Many early heretical sects in Christianity regarded the god of the Old Testament as evil, but the church eventually supressed all of these and aligned itself with that god. As for god having a son, this is commonplace in Pagan mythologies so was hardly anything new.
Different ruling gods for different epochs is exactly the idea explored in Hamlet’s Mill by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, linked to the precession of the equinoxes.
It’s Judgment Day for all of those who worship and adore the God of Moses and Abraham.
You’re at the Pearly Gates. So, does it make any difference if you are a Christian, Muslim or Jew? After all, down here on planet Earth, any number of Christians and Muslims and Jews have been making life a living Hell for each other for centuries now.
So, doesn’t it ultimately come down to whether a God, the God, your God at Judgment Day takes that into account?
Doubtlessly the Old Testament Abrahamic God is evil in the sense of cruelty and petty vengeance. But the Bible is highly controversial and debated theologically for centuries. This debate results in the derivations of mainstream Religion: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.
What do you think about Monotheism? What is the reason you see as to why the Abrahamic ideologies believe they are praying or worshiping the same ‘God’, when, they clearly are not?
I think they clearly are, though, since he exhibits all the same characteristics, including jealousy, vengefulness, a desire for strict conformity to his law, a hatred, even fear, of women, and a tendency to use force to convert people, or kill them if they refuse. Add to this the fact that they all say they’re worshipping the same god, and its pretty obvious.
Yes, they claim that they are worshipping the same God, but as this thread demonstrates, most of those same followers cannot describe nor pinpoint characteristics or symbols of the god they claim to believe. So there’s a misconception. And when it comes to Abrahamic faiths, it is not what the follower believes inasmuch as their Priests, Rabbis, Imams, and holy men, who translate and represent Authority to them. The followers can’t go very far before perjuring themselves.
In Christianity, Christians idolize and idealize Jesus Christ as the “Son of God”, hypothetically.
In Islam, Prophet Muhammad is the herald and standard of belief.
So, is the Prophet the “man-himself”? Abrahamism then defaults to, hypothetically, the Old Testament Bible as the source of their beliefs and faith, which is a compendium of Authors. This tends to ignore the history and pantheism and polytheism of the Ancient world. So this is where the discrepancies really expose themselves.
If the followers don’t know what they’re talking about, and their Priestly authorities do not clarify and prove that authority, then anybody can do better immediately, by confronting any follower or authority on the spot. That is why I challenge you, or anybody, to demonstrate a representation of belief. The symbol is important, as it proves deeper beliefs underneath, that often go ‘beyond’ mere religiosity.
I don’t know about that. Christians claim to worship “The Son”, not necessarily “The Father”, which is Good and not Evil.
Furthermore, I know that any Abrahamic scholar would disagree with you about the nature of Jehovah’s “Evil”. For example, that when foreign armies are at your doorstep, you need a War god behind you. You need a scary motherfucker, to protect you. You need a merciless god, who will annihilate all enemies. Otherwise you, and your society, will be defeated and enslaved. This is simply playing Devil’s Advocate, but it is a standard counter-argument as to the Evil of God.
It’s a moot-point, to me, because I don’t necessarily believe the Abrahamic religions do in fact believe in the same ‘God’. They claim to, but I believe they disagree with themselves fundamentally.
It’s more likely that Monotheism is a sham. It is a poor attempt to bind the polytheism and pantheism of the Ancient World into the Bible, which is essentially, entirely Anti-Pagan.
Muslims regard Jesus as a great prophet, as indeed did many early branches of Christianity, rather than the son of god.
But yes, I agree that monotheism is cobbled together from Pagan mythology. Everything in Chrstianity, for example, including the ritual of symbolically drinking the blood of one’s god, and eating his body, can be traced to Pagan ideas current in the area at the time.
Yes but underlying the blood and wine are the early understanding of sacrifice. The need to atone, for the understood transgressions under that.
Eating and drinking were guaranteed by a pleased god.
That may be the connective strand keeping belief in the region of faith between pagan and early religious archytypes.
