Suppose all the world religions were true

[HEyHEY]

And there was a bunch of different gods. And the only reason wars were fought is because they were playing some kind of god version of risk.

Wouldn't you be pissed about the whole thing?



Seriously though, has anyone ever written anything on that theory?

No, I'm not high.

[wuushew]

1. Make sure to honor all the gods or end up like the Greeks

following the sack of Troy.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. the different gods you talk about

a merely different concepts. Concepts have changed throughout the ages. There is only Unity, call it God, call it Nature, call it Scientific Principles. Don't think any game of 'Risk' is involved.

[HEyHEY]

4. Got proof?

[rug]

18. It's been done - the Iliad

[immoderate]

23. I was gonna say, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

They have had every kind of supernatural creature guest star on that show. And they have Michelle Trachtenberg!

--IMM

[Az]

8. We all observe the same world

How we label and define our observations varies. Its the conclusions we draw and how much we are willing to stand by those conclusions that differ.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

14. yep

same thing that I said, different words.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Well, see, I am of the opinion that all the major religions are more

or less true and that one God or spirit or whatever is behind them.

So..... no, I don't really worry about being a pawn in a massive game of RISK, not with a heavenly group of players.

Now, where the junta and Sharon and some other sneaky world players are concerned.. yeah.. I think I'm being played... and I am pissed.

[Malva Zebrina]

9. You mean by the major religions, the monotheistic religions, right? nt

[GreenPartyVoter]

15. No, I mean religions... as opposed to cults that make you

stomp on kittens or something.

I'm a pluralistic universalist. That means that I believe that there are many paths to travel to find God, and that everyone will be reconciled to "Him" in the end.

I believe that all sincere seekers of faith, regardless of what form their seeking takes, are searching for, and finding the same being.

Sure, you have Buddhism, Wicca, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and so forth and so on, but their god/gods are all still the same being.

I am a mother, wife, sister, daughter, and friend... but beyond all those titles I am still ME... you see? :)

http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/liberalchristians.htm

[Malva Zebrina]

24. sort of--but I was not aware that Buddhists worship any god

at all, being more of a philosophy than a religion. And I doubt the Wiccans would agree that what they worship is the same god as the Hebrews. And of the Gnostics, or the Hindues? Are they left out of your independant perception of a valid religion? If so, then you are really picking and choosing your god also it seems.

I am not aware of any cults that make you stomp on kittens, LOL, but some sects of religions are called cults, for instance, the right wing Christian religion or the Dominionists as we have all become familiar with in the past four years or more, and the right wing Catholic cults, such as Opus Dei--are you familiar with their practices? They worshio the same god as the Hebrews, and the Baptists, or the Catholics. Indeed they can be called Christians.

Are they included in your religious perception of a god?

I am curious as to how you pick who to include in your version of god, as the "same" god in all of the religions there are in the world, including those that are pagan and who do not stomp on kittens but at who may have at one time, say, believed in cannabalism as a sacred and spiritual ritual and that religious belief served their community well enough indeed. As well as the Native Americans who were generally pantheists.

Can they be considered a path to the same god as the Christians, Hebrews and Islamists? And if so, how?

[GreenPartyVoter]

26. Yes, it's all the same to me. Whether it's a religion in the traditional

sense of worshipping a supreme being (s), a reverence of nature, or a philosophy that is concerned with self-improvement and the care of others.

Bascially, I consider a sincere path to be one that does good rather than harm. So to me, a buddhist or Hindu may be more spiritually enlightened or closer to God than a dominionist Christian if the Buddhist or Hindu is doing more good in the world. Any variation of a religion that insists that it is the one true path to God or enlightenment, is, to my way of thinking, in danger of being a cult if they are so insistent of this belief that they will wage war for it or damage others spiritually with their dogma. I was raised in spiritually abusive fundagelical churches. What good is it to send food and clothes to the needy if you are also going to eat up their soul?

Human sacrifice is not a favorite religious practice of mine. I understand why some cultures have done this, but it doesn't sit well with me. A symbolic sacrificing of your life to me seems to make more sense. You can do more good alive than dead.

But, that's just my opinion.


