Who are thy Gods

[God_of_Mercy]

To often i hear people just say "the gods". I would like to know who these gods really are. I mean the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob is so well described. We know his nature and just a lot about who He is. This question is aimed at pagan gods and mabye wicca if you wanna. How many of them are there? What do they do?

Another question. I recently had a talk with a pagan and they said the Christian God exist but lied about every thing and Christianity is underly false, but the relationship with Him is real. Does this make all the Gods of every religion exist? Why would God(Christian God) and every other one lie and make up a religion. Are they like competing with each other to see who gets the most followers. I just seems like such odd logic. And why would God have a relationship with you and do all the things he said in the bible, then you say the bible is false. I dont get it.

 

[artofwar]

Mate everyone has "theories" and wierd beliefs and some people are just easily led through Prejeduces- i know i spelt this wrong

 

[ravenwolf]

well i believe in One God(no gender implied , but both)as having many aspects as such, God and Goddess, and as well as the different Gods and Goddesses of other cultures, but again they are all One pervading energy or consciosness. I see Yahweh as the discription of the One, i think that the Jewish people had chosen to only view the One God as such and chose to not view the One or I AM as other aspects but as whole.
I personally think that was rude of him to say Yahweh lied( i think i know who u r speaking of), but of course I hold a much diffrent view of Divinity than he does. Yahweh is not lying but as speaking the Truth in very hidden ways and that when these hidden things are takin literally rather than metaphorically and symbolic than they become what they were not. But the scripture itself are not lies, just hidden Truth's....very hidden.
So there are some pagans who view Gods and Goddessess as completley separate, but I do not so I guess i am not of to much help to most of your questions.
Blessings
~ravenwolf

 

[light-bringer]

I believe we are all gods/part of god. We need both good and bad, one cannot live without the other.

 

[ravenwolf]

i forgot to add that, i believ that as well, that we and everythign else are all a part of God...All is One, One is All
Blessings
~ravenwolf

 

[God_of_Mercy]

Thanks for posting, but i wish all my other questions would be answered *cough*(Heathen Dawn)

 

[Ataradrac]

God_of_Mercy, depending on which religion you are speaking of, you're looking for a list of many hundreds, if not thousands, of god/esses. In Shintoism alone, every river, mountain and forest can potentially have a god.

Some are good, some are bad, some are just neutral. Some get intimately involved in human affairs, some couldn't be bothered.

Is there a particular god/ess you were wondering about? I've done a lot of reading on other religions and their mythos.

 

[Volos]

Another question. I recently had a talk with a pagan and they said the Christian God exist but lied about every thing and Christianity is underly false, but the relationship with Him is real. Does this make all the Gods of every religion exist? Why would God(Christian God) and every other one lie and make up a religion.

doesn’t’ sound like a terribly Pagan thing to say.



Pagans as a general rule embrace religious pluralism meaning that all religions are essentially correct for those that practice them. By this same token Pagans recognize that religions are human inventions so saying that the Christian God (or any Deity) lied in the creation of some religion would be defiantly unPagan in more ways than I would care to count.

Are they like competing with each other to see who gets the most followers. I just seems like such odd logic.

as ravenwolf aptly pointed out Pagans (as a general rule) believe that all Gods and Goddesses are not so much individual beings but aspects of the ultimate Divine, as such there is no competition between these individuals gods and Goddesses but so many humans feel the need to make themselves special and seek to compete with followers of other religions.

And why would God have a relationship with you and do all the things he said in the bible, then you say the bible is false. I dont get it.

remember Pagans believe that the bible was written by human beings who claimed to be divinely inspired and that the bible is no more the word of the Divine then any other book. If we seek a personal relationship with the Divine then there s not need for an intermediary between us and the Divine and that includes a book. An all powerful God does not after all need a book to speak to us, he/she/it/them speaks directly to the individual, though far to many choose not to hear.

 

[Nathan David]

Another question. I recently had a talk with a pagan and they said the Christian God exist but lied about every thing and Christianity is underly false, but the relationship with Him is real. Does this make all the Gods of every religion exist? Why would God(Christian God) and every other one lie and make up a religion. Are they like competing with each other to see who gets the most followers.

Makes sense to me (or it would if I thought gods existed). In the Old Testament Yahweh says he is a jealous god, and doesn't claim no other gods exist. He just demands the Israelites worship him only.

The natures of the gods worshipped by the ancient Greeks are pretty well described, as are the gods of many other cultures.

 

[Proud Hindu]

To often i hear people just say "the gods". I would like to know who these gods really are. I mean the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob is so well described. We know his nature and just a lot about who He is.

As a practitioner of Sanatana Dharma, I believe in one all pervading Supreme Consciousness, that people worship by different names.

My personal deity though is Lord Krishna, a human embodiment of the Universal Preserving Aspect.

http://www.geocities.com/krishnaramashiva/Krishnachakra.txt
http://www.geocities.com/krishnaramashiva/Krishna.txt

For your info, Hindu Avataras are very well described. The Ramayana epic, about Lord Ramacandra, is 3 times the length of the Illiad and Odyssey combined. The Mahabharata is 8 times the length of the Illiad+Odyssey, or 4 times the length of the Bible. Sometimes we chant the 1008 names describing the features of the Avatar.

