h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

HS and others. Thanks for, in general, approving of my attempt to characterise 'a god'. Perhaps, in addition to my request for further suggestions or specific critisism I might ask for opinions as to whether the characteristics I have listed are all necessary (x isn't a god if x doen't have the lot) or sufficient (x is automatically a god if x does have all of them).

As an example of the first, it has already been suggested that a god doesn't have to be good on the whole. I liked the way that went and I was about to offer the kind of reply that Math gave with far more authority than I could muster in the context.

HS, you said that gods tend to have an 'appearance'. I take it that is not anything like a body except in the eye of the observer. I am reminded of stories of the 'loathly brides'. Now where could I have read that? Then there's the opposite tale of the ugly hag who turns out to be a beatiful girl after the hero marries her from some magnanimous motive.

toxx

I'm not saying that gods of the underworld are inherantly bad, I'm saying that myths often depict them as pretty nasty characters.

Satan was not a god/angel of the underworld and in Job he was on good terms with God.

The Celtic God of the Underworld Afallach, was the son of Nodens, the God of Healing.

The Greek gods and goddesses of Earth and the Underworld were known as the Chthonians. Thanatos, Hades and Persephone . Thanatos was the god who personified death.

The Roman Dii Inferi, are Dis/Orcus and Proserpina.

The ancient Maya had nine gods of the Underworld. Each of the Nine Gods had his or her own specialty (there are four female deities and five males).

In Sumerian mythology, Nergal rules with his consort Ereshkigal, sister of the sky goddess Ishtar. He is sometimes regarded as representing the sinister aspect of the sun god Shamash. Namtar was regarded as the bringer of disease and pestilence.

In Japanese Shinto-belief, the Underworld, Yomi-no-kuni is more a place where the souls are cleansed. This is not a place like other Hells where the souls of the deceased are tortured without hope of redemption.

The Etruscan god of the underworld, Februus, is also a god of purification.

Belit-Sheri is the Babylonian scribe of the underworld who kept the records of human activities so she could advise the queen of the dead on their final judgement.

If you want to read more of this you can do so @ http://www.pantheon.org/cgi-bin/search.pl?Realm=mythica&Match=1&Terms=underworld&maxhits=10&Rank=1


Alji

It all depends on the definition of god. If the definition of God is an entity that is so complex that we cannot comprehend it then God must be a fact.

If a person living 10,000 or a 100,000 years ago witnessed todays civilisation then they would think of us as Gods. Acoording to the genetecists it would also be possible for us to breed together as the human race has not mutated. Equally it would be possible for a baby from that time to enter our society and come out with the requisite exams to prove its intelligence.

If it were possible for us to travel a further 10,000 or 100,000 years into the future. Assuming mankind carried on evolving in the same way then the people of the future would be as Gods to us. It would also be possible to breed together (assuming no new branch of homo sapiens evolves). A baby from our time could adapt into the future.

Our children have the potential to be as advanced to us as we are from people from the bronze age. On a scale of 0 to infinity where would you place mankinds current knowledge of the universe (where infinity means we understand everything and 0 meant we are just sentient). It is our teaching that prevents our children from maximising there potential.

The reason that God is contentious is because we ascribe our notions to God. God by definition is uncomprehendable to us. An economist called Mancur Olson proved that the longer a society or institution has been in existance the more corrupted it will become. Religion has hijacked God. I suspect that all the Gods the human race beleive in are one and the same and no one has the right to question other peoples God.

"If the definition of God is an entity that is so complex that we cannot comprehend it then God must be a fact."

If my definition of God is a computer that is so complex that we cannot comprehend it then God/computer must be a fact.

False logic!

"no one has the right to question other peoples God."

But we do have the right to question other peoples beliefs about God when their beliefs affect us.


Alji

Noggin
Would the name change just have been down to corruption or translation, then? As far as I can see, they had nothing in common, really; Nietzsche seemed to be just using him as a vessel for his own ideas, like Plato.
Oh, I should say things are bumbling along pretty nicely, thank you. And yourself?

Not so bad, Mal. Currently enjoying a sabbatical.

Given that the original is in a different language in a different script, there's plenty of scope for mucking the name about a bit in translation.

Noggin

I suspect that however complex a computer becomes it still will not be able to beat a group of human brains. The 45 years of programing and experience that makes me cannot be replicated by a computer. How can a computer be programmed to work with infinity? It is a human concept.

The questioning other peoples God is more complex. I beleive in God as I beleive in evolution. If it is possible for us to evolve into a God over the next few million years then this event must occur in an infinite universe.

I beleive in God and am a Christian but my faith in God is far stronger than my faith in Christ. There are parts of all the world religions that are a reflection of God. Western society would be a lot different if we went out and picked our leaders randomly from eight year old children. The very act of God communicating with us is limited by our language and recording methods. How would we go about explaining a concept to a chimpanzee? If one were to look at the evolution of religion it would be a study of how to control society. This goes to show how corrupted religion has become but it is human intervention that causes it.