Edit: this page might help explain this approach to faith a little better: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/2961/liberal.htm

--------------------------------------------------------
Would Jesus love a liberal? You bet!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/liberalchristians.htm

[Malva Zebrina]

44. What you are describing sounds to me like Panentheism

Some ten years ago, a Dominican priest named Matthew Fox, published a book called "Original Blessing". I read the book, and do not have it now for reference, but if I recall, he challenged the notion of original sin. He also wrote "The Coming of the Cosmic Christ" which advocated acceptance of all spiritual beleifs, much the sam as what you are describing. I read three of four of his books back then and have none available now for reference.

He indeed was a thorn in the side of the Vatican, and was de-frocked, thrown out. Subsequently he became a priest in the Episcopal religion. I found this link on the web re Matthew Fox

http://www.creationspirituality.com/matthew.html

Many religions also find animal sacrifice a connection to their god. I believe Santoria is one of them. The Aztecs also had deep religious significance in their human sacrificial rituals. That was their path to a god.

What I find disturbing is that there have been so many, many gods over time in history, and so many today, who is to say, indeed, that they lead to one particular god? Could it be the other way around? Suppose the path led to the same god as the Aztecs? Suppose for instance, the goddess,or Shakti of the Hindues, is the god that all paths lead to? In other words, I think you have in your mind that all paths lead to one particular god, the one you imagine as yours or the one you have been schooled in at one part of your life, as most of us were. This is the prerequisite to "intelligent design" theory, or at least similar. In that theory, it is the Christian god who is touted as the intelligent designer, and not, say, the goddes Athena.

I say these things as an intellectual pursuit and do not wish to challenge your beliefs or faith in a derogatory way.

[GreenPartyVoter]

45. I have Fox's book on my shelf but have yet to read it. In a nutshell

I don't believe we're going to discover in this life or the next that one religion got it all right, and that yaweh or shakti or whomever was in fact the one God all along.

God is too big for humans to comprehend, even en masse. There's no way any of us have got it completely right about him/her/it. It's like asking the flea to draw a picture of the elephant he's riding on. :)

[Malva Zebrina]

46. I thank you for this polite conversation

You may or may not know I am an atheist, and where you see five stars, I only see four. I cannot help it. I see only four and simply cannot see five! :-)


But that does not stop my curiosity over investigating the need for human beings to believe in the supernatural or to believe in their continued existance after death.

Those, like Matthew Fox, who are willing to go outside the proscribed circle of dogma, have my respect as at least being willing to question some of the absurdities currently present in modern day religions.

[GreenPartyVoter]

47. You are most welcome. :^) I frequently find that many times

atheists are more likely to be an ally than rigidly dogmatic believers are when it comes to talking politics. (Separation of chruch and state, for example.)

[NC_Nurse]

5. BWAAAHAHAHAHA!

like that.

Ever listen to any Bill HIcks?

"Does it bother anyone else, the idea that God might be FUCKIN' with our minds?"

:7

[HEyHEY]

6. No, but I like his style

[Maple]

7. Book of Job

is about a bet between God and the Devil over who gets him.

Terry Pratchitt writes about the gods playing a game with human lives.

'We are their playthings' is an ancient suspicion. :D

[NC_Nurse]

10. Like that old Twilight Zone episode

Yikes! :crazy:

[amazona]

11. lots of people have written on that theory

Seems like lots of junk SF/fantasy dealt with that theme back in the day.

Even the Bible has books where it is clear that there is more than one god and they are fighting over whatever. Read your Old Testament.

I wouldn't be pissed because it is clear to me that anyone with eyes can see there is no such things as One God in charge of everything. It just seems silly to insist there is only one God because the workings of the world are too complex for that. OK, there are ways around the clear evidence of our sense, like describing God as the Holy Multiple Personality Syndrome that we see expressed in the Trinity. But it just seems more Occam's Razor to assume that there are either many invisibles or there are none. You can't have just one of something. I was raised as a Presbyterian and they are a very nice, caring people, but some of the metaphysical concepts border on the hilarious if you stop and think about it too logically.

As for people who say that God is just another name for Universe or the All, well, I've never been clear how that is any different than saying there is no God with an actual, engaged brain.