 

[Crispie]

Luckily I dont need a book to get everything I need to know, I have access to something of infinite knowledge and guidence

 

[challenger]

Mate everyone has "theories" and wierd beliefs and some people are just easily led through Prejeduces- i know i spelt this wrong

Dammit! I'm sick of posting here, that's the fifth irony guage I've blown this week.

 

[challenger]

Luckily I dont need a book to get everything I need to know, I have access to something of infinite knowledge and guidence

Not another one

 

[vajradhara]

Namaste all,


as you may or may not know, Buddhism is repleat with gods and goddesses

however, they are not all that different than you and i and are incapable of liberating us from samsara, thus, we Buddhist types don't really see much point in worshipping them.

the god realm is the highest realm that a being can be reborn in and though they may be long lived and vastly more powerful than a human, they are still subject to karma and, eventually, rebirth.

thus, Buddhists have no "god" or "goddess" that they worship. it is very true that some Buddhists will venerate certain Buddhas or Bodhisattvas, depending on school. however, even in these praxis it is clearly understood that the Buddha or Bodhisattva being venerated is only a guide.. they cannot liberate one either... they can point the way but you must walk the path.

 

[Fuzzy]

This question is aimed at pagan gods and mabye wicca if you wanna. How many of them are there? What do they do?

It depends on the path you tread. A Monist Pagan would maintain that
there is no god, just that everything is an aspect of the whole. A pantheist
Pagan would say there's a potentially infinite number. A polythesitic Pagan
would be likely to work with a number of gods, or a specific cultural pantheon.

For more definite answers you may want to rephrase the question, when you ask a Pagan, what deities do you work with? Then you'll get a specific
answer, such as "I work with Brigid," or "I worship Apollo", or "I follow the
Egyptian pantheon."

(Editted)
Just to expound a little more...the number of gods in Paganism is dependent
on the pantheon/religion. The number of gods in Wicca is at least one.
Dianic Wicca doesn't have a male deity. Gardnerian tradition recognizes
God and Goddess. Eclectic Wicca uses pantheons as the participants see
fit.

 

[Heathen Dawn]

How many of them are there?

Thousands. Take a gander at his link for a partial sample:

http://elephanticity.250x.com/wager.html

What do they do?

They are persons as we are, and they control nature (such as Thor making thunder with His hammer Mjölnir) and teach Their worshippers the Divine Mysteries.

I recently had a talk with a pagan and they said the Christian God exist but lied about every thing and Christianity is underly false, but the relationship with Him is real. Does this make all the Gods of every religion exist?

Yes, They all exist. The claim that there is only one God is false.

Why would God(Christian God) and every other one lie and make up a religion.

He (and Allah, the Arab God) is worship-hungry, He desires the greatest number of worshippers. A jealous God.

Are they like competing with each other to see who gets the most followers.

They all like worshippers, but They have varied degrees of thin-skinnedness to lack of worship.

And why would God have a relationship with you and do all the things he said in the bible, then you say the bible is false. I dont get it.

What do you mean? He has a relationship with you, isn’t that enough? The Bible doesn’t have to be true for its starring God to be real. Christianity is a perfectly valid path. I’m not denying the Christian his relationship with God, all my worldview does is rob Christianity of its exclusivism.

 

[Crispie]

Heathen, ever realize your just making up excuses for this logic of yours without anything to truely support them. Opinions and self generated views on God or gods isnt the infallible truth, nor is it dependable.

 

[Heathen Dawn]

Heathen, ever realize your just making up excuses for this logic of yours without anything to truely support them.

You will see I am right in the end.

Opinions and self generated views on God or gods isnt the infallible truth, nor is it dependable.

That’s exactly what I think about the Bible.

 

[Crispie]

Opinions and self generated views on God or gods isnt the infallible truth, nor is it dependable.

That’s exactly what I think about the Bible.



Welp, when over 40 writers from a span of 1500 years writes 66 books that never contradict and all have the same teachings/writings, all flow together perfectly, then you start to see that there must be something infallible involved.

 

[peaceful soul]

Heathen, ever realize your just making up excuses for this logic of yours without anything to truely support them. Opinions and self generated views on God or gods isnt the infallible truth, nor is it dependable.

Thanks for stating that Crispie.

Actually, I have been reading this thread and others and am quite disturbed by what I read. Pluralism can not exist if only one holy text goes against that notion. That makes a lie of those texts and makes the proponent look quite foolish to continue to push this idea.

Pluralism makes a central truth unknowable and everything becomes questionable or relative. Subjective ideologies then have the upper hand. No one can refute the other and have the one correct view of anything. That allows for the proponents of pluralism to have no accountability to what they do - except it be of their own judgement or of only those who hold their views. They can easily say that it is true for you but not for me. You have your truths and I have mine; so do not judge me.

This kind of blindness is what prevails in our world today. Unfortunately, they are just as committed to believing it as a Christian is to his or her relationship to Christ. The main difference with a Christian is that he or she has The Word and The Spirit to guide them unto righteousness. To be fair, I can understand their perspective, becasue all Christians have gone through those same kinds of challenges - even more so now as a Christian than most, if not all, non-Christians.

Why is it that almost all people posting here in the non-religious section do not know Bible well enough to comment on it in any detail, but yet they can tell us what it says and means with absolute conviction? How can they say that it is not from God on that basis? They are fooling themselves immensely. It is really sad to see, but what can one do?

Anyways, back to topic.