Thank God Hitler happened fifty years ago and not now. With all the modern weapons and propoganda available the tree thousand year reiche could have become a reality. Have we learnt the lessons of the second world war and prevented anything like that occurring again? I do not think so

To late to write a reply

I think all this heaven and hell stuff was the way a thought was translated that could be well assimilated by an uneducated person a few thousand years ago. As our vocabulary and knowledge has expanded God has not evolved with it. I personally go along with aldous huxley,s view in Brave New World REVISITED. There are personal and impersonal forces. The impersonal forces are man made (money work poverty etc). The personal forces like sunshine bird song love etc have always existed.

hi
your choice of the world evolve is interesting. Religion evolved from a man thanking God that it did not rain today or catching a rabbit or escaping from a bear the God of our ancestors is the same God as we have now. God has not evolved but our perception of him has. This whole process has been hijacked as religion became a tool for those in power to control the population. The very fact that most religions have not evolved for millenia seems to indicate that someone is keeping a tight hold on it. I suspect the answer as to weather there is a God or not is contained in the theory of evolution? The reason it is still contested 150 years later seems to indicate a raw nerve in society. Would it be possible to prove the theory of evolution without using biology as an example?

Hello, zzzboom (does that name come from parental sleep deprivation, by any chance?)
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That's an interesting idea, and I'd like to know more. Do you have a link?

"HS, you said that gods tend to have an 'appearance'. I take it that is not anything like a body except in the eye of the observer."

I have never reached out and touched one of the gods, toxx, but I suspect that, if one did, they would feel corporeal. After all, we receive all our information via our senses to our brains, and there is no reason therefore why what we see, hear or feel isn't a god bypassing sensory input to connect directly. In turn, this infers that what we experience, we experience as though it were as real as that which comes through the normal channels, and would feel no less corporeal.

Gods tend to keep to particular range of appearence to enable us to easily recongise who we are dealing with. this can be physical features (such as one eye, leg, hand etc) or age or clothing - a whole range of characteristics. The one I have mentioned who is extremely mutable in appearence nevertheless has seen fit to take the same overall physical features with a number of people.

" I am reminded of stories of the 'loathly brides'. Now where could I have read that? Then there's the opposite tale of the ugly hag who turns out to be a beatiful girl after the hero marries her from some magnanimous motive."

A common motif in fairy stories. I don't decry such tales: they usually have some truth in them.

"Religion evolved from a man thanking God that it did not rain today or catching a rabbit or escaping from a bear the God of our ancestors is the same God as we have now."

No, not the same. My gods are the gods of pre-Christian Europe. they are each individual in character and very much NOT the Christian God.

The notion of religion evolving in this way is a Christo-centric one. Other religions do not necessarily share it as we do not share the idea that some primitive notion of 'gods' evoled into a higher form of life which is the Abrahamic God. There were men and women of faith before Abraham., but their gods were not the same as 'God'.

Good morning - we used to supply breakfast, so here it is



Hello everyone, long time no post, sorry...

Jez

Hi Jez!

Me too, been mostly lurking here these days. But thanks for brekky! Perhaps I should start up the 'breakfast bookmark' again? I got put off when *he who must not be named* started demanding brekky from the Canuk and just never got back into it.

Anyhow, nice to see you. *waves to everyone else*

az

Some quotes;

The purpose of work is play. "The first principle of all action is leisure." _Aristotle

"You're playing God."
"Somebody has to!"
Steve Martin, The Man with Two Brains.

One of the mysteries of life is that, occasionally, some piece of it will be perfectly understandable.

Arjun asks, Renunciation of action and discipline — which is better? Gita 5.1). Krishna replies: "Both effect good beyond measure; but of the two, discipline in action surpasses renunciation of action" (Gita 5.2). Krishna advocates that the only way to attain everlasting equanimity is to free the mind of bondage to the 'worldly' world and understand the nature of the self to become one with the eternal spirit.

The Universe is infinite. There is no outer border. Even if there were a border and a void beyond, that void would be part of the universe.

The Syzygy (Divine Couple)
If one comes to terms with the Shadow and the Soul, one will encounter the enchanted castle with its King and Queen. This is a pattern of wholeness and integration. The opposites of the outer and the inner life are now joined in marriage. Great power arises from this integration. Christ and the Church, God and Israel are syzygy images. The believer who aspires to be the "bride of Christ" is modeling his or her experience in response to the syzygy archetype.

The Universe is eternal. It never began, and it will never end. It has no age. Many religions promote the idea that there was a beginning, but at the same time they speak of an external god existing before the beginning. "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God."_Gospel, John, 1:i.

Religions are not the only ones to promote the idea that the universe has a birthday. Many scientists claim it is 13 billion years old, though they continually revise this age upward. But when questioned about the "beginning out of nothing," they conjure up a primordial mass that pre-existed the big birthday.

There are two types of energy: the inanimate physical energy (light, heat, etc.) and the animate living energy (mind, consciousness, chi). The physical energy tends to dissipate, to contract. The living energy tends to increase (grow, expand). Both energies are eternal. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. Physical inanimate energy never began, and will never cease to exist. So too, living animate energy never began and will never cease to exist. Living things are a combination of the animate and the inanimate.



Alji

Well, let's go at this from a different perspective...

Let's divide views of the gods into

World-denying views

and

World-accepting views.

As far as I can see, the basic trend seems to be that monotheistic and non-theistic (Buddhist?) religions have a world-denying view and the polytheistic religions have a world-accepting view.

This colours their perception of the gods as well.

The gods, wights and ancestors of my religion are in this world as well as in the rest of the worlds.

Humans can also move through the worlds, if with difficulty...

Jez

Slightly odd mix of science, philosophy and faith there.

When scientists talk about science they're talking about our particular physical 4D (at least) space-time thingy.

Anything outside that is outside our current definition of science really. That's the point of it after all, measuring what we can, not making guesses and wild extrapolations.

The thing about their being a date for the Big Bang (even if we don't know that date) doesn't necessarily mean the universe was created at that point. Time is part of that space after all, and so saying the universe began then is debatable. I wonder if its even possible to say its so many million years and have that mean anything.