Not high yet...but I'm getting there. :-)

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[sweetheart]

12. Then we need only celibrate

All the world religions have the premise of a divine power, a great
consciousness beyond mortal comprehension that is innate to all the
universe of our perception.

As well, all of them celibrate human enlightenment. What you call
"different gods" are anthropomorphic ways of relating to qualities of
life that are otherwise vapourous and difficult to grasp. Tibetan
buddhism has, for example, a god "Manjushri", the buddha of wisdom,
and western people often repeat the misunderstanding endemic to your
post that he is understood as a "god" and rather, manjushri is a
principal of consciousness, much like a jungian archetype that is
present in the attention consciousness of all beings.

So in this regard, the polymorphic view of many gods, might just as
well be seen more as an externalization of the many aspects of
personality and consciousness that are all "within" the human mind,
and that god(s) is/are within.

Then as well, to discover its all true, that there IS indeed enlightenment
and that this world is a short mirage of the soul as one travels on
a journey of the senses in a world of tremendous darkness, but that
one is not of this world, is a joy.

I think roger zelazney wrote a science fiction book using the hindu
gods on a world, that sorta is like the premise you mention, but he,
IMO, misrepresented said gods, equating them with greek gods rather
than the vedic forms of abstraction.

IF you study comparative religion you will certainly see the common
set amongst all the world's religions. All of them postuate that
there is a divine will of tremendous power. All of them accept that
"now" is the only moment in life, as even the stories are merely
eschatological devices to communicate one's mortality in to the
present moment. (ways of making one face death by discussing final
endings or beginnings).... that we see common archetypes of a
profoundly beautiful and mysterious complexity.

Even more, we would come to recognize that there are living buddha's
and saints in the world today, and see that wisdom of profound
enlightenment as obscuring 1000's of years of dead parchment for
the truth today.

What a lovely wish you have. :-)

[ashmanonar]

13. you've just described the

ancient Greek classical religion...a bunch of gods/goddesses, all screwing with their worshippers to gain their own petty aims...in essence, playing a giant game of "risk" with their favored worshippers.

i don't think such a view would work too well with monotheistic religions, they generally portray the god as above such petty concerns...the greeks knew better.

[GreenPartyVoter]

19. The Vikings too, I think

[ashmanonar]

32. yea, i believe so...

along with EVERY other early religion out there...judaism was the FIRST to have a god that wasn't concerned with a "risk game"...

lemme see...classical greek, norse, mesopotamian, native american, hindu, etc, etc, etc.

yep, all had gods with human characteristics and mentalities! (well, the native americans had a partially animist system, but it was close enough)

[knight_of_the_star]

33. No they didn't

Different perspective with the Vikings. They saw that their Gods were in conflict with eachother, but instead of using human pawns to duke it out, they went at it directly. Vikings fought eachother for honour, glory, loot, and land and felt that the best way to gain favour in the eyes of the Gods and feast eternally in Valhalla until Ragnarok was to gain glory and honour and die a hero in battle. They didn't think that the Gods fucked with them, they believed that their Gods were either busy fighting eachother or fighting off the Frost Giants from attacking Ysgard.

Just a brief clarification.

[GreenPartyVoter]

35. Doh. That rings a bell. Thanks!

[ashmanonar]

39. oops, you're right.

:eyes:

[illflem]

16. and what if the stars were just holes in the lid of a jar?

[SHRED]

17. For the "one God" folks...

I see a dying violent planet.

Dear God,
Way to take responsibility for your creation, creatures, and mankind!
You must be one sick masochist. Seek help immediately!

[murray hill farm]

20. What if all the religions that believe that only through theirs..

can you go to heaven when you die...are right? Then...no one will go to heaven...and we will all go to hell! Well..that settles that!

[ZombieNixon]

21. I actually made a short movie on that topic a few years ago.

called "Bob."

This guy named Bob dies (choked on french fry - indirect tribute to Dear Leader) and goes to heaven and meets God. God spins the Wheel of Fate and Bob gets reincarnated as a rock at the bottom of the ocean, where he gets swallowed by a whale and meets a modern day Jonah who's been surviving in the whale's belly and has gone insane.

