One issue that should be considered is the definition of the word “god.”
If you define it as “a non-material being not subject to the forces of time and entropy and possessing various supernatural abilities,” then yes, there are many gods in Christianity.
If you define “god” as “the uncreated and sovereign creator and ruler of the cosmos” then there’s only one.
But you should ignore kanicbird for reasons explained here.
Your cite doesn’t address the quoted cite.
I’d be interested in a more comprehensive post on the subject.
I’ve only ever encountered that theory in Graves’ novel and I don’t know if it was original with him or what (other than that passage in Ezekiel) he based it on.
So, twice today, on two different threads I hear I worship the anti-christ being an Atheist. And “demons and men are gods.”
By this logic (or lack of), I can say that Satan is the one who wrote the bible, the most non-sensical book in the history of mankind, and through morbid curiosity, a disgusting murder scene makes the victim a savior.
Substitute satan for god in your last statement, and my assessment is true!
Of course, since “men are gods”, Locriangod declares all belief to be bupkus.
Sheeesh, and to think I helped defend you in the Pit. The only way this argument could make sense is if you’re reading the St. kanicbird version of the bible.
A spirit of the Antichrist, as there are many it is a general category:
It comes across to me that Kanicbird’s God is not a very good being he makes his god closer to Satan, He gives Satan and Demons a lot of power and seems obsessed with Demons and evil spirits.
Kanicbird does not seem to have (or worship) the God most Christians worship, Polycarp, Tomdebb, and other Christians, have a God that is loving and understanding of the human weaknesses.
Kanicbird’s god does not seem to care if one of his children are devoured by a monster as long as he gets his own way.
I do not think Kanicbird worships the Christian God but one of his own making.
“Thou shalt have no other Gods before me” comes from the Old Testament so it isn’t a particularly Christian thing so much as it covers at least two Abrahamic religions (I don’t know if that particular phrase is used in Islam). Unlike Christianity, Judaism was not a universal religion it was a tribal religion meant for one specific group of people. God made a universal covenant with Adam, he made one with Noah (not flooding the world ever again), but later he made a specific covenant with Abraham and his people (circumcision).
Then there’s the evidence from Exodus that the Gods of Egypt have actual powers. So it would appear as though other gods are recognized in the Old Testament. It’s just that the Hebrew God is meant for the people of Abraham.
In the New Testament (Matthew I think) you can find arguments over whether Christianity was meant for the people of Abraham or for the gentiles. Ultimately it was decided that one did not have to follow the laws of Abraham (circumcised) to be a Christian.
Odesio
I don’t think they sidestep the issue at all. They flatly declare that there are no other gods.
Saying “You shall have no other gods before me” is not a tacit admission that other deities exist. Rather, it is a command not to worship any other deities, whether they exist or not.
So if I underztand that the idea of the Good God and his angels vs. the Bad God and his demons is an element of Zoroastrianism, not Christianity, then that makes you a Zoroastrian, not a Christian? Who gets to make those definitions? And why them?
Tell me, kanicbird, are you a sect of one, or do your interpretations of Scripture reflect the doctrines of some known denomination?
I have to admit, demonic evangelist sounds like a really cool job title.
The business cards alone would be pure liquid awesome.
I’m not sure how the pitch goes though, once you ring someone’s door bell.
“Hello sir, have you heard the good word about Azaziel?”
Deuteronomy 7 has a bunch of interesting stuff regarding ‘other gods’, the general theme being (in my interpretation) that they should be regarded at best as a waste of time.
“Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire.”
This goes right along with what’s said in Exodus 34:14; “For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God”.
Also from Deuteronomy 7;
“16 You must destroy all the peoples the LORD your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you.”
None of this suggests that ‘other gods’ exist of course; just that God doesn’t want you worshiping them either because;
a) He didn’t bother creating us all just for someone else to get the credit,
b) If they don’t exist you’re wasting your time, time that should be spent following God.
c) Worship of other gods may well involve things forbidden by God, so best to destroy them to make sure.
Yep…
When you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.
All of religion is belief; there is only faith. Whether one’s belief falls on one side or the other of the fence is irrelevant. One can be an atheist and have nothing to say about anyone’s faith just as one can be a Christian and have nothing to say about anyone’s faith.
As well both sides can proselytize, witness, preach, recruit and condemn with fervor equal to their levels of faith.
When looked upon without bias, someone who is adamant and outspoken as an athiest is the same as someone who is adamant and outspoken as a thiest; only the direction of the faith has changed, not the intensity.
There are many “gods”, some of them supernatural and some of them quite material. There are many ways to put things before God in life, praying to Zuul or preaching that Jesus never existed are only a couple.
OK, so I was almost with you here: it is all about faith.
Riffing from that, though, and this might be old hat around here: my personal operating definition of the term “faith” is that it refers to the hedge factor/glue/stuffing/ectoplasm/magic/marshmallow fluff we use to caulk in the gaps between that which we choose or find ourselves compelled to believe, and that which we can empirically prove to be true. Faith is the stuff that you can’t “know”, you can only know. It can’t be proven or disproven: you have it or you don’t, and it makes all the difference.
Using this definition, it’s evident that while it takes a good deal of faith to believe in a God, it also requires a modicum of faith to believe in human kindness, or capitalism, or karma, or romantic love, or Africa, or that you ever really came down from that harsh acid trip that one time, or that you are not just a disembodied brain floating in a vat of goo in some experimental alien laboratory circling Planet Ix. Every belief, no matter how probable, requires at least a mote of faith, simply because of our limited faculties as human beings. We are not omnipotent, and even if we were, how would we know we weren’t merely fooling ourselves?
But a value can be assigned to the sheer quantity of faith required to shore up a given belief system. My faith that the sun will rise tomorrow morning is a much less costly wager, given the evidence and precedence at hand, than another person’s faith that there is an invisible pink unicorn in the sky who will grant wishes when you sing campfire songs to it. Thus I would argue that the intensity is absolutely intrinsic to your argument, and that it is not that same in each direction. An atheist, who attempts to restrict his worldview and faith to that which can be evidenced empirically while avoiding more mystical and teleological speculations, expends considerably less faith to shore up his argument than a religious person who uses faith as the fundament of his belief structure. It’s not an equivalent dependency on faith on either side of the fence: it’s foundation versus spackling.
This is true. And Pascal’s Wager has many lessons.
But it offers no grounds to choose between, say, Catholicism and Islam.
It is a fact that the sun doesn’t rise, one can believe this, but the truth is the earth turns, and so it seems that in the sun rises, or sets. The sun is the center of our solar system not the earth as people believed many years ago.
There is the father ,the son and the holy ghost. They try to work around that with a blessed trinity explanation that falls totally flat. Then there are lots of angels with supernatural powers. They are clearly gods. Then the devil and his minions . The devil has the power to stand up to and maybe defeat him. If that is not a god ,I wonder what is? Then people pray to the Virgin Mary. Why, if she is not a god? The Christians are not monotheists.
Some people pray to Mary to ask Jesus (or the Father) for them, just like some people ask others to pray for them in times of need. They feel that Mary is closer to God (or Jesus) so she acts as an intercessor for them.