The only Gods are

[MineralMan]

The distorted concepts of deities so many people carry around in their brains. Oddly enough, those deities assume a different distorted and personal form in every person. Humans are polytheistic that way, it seems. There are no other deities, in my not-so-humble opinion.

[John1956PA]

1. On an unrelated note, the American Atheists website is down.

Every day, I check www.atheists.org , and this is the first that I have seen it down. I wonder if it got hacked.

[MineralMan]

2. Database error is what I saw.

It'll probably be back up later.

[rug]

3. That'sa broad assertion. What evidence of it do you have?

[LAGC]

4. I'd say just the fact that there are so many different faiths...

Religion is purely subjective. A product of pure human imagination.

Not surprising that different isolated groups of humans would come up with different versions of deities, wrapping their particular cultural norms of the time around the myths.

"God" truly is in the eye of the beholder...

[MineralMan]

5. I have the same amount of evidence as those who believe that deities

and other supernatural entities exist. It is a broad assertion. Almost as broad as the assertion that the Old Testament God exists.

[rug]

6. Ok, so you made the assertion without evidence.

[MineralMan]

8. Most assertions are so made, including the assertion of the

existence of deities. What I wrote, as are most things I write, was my opinion. See my signature line. You needn't share my opinion. And you need not share your God. You may have the one you can conceive of to yourself.

[rrneck]

7. You've probably seen it yourself.

Any time anybody did anything because that's what they thought God would want them to do.

[MineralMan]

9. To expand just a little:

When examining the Judeo-Christian deity, one may hold that it is either a jealous, vengeful deity or a deity of love and forgiveness. Both are supported in scripture. Some attempt to apply both attributes to that deity, but more or less unsuccessfully. One may believe that their personal deity forbids the consumption of pig meat or that the deity has given up on that particular demand. Both are supported by scripture.

And so, through an almost endless list of attributes and supposed directions from that deity, you can accept or deny virtually anything, and find support for your position in the writings related to the belief in that deity.

The number of possible permutations and combinations of attributes and directions far exceeds the population of the planet. Since an individual cannot actually express a complete definition of his or her own beliefs, due to the sheer number of attributes and demands, along with a frequently mistaken belief in what those actually are, one cannot even know how another person defines his or her own personal deity.

Denominations of Christianity, alone, number in the thousands. Individual leaders within those denominations often hold views that do not precisely match those of the parent denomination. Their parishioners and followers, themselves may believe more or less what the leader believes, but never everything he or she believes, since the leader will not even express everything he or she believes.

Each person carries a little virtual deity along in his or her head, unlike the one carried by others in ways large and small. Indeed, each personal deity is subject to alteration at any time, depending on circumstance, new information, or whim.

[trotsky]

10. This is quite beautifully demonstrated by the simple fact...

as noted in a previous thread, that liberals believe in a liberal god, and conservatives believe in a conservative one. A person's god always seems to want what that person themselves wants. What an incredible coincidence!

[laconicsax]

11. Well, God is a sockpuppet.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/12/01/0908374106.abstract">Believers' estimates of God's beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people's beliefs

Abstract

People often reason egocentrically about others' beliefs, using their own beliefs as an inductive guide. Correlational, experimental, and neuroimaging evidence suggests that people may be even more egocentric when reasoning about a religious agent's beliefs (e.g., God). In both nationally representative and more local samples, people's own beliefs on important social and ethical issues were consistently correlated more strongly with estimates of God's beliefs than with estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 1–4). Manipulating people's beliefs similarly influenced estimates of God's beliefs but did not as consistently influence estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 5 and 6). A final neuroimaging study demonstrated a clear convergence in neural activity when reasoning about one's own beliefs and God's beliefs, but clear divergences when reasoning about another person's beliefs (Study 7). In particular, reasoning about God's beliefs activated areas associated with self-referential thinking more so than did reasoning about another person's beliefs. Believers commonly use inferences about God's beliefs as a moral compass, but that compass appears especially dependent on one's own existing beliefs.

And a nice piece on this study:http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/11/creating_god_in_ones_own_image.php

[MineralMan]

13. Very nice.

Thanks for posting.

[struggle4progress]

12. People practice all manner of idolatry, bowing down before many figments of their own minds

It's not always immediately obvious that they are worshipping false gods or that their attitudes are actually religious

[MineralMan]

14. From the perspective of an atheist, they are all worshipping

false gods, since we do not believe that gods and other supernatural entities exist at all.