Yohan wrote:Technically speaking, there is currently only one major polytheistic religion. That is Hinduism. The major piece missing in a polytheistic religion is the absence of moral principles. In other words, anything goes. One may find that to be the case with now extinct Roman and Greek polytheist religions too.
Keepers of the Monotheistic religions had over time managed to bring in moral principles into religion. Now there are good and bad morals as you know. Monotheistic relgions which emphasises good moral principles tend to do more good things for its believers, and are more attractive.
Lately Polytheistic religion Hinduism for example is copying monotheistic ones in this regard and trying to integrate moral principles into it. Now Hindus will not accept this 'copying' business since it is too much for their bloated egos.
Yohan wrote:Technically speaking, there is currently only one major polytheistic religion. That is Hinduism.
The major piece missing in a polytheistic religion is the absence of moral principles. In other words, anything goes. One may find that to be the case with now extinct Roman and Greek polytheist religions too.
Keepers of the Monotheistic religions had over time managed to bring in moral principles into religion.
Now there are good and bad morals as you know. Monotheistic relgions which emphasises good moral principles tend to do more good things for its believers, and are more attractive.
Lately Polytheistic religion Hinduism for example is copying monotheistic ones in this regard and trying to integrate moral principles into it. Now Hindus will not accept this 'copying' business since it is too much for their bloated egos.
Yohan wrote:Technically speaking, there is currently only one major polytheistic religion. That is Hinduism. The major piece missing in a polytheistic religion is the absence of moral principles. In other words, anything goes. One may find that to be the case with now extinct Roman and Greek polytheist religions too.
THHuxley wrote:Yohan wrote:Technically speaking, there is currently only one major polytheistic religion. That is Hinduism. The major piece missing in a polytheistic religion is the absence of moral principles. In other words, anything goes. One may find that to be the case with now extinct Roman and Greek polytheist religions too.
What a very strange idea. The Roman religion had no shortage of embedded moral principles, and even had a specific deity, Virtus who was the embodiment of physical and moral excellence. Virtus was often associated with Honos (the personification of honor) and they shared a double temple inside the Porta Capena of Rome.
Nothing in Roman life was so trivial that it failed to merit the attention of their deities and their religion... especially when accounting for the original Roman religion that predated their adoption of the Greek Pantheon. Each of the individual "Roman Virtues" was associated with specific religious obligations, and most of them were were represented as deities on their own and had their own cults and temples. Cicero said of these "as each divine power confers its own benefits, so it is recognized as a god in accordance with the importance of the benefits which it confers, and the power which resides in each of the gods is expressed in their names."
In other words, moral values were themselves worshiped as part of the Roman Pantheon.
While many of them do not directly translate into English, an adequate accounting of the Roman Virtues would be as follows:
* Auctoritas — "Spiritual Authority"
* Comitas — "Humour"
* Constantinum — "Perseverance"
* Clementia — "Mercy"
* Dignitas — "Dignity"
* Disciplina — "Discipline"
* Firmitas — "Tenacity"
* Frugalitas — "Frugalness"
* Gravitas — "Gravity"
* Honestas — "Respectability"
* Humanitas — "Humanity"
* Industria — "Industriousness"
* Iustitia — "Justice"
* Pietas — "Dutifulness"
* Prudentia — "Prudence"
* Salubritas — "Wholesomeness"
* Severitas — "Sternness"
* Veritas — "Truthfulness"
This is (in case you are not paying attention) a rather more comprehensive moral framework than those afforded by the Abrahamic monotheisms. In the judgment of some, it was also superior.
Religion could theoretically be true. But any random story I make up could be true. We do not have the luxury of believing arbitrary things. It could be true that if you don't sacrifice an animal every day to the God of the aliens that live in near Alpha Centauri, you go to hell and suffer eternal torment. It could be true. We just don't have the luxury of believing in it because we have no proof and no way to investigate it.
You might say it follows from belief in God that God can do miracles, but I don't see that that's necessary. There's nothing wrong with a God who cannot work miracles. Depends on what God.
That it was the idea of tyranny is rather odd, though, considering how tyrannical even the god of the Gospels/Epistles is. Oh sure, he makes a lot of noise about love and forgiveness, but when it comes down to it, the choices are: Accept Jesus, get into heaven and eternal bliss OR reject Jesus, go to a horrible place of suffering for all eternity. Yes, I know *some* Christians don't believe in that sort of afterlife, but their beliefs are not based on Scripture, which is where the ultimate authority for Christian belief should be. The point is this: The god of the Bible is still offering a binary choice based not on forgiveness and grace, but on bribery and fear. If that's not tyrannical, I don't know what is.
.... You serious?
POLYTHEISM!!!!!
Look: Monotheism didn't even EXIST until the 8th/7th century BCE, when Hezekiah took out all the ESTABLISHED competing gods from the (very tiny) kingdom of Israel. Before that time, there were NO MONOTHEISTS. Anywhere.
Proof? There's been almost 100 years of painstaking archaeological and historical research into places all over the world, including the Near East. Beyond what the Bible claims about what the Hebrews believed, there is NO EVIDENCE AT ALL for monotheism before the violent expulsion of competing god-cults of ancient Israel and the establishment of the idea of a transcendent god, divorced from place or culture.
