A demigod is the child of a god and a human. minor deity would be more appropriate.
By logic, monotheists can’t believe in other gods, the same way squares can’t be circles.
Knew it by heart JThunder, but thanks for asking. Did a play on it in church years ago. Didn’t get to be God because I wasn’t a guy.
Okay, I’m sorry I said, “you’re supposed to look it up”. It just seemed obvious to me. I agree, his soul wasn’t mentioned.
This is tedious, but here is the definition of challenge and contest. Also, just to get everything clear the synonyms(do you want me to define synonym) for competition are as follows:
Are we clear on all these words and now can discuss the real point? No matter what word you would like to call it, even if you call it a casual conversation went like this:
God: “Where’ve you been?”
Devil:“Hanging around on earth, just walking around.”
God: “Check out my guy Job, he’s one in a million, have you thought about him.”
Devil “So your saying Job isn’t afraid of anything? Haven’t you really made him rich? Protected him? Take away your protection and cause him to lose it all and he will curse you.”
God: “Have at it, he’s yours; but you cannot kill him.”
There is not much straining involved to see that this fits the definition of a challenge, contest, competition or whatever you need to call it. The thing is God gave the devil permission to cause Job grief, to prove that Job was loyal to him. I don’t know whether this was an actual event or a parable and I’m not making some sort of moral judgement on it?
There is no “burden of proof”, since there is no certain answer. I was just positing that since we don’t have a particularly good definition of what a god or God really is, we can’t say there aren’t more. The “son’s of God” could have been angels, other god’s, etc.
A challenge is a contest. God participated, that makes him a contestant.
Gee, good point. I can’t prove Satan is a god, I can’t prove angels aren’t gods, I can’t prove we aren’t gods, because of our immortal soul. I can’t prove God is a god, but I believe that to be true.
Cite?
My only contention on this is it’s pretty obvious, going by the Bible that God is not alone and there are other creatures, things that we are unable to define. If you believe in God, you can’t discount the chance that there could be other gods. This is not me somehow blaspheming God and saying he’s not special as I’m sure it seems like. This other “undefined” world/heaven seems pretty busy and we can’t define it’s population. The OP is if there can be one, why can’t there be more and I don’t see any reason why there can’t be.
Thanks. I’ve never heard it put that way before. So do you believe the Bible is more “lesson” than “literal”?
So God was just sending him out on a job? Sorry, I’m not trying to be irreverent, seems to happen by itself. 
I was taught that the devil was a fallen angel, but angel was never defined in anything but the loosist terms; as in no real explanation of what they were. So what the devil does is basically entrapment? And God wants him to do this because…? I was taught that generally the devil was a force run amok, not guided by God? I am letting go of a lot of what I was taught, but it’s still there.
IWLN:
I believe it’s literal, but that G-d’s actions and commandments are done/said in ways that we are intended to draw lessons from them as well.
For example, are you familiar at all with the book of Ezekiel? G-d tells the prophet Ezekiel several times to perform certain actions so that the people will learn lessons from his examples.
Well, we believers believe that nothing just “happens by itself”. 
That is Christian theology, as seen through the works of Milton and Dante. The Old Testament…of which Job is part…is the basis for Jewish theology.
Essentially, celestial automatons. (In Jewish theology, that is).
I suppose you could call it that…although I wouldn’t necessarily attach to it all the nuances that that word carries in the American legal system.
Because the only way to maximize the potential of the human soul is through the exercise of free will under trying conditions.
Chaim Mattis Keller
IWLN-
The Bible, according to the Jewish perspective (which is where cmkeller was coming from, as he said in his post), is both literal and lesson. It is, on the surface, a story, which actually happened to the people described at the time. It is also a guide by which to live, and everything in it can be taken on a deeper level. The first five books, written by G-d personally, can be (and sometimes is) dissected on the single letter level in order to extract meaning. Prophets, of which the content but not the exact wording was set by G-d, can be analyzed and taken deeper, but not quite to that extent.
I rather doubt that, since you insisted that God and Satan were vying for Job’s soul. This suggest that you did not know it by heart, contrary to your claim.
Which demonstrates that you shouldn’t be telling people to “look it up” if you haven’t done the same.
