Church of Azazel > Beliefs & principles > Post-Copernican natural theology
Post-Copernican natural theology
by Diane Vera
Copyright © 2004 by the Church of Azazel. All rights reserved.
Before the astronomer Copernicus (1473 to 1543) discovered that the Earth revolves around the sun, most people assumed that the Earth was the center of the universe. Therefore, many people assumed that both the Earth itself and the humans living on it would be a central focus of the attention of all gods, including even the ultimate cosmic God.Not everyone assumed this. Even back then, there were many who realized that humans are ultimately insignificant, and that the cosmic God is highly unlikely to take much direct personal interest in us humans as individuals. In many ancient polytheisms, the highest gods are thought to be remote and impersonal. Only the lesser gods are thought to have a personal interest in humans. For example, in the Yoruba pantheon, Obatala is the highest of the gods concerned with human affaris, but is not the highest god.
But Christians and verious other people did assume that the entire universe was created with humans in mind, either for our benefit or to our detriment.
Christians believe that their allegedly cosmic God is "all-Good" in some sense meaningful to humans, and that their allegedly cosmic God is interested in micromanaging human morality.
On the other hand, the ancient Gnostics, observing Nature's many nasty features, concluded that the universe must have been created by an evil god, the Demiurge, for the purpose of trapping human souls in matter.
We now know that the Earth is not the center of the universe. Many later scientific discoveries, too, further drive home the insignificance of humans in the cosmic scheme of things. The Earth is but a speck of dust in the cosmos. We humans have lived on this Earth for only a very short time, compared to the age of the Earth. And we have discovered the role of randomness and chaos in many, many of Nature's mechanisms.
Even before Copernicus, there was plenty of reason not to believe that the cosmic God has much direct personal interest in the affairs of humans as individuals. The whole way that life on Earth operates, with nearly all living things feeding on other living things, does not suggest a "moral" God, or a God who cares about individual creatures. Nothing in Nature suggests a personal Creator God who desires a personal relationship with humans as individuals.
If indeed there is a cosmic God, then said God probably does not desire a personal relationship with humans. Both deism and pantheism make a lot more sense than Christian-style theism.
On the other hand, any god who does desire a personal relationship with humans is probably not the cosmic God. If the entity whom Christians pray to is at all real, in any sense, then he is, most likely, not the true cosmic God, but only a much lesser deity, existing only on a much, much smaller-than-cosmic scale.
We of the Church of Azazel believe in the likely existence of many non-cosmic Gods, some of whom who have formed symbiotic relationships with people, both as individuals and as groups. All the gods that people pray to are, in fact, non-cosmic, if indeed they exist at all.
Some of us in the Church of Azazel may also believe in an impersonal cosmic God, who may be viewed in either deistic or pantheistic terms.
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