There's absolutely no evidence that you can't twist to make fit the conclusion that you've already reached. You assume monotheism comes first because that's what you want to be true. You work backward from this conclusion, picking evidence or making the evidence fit based on the interpretation you want already. In logical terms that is called 'begging the question,' and it is a HUGE logical fallacy.
This was rather firmly established with the excavation at Ugarit, and the realization that Biblical monotheism was an evolutionary descendent of Canaanite polytheism. Originally, the "head god" was EL, and with his consort Asherah begat seventy sons... the multiple national gods of the levant. Each member of the divine family was assigned a nation of their own, an event still recorded in Deuteronomy 32:8-9 (you want to look at the Dead Sea Scroll or Septuagint version rather than the edited Masoretic text). Yahweh was assigned the nation of Judah, and was originally just one god among others. Yawheh himself makes that point in the "First Commandment."
"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me."
Yahweh himself seems to fully accept the existence of other gods, simply demanding that his nation (Judah/Israel) worship only him.
Other traces of Israel's original polytheism remain in the Bible to this day, from the plural "Elohim" to the Nephilim to the 82d Psalm in which the father of the gods, El presides in a divine assembly at which Yahweh stands up and stages the overthrow of his brothers, the other gods.
While other monotheisms might boast other origins, the Abrahamic faiths all descend in a straight line from that original polytheism found in Ugarit and fossilized still in the Old Testament.
debunker wrote:That it was the idea of tyranny is rather odd, though, considering how tyrannical even the god of the Gospels/Epistles is. Oh sure, he makes a lot of noise about love and forgiveness, but when it comes down to it, the choices are: Accept Jesus, get into heaven and eternal bliss OR reject Jesus, go to a horrible place of suffering for all eternity. Yes, I know *some* Christians don't believe in that sort of afterlife, but their beliefs are not based on Scripture, which is where the ultimate authority for Christian belief should be. The point is this: The god of the Bible is still offering a binary choice based not on forgiveness and grace, but on bribery and fear. If that's not tyrannical, I don't know what is.
First, please see my definition of God above. Now, you, me and all of humanity are an absolute zero compared to this God. Is it tyrannical if this God chose to throw this zero in an everlasting Hell? I don't think so. The very fact that He chose to care about us enough to save some of us under certain conditions is a great sign of infinite mercy on His part. Only when you accept the fact that you are infinitely small and insignificant compared to His infinite majesty, will you able to accept that Him throwing all of us in Hell is justice and Him saving some of us is mercy.
Wow! So that's your proof? No archeologocal evidence was found yet of a monotheistic religion before Judiasm? Do you claim that the current archeological findings are absolutely conclusive?
And to top it off, it seems that you're implying that since some Israelites were polytheistic then the Hebrew Bible was preaching polytheism!!! Did I understand you correctly?
Of course I have no evidence for my claim just like all you have is that archeology so far did not find an evidence for monotheism before Judiasm.
You make such BIG claims. By the way, such claims (if proven) are the kind that can easily shatter my belief in God (not the fact that there's no evidence for Him).
debunker wrote:You make such BIG claims. By the way, such claims (if proven) are the kind that can easily shatter my belief in God (not the fact that there's no evidence for Him).
Now, could you please elaborate on these claims. In other words, do you think that the current archelogical findings are conclusive? Do you think they tell the whole story? No room for speculation is left.
debunker wrote:And although I'm not particularly interested in defending the Bible, I feel inclined to point this out: God in the the Hebrew Bible never acknowleged other gods as real (as you seem to suggest) but rather false gods not to be worshipped.
debunker wrote:I checked Deuteronomy 32:8-9 and Pslam 82
I see no problem in Deuteronomy 32:8-9.
debunker wrote:As for Psalm 82, and although I don't like the description of God's servants as His sons/gods (who will die like men) this can still be explained as metaphorical expression. I have no evidence for my speculation, but do you have evidence for your claim?
Yohan wrote:Yes, moral virtues in the form of deities were worshipped in Roman/Greek religions. Actually the same is true today in Hinduism too. All such worship was/is done at a personal or family level. So the effect was never felt across the society at large. With or without religion, man is born with some inherent moral virtues which he extends across his community depending on the situation. Spreading such values across a society consistently requires another level of effort. You know morality in most cases just can't be legislated. That is where moral religions come in.
THHuxley wrote:Another absolutely indefensible assertion.Yohan wrote:Yes, moral virtues in the form of deities were worshipped in Roman/Greek religions. Actually the same is true today in Hinduism too. All such worship was/is done at a personal or family level. So the effect was never felt across the society at large. With or without religion, man is born with some inherent moral virtues which he extends across his community depending on the situation. Spreading such values across a society consistently requires another level of effort. You know morality in most cases just can't be legislated. That is where moral religions come in.
Roman religion was pervasive, it was communal, and morality was deeply ingrained in their "legislation." There was no separation of church and state in ancient Rome. They were the same.
Yohan wrote:ome probably had high moral values early on. But things changed rapidly. Here are just a few. Homosexuality was encouraged everywhere and imposed upon young boys. Some way to bring up good men!
Yohan wrote:It was the disintegration of the basic family unit which finally did make the Empire collapse (not the Barbarians). Romans couldn't reproduce enough Romans with good principles to keep the empire going.
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