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Pastoral Scene With the God of your Choice Casually Tossing a Bomb (an allegory of War)
Pastoral Scene With the God of your Choice Casually Tossing a Bomb (an allegory of War)
Oil on Panel
20x16"
2024


Although the Dutch philosopher Benedict de Spinoza believed God was everything, he believed that all the strife, violence and bigotry spawned by religion was due to man anthropomorphizing God. Mankind has always created its gods in their own image and likeness.
I was raised to believe in the tripartite Judeo-Christian God and thought the trinity was unique to Christianity. Eventually I realized that Christians appropriated this concept from the many trinitarian gods of the ancient world. Questioning what the persons in a current triadic god may be I concluded with greed, narcissism and dopamine hits, and suspected it had always been that way. The more intellectually abstract Buddhists summarized all this as delusion.
In my painting the dancing boys are as happy as can be because they experienced the enlightenment of knowing life is meaningless. They're creating their own meaning. At lower left is Eve recreating the greatest sin in Western Civilization, a woman seeking knowledge, and laughing at the misogyny of whoever created that folktale. Meanwhile delusion generated violence surrounds and threatens all. Cheers!