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Hi everyone,
Hope you are enjoying the holiday season, which is giving me some more free time.
Today I want to take a quick look at gods and what makes them special.
Looking back in time, we find that different religions came and went, along with all their
gods.
If we look at how many gods there were, we are inundated with different cultures and
civilisations who all came up with their gods on all continents and all regions.
So out of the approximately 200 gods that are active today, or the roundabout 300,000
that ever existed, today's believer takes only one as their favourite god, while being
a rejectionist of all others. Actually, well, wrong vocabulary, as you cannot reject something
that does not exist, so they should at least call themselves: atheist-but-one.
Looking at the timeline of the 12 big religions we see that they all came about during the
last 3000 years, starting with Hinduism, where people started interaction between groups
and pondering their origins. What is interesting is that tribes or groups that did not have
this interaction or others that locked themselves away did not develop. So for development to
happen, interaction is required, which is possibly the reason why our development has
been speeding up since communications and travelling resulted in increased interaction
and thus a thrust in development. The aboriginal Piraha (Beenahan) people of Brazil have no
numbers, no leaders and no gods. They also never developed any higher systems for society
or technology and are the happiest and most peaceful people I have ever heard of.
Going a little deeper into the time line we see that when mankind started understanding
nature better, the traditional gods within some societies were retired, but as the last
question, the origin of the Universe and species was still unanswered, a single one was kept
alive in books and personification.
What all 300,000 gods have in common is that they are insanely jealous, strict, vicious,
punitive and massive control freaks. They are all claiming to be the only god and the
one god. All of them. They also claim they created the Universe and in particular planet
Earth. And all are totally obsessed with what we do, when we are how we were born: naked.
Different people have created different creation myths which all boil down to one thing: God-did-it.
Period.
On this time-line we see religions appear and disappear. Some develop further and co-exist
or are in fierce competion with each other, screaming: buy me. Even when we get to more
recent times we see people like Smith and Hubbard take advantage of gullible and naive
believers to threaten them with eternal punishment and torture. They also have their unique
- or not so unique creation myths, fables and stories. So let's go and look at some
of these creation stories and see whether they are really that easy to swallow and accept.
Starting with the Aborigines in Australia, we see it is, well it comes as no surprise,
very much centered on our planet Earth, where all living creatures are created.
The Hindu version, elements of which you find in all 3 Bibles we have today, as you see
a god of creation, a god of death and a god sustaining life. If you read the Bhagavad
Gita, which I'm doing at the moment, you will recognise a lot of the features, a lot of
their personalities and a lot of the familiar creation we know today.
In China things a little bit different, as it's based on the number of suns, as there
is only 1 sun as opposed to their creation myth which has 10.
When we look at the Eskimos we see that it was also centered on Earth and giants were
the cause of all life as when pieces were hacked off they develop life under water.
Looking at the Greeks we see they have different functions for their gods, one of them being
the god of creation.
I found a very nice site which takes a bit of a lighter side to the creation myths. It
looks at different ways and different religions on different continents and looks at how they
interpret their creation. I highly recommend this site to anyone who wants to learn about
the different customs in different countries. Very well made. The one that definitely gets
my thumbs-up is the Japanese one, because the way the guy tells it here is really great:
resulting in the vomit, the urine and the feces god. And you arrive at the Flying Spaghetti
Monster creation myth, which, I suppose, is the most recent one and the one that holds
the most truth - so to speak.
So what we see is that all these myths have something very much in common. Another common
factor is that all these gods are incredibly angry. They always threaten you with the worst
possible punishment if you don't do as they say. Which one is your favourite god again?
Go against the supposedly laid out rules, regulations and limitations and you will suffer
eternally. However, if you comply with all these you will receive - well, erm, here the
religions differ, depending on what region, what continent they actually came from. Here
it's a different concept depending on where you go in which religion you look.
We marvel at cell-phones, OLED TV's and Aspirin, but even though we know there are no demons,
witches or super-natural capabilities amongst humans, there are people claimimg their favourite
super-natural entity created everything and still does. But which one is it? Do you just
pick one from this list? What criteria do you apply? And why accept all modern amenities
based on modern science - yet at the same time reject anything to do with cosmogony,
abiogenesis and evolution, which is the case with most religions?
Theists of all stripes are extremely fond of large numbers, showing with their stupid
probability calculations how the creation without their favourite creator is totally
out of the question. But how do they choose a god? Do they go according to a hitlist?
Do they apply and objective criteria? Or is it really the pre-chosen one by their parents?
Maybe there is a god along with hell and heaven, but why should there be? Anyway, it must be
the fear of the first and the vision of the latter that causes people to carry on believing
and thinking the way they do. Maybe it’s simply the more comfortable way to go or it’s
the more accepted view to have. Or is there more? Can there be more? Or is it as postulated
in the Christian Bible where Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13: “When I was a child, I
spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a
man, I put away childish things.”
Muslims counter that Allah has 99 names, well 100 if you count the Bahai as Muslims, and
this shows his super-natural divinity. Hmm. Hindu Gods have 330 million faces. Eat your
heart out, Muslims.
So the way I see it there is nothing objective about choosing a religion as they are too
similar, all based on an invisible being that resides outside of our senses and perceptions
yet is supposed to interact with our real life, not by some divine and super-natural
manner, but by means of a very human invention: a book or using the fallible means of communication
humans use: language.
My point is: why do you think your particular god is special?
Thank you for your time and interest.