While I’m unable to believe some of the stories of my traditional Judeo-Christian Bible. I’m more inclined to believe stories of the gods arguing with each other about our human affairs, like in the Illiad. After all, Zeus informed Hera, his own wife and sister, and his own daughter Athena, to stay out of the affair during the Trojan War “haughty bitches” he called them - both goddesses favored the Greeks.
So, the Epicurians, are wrong to believe the gods are distant and unconcerned with us, and wrong in believing an afterlife “eschews” one’s tranquility (Ataraxia) in “real” life. But I do grant sometimes it appears the gods have abandoned us and wonder if they really care at all. But what I admire most about ancient Greek mythology, are the limitations and shortcomings of the gods, their weaknesses, their anger, their joy, their sorrows, their love; the gods were, as the late Ray Harryhausen referred to them as “big people.”
And loony as all get out. I’ve actually cozied up to the idea of a loony god, or a god that has a loony streak. It is said we’re made in the image of god, and humans certainly are loony, and have a loony streak.
Perhaps gods exist if we think they do and a great mass of us also think they do, for then even as metaphors they are making an impact upon our lives. If we don’t think they do then we have no way of correlating what affect they may or may not have, we could be reading the same informations in a different light.
On the other hand; is reality vast and complex enough for such things to exist, to make them real or indeed to make them manifest upon request! Indeed i think it is capable of that and much more, i don’t see any limits to that.
If I imagine myself as having wings and flapping them, would i have the capacity to scoop myself up and fly over to you? Would I be able to make it across that big, big, big pond? Could I manifest that kind of reality into existence?
But wouldn’t you say that this is actually an attribute of god that one could accept? Looniness?
I hear it said that a bit of it is necessary to survive in this world. Would you agree?
And that ^^^ is just how it is done - recreating a god in our own image - the projector focuses on something and shows itself as it sees it. But maybe it isn’t the projector it is the lens from which we see - and the projector within sends out the image of god. We have all of these different images of a god strewn all over the place.
But there is probably a far deeper meaning to and explanation for why we see a god as being loony. It’s probably because we don’t have all the answers - there are pieces to the puzzle missing.
Great point AD. And I might add that god or the gods come to look loony when we turn them back on us. Like for examples, celibate priests, women wearing Burkas, and such things as, the worship of The Holy Foreskin. It’s when the gods we project turn back to control us that god(s) appears loony. Perhaps more accurately, we should say loopy … as it’s a projection that loops back.
Welcome Chimpeyes. I was a big fan of Harryhausen when I was a kid. Monsters should always move like his did. It was hyperreal.
Heraclitus demythologized the principle embodied in the gods in the principle that the oppositional processes produce eris i.e. strife. He hypothesized that the apparently stable state, dikê, or “justice,” is a harmony of them. “We must know that war (polemos) is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being through strife necessarily.” [Wikipedia] We do a lot of polemos here.
God is the human element the conscience that wants to cleanse, god is a genetic map, god is evolution of what we developed to be called the soul, god is struggling to get out, god wants to be unashamed, it wants to play fair, it wants to be good and keep the ten commandments,god wants us to elevate beyond mere animals and forgive our trespasses, god doesent want us to kill, god loves our children, if it wasn’t for god how would we pass down our love for each other, we could easily forget what love is, god is love and where love is there is no fear.
Yes! Jesus noted that the opposite of love is not hate; it is fear. “Perfect love casts out all fear.” Carnel love is the battleground of fearful egos. Caritas brings peace.
our gods have to do with our ancestors and/or nature…they need to be bigger than us or they don’t work…
examples—father,mother,ghost,…or… sun,rain,earth
Irrational question, how should we know?
So you say that fairytales are real?
So we are being gifted with high technology, we have life saving medicine, surgery, we have cars, trains and planes, we can go buy cheap stuff in the supermarket, we have no high way bandits (well, not so many these days), we have wonderful internet, and all other kinds of wonderful inventions.
How hasn’t we been blessed with all these gifts? Yet i hear christians whine all the time, and want more and a personal assistant in God.
