Do All Deities Worshiped by Humans Actually Exist?

[MineralMan]

All of those deities have or had faithful followers.

Faith is represented as adequate proof of existence by many religious people.

So, are all deities real?

If you believe that they are not real, but that the deity in which you have faith is real, then I think you have some 'splaining to do, really. If your faith is evidence of your deity's existence, why is the faith of others false evidence?

Or, perhaps, are all deities equally created by human imagination and are just thought to be real?

I await discussion of these questions.

[samnsara]

1. I only worship my doG....and he is real! :)

[Zoonart]

2. RIght you are.

I recently had a f riend of mine, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, tell me that he judges himself, as a man, by what he sees reflected in his dog's eyes.
That just blew me away. Praise DOG.

[MineralMan]

3. Indeed. There is plentiful physical evidence of the existence of dogs.

I myself have two such dogs, and I frequently have to pick up evidence of their existence while on walks with them.

[trotsky]

4. Yeah it's funny how many believers point to martyrs as some kind of ironclad proof.

But it opens up the can of worms that now EVERYTHING that someone was willing to die for, is true. People can be wrong but be very committed. Exhibit A: Trump supporters.

[MineralMan]

5. Indeed. It appears that faith proves nothing.

Either that or all deities are real, which must make for a very crowded place where they exist.

[John1956PA]

6. The "I contend we are both atheists . . ." quote caught my eye several years ago.

Here is the quote:

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Stephen F. Roberts

The history of the quote can be found here: http://freelink.wildlink.com/quote_history.php .

[MineralMan]

7. Yes. I've seen that before.

It's a fair argument, actually. I have not seen a valid counter-argument to it.

That's why I'm asking believers the question in this thread. I don't know if any of them will participate in it, though.

[AtheistCrusader]

19. This argument is powerless against special pleading.

'Oh, mine rose from the dead'. Done deal, and they ignore your argument.

Doesn't matter that rising from the dead is a common feature of mythological gods.
Stephen's argument is a reasonable argument, and reasonable arguments only have traction with reasonable people.

[Soxfan58]

8. I believe

This big beautiful planet, the creator of life, our protector, is my deity. I see its miracles everyday, and am standing literally right on it.

[MineralMan]

10. OK. However, you should probably expand your

definition, since our planet could not have produced life without some other coincidental fellow travelers.

[Glorfindel]

9. Interesting question! Might it be that the act of worship calls the deity into existence?

And that long neglect, or failure to worship, obliterates said deity? Who now speaks of Thoth, or Baal, or Hestia? These deities, for hundreds or even thousands of years, had their faithful followers. Yet the worship of Shiva, of Allah, of Jehovah, of Krishna, continues with great fervor, though with mixed results.

In truth, I agree with our third president: "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

And with Will Rogers: "“If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."

[MineralMan]

11. Yes. Perhaps all deities exist only in the minds of those who

worship them. If that is the case, then there are no deities, since I don't believe that any of them exist. My mind is the equal of other minds, I'm sure.

[aka-chmeee]

34. In a dual purpose reply,

One to your post and one for the guy who's looking for movie quotes:
"I'll buy that for a Dollar!"

[Cuthbert Allgood]

14. You should read American Gods by Neil Gaiman if you haven't already.

He explores that. He does some of it in his original Sandman comic, too, but more extensively in American Gods.

[Glorfindel]

16. Thanks...I haven't read it.

I'll see if I can find it at the library. If not, I'll order it from Barnes & Noble. Always glad to get a reading recommendation.

[cntrygrl]

26. You can read it online at the following URL

https://www.8novels.net/book/American_Gods_1/

[Glorfindel]

29. Wow...thanks a lot. I didn't know that website existed.

A new resource to while away the dreary month of January! I really appreciate it.

[TlalocW]

12. Though I'm a Kansan, I have prayed to Poseidon for many years

And I've yet to be destroyed by a tidal wave or drowned in a whirlpool.

What more proof do you need?

TlalocW

[MineralMan]

13. Apparently, you have propitiated that deity, then.

Last edited Wed Jan 24, 2018, 12:02 PM - Edit history (2)

Good job! You'll never need to worry again about such things. Of course, Kansas was once under a vast ocean.

[Permanut]

15. Huge subject, MineralMan, thanks for posting..

Seems that people have a deep desire to have humanity's origins and purpose explained, and are willing in many cases to accept one of the prevailing explanations in their community of origin. Lots of magical thinking and cult thinking; hard to figure what the evolutionary advantage is; maybe there is none.



“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”

- Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays.


"Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based."

- Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

[MineralMan]

17. Yes. I'm certainly not the first to think of this.

I'm familiar with your second quotation, but this is the first time I've seen the other one. I'll definitely add it to my list.

Actually, though, this question is the thing that tipped me over the edge of atheism. The more I looked at other religions, the more I realized that all those deities were invented by human imaginations, and in the image of humans, to boot.

That did it. I could no longer believe that any of them really existed, except as figments of the imagination.

[guillaumeb]

18. Or all deities are a reflection of the Creator.

And every human "sees" a different thing when they "see" the Creator.

To the Norse, hell was a frozen place. To the Abrahamic people, hell was very hot.

[MineralMan]

20. I've seen no evidence of that, Guillaume. None whatsoever.

And as you admit, every human creates his or her own deity, and all of them are different.

So, you and I apparently believe the same thing. There are no actual deities - only human imagination.

[guillaumeb]

21. You imagined you saw that in my response.

But what you wrote completely missed the point of what I said. Interesting response on your part. Perhaps a rereading by you of my response is in order.

[MineralMan]

22. I can see that you're coming around, Guy.

Clearly. That's good.

[guillaumeb]

23. Now this response sounds more in tune with the choir.

[MineralMan]

24. ..

[Permanut]

25. If every human "sees" a different thing..

and each human who sees a different thing is a member of a group who shares that imagery, then all religions that include any imagery of a creator are equally valid. That is definitely NOT what we hear from evangelicals, fundies and fanatics of the most influential religious groups, including Christianity and Islam.

No problem with that here, except when they attempt to control society by proxy based on the edicts of their version of the creator.

[Act_of_Reparation]

32. Two people believe in superficially similar things.

Therefore they both believe in the same thing.

Just. Stunning.

[guillaumeb]

35. Your first sentence is in direct contradiction to the second.

Stunning indeed.

[Act_of_Reparation]

36. Oh, picked up on the sarcasm did you?

[DