Journal eglamkowski's Journal: Religion 14
Ok, having a keen interest in history, having read a number of religious books (if only partially - Old Testament, New Testament, Koran, Tao Te Ching, et al.), and having been patiently observant through my life, I wish to make some observations and offer some random ideas as regards religion. This is obviously all just personal, and is my attempt match facts to possible realities. While I would very much encourage discussion, please no flames or trolling.
First off, it seems improbable to me there could possibly be one eternal omnipotent God. Why would such a God not only keep himself hidden from humanity for so long (at least several thousand years possibly a lot more, depending on what you believe), but allow us to create false idols and worship other "gods"? It is possible that such "gods" were really just angels or "assistants" to God, and thus such worship was marginally tolerated, but then how is that, for all practical purposes, different from any poly-theistic religion?
No, the fact is, in ancient times, every tribe had their own god or gods. Monotheism didn't appear for a very long time (if ever). This suggests one of several possibilities:
1. There really are that many gods, but they are not really immortal and can be killed by other gods (or by mortal "heroes"), or are subject to "absorption" by other gods, or can just simply fade away into nothingness (and as a corrolary, be created from nothing - see the intro to "Black & White"). Small probability.
2. They aren't really gods at all, but aliens of sufficently advanced technology as to be able to command worship from the early humans. This, of course, suggests they left suddenly at some point in our history, but left no discernable traces of their visits. Or that they exist in some dimension we can't (yet) sense, like in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Scientific Method" (where the crew is afflicted by various ailments, ranging from the captain's headaches to Chakotay suddenly turning into an old man. B'Elanna and the Doctor find that the affected crew have tags on their DNA - just as they find this, they, too, are disabled. The Doctor contacts Seven via her Borg implants. He adjusts her eyepiece to be slightly out of phase. She confirms that there are aliens throughout the ship, conducting experiments). Low probability.
3. There are no gods, they are all a construct of humanity to make themselves feel better about death and some other things. Very probable.
4. As indicated previously, these many gods are really just angels to a monotheistic heaven, falsely worshipped as gods in their own right. Reasonably probable.
In ancient times, as tribe conquered tribe, the vanquisher would either absorb the conquered peoples gods into their own religion, or they would reject those gods and in time they would cease to be worshipped. This absorption or obliteration process does nothing to confirm nor deny the above 4 scenarios, nor does it add any new ones.
Many of today's religions are either polytheistic or say little about the existance or non-existance of other gods. Hindu and Shinto, for example, are highly polytheistic. Buddhism, being an offshoot of Hinduism, presumably shares this polytheism, but I have not read enough to know about the gods (or lack thereof) in the Buddhist religion. Judaism (and by extension, Christianity) hint that other gods exist, but forbids followers of the religion from worshipping them ("I am the Lord your God, You Shall have no Other gods Before Me.", if an accurate translation, implies that other gods do exist). Islam seems to have taken this one step further, outright denying the existance of other gods, but that seems inconsistent with how the Old Testament is written. Still, Islam is the closest thing to monotheism in the big religions of the world. And of course, many "pagan" religions (wicca, native american religions, et al.) are all highly polytheistic.
But even in Islam (and Christianity and Judaism), there are many angels which, in some other religions (say the ancient roman religions), might have been called demi-gods or lesser gods. It seems to me merely a difference in semantics, so even if there are no other Gods in Islam, there are at least these angles, which in other religions might be considered as gods. So is Islam truly monotheistic after all? Just depends on how you define things...
So this brings up a good question: if it was true that there was only one God, why are there so many religions? Oh, people will say that that is just God's way of manifesting Himself to different peoples - different cultures will have different understandings and require different presentations. That's just weak to me - if I were the all-powerful God, my One True Form should be good enough for everyone. Well, you might suggest, it's because people have God-given Free Will and have created all these different religions themselves, whether God wants them to or not, in order to suit their own world-views. Maybe...
But then why are the different holy texts all so... different? If God's will is God's will, why so many differences? I mean, the basic core message may be similar in most texts (but not all, cf. Hinduism), but there are still many noteworthy differences, in some cases some very dramatic differences.
And why, if it is all the same God, have the different religions hated each other so much, and waged war upon each other and done so many Bad Things to each other in the name of that God? Would you, if you were God, tolerate this? Sure, people have free will, but wouldn't it be trivial enough to cast down some thunderbolts onto the offenders and demand better behavior? Why would God tolerate this, if he is all powerful? It isn't just about free will, it's about obedience to god, which is very prominent in many religions (especially judaic derived religions). And almost all religions oppose killing, especially fellow believers, so if it's all the same god being worshipped in these different religions, they shouldn't be killing each other no matter what. This is a sticky point about which nothing can be said that will reflect well upon any religion or theology.
Of course, if the gods associated with each religion are, in fact, different gods, then all these concerns immediately evaporate and it all becomes crystal clear. Occam's Razor and all that
And obviously, if there is no God or gods, then it's all just a simple matter of manipulation and control and is trivially understandable.
If there is, in fact, only one God, why would there persist to this day so many polytheistic religions? The Old Testament claims that God wiped out all of humanity, save Noah and his family, because of their sin - clearly so powerful a God could trivially convince everyone of his one-ness, and of the folly of polytheism. But it was never the case that all the world followed this one God, even for a short time (say, the time immediately after the Great Flood), since clearly there were other people in the world (for example, the Chinese), who were not wiped out by the flood and did not worship this God. That is to say, He really didn't wipe out all humans; at best, He may have wiped out all those in a certain geographic region (e.g. the Mediterranean region), and since that was all the world Noah knew about, he recorded it as wiping out everybody (presumably Noah must have been the one to record the event, as supposedly everybody else died!).
