TOS - Who Mourns for Adonais?

[Percysowner]

There are hundreds of paths up the mountain, all leading to the same place, so it doesn’t matter which path you take. The only person wasting time is the one who runs around the mountain, telling everyone that his or her path is wrong.

—
Hindu proverb

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

If you worship powerful beings simply for being powerful then the only sensible thing is to change allegiances whenever a more powerful being comes along.

Which is the same kind of logic that justifies divorcing your spouse whenever you meet someone else who is more attractive than they are.

I beg your pardon?

Why does a being need to be completely and utterly powerful? Why isn't it enough to worship a being who gives you good harvest, good health, and/or artistic inspiration? Why do I need to get my every need in life from one all-powerful god?

Lets say you're worshiping a "god" that gives you artistic inspiration.

Now another "god" comes along and says "No, you must worship me instead. But if you do I will give you better artistic inspiration than your old god."

And there's your problem right there. Polytheism doesn't have "instead" worships. It has "Also".

I didn't stop praying to Dionysus just because I started worshipping Hecate, even though they both are psychopompes with a connection to ghosts.

[Beastro]

If you worship powerful beings simply for being powerful then the only sensible thing is to change allegiances whenever a more powerful being comes along.

Which is the same kind of logic that justifies divorcing your spouse whenever you meet someone else who is more attractive than they are.

I beg your pardon?

Why does a being need to be completely and utterly powerful? Why isn't it enough to worship a being who gives you good harvest, good health, and/or artistic inspiration? Why do I need to get my every need in life from one all-powerful god?

Lets say you're worshiping a "god" that gives you artistic inspiration.

Now another "god" comes along and says "No, you must worship me instead. But if you do I will give you better artistic inspiration than your old god."

Under your system it would be stupid to remain loyal to the old god when the new god is better.

Now you might say "But there's only one god of artistic inspiration."

To which I say: why? Why would there only be one god of a particular aspect?

That's why the need for only the God and not a god. There can't be someone new, more powerful, or otherwise better.

I will note that some Christians pray to Jesus and some, particularly Catholics, pray to specific saints. To which I say that is stupid. God does not need a middle man.

The issue faced here about polytheism is dealt with in the term "meta divine realm". I'm not sure if I linked about it here, pretty sure I did, but look it up.

The pagan outlook of dieties is not to demand worship, at least in "Western" religion (as in west of India). The outlook is to meet out favor if service is rendered that pleases them - worship in ancient times was seen more as service than strict submission as the stereotype is now.

The fact is in such religions the gods don't need you or any human anymore than pigeons and ants need people, but eating their scraps of food is a marked advantage to them.

With that said, if Fuzz wants to stick with one out of love or loyalty that hands out stale crumbs that is his right as a lesser being in a world filled with beings that possess varying degrees of power. That is the essence of the "meta divine realm", its amoral in that it posits nothing overarching and caring that sees or made the world "good" as Genesis declares creation to be.

It also ignores that one girl is not wedded to one sugar daddy.

Your outlook is still transactional. The Abrahamic point of view is antithetical to transactionism: you don't appease God because He scratches your back, you do it because He is and the source of all things.

This idea is ultimately where secularity finds the sacred in truth. What is truth must shine through and not simply when it's advantageous to you.

I'd say giving the predominance of Orthodoxy that not just some but most if not all pray to Christ. Christ is God. I know the Trinity make peoples heads spin, but there is no comparison between Him and the veneration of saints whether one agrees with said veneration or not (even Catholics will agree with that vehemently, hence the emphasis on mere veneration).

If this strains things, consider from thr psychology analogy that every person is an individual made up of individuals in our sub-personalities and other things lurking along and underneath the surface of consciousness. That is what every one of our psychological makes up is with the conscious-self as one part existing equally but not dominating (and if you think you consciously dominate the rest of yourself it simply means you're blind to the other sides your being led by and acting upon).

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

If you worship powerful beings simply for being powerful then the only sensible thing is to change allegiances whenever a more powerful being comes along.

Which is the same kind of logic that justifies divorcing your spouse whenever you meet someone else who is more attractive than they are.

I beg your pardon?

Why does a being need to be completely and utterly powerful? Why isn't it enough to worship a being who gives you good harvest, good health, and/or artistic inspiration? Why do I need to get my every need in life from one all-powerful god?

Lets say you're worshiping a "god" that gives you artistic inspiration.

Now another "god" comes along and says "No, you must worship me instead. But if you do I will give you better artistic inspiration than your old god."

Under your system it would be stupid to remain loyal to the old god when the new god is better.

Let me tell you what I'd do. Let's a Celtic god of bards comes along and says this about Dionysus.

First, I'd be pretty flattered to be personally addressed by any god. I don't get direct messaging from any of the gods I worship.

That said, I'd be reluctant to stop worshipping Dionysus for a lot of reasons. For one thing, I have a long and positive history with Dionysus. I've received inspirations and blessings that I attribute to Him, including one event that I consider a minor miracle. I have prayed to Him, loved Him, delighted in Him. I have enjoyed many ecstatic fits of creativity and drunken revelry and theatrical transporation in His name. I have celebrated the Summer Solstice for Him. Through interpretations of old texts, word of mouth info from fellow Pagans, and good ol' trial and error, I have learned what types of sacrifice and worship are more likely to please him and curry his favor.

The same cannot be said of this Bardic God. Why would I abandon a happy, positive religious relationship for an unknown quantity?

I would certainly be interested in worshipping a god who personally sought me out and whose existence was being validated, and if at all possible I would try to avoid offending said god, but I'd like to think I wouldn't give up on Dionysus just because some new being claimed greater power in one of his many domains. I stopped praying to jealous gods when I left Christianity.

After all, you wouldn't turn your back on Christianity and worship Ahura Mazda just because some Zoriastrian mystic performed miracles more impressive than those attributed to the prophets, would you?

[clearspira]

Y'know, i'm an atheist, but the Greek gods are by far the most believable gods I have ever read about. You tell me which is more believable: that humans were invented by an all-loving, all-forgiving creature of mercy and peace; or that humans were invented by a bunch of vain serial rapists, paedophiles, murderers, thieves and slavers? I'll give you a hint: turn on the evening news.

The Greek gods are simultaneous the most believable - because they're basically just humans with superpowers - but also the ones least worthy of worship. If we were to discover definite proof that Zeus and crew were real and still existed, our next order of business should be figuring out how to wipe them out because they're a menace to the universe.

How does that old saying go? "Any god you can perceive is not a god. If you meet a god, kill him."

Who is that quote from? I have to say it comes from a pretty Abrahamic-centric view of religion.

Also, speaking as somebody who worships a couple of Greek gods, a lot of the rape myths are more cultural motifs than canonical theology. It's like somebody 900 years from now learning about American Christianity from netflix archives of Supernatural and Lucifer. In particular, a huge amount of the "Greek gods, and Zeus in particular, were total dickheads" comes from the most well-known versions of myths coming from Ovid, who definitely had an ax to grind.

That said, even going by the nastier myths of the time, the ones I'm following have no attributed rapes. That's the nice thing about polytheism; it offers choices.

You worship the Greek gods?

You don't though, do you. You made that up. And if you do, how are you doing so without any temples in their name and many of their traditions lost to time? Did you just wake up one day and invent a few rites?

[clearspira]

The only thing worthy of worship is perfection.

Didn't expect to see someone embracing the philosophy of the Borg

Especially as perfection is impossible as it is an ideal that everyone has a different opinion of. To put it bluntly: a Ku Klux Klan member is going to have a different idea of a perfect being and a perfect world than Florence Nightingale.

And what even is perfection when relating to the Christian god anyway? Because i'm looking around and I cannot see an awful lot that this perfect being has created that is actually all that perfect.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

The answer to how I'm doing without any non-crumbly temples and a paucity of primary sources is "My best". I worship a couple of them, and I gotta say it's way easier than trying to worship a lot of Celtic gods or Germanic Pagan deities. At least I have more to go on than a single worn bas-relief, an offhand quote from an unreliable Christian monk, and the name of a river.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

BTW, clearspira, there aren't many of this but I'm far from alone in that respect. If you're interested in finding out more here's a 101 article: http://www.religionfacts.com/hellenic-reconstructionism

[Thebestoftherest]

This is still being talk on.

[clearspira]

This is still being talk on.

Religion has been talked about for 5000 yrs at least. It isn't ending on a 13 page forum thread.