Tedious and IRRELEVANT. Your claim was that God was engaged in a contest with Satan. (NOT a mere challenge. A contest.) According to your own definition, a contest involves a struggle between two rivals. There was no struggle. Satan levelled an accusation, and Yahweh said, “You’re wrong. Go ahead; see for yourself.” No struggle there.
Again, irrelevant. There was no competition between God and Satan. ERGO, citing synonyms for “competition” is a pointless exercise in futility. It amounts to throwing words at your opponent, in the hope that these words will somehow resemble an argument. They do not.
You. Have. No. Case. Here. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Satan and God were locked in battle for Job’s soul. There is also no reason to consider this story to be a “contest” in any form, shape or fashion, especially since God did nothing but sit back and watch as Satan proved himself wrong.
And even if they did, this STILL would do nothing to prove that Satan is a god. It merely shows that he levelled an accusation against Yahweh, and humiliated himself in the end. This entire argument of yours (and I use the term loosely!) is a colossal red herring.
I can accept that there life-long lessons to be learned. I have a really hard time with the literal part, though. A lot of it doesn’t seem “reasonable” and consistant. Compound that with the problem that, my previous religion interprets the Bible very differently from yours and apparently from other people’s. Hard to know what to believe. Ezekiel tells you what is vision, prophecy or parable. That’s kind of reassuring to know.
Ouch! I agree. I’m counting on God to have a sense of humor or I’m going to be scrubbing those pearly gates for quite awhile before he lets me use them.:eek: Maybe I’ll just have to try harder, hmm…novel thought.
That’s all I really know. Where are you taught that the devil comes from or what is he? I don’t believe a lot of what I was taught, but it’s hard to let go of it too.
Why couldn’t he have given us a “better” soul, so it wouldn’t be so “trying” some times? Okay, that wasn’t really a question. I get that part, I guess. I guess it’s a safe bet to assume you believe there’s only one God.
Do you think it just may be possible that my church, which was Christian, taught the story differently than yours? Maybe with a different interpretation?
I still see no difference between competing, which was my original word and a challenge or a contest. Doesn’t matter, the bottom line is God gave the devil permission to torment Job.
God allowed it to happen and actually was the one who brought Job’s name up. That wasn’t an oversight on God’s part. He meant for the struggle to happen. Whether it was a struggle between good and evil or just Job’s personal struggle. It was intentional. The first person I’ve ever heard make an attempt to explain why, was cmkeller. First time in my life, actually. IMHO, you spend too much time telling me in bold why I’m wrong and miss the opportunity to tell me what you believe is right. To me debating an issue means learning from it. I don’t care if I win, only if I get something out of it. If I offended you, I’m sorry and if you need to win, you can do a victory dance now.
Bringing up Satan wasn’t it red herring. It was an attempt to show that there are many other “supernatural” beings and I don’t feel that we can state, without making huge assumptions, that there are no other gods. I personally don’t believe there are, but have no reasonable way to back that up. I’m trying to be more realistic about that.
The Bible defines many Gods as the norm.
Genesis has God quoted as, “Lets us make man in our image”.
In many instances God is admonishing the Jews to have “no other god befiore” and tha “I am a jealous God” [jealous of other Gods]. The Bible mentions in the days of the Neflim, plural for “Gods” and “when the sons of God took the daughters of men as wives”
You will see a vairety of interpretations drastically trying to maintain the status quo by arguing that the “us” just mentioned was the ‘trinity speaking’, or the multiple pesonality referring to herself as “us”.
What do you think all that warring that God had the Jews doing when they went slashing through their life in a constant state of violence, when war was the norm? Gods have brothers and sisters too, you know, that fight.
And observe the total lack of reference to the sheer gross brutality these Gods meted out to each other. Now, we never hear the preacher talking of God ordering the Jews to “kill every many , women and child” in a city.
IWLN:
Well, the appearance of consistency or lack thereof depends in large part on how you were taught. Growing up as an Orthodox Jew, my teachers have always taught the traditional interpretations alongside the text, and what emerged was a picture of the Bible as a model of consistency.
As far as “rational” goes, well, I guess that’s just the nature of the material, all miracles and G-d and stuff. While I (obviously) don’t think of it as irrational to believe in, some people have a tougher time accepting such things than others.
We’re taught that the devil…or Satan, or whatever you wish to call him…is an angel, an actual servant of G-d like all the other angels. He merely serves a function that we humans associate with our own evil. But he himself is not an evil being, and does not act independent of G-d or in opposition to G-d.