Jonah befriends Bob the rock, and in a fit of religious fury, sacrifices his new "friend" to God in a vain attempt to escape from the whale. Bob's soul takes a wrong turn and ends up in Hell, where he meets God's angry younger brother, Satan.

Bob becomes a pawn in God's and Satan's (who were both played by the same person) cosmic games, which include starting World War IV for fun (fought with rocks and sticks, since all weapons were destroyed along with all of civilization in WW3, per Einstien's prediction) and a cosmos-wide search for the Holy Grail (a broken wine glass patched together with duct tape).

When God sends Satan a declaration of war, the Earth gets destroyed, killing Bob, who is in the middle of fighting WW4, once again. Bob, once again in heaven, digs through a box in God's basement and finds the Holy Grail, and gives it to God, who agrees to send Bob back to Earth a human. Unfortunately the Wheel of Fate spins to far and Bob ends up becoming a penguin.

After completing filming, my friend coined the term "blasphe-comedy," meaning a comedic work that flies in the face of religious tradition, like "Dogma."

[Az]

22. The Book American Gods does an interesting take on that subject

By Neil Gaimen. Its a worthwhile read.

[Codeblue]

25. I never understood

how the Christian God could be the only God and all other Gods were actually non-existant.

If everyone believes their version of God is the only correct God, how can there be only one God. They all have to exist in some capacity.

[Az]

27. Um, technically there is one other option

There is the no gods option.

[amazona]

28. sure there is the no gods option

The trouble is, once you've been screwed with by the invisibles, then it's hard to believe in the "no" option.

If you've never had a truly weird supernatural experience, then yeah the logical choice is the atheist or agnostic choice.

The trouble is weird stuff does happen to some people. Maybe it's the frontal lobe going blooey, maybe not, but for those people, the "no god" option is just ridiculous on the face of it. We need a way to serve that portion of the population without just feeding them to the fundamentalist hysterics.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[Az]

34. Oh without a doubt belief governs our views

If a person believes a thing is true then it takes quite a bit to alter their belief. And you don't need to have a full frontal lobe blow out to create an altered state of mind. They are far more frequent than that.

And again I agree that we can't just look them in the eye and tell them what they believe is a fairy tail. Each person's path to understanding is unique and their own. To address them you have to address their issues.

[OxQQme]

30. gods and goddesses simultaneously

Mr. Sitchin lays out some convincing tales from the clay tablets of olden times when gods and goddesses roamed the skys and made physical appearances that were recorded in pictographs showing them to be very 'human' like in stature. They lived amongst us. For several thousand years before Moses and Yahweh's meetup on the Mount humans revered a Goddess. Innana/Ishtar were the two most often heard depending upon the global location or the millenium.
She had two half-brothers and the three vied with each other for Dad's attention. They each were allotted 1/3 of this globe to watch over in a rorating fashion through the Ages. We are cusping into the Age of Aquarius and it's a nurturing, soft feminine, water sign. The Age we've passed through was a conflicting, male warrior, fire sign




<snip>
That history will repeat itself, there should be no doubt. What remains a mystery is what chapter of history will be repeated when – are we still in the middle of the what I named The Earth Chronicles, or is the grand cycle nearing completion and the very First Things shall fulfill the prophecies of The Return? In this regard it behooves us to recall that before the Cities of Man there had been cities of the gods and before the wars of men there were the wars of the gods – including the one in 2024 B.C., when the use of nuclear weapons caused the demise of the Sumerian civilization.

I do recommend that my fans re-read my books, especially The 12th Planet, The Wars of Gods and Men, and The Lost Book of Enki.

April 2003

ZECHARIA SITCHIN

[Az]

36. Convincing for some

Let us just say Mr Sitchin doesn't get invited to the Anthropologists Annual Ball.

[NoStinkinBadges]

48. Obviously all religions can't be correct.

Some, most, or perhaps even all have to be wrong.

I once wondered years ago if we were merely a scientific project, sort of like an ant farm, for some extremely advanced alien adolescent.

[ashmanonar]

40. the bible doens't say "there are no other gods"

it says "thou shalt have no other gods before me."...which means that the god of christianity and judaism acknowledges other deities, but says that you have to worship him more and louder.