That’s a tough one biggy, but god looking down do not see sons, sons of man differently, because they are still trying to connect in the few thousand years that in. Gid’s humble estimation out of trillions raised to trillions of power & that top to trillions and that up to trillions of years, so let’s just round it up from here to eternity. ( should have said googleplex )
Whenever somebody approaches or confronts the Word of ‘God’, they receive a concept of some kind whether they are a theist or atheist.
Atheists tend to depend on or copy the Monotheistic dogma, because that is the most popular, prevalent, and dominating typology. The Monotheistic religions are as they are, because of proselytizing and spreading their faith through force and threat of violence. This is impressionable on the young, who then develop negative reactions to the mainline religions, especially Christianity in the West. This is a disservice because it slanders, perhaps more ‘Natural’ impressions of Divinity, which you and others call Pagan. Life has a bias toward the Negative, death, threats, violence, and pain because of evolution, and the survival instinct. The concept and threat of Hell are enough, for most, to believe or disbelieve, which then overlooks all the other important aspects of spirituality and mysticism.
Yes, I agree that monotheism has desacralised the numinous and divine qualities of the natural world, and has turned it into a commodity to be exploited. Atheism is the next logical step from monotheism. Monotheists reduce the number of gods down to one, so reducing them to zero is the only place left to go. Monotheism removes the sacred from the everyday world, and replaces it with dogma.
When I think of Divinity and Deities, I think of the highest or most superior qualities of existence that people can imagine. So Deity is a derivative of the Divine. Most Westerners are introduced to superheroes form a young age, most of which are based on Polytheism and the historical progression of the heroes of European history. The superheroes today are a form of Pagan-worshipping if you connect the terms to Thor or Zeus, for example. However, people tend to ignore the obvious on that point. So when any average person is asked about Divinity, they don’t have much to say, since it has already been denigrated and demeaned as ‘fictional nonsense’. Thus their ideal of Divinity, of a “greatest existence” is also demeaned. To me, it’s a cruel form of intentionally clipping or dumbing-down, like telling a child he/she is stupid all the time, the child will usually surrender to the identification.
Then, as an immediate example, you only need to search this forum a little bit, and you have theists or atheists bullying each-other as to their conception of Divinity and Deism, trying to force the matter.
This thread was a lure, to demonstrate the point. People have hidden ideals of what they believe about existence, at their core level. Most are afraid to answer, and unveil what they think and believe, because it exposes them too deeply. Most, simply do not have creative or imaginative ideals about existence. And they copy other people’s. So demonstrating what they believe, would unveil a part about themselves they are embarrassed about, or have already surrendered to the slander, cruelty, and abuse that they suffered as children – in the same fashion children are bullied with “going to Hell” if they disbelieve the Abrahamic Jehovah. Again, it is a slander.
Yes, there does indeed seem to be a direct progression from the hero gods of old, to modern superheroes, and this is often made explicit, by giving them the names of ancient deities, or in some other way using ancient mythology, for example, the Amazons. These are examples of thought-forms, where an entity receives power from the energy given by people. This may indeed be what gods were in the first place. One thing I’m pretty sure of, though, and that is that whatever the gods actually were, or are, they are bound to the earth, like all other entities that exist on it.
The Roman appropriation of the Hellenistic Greek Gods linked different gods to different planets in the solar system. So it’s not only Earth, but the other planets as well. I believe you are more connected to Earth because of your blindness. You cannot see the daylit or nighttime sky, where the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets reside. So they do not speak to you as immediately as Earth. From my impressions, Jupiter is the most powerful entity in our Solar System, and I believe, more powerful than Sol the Sun. It is not a coincidence that the Catholics linked Jupiter to Zeus, and the Jews linked Jove to Jupiter.
Yes, you may be right about that. Being blind has certainly affected how I interact with nature and the divine.
Linking gods to planets is also the origin of astrology, which became very popular in Rome from about the first century AD. It has also given us the names of the days of the week, and this system of correspondences is used in ceremonial magic.