Yup.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Mhernan, have you read all the preceding posts? These points have already been forwarded. And it’s not at all clear that the texts you cite imply the real existence of multiple gods.
The Bible was written, IIRC, by a people who considered themselves unique in their monotheism. They were not advocating the importance of their god over others; they maintained that the very existence of other gods was a fiction.
But were they ALWAYS monotheists or did that only become codified at around the time of the exile, as I recall reading somewhere.
I think the first documented monotheistic religion was the cult of Aton in Egipt. The Hebrews probably got the idea during their permanence in that country.
I read a long time ago, so I can’t quote, that a good part of the Book of Proverbs is a translation of Egiptian originals.
Some of the Psalms sound quite a bit like the prayers Akhenaton wrote, too, but that’s definitely NOT one to bring up at church!
You could bring it up in my parish and the priest would say “got a quote on that, my son”, and if you REALLY want to talk about it, he’ll oblige.
There is a tendency in the SDMD to portray clegry as fearful ignorants who can’t answer a simple question which looks contradictory to their faith (although there are a number that are, for sure). I imagine many are tired of smart asses trying to annoy them with “why doesn’t the bible mention radioactivity?” and not really trying to engage in intelligent dialogue.
In the end the OP question is a bit like asking "Why does the one-forward-pass rule in American football allow only one forward pass?", because if it didn’t it would be called the two-forward-pass rule . Monotheists cannot belive there is more than one god because that would make them politheists
> Any being with powers that defy the laws of nature is, by
> definition a god, or at least a demigod.
Unfortunately, we really can’t be sure that we know all the laws of nature. I could bring in my favorite magician and have him make a red rubber ball disappear into thin air. If you didn’t know that he use sleight of hand, you’d be forced to conclude that he used supernatural powers and, therefore, must be a god.
But, when you learn a little more about the laws of nature and discover how he did the trick, you’d have to retract your conclusion that he was a god.
Similarly, if I simply told you that I saw a man do something supernatural, but you didn’t see it for yourself, you would be perfectly justified in doubting that this man was a god.
In any case, what supernatural powers (i.e., things outside the laws of nature) have you personally seen an entity do that would lead you to conclude that He is a god?
I hear people say that the birth of a child is proof of God or that their mother recovered from cancer is proof. I counter that these events are perfectly natural events wholly within the laws of nature.
Dropzone-
The Jews were monotheistic since the time of Abraham. They just weren’t a formal religion. Until the Exodus from Egypt, religion was fairly simple: Believe in G-d. If he appears to you, do what he says. Be a generally good person. After the Exodus, which is around the time the Bible begins referring to the people as a nation, they are asked: Once and for all, do you want to do this or not? They’re given the option by G-d to accept or reject it all. That’s when it become an organized religion, which is probably what you were thinking of when you said:
-quote-
“did that only become codified at around the time of the exile, as I recall reading somewhere.”
But unless you count before Abraham, when there weren’t really any monotheists (or Jews, for that matter), Jews were always monotheistic.
Okay, Rodrigo, that’s a neat bit of semantic gamesmanship. But it completely avoids the intent of the OP. All fun and games aside, let’s re-phrase the OP’s question: “monotheists, why are you not Polytheists?” Or, “those of you who believe in only one god, why have you stopped with only one?”
Most modern Christians don’t believe in one God, really. They believe in a gob of god spawn. His son, the son’s mother, the saints, the “holy spirit”, angels, demons, devils, prophets, etc.
I would even posit that most Christians don’t really worship (Jehovah) God, but in fact have raised a man above God and equate him through some fancy syllogism to God…hence the triune God. I would say that this alone makes it an impossibility that Christians are truly monotheistic. Instead they violate the commandment to have no other God before me with apologetics.
Yes but the prohibition to have no other gods is a recognition of a pluraity of Gods. The admonition was a demand issued to keep the flock from fleeing and served no other purpose. Is a monotheist a believer in the existence of a pluraity of Gods, or is it a worshiper of one of many Gods?
Most Christians are habitual and unable to see the noose. Talking about Jehovah as order the slaughter of "every man, wioman and child " of the trarget city does not bring happy faces . God is infintely good etc, almost completely de humanised