may have morphed into this "One God To Rule Them All" if Neo-Platonism merged with Olympian-ism the way it actually did with Christianity (thereby lending it philosophical clout).

An interesting tangent to this concept of what gives life to gods: during the Vietnam War, a Buddhist monk (it may have been Thich Nhat Hanh) rescued the wounded and tended them back to health, regardless of which side they belonged to, often at great peril to himself. Some of his supporters told him that he should go into exile and stay safe, so that the dhamma could continue, i.e. if all the Buddhist monks perished, so too would the dhamma.

He replied that even if he and all other Buddhists died, the nature of dhamma is such that one day, somewhere and sometime, another person would attain enlightenment, and the dhamma would once again be taught, but any single human life, once lost cannot be regained.

For monotheists, keeping their God alive and supreme has usually been more important than any person's life, leading to the glorification of martyrs, jihadists, crusaders, militant missionaries, religious wars, forced conversions etc.

Yes, even the Jewish YHWH (Jehovah) was a mere desert dwelling tribal god, a self-acknowledged "jealous god" who said, "Though shalt have no other gods before me" - which means there are other gods, but you have to put YHWH above them.

Is the Brahma Kumaris' BapDada any different? It appears to be the name of their game. As with Pratchett's small gods (and the BKs' god is just still a small god however much they huff and puff and exaggerate him) he seems obsessed with people remembering him, and having relationship with him alone.

For a long time I thought the energy exchange was *from* BK adherents *to* the BK god; not the other way around. Sure, the BKs get a little zap, or flash or high now and again but for the most part get nothing back.

Interestingly, as I am sure you know, before the jealous Jehovah, they worshipped the Babylonian god Baal, and before that existed Ahura Mazda, the uncreated God and highest deity of Zoroastrianism, the lord of light and wisdom, creator and upholder of Arta (truth). Ahura Mazda, on which other small gods (or their priests) modelled themselves was the omniscient and omnipotent god who created the universe.

Ahura Mazda has also almost disappeared. Instead he came down to earth and now makes a rather good motorcar in Japan, just as Brahma now makes a beer in Brazil.

Even the gods have to diversify to survive ... just as the BKs are doing. I wonder what Shiva will end up advertising?

Ahura Mazda has also almost disappeared. Instead he came down to earth and now makes a rather good motorcar in Japan, just as Brahma now makes a beer in Brazil.

Even the gods have to diversify to survive ... I wonder what Shiva will end up advertising?

Farm tools!

Full circle. Exactly the theme of Neil Gaiman's "American Gods", in which Odin (Mr Wednesday) is a grifter, Thoth (Mr Jacquel) and Anubis (Mr Ibis) are undertakers in Cairo, Tennessee, and so on.

american shiva.jpg (40.4 KiB) Viewed 17673 times

... hmm, interesting how Satan became associated with the pitchfork, I wonder if there's some connection? I know the horns that Satan is shown with began by trying to disassociate Christ's myth from preceding ones.

Depictions on coins which show Alexander as the "Horned God" in human form, originally associated with the Persian emperor which Alexander became, and he would one day return to unite all into one kingdom again (and bring peace & prosperity). The horns depict the Ram, the head of the flock, also associated with Aries - the protector (of the fields) and god of war.


The Christ myth replaced many similar ones. He is also God-become-man, the true king who would unite all and bring peace - and the cult of Alexander competed with that, hence the "demonisation" of the Horned God. Alexander's cult also merged with the cult of Mithra and Horus - whose story is even more similar to the Christian myth. Brahma > Krisna > Narayan is another take on an archetypal story that serves the psychological need.

Brahma > Krisna > Narayan is another take on an archetypal story that serves the psychological need.

The Brahma Kumari leadership feigns innocence and accuses their educated Sindhi peers of causing conflict with Lekhraj Kirpalani's cult claiming that it was due to their "purity".

Now, reading the old original material, we know that is entirely false and, indeed, it was the Bhaibund and others within the cult who left early that occupied the moral high ground.

Try and imagine how audacious and insulting it would have been to a Hindu community for a fairly uneducated, albeit gifted businessman, suddenly started claiming to be Brahma, Krishna and Narayan ... and "superior to the incorporeal god".

Bear in mind that up until 1955 at least, the cult was still Kirpalani centric and believe the "incorporeal god" they were just starting to perceive, to be an other aspect of Lekhraj Kirpalani and not a separate being.

Now consider Lekhraj Kirpalani as the BK Christ figure being used to usurp the position of all the old gods of India. "I am Brahma ... I am Vishnu ... I am Krishna ... I am Shiva". How outrageous, not to sane insane, is that?

I read another article about,

"How are religions born?"

It's widely believed, for example, either that religions must have a charismatic founder, a prophet figure, or that they are more or less self-conscious frauds perpetrated by a priestly class against the common people. This second version is clearly a secularised version of the Protestant history of the Reformation, and makes very little sense as a general theory. Obviously there have been examples of both types of religion formation. It's possible that Mormonism combines both, since a charismatic founder managed to create a social structure with huge rewards for the priesthood. But there are too many exceptions for these rules to be generally valid.

Parts of which resonated with me.

Ditto, there's a new book studying, 'The Invention of Religion' which I think will cast some light back on how things were in India before the British came and divided the people according to religions, thereby inventing Hinduism from where before there was just life and diversity.

The Invention of Religion in Japan by Jason Ananda Josephson

Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call "religion". There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this Western idea. In this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual, legal, and cultural changes that followed.

More than a tale of oppression or hegemony, Josephson’s account demonstrates that the process of articulating religion offered the Japanese state a valuable opportunity. In addition to carving out space for belief in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, Japanese officials excluded Shinto from the category. Instead, they enshrined it as a national ideology while relegating the popular practices of indigenous shamans and female mediums to the category of "superstitions" - and thus beyond the sphere of tolerance.

Josephson argues that the invention of religion in Japan was a politically charged, boundary-drawing exercise that not only extensively reclassified the inherited materials of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to lasting effect, but also reshaped, in subtle but significant ways, our own formulation of the concept of religion today. This ambitious and wide-ranging book contributes an important perspective to broader debates on the nature of religion, the secular, science, and superstition.

Something that continues to interest me is how the Brahma Kumaris are still, at core, a magical spiritualistic religion full of superstitions brewing up and enforcing their god concept ... and yet they claim to be more advanced, and more wise and enlightened, than all other religions ...

all for being led by male empowered female spirit mediums.

See also ...

The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion by Pascal Boyer

Why do people have religious ideas? And why those religious ideas? The main theme of Pascal Boyer's work is that important aspects of religious representations are constrained by universal properties of the human mind-brain.

Experimental results from developmental psychology, he says, can explain why certain religious representations are more likely to be acquired, stored, and transmitted by human minds. Considering these universal constraints, Boyer proposes an exciting new answer to the question of why similar religious representations are found in so many different cultures. His work will be widely discussed by cultural anthropologists, psychologists, and students of religion, history, and philosophy.

Beware religionists ... the atheists are out to understand you!