Every religion believes the other gods are wrong. Why were they created?
In Soviet Russia, gods create you!
Seriously, the things I’ve always heard are:
- The other gods are Satan (or whoever else is the bad guy in the “true” religion) in disguise
- The other gods are the True God in disguise
- The other gods are purely fictional attempts of primitive people to figure out the world, because they haven’t been taught about the True Religion yet.
Those of us who think all gods are false gods believe this is the answer – the world is a dangerous and wonderous place, and people feel more comfortable about it if they explain random chance as the manifestation of the will of someone they can placate – and thereby get his protection. Then, once the myths are established, they are promoted by the clergy who want to increase their temporal power, as well as those who truly believe and think they’re doing something noble by bringing others into the fold.
–Cliffy
Another explanation is that early Judaism, Zoroastrianism, etc. only considered their gods to have power over their tribe. When they got more power, they suddenly started ignoring the fact that their holy books made reference to other powers, with no explanation as to how they can cherry pick like that. They just did.
Thre real explanation (I know you don’t want to believe it, but here it is anyway)
First, people innocently tell their kids any old thing to make them shut up with the Why.
The kids, having never doubted their parents, believe it.
When the parents die, there is no one to ever clear things up again.
At each generation, the story grows and grows.
Well, thank goodness we resolved that.
You don’t think you might be oversimplifying things a tad?
Because the people who founded the religions thought they had the true answer as to who and/or what the gods were. What they thought all the other religion’s gods were was not important to them.
Not every religion believes that other gods are false- that is largely restricted to monotheists.
Simply put, most of these “false gods” are the gods that were there first. Before monotheism came it to vogue, most people practiced animistic religions that had room for a huge variety of gods- it’s one of the most obvious human impulses. Each tribe and area had it’s preferences, but generally one person’s gods were considered as “true” as any other person’s. And generally people didn’t care who other people worshiped.
Things changed a lot once monotheism came in to vogue.
Chances are that most prohibitions of “false gods” serve the dual purpose of shutting out outsiders and discouraging people from holding on to their old religions. Monotheism brought a lot more power to religious organizers, and it can be hard to maintain that power when some people are still running around worshipping random gods. And it can be hard to root out traditions that date back indefinitely. In time, churches discovered that it can be a lot easier to appropriate the old gods instead of fighting them- which is why so many Christian celebrations have direct connections to Pagen traditions (Easter fertility rights, yule traditions, etc.)
I can’t really add much to Revtim’s answer (from a Christian perspective), but I might take issue with the first point:
This, IMO, isn’t universally true, even if we can find unambiguous definitions of “religion” and “god”. Islam, for example, considers Jesus to be a prophet, although it worships the same god as Christianity; Hinduism (as I understand it, although I’m open to correction) regards each individual god as one particular manifestation or example of the universal Divinity (brahma). The Greeks and Romans were quite happy to identify the Egyptian gods with members of their own pantheon.
I’m also sure that a follower of the New Age/Wiccan/Pagan movement will be able to state their position far better than I can, but I doubt that they’d agree with the original statement.
A lot of early religions were henotheistic rather than monotheistic. They believed other gods existed but just thought their’s was the best. Judaism started that way. Other gods were quite literally demonized. Turning other gods into devils was easier than trying to deny their existence (originally, the problem with idolotry was not that those gods didn’t exist, but that they were “evil” usurpers as well as inconvenient competition, both politically and economically, for state religions like the Yahweh cult). More sophisticated explanations for other objects of worship now tend to center on the idea that the longing for God is innate in humans and that “false gods” are really just mistaken conceptions of the One True God.
I see.
Not really sure what perspective you’re coming from here - how would you describe your own faith, or lack of it?
I understand your point that religion is largely a social construct, and some atheist’s arguments are similar to yours - do you claim that all gods are false, and all get started this way?
The traditional Jewish perspective on the origin of idolatry is that people felt that G-d was too lofty to be addressed by lowly, Earth-bound people, and that celestial beings (either stars and constellations, or angels, or perhaps some conflation of the two, e.g., anthromorphization of the stars), acting as G-d’s servants, should be addressed by people instead. Generations later, this morphed into worship of these entities as powers in and of themselves, not merely servants whose powers derive from their master, i.e., G-d.
This, BTW, is why idolatry is such a bad thing in Judaism. It’s more than a mistake of fact, it’s a rejection of the idea that one can have a personal relationship with G-d himself, which is the essence of the covenant of Sinai.
Only monotheistic ones. Alexander the Great, who thought he was descended from the gods, had no trouble worshipping Persian gods also, and being married in a Persian ceremony. I got taught in Hebrew school that he accepted the Jewish god as valid also, which is why so many Jewish kids were named Alexander.
His tolerance was one reason he was able to hold together a large empire while off at war in other places.
The answer was given to me by God himself on a stone tablet, written in Greek, my first language.
Cool, then.
That’s probably the best explanation I have seen so far. I still have my doubts as to the origins of religious beliefs as being written of as “primitave man,” but the idea that God—which religions now see as universal—started as tribal in nature makes the most sense to me. Almost as if they saw the realm of the gods as being in a constant state of conflict similar to the earth.
Don’t you mean three tablets?
Would it wrong to interpret “thou shalt have no other gods before me” as a tacit recognition of the “other gods”? IOW, I’m your God, and even though there might be other gods, those gods are for other people.
Were the Jews of the time monotheists by our standards ? I thought that came later.
Some religions not only recognize, but embrace foreign gods. In Athens, they had altars to “The unknown god” everywhere, just incase there was a god out there that deserved worship and that they had missed.
http://www.pilgrimtours.com/greece/info/athens.htm
“Thus Pausanias and Philostratus, second-century A.D. writers, record altars dedicated to “the unknown god” as existing along the four-mile road from the port Piraeus to the city and elsewhere in the city itself (cf. v. 23). Pausanias, moreover, says the Athenians surpassed all other states in the attention that they paid to the worship of gods. Hence the city was crowded in every direction with temples, altars, and other sacred buildings…”
Which sorta lead to this:
http://www.faithandworship.com/Sermons/To_an_unknown_God.htm
"Acts 17: 22-31
So Paul stood up in front of the council and said:
People of Athens, I see that you are very religious. As I was going through your city and looking at the things you worship, I found an altar with the words, “To an Unknown God.” You worship this God, but you don’t really know him. So I want to tell you about him. This God made the world and everything in it. He is Lord of heaven and earth, and he doesn’t live in temples built by human hands. He doesn’t need help from anyone. He gives life, breath, and everything else to all people. From one person God made all nations who live on earth, and he decided when and where every nation would be."
As in “See, I know your Unknown God, and he is cooler than all your others gods. Be the first on your block to get the Unknown God!”