Dave Ellis
Contributor
- Dec 27, 2011
- 8,933
- 821
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Atheist
- Marital Status
- In Relationship
- Politics
- CA-Conservatives
Except that's demonstrably false... Not everyone has a concept of a God, and even more specifically, your god.
The problem of evil for example shows that an all powerful, all knowing, all loving and perfectly moral being can not exist.
Well, for example we know that the Abrahamic God (Yahweh) started off as the God of Israel within the Canaanite Pantheon. In his original form, he was not the creator god (That God was known as El) and he even had a consort goddess known as Asherah. Asherah is even still referred to in the earliest parts of the Bible, and ruined temples dedicated to her still exist in Israel to this day. A fully monotheistic Judaism didn't exist until the Babylonian exile at the earliest (586BC) and polytheistic Judaism still existed right up until the time of the Maccabees in the second century BC.
The term Elohim actually means the children of El, and is a plural phrase. The polytheistic roots of Judaism are still apparent in verses like Genesis 1:26 - "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." If it were a single god talking, it should read "I shall make mankind in my image, in my likeness, etc. Instead it's a plural, indicating more than one god.
As Judaism was becoming monotheistic, essentially the Gods El and Yahweh were merged (Similar to Amun-Ra in Egyptian mythology) which eventually lead to the modern concept of God.
Upvote
0