“A god is the idea of a god. The idea of a god is a god.”
De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: A god is the idea of a god. The idea of a god is a god. The idea of Glycon is Glycon, if I can enhance that idea with an anaconda and a speaking tube, fair enough. I am unlikely to start believing that this glove puppet created the universe. It’s a fiction, all gods are fiction. It’s just that I happen to think that fiction’s real. Or that it has its own reality, that is just as valid as ours. I happen to believe that most of the important things in the material world start out as fiction. That everything around us was once fiction – before there was the table there was the idea of a table, and the idea of a table before tables was fiction. This is the most important world, the world of fictional things. That’s the world where all this starts.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Alan Moore 274
English writer primarily known for his work in comic books 1953Related quotes
“Truth is the agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God.”
“The idea of God is an interpretation of experience.”
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
“There's a huge difference between a good idea and a God-inspired idea.”
It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)
“Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.”
“Where do ideas go? They go into the memory of God.”
“Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons.”
As quoted in Life of Pythagoras (c. 300) by Iamblichus of Chalcis, as translated by Thomas Taylor (1818)
Variants:
Number rules the universe.
As quoted in The Story of a Number (1905) by E. Maor; also in Comic Sections (1993) by Desmond MacHale
“All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.”
ibid., chap. 30