We need a liitle Czarcasm share here. What deity do you believe in?
None. I am seeking understanding and knowledge.
There is therapy for that.
No, one God, one face. But we see through the glass darkly. It’s more like the blind men and the elephant.
Thank you for clarifying.
What’s you take on Ganesha?
A friend reminded me that I’d once used this analogy:
If you’re climbing a mountain, the path you’re on may get you to the top. Someone else may be climbing the mountain via a different path — that doesn’t mean they won’t get to the top. Doesn’t mean they’ll only get to the top if they switch to your path at some point along the way, either.
I believe that there is a single Supreme Being, “God”, whom Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship, though with varying degrees of accuracy.
In addition, there is a vast multitude of powerful-yet-finite supernatural beings, which one might call “gods” or “angels”. Some of them are good, and some of them are evil.
The various gods of pagan mythology could be any combination of the following:
- Misunderstandings of the Supreme Being.
- Misunderstandings of good angels.
- Misunderstandings of evil angels.
- Misunderstandings of aliens.
- Purely fictional creations.
I don’t presume to know which case is true for any given deity.
Before ‘god’ there were a bunch of deities, what happened to the Roman and Greek gods? Did they suddenly give up? Deities, mother nature. Don’t ever f with mother nature.
Thank you for going into detail.
You didn’t read his post.
I believe that any God worthy of being a God cannot be comprehended by any one. But a lot of us try anyway.
If there is a first cause (beyond the realm of cause & effect), that Cause cannot be comprehended by us because then it would just be some guy in the sky which doesn’t make sense. The best explanations I’ve come across for God (mean the most to me) are the No-thing of pseudo Dionysius, I also like the Islamic mystical approach of contemplating the names or qualities of God (Allah) knowing that one cannot comprehend the deity.
So I’m a religious agnostic.
As far as all other deities/beliefs, I have no reason to place more or less credence on them than on my own understanding (which is to say, not understanding). I mean, if you start at the point that no one can comprehend God, then it becomes silly to say well you comprehend even less than I do (zero comprehension vs. zero comprehension).
My position is probably not very well-explained. It’s certainly a wussy (gutless?) approach, but an honest one nevertheless!
And then you went and bollocksed it all up by saying, “THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME!” :mad:
So wait, you’re saying that Gods created by Man are the Gods who created Man because Men are children of God and therefore created by…ow, think my head just exploded.
SUPER confusing for the blind men.
You almost got it, then like all the mortals right at that very moment that they would have achieved enlightenment the head pops off.
I think I need to send a letter to quality control and wait for human V2.0 (I think that one is due out by the end of the year anyway).
Are you defining “pagan” as “religions other than my own” in this context?
I don’t know about “most” religions. Some religions posit a single Creator, some don’t, and some can be interpreted either way. Anyone who believes that there is a single Creator, and worships that Creator, is worshiping the same God that I am.
Now, most people believe various other things about that entity, aside from that e created the Universe. Some of these beliefs might be correct, and some of them are undoubtedly incorrect, so they’re not all equal. But we mortals can’t necessarily tell which of those beliefs are correct or incorrect. And these beliefs might be based on actual manifestations of the Creator, or they might be based on misinterpretation or human imagination, but again, we can’t necessarily tell the difference.
Not really. If that’s the way the ancient Jews could relate to a God best, why wouldn’t God say that?
I am an agnostic polytheist.
This means, I have a set of personal gods that I believe in, but I’m prepared to be wrong, since I have no evidence other than literature and emotions. Plus, since I selected the set myself, I know there’s already major inconsistencies.
I am prepared to believe in all gods, but also that their followers get some details wrong. It’s not possible that both the Abrahamic God and Apollo are exactly as described, so I tend to think “Jews etc. got the monotheistic part wrong, and Greeks got various other aspects wrong.”
I’m also aware that religion is not science, nor a substitute for science, and so myths are neither factual nor distortions or misunderstandings of facts (contrary to popular beliefs on this board). So they’re really terrible sources for accessing empirical knowledge, and as others have mentioned culture plays a huge part in how we see them.
TL, DR version: I don’t believe all gods are one, but I do believe that all gods exist—just not necessarily as described.
Given that, it’s hard to believe the gods care terribly much when we get it wrong.
But doesn’t that imply that the Jews created their own God, instead of the other way around? As in the words of Voltaire, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” Or, as I said in the prior thread: “All Gods are imaginary, and imagination creates [this type of] reality.”
My point is, it’s pointless to disbelieve in anyone else’s God, because the mere act of belief itself is what creates said God. That’s the genesis of all Gods in religion and mythology, in a nutshell. And the only way to destroy any particular God is to destroy any and all belief in that God, one mind at a time. Not an easy task, is it?