“Anything less would be uncivilized” and unnoticed?

The gospel according to Aristotle:

“Men create the gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.”

What of the beliefs that God is represented in other life forms?

What of the belief that man was created in the form of God?

That Aristotle would ponder something so obvious is incredible. This man of great intellect is asking his audience to consider how mankind projects himself into the deities that he worships and the religious expression he pursues. This is obvious.

Obvious to be true in his culture.

Obvious to be false for other cultures and sub-cultures.

One only has to consider the religious landscape of the world to understand the bold ethnocentricity of Aristotle’s “civilized” thought. Were all the other religious strata and substrata outside of his culture unworthy to be considered and he formulated his thought?

There are at least three categories of cultural imaging to be considered:

First, some create gods in the images other than their own. It is undeniable that other cultures have created God with the images of animals, plants, or even a perfectly balanced nothingness of nirvana. This reality is not addressed in Aristotle’s sophistry.

Second, some do create gods in their own image. This is well stated by this philosopher as he expounds on the crafting of religion in his own culture and considers the fickle nature of the residents on Mt. Olympus. Within in this cultural context, as well as others, this is quite true.

Third, some consider mankind to be created in the image of an invisible God. Though, there is considerable debate as to what this IS, some have written about what it INVOLVES. I am not so sure what the image is because I struggle with imagining that which is immaterial. But I am quite confident that the image involves a series of relationships that places mankind in proper perspective with all of reality, both material and immaterial. Though this image is not physical, it does not remain unnoticed.

Suffice to say, the task of justifying Aristotle’s statement in a way that is both culturally aware and theologically accurate is well beyond my philosophic abilities.

Perhaps, it was an error in his thought.

An error so glaring that its expression in a civilized culture would go unnoticed only if such a culture assumed the rest of the world to be barbaric.