So it seems to me we must reject the possibility of monotheism. (What does that mean for Islam? Is it false? Not necessarily - it would merely suggest either a very vain god, or a power-obssessed god who is actively seeking to destroy all the other gods and therefore make monotheism a reality.)
Another tangent: Why are there so many Christian sects? I offer the following scenario for consideration: in ancient times, the Greek and/or Roman gods were faced with some external threat. In order to survive, they believed it necessary to present a united front to this threat. They therefore created a "council" of gods. They needed to sell this idea to us humans, so they created the Messiah - a figure that would (eventually) unite their worshippers into the worship of "the council" instead of individual gods (and thereby increase the power of the council, at the expense of the individual gods). Enter Jesus. And so, this council, eventually having united a majority of their followers of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa under the shield of Christianity, was able to fend off this external threat. Unfortunately, these gods did not really get along very well, and as the threat subsided, differences in the council grew. The many small schisms represented individuals gods breaking away from the council, while the great Eastern Schism of the 15th century represents a dramatic split in the council, maybe into two competing counciles. Martin Luther and the protestant movements also represent futher splintering of the council. The problem was, the humans had come to identify with the gods only through the Christ figure, so the break-away gods could not revert to their ancient pre-Christian forms. They had to retain their claim to Christ in order to keep any followers, and thus they all became spin-offs of Catholicism.
Personally, I find the idea of many gods quite appealing. I like the idea that each religion is its own separate god. It fits the facts quite nicely and does much to explain the state of religion, past and present.
I'm not too keen on the idea of aliens - it seems improbable we could be subject to such vast and continuous manipulation without any solid evidence of their existance having been found by now. Yes, there are a number of "hints" (pyramids? big foot? Star Child? And many others), but many of these could be equally well explained by a polytheistic view of the universe, especially if the gods are meddlers as the ancient Greek and Roman gods were described as being. I mean really solid evidence for aliens (e.g. alien weapons, a space ship, a corpse). They'd misplace or carelessly discard something EVENTUALLY - nothing is 100% perfect. Of course, some people believe such evidence has been discovered, and covered up by the government (e.g. Roswell, Area 51). Outside of North America, such cover-ups would be much easier, or the stuff may have been carelessly destroyed without understanding what it was.
Of course, then we get into the idea of: what did the gods do before humans came along? Were there gods before humans, or are gods intimately tied to humans - existing only when worshipped, and ceasing to exist when no worshippers remain? Were the dinosaurs merely a little play thing for the gods? An experiment or a way to pass the time? Or were they there for "entertainment", a sort of cock-fight, as it were. Obviously, if we go with the alien hypothesis, this question quickly becomes irrelevent, as they would obviously have existed long before humans and the question of what they did before hand isn't as interesting.
Anyways, that's just some random ideas and musing I've had over the years. Please comment.
The Answer (Score:2)
Re:The Answer (Score:1)
I'm just trying to fit the facts to the possibilities. I know religion and logic don't really mix, but I still want to try
Re:The Answer (Score:2)
G_d is infinite in scope, intellect and all the rest. Humans are limited. We can not understand the infinate any more than we can piss up a rope.
BTW, this is yet another reason to take preachers, (the serious kind as well as the TV kind) authors, philosiphers, etc. with a large block of salt when they start tossing in human suppositions to the words of G_d.
But that's okay, you can go to hell if you like and I'm not going to stop you
option 3 (Score:1)
Where do we come from? why is the earth here? how were we created? all very easy to answer if you look at any religion.
So where do we come from? A series of events dictated by the movement of particles after the big bang. But then you get back to religion again as you start thinking of what created the big bang. Are we in an infinite circle of big bangs each time creating the same things. Do multiple dimensions exist? Is this
Too many questions (Score:1)
christian persepctive (Score:1)
This answers all those questions such as, why dosent our god revel himself to us after all these thousdands of years. Because unless we ask, he wants us to choose our own directions, and it is also on those directions we choose that we will be judged. Also, per christianity, Jesus Christ w
Re:christian persepctive (Score:1)
The ancient greeks and romans were not stupid people - indeed western civilization is deeply rooted in their philosophies and political structures. For all their genius, they were still highly polytheist
Re:christian persepctive (Score:2)
First, I want to say to the author of this JE, you raise a bunch of really complicated questions, and I certainly don't have all the answers. But, I can tell you what I believe, and what I've read, etc, and that may help you figure some of it out.
Second, Eglamkowski, there is one instance in the Bible of someone who was devoutly another religion, actively seeking out truth, where they prayed for something and God answered their prayer. I don't remember when or where it was,
Re:christian persepctive (Score:1)
I have to say, that's probably the most convincing argument I've ever heard in favor of one God. One problem with it: how did the demons come to exist? Did God intentionally create them? [to test their faith? Isn't that in Job?] Were they an unpleasant side-effect of creating the universe? Maybe angels gone bad? (I recently saw the movie "City of Angels" - I loved it when the one angel says "He gave these bozos the greatest gift in the universe. You think He didn't give it
Re:christian persepctive (Score:2)
I once asked myself (and a pastor) "What's the deal here? Satan's pretty smart (obviously). Does he really think he can win? Why's he bothering with this whole war when he knows he doesn't have a chance? And now that Jesus has come and the tide turned and even mankind knows how it's going to end (although we had little doubt that God would win beforehand, we had no direct evidence, per
Re:christian persepctive (Score:1)
Of course, I may be completely wrong, but that's my vague recollec
Religion is crap (Score:1)
Perhaps when man conquers death, most of the bogus religion, as we know them, will die off. What will still remain, however, may be our first glimpse at the "answer" to the "question"
Re:Religion is crap (Score:1)