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

Marched my socks off, but found it all rather cold and strangely depressing, (which reminds me, I must try to catch the news).

I have to declare a chair? As a lot of you know, I have a problem with titles and badges and things.

B

Well, you don't *have* to, but I see it as a kind of declaration from which corner you're going to be attacking the arguments from, although you're not obliged to stick to it, or even have a chair that in any way relates to your actual position on things, or indeed to anything else at all.

I think it's it's excellent that agcB isn't conforming to FFFF doctrine

Considering how long it took to get her to peek into the Business forums and take part, it's a small wonder.

Zoroastrianism isn't necessarily monotheistic... but I don't believe there is any such thing as a monotheistic religion, especially if you define a god as anything superhuman and supernatural. Zoroastrianism is one of the dualistic religions, in that it involves a good god (Ahura Mazda) locked in battle with an evil god (Ahriman). Both created the earth together, specifically to be their battleground.

It has long been my belief that Christianity became a dualistic religion after influence from Zoroastrianism. After all, if you go looking in the Bible for mention of the devil, you come up short. This is what you actually find:

- A talking serpent tempts Eve in Genesis.
- An ANGEL named Satan who harasses Job, as an experiment sanctioned by God.
- Satan tempts Jesus in the gospels... the same Satan who is already established as an angel?
- The beast of Babylon that does all the weird stuff in Revelations, and the anti-christ.

These 5 incidents involving 4 different characters are lumped together into one character (two, if you count the anti-christ as his son) in common belief. The rest of Christian teachings on the devil have no basis in the Bible. They're based on tradition. The tradition had to start somewhere. I believe that the devil has inherited traits from a lot of different religions (his traditional appearance, for instance, is that of a Greek satyr), but the primary source for his traditions is Zoroastrianism.

Aha... this is what I hoping to get at...

This was pointed out in a BBC documentary. Can't remember its name, but it did indeed suggest that, with info garnered from what has been translated from the dead sea scrolls, Lucifer was never an equal with Jehovah but one of a great number of fallen angels. The dead sea scrolls seem to suggest a civil war after which Lucifer and his compatriots were sent down. Seemed to draw links through Judaism from Zoroastrianism.

Judaism has one omnipotent God, yet christianity (after Zoroastrianism)God has an apparent equal and opposite enemy. How can this be if God is omnipotent, you can't have two omnipotent beings!

After Christianity (or it's precursor) came into contact with proper religion it subsumed their ideas and practices in some kind of multicultural globalism drive, demonising popular stuff and simply altering the spooky stuff.

Then the nicea stuff...

'Lucifer' - bearer of light. I always thought it would be a lovely name for a girl.

B

Indeed the current Dualistic incarnation of Christianity and increasingly Judaism make the treatment of the Cathars all the more tragic...IMHO...

Pretty name...

Hi Jose .

The oldest religion is not as my esteemed colleague claims, Hinduism. It is certain that the shamanistic religions of the Siberians, Australasians, Amazonians and other 'native' peoples far pre-date the learned scribes of the Indus.

Many of these religions continue today in an unbroken tradition going back as far as 100,000 years (and possibly further). Many more modern traditions have grown from these including Druidry.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

Shinto is pretty old too, although I suspect not as ancient as shamanism.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I suppose, strictly speaking, that atheism is the oldest religious standpoint... depending on how you define it.

I guess there must be a lot of blurring between pre-historic superstition and early proto-faiths. Not that we'll be able to examine them, of course.

I think you'll find that atheism was specifically identified some millennia later than the earliest faiths. It's unfair to claim it was followed by those who had yet to adopt or develop some form of faith.... This is of the form "those who are not with us, oppose us", and seeks to take advantage of those who have not (yet?) chosen to exercise their right to vote.

Bad Queex!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Hey, if there is no codified structure of belief, and no recognised deity, then atheism sounds accurate. There's probably a better word (nontheism, perhaps?) but the a- prefix generally means absence of. Admittedly, it would also have probably been amoral and a-lots-of-other-things back then, but the principle is sound.

Although the word would only have been needed once people started messing things up with religion .

Hi Ben

Greets!

I think atheism describes the consideration, and subsequent rejection, of theism. If this is so, then atheism cannot predate theism, can it? One cannot reject God until one has first invented Her....

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I'd call atheism the state where you don't recognise any deity. Therefore, until theism was invented all were atheists.

I don't like defining atheism in terms of consideration and rejection of theism; as it tends to imply that theism is in some way the natural state of mankind. If we can't be considered atheists until we consider then reject, then perforce until we do so we are theists. Nah. Theism requires some decision to follow it.

Of course, there's the distinction between how you arrive at atheism...

Words, words, words. Doncha just love 'em?

There are surely two separate states denoted by Atheism.

One is the absence of belief in a deity, and the other is the belief that there is not deity, and they are different.

Some Atheists in the first sense are presumably also Agnostics, but others may be Buddhists or Taoists or whatever.

Atheists in teh second sense cannot also be Agnostics, though they could still be Buddhists or Taoists.

I am a Buddhist whose stance on the deity is slightly to the Theistic side of Anosticism. Very very slightly. Half a rizzla paper.

Ben

Bloody 'g' key sticks. "I beleive in od the father od the son and od the holy ost...."



B

Hi Guys! and

B