07.+What+is+Intelligence+(February+2006) - Get a Free Blog

What is Intelligence? 122
them into doing everything they want, and gives them a little space to be
their own person, their own human being.
In short, what happened to their “beautiful relationship” was that two
“takers” mistook one another for “givers”, and when they finally figured
that out, they both ran off and tried to find another “giver” before it
was too late.
But many of us have suffered so much in our childhood, bullied by our
parents and so on, that we grow up seriously damaged, though because
we aren’t much different than those around us, who are also growing up
in an uncaring atmosphere, we think it’s normal when it’s really not.
And after years of sulks, pain and tears, or even just being neglected and
ignored and locked in our own little world, we are thrown out cruelly into
the big wider world of the school where we get bullied some more.
Even the teachers bully us, not only the other children, but the teachers
have got the gall to say they are “good people” and then they tell us about
this “God” whom they go to Church and worship every Sunday or
whenever, depending on the particular religious culture we find ourselves
trapped in.
So what we have in our society are an awful lot of damaged, unloved
people, and naturally when they have grown up in a living hell, how on
earth can they be persuaded that there is any kind of loving god?
Clearly therefore it seems to them, there is no justice in the Universe.
There is no benevolent being watching over them who cares (just like
their parents, you see) because otherwise it would never have let them
undergo all those tortures and trials.
And then we have the minority of people who grew up feeling loved.
They hear about this loving God, and even though there seem to be a few
logical problems with the theory, they think – “Great, a being that can
love me even greater than I am loved already!”
And of course, the fact that they have already been loved, had that feeling
of someone kind and powerful and benevolent watching over them (i.e. a
good parent), acts as evidence that such a being does, and should exist.