God

There is zero chance of me getting into an argument about which God is the true one nowadays. So, I’m going to have a look at two references to God. One new and one old. Let’s start with the old.

Human beings have been around for hundreds of thousands of years and we know that some form of religion was practised then, mainly from images, symbols and art. However, in around 4000 – 3000 BCE the area in what is now southern Iraq was developing the first city states and was known as Sumeria and that is where evidence of the first words written has been found, providing us archaeological evidence today of the gods they worshipped.

Of all the Sumerian deities who are attested in these very early tablets the one who is most certainly attested is Inanna. Let Rosie Lesso describe her:

Ishtar holds a special historical significance, as she is the first known deity for which we have written evidence. Early Mesopotamians (my heroes) called her Inanna, as seen in the now extinct language of cuneiform writing, the primary form of communication in the Ancient Near East.

Ishtar was the very first goddess of love. Mesopotamians described her in her many myths and poems as young and strikingly beautiful, with piercing, penetrating eyes....the ultimate power dresser, who applies make-up, jewellery and the most expensive clothing to enhance her appearance.

At the other end of the spectrum, Mesopotamians also associated Ishtar with the destructive actions of war....When preparing for battle, rulers and kings would call upon Ishtar, asking her to inflict suffering upon their enemies. Ishtar was also able to harness thunderstorms and unleash them on her victims, destroying crops and harvests. Her links with war tied Ishtar with the dishing out of justice, particularly punishment for those found guilty of crime.

Now for the new. I realise that most people are very familiar with the Higgs Boson but for the few who are not then here is an introduction.

The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field which is a scalar field with two neutral and two electrically charged components that form a complex doublet of the weak isospin SU(2) symmetry. Its "Mexican hat-shaped" potential leads it to take a nonzero value everywhere (including otherwise empty space), which breaks the weak isospin symmetry of the electroweak interaction and, via the Higgs mechanism, gives a rest mass to all massive elementary particles of the Standard Model, including the Higgs boson itself.

I’m sure that I don’t need to go on with any further explanation except to add that both the field and the boson are named after physicist Peter Higgs, who in 1964, along with five other scientists in three teams, proposed the Higgs mechanism, a way for some particles to acquire mass. Physicists from two of the three teams, Peter Higgs and François Englert, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013.

The Higgs boson is called the "God Particle" although the nickname has been criticised by many physicists (and clergy). It was named after the book by the physicist Leon Lederman: The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question? Published in 1993.

I realise that I’m going to have to go back to the first paragraph and actually make a comment. It seems to me that back at the dawn of written history deities could be male or female and in Hinduism and some other religions nowadays that is still the case. But in Western culture God is a male entity. The reason for that would have to be another blog.

Which leads me on to this poem:

Credo

I believe in God
Creator of heaven and earth,
In Zeus, King of the Gods, sky and air,
Son of Cronus, born of Rhea.
I believe in Jupiter
King of the Gods, sky and storm.
In Ra, the sun God.
In Toci, Goddess of Earth.
Rhiannon, Goddess of Moon.
I believe in Odin, King of the Gods
Son of Bestia and Borr.
I believe in the Trinity,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
In Brahma, the Supreme Deity.
In Allah, the one God.
I believe I am that I am.
In Nonak and Gurus.
I believe in Joseph Smith and angels,
In mediums and spirits.
I and I believe in God incarnate,
In Merlin and magic spells,
In faeries and magic glades.
I believe in Heaven’s Gate,
In the Solar Temple.
I believe in Dan Brown,
The communion of myths,
The force of mystery,
The power of words
The question of being
And the amen of knowledge.
The amen of knowledge.

First Published in ‘Acumen’ in May 2007

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.