DavidFord said
“It is in the nature of gods to be obvious”
Such as “in the nature of” what gods?– 3 examples?
Only three?
Let’s start with everyone’s favorite divine bada$$, Yahweh.
Plagues, showing his hind quarters, giving out laws, strolling through the garden, supping with Abraham, wresslin’, drowning babies; Yahweh is up everybody’s butt. He’s bad. He’s nationwide.
But let’s not be ethnocentric.
There’s the divine horndog Zeus, busy spreading his seed far and wide, filling the world with demigods and heroes.
Even further westwards the cloaked, one-eyed Odin, Allfather (Alföðr), Greybeard (Hárbarðr), The Hooded One (Grímnir), who shows up unannounced at people’s door to test their hospitality. Who offers divine riddles and drives his devotees into mystical ecstasy. Who wanders the battlefield exhorting his warriors to triumph in battle.
No faith is required. In fact the usual attitude amongst regular fold in the ancient world was hope that the gods would not appear.
Only now amongst our own modern used god salesmen do you find resistance to requests to kick the tires a bit and take them out for a spin. Now we hear a lot about trust.
DavidFord said
“It is in the nature of gods to be obvious”
Are any of the 3 gods you mentioned obvious to you?
Well they would be if they existed. Which is, of course, my point.
What’s not so obvious is why I misspelled ‘folk’ as ‘fold’ when the ‘d’ and the ‘k’ are so far apart on the keyboard.
Robert said
All of this seems a great way of rejecting primitive depictions of unworthy deities, Stephen. Do you ever think of there being some kind of more sophisticated supra-consciousness that is evolving with the unverse and already evolved much beyond our ability to perceive it concretely? No, there’s no concrete evidence, maybe just wishful thinking or an intuition fed by our own thirst for meaning. Just curious.
Oh there I was having a little fun with David and now you want me to actually think again.
Ok but see the work of ** you do not have permission to see this link **, who argue that far from being “primitive”, anthropomorphic depictions of deity are actually quite sophisticated. Of course these are literary depictions. I’m not all the way yet to the view that nothing exists outside of language* but I’m halfway. I’m interested in the idea of a “supra-consciousness that is evolving with the universe” just as I’m interested in concepts of an impersonal divine. I think the idea could be roughly stated as ” If we can describe a thing it may or may not exist but if we cannot describe a thing it cannot be said to exist.” It follows from this that the ideas can be said to exist. I’m not sure how we can claim more than that.
* Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος
ps Just to clarify, when you say “evolving” do you mean naturally/spontaneously or do you mean that it is self-consciously evolving? Teleonomy vs teleology?
I said I’d keep listening, and look what happens the moment I sit on my hands: Wagner, Kugel, teleonomy, and John 1 in the original Greek. You two cannot be left alone for a minute.
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, and apparently in the middle of the thread there is also ὁ λόγος. I am enjoying this far too much to interrupt. Carry on, I’ll be here, grinning into my coffee.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
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