Is the ability to create an intrinsic requirement of god or merely an emergant property , in other words can a being be a god without creating anything, for the god = love team, can you be a god of love if you do not create?
What argument is there for a single God?
by Qcmbr 36 Replies latest watchtower bible
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peacefulpete
The "Bible" is a collection of writings reflecting an evolving culture. The oldest sections clearly betray a polytheistic outlook with good gods and bad ones that needed to be placated with harvest festivals and blood sacrifices, the largest portion of the OT shows what has been described as 'henotheism' wherein the worshipers recognise the existence of many gods, often regionally assigned, but devotion is more or less given to a single patron god, in this case Yahweh, a deity apparently imported from from northern Arabia but adopted as their special protector. This transition involved the subsumation of a multiplicity of minor, locally worshipped deities into the one character. IOW Yahweh became all that these other gods were hailed to be including titles and theophanic descriptions. The Persians had adopted a form of this henotheism in Zoroasterism by then and were quite influential in the Hebrew recontruction of Yahwehism. Eventually as the world became more sophisticated and smaller, the national patron god started looking insufficient to a culture with strong universalist notions. The great solution was that the patron gods of rival regions and nations were deemed imposters and merely lesser beings or illusions. The God of Judah had to be worshipped by all men and all must obey. Intolerence of competing religious views soon followed. This new exclusivist "monotheism' created the great problem of the existance of evil and suffering question. What was needed was an antagonist that was powerful enough to interfere with the benevolence of Yahweh. They borrowed another chapter from Persia and created "The Opposer" aka "Satan". Fast forward another couple centuries of foreign oppression and the 'one God' starts feeling remote and detached to the downtrodden. Some respond with a more secular outlook, some to a mystical one, while others create a new chapter wherein this deity or his "son" personally came to visit to assure them their tireless devotion was due to be rewarded with global domination and unimagined delights. This idea of course was circulating around the Greek and Roman worlds to address a similar disconnect with their gods. There you have 4000 years of religious evolution in one paragraph.
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smiddy
gubberingbody , I think you summed it up nicely.
smiddy
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fakesmile
the best argument for a single god? have you ever had to deal with a chick at the end of a sentance? period.
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Qcmbr
Thanks for all responses. I think its clear that tradition and scriptural reading apart there is no real reason for a god to be a sole being except we like heirarchical patterns and concepts like omniscience which suit a top dog rather than a pantheon. Love seems a much overused concept and motivation for a largely empty , barren and hostile universe with a tiny smattering of self conscious former hydrogen atoms who have barely survived on a life threatening planet. Its as if our awareness of self and the imminent end of our own life manifests in a group pretence of eternal life and the unending perfect man.
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mP
The need for a single god was simply corporate greed where one company wants to eliminate all compeition. Its all about $.
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Zordino
There could possibly be a Higher Power and most likely be multiple beings (or Gods) But most likely, everything evolved and there could be infinite Universes and dimensions out there that could not even imagine. Its a mystery.