[Jokinomx]

29. "The Gods of Eden" by William Bramley

How did man come to be this way? Bramley (in my opinion) comes as close as anybody in trying to explain mankind's situation and how we seem never to rise above warring with each other. He touches on the many influences from several esoteric organizations starting in the ancient Sumeria to the present day. You will be astonished to find that the "Gods" did in fact disagree with each other and how to use their newly created being "Adam".


Another great series of books are from Zecharia Sitchen... where he explains the writings of the people of Sumeria. "Genesis Revisited" is my favorite of the books that I have read.

[DrWeird]

31. Turns out they're really technologically advance aliens.

MacGyver told me.

[ashmanonar]

49. hey now

don't be dissin macguyver! ;)

but seriously, i think people are wrong to rule out that alien life had some impact on human life...if nothing else, science has proven to us that nothing is impossible, and that anything the vast majority of people believe is probably wrong...(perhaps tied into metaphysics, perception is everything?)...

my point is, the religious fundies who proclaim that god has all these powers that are beyond the reach of man are also the ones who claim that they've been abducted by aliens and probed...what if, 40,000 or more years ago, or even more recent periods, some form of life came down to earth and found these little hunched-over apes who had a raw form of language and some tool-using habits, and decided to "help" them? the ancient people wouldn't know what an astronaut or a spaceship was, but they'd probably see this giant brightly lit ship as some sort of "godly vessel"...

ok, now that i've completely abased myself in front of the entire of DU, i guess i'd just like to make sure that everyone considers everything with an open mind, and that you don't rule out an option just bc you think it makes you sound like a crackpot...it's not this idea's fault that only crackpots have come forward talking about it.

[knight_of_the_star]

37. That makes sense to me

But then again I'm a Pagan so any worldview that encourages more than one divinity will make sense. Considering that you've had so many different concepts of deity and so many different mythologies I would seriously doubt that you would have just one god. For one example, the Northern/Western European pantheons and the people associated with them, the Celtic and Germanic tribes, had warlike Gods and had cultures that placed HEAVY emphasis on personal strengths, abilities, and honour. The Mediterreanean Pantheons, namely the Egyptian, Phoenician, and Greco-Roman, had more of a focus on pleasing the Gods so that they wouldn't decide to do something to you. Then you have the Hebrew God which from what I know that culture encouraged subservience and doing the will of that God as opposed to pleasing it to make them/it avoid you or acting in what would be considered warlike/honourable fashion consistently. Also what is interesting is that in the West ONLY in the faith of the Hebrews and what stem from their practices do you have specific codes of morality involving sex and nudity, you don't have that in others. Also you have the Far Eastern religions of Japan and China that have a heavy emphasis on ancestor worship, a practice that you don't find in the desert religions and only get in comparison a passing glance at in others.

[Jackie97]

38. Okay.

It's time for the parents to fight among themselves and leave us kids out of it. LOL.

My theory is that we all create God in our image.

Every country wants to sometimes go to war for whatever reason. To justify it morally, they have to claim that God is on their side and against the other. This makes the people of the country feel self-righteous, morally superior, and okay with going to war.

[Deja Q]

41. They're playing nothing. They left us a long time ago out of resignation.

God or the Gods on the Heavenly Poultry Farm exists. But why would they want to interfere, assuming they'd still want to?

It's up to us to save ourselves, especially if God (or Gods) now considers their Creation to be utterly worthless? In the same position, how'd you feel about your best creation making a huge mess of things?

[michael_1166]

42. I'll start to believe...

in a Christian God the moment a volcano erupts under Dubya while he's using his White House toilet (the King's throne) - or alternatively, when he gets beaten up and kicked out of Oval Office by an enraged guy wearing a white toga, a long beard and a halo on his head. O8)

As long as that doesn't happen, Taoism suits me better :-)

Michael

[annabanana]

43. we are the astronauts........

by nature spiritual, sent to explore and explain the physical world, our inner dialog is the journal, instantly intelligible to the spiritual world........

unable to transcend the human viewpoint we always interpret our relationship to the spiritual reality backwards.

or as the bumpersticker says:
"We are Spiritual Beings having a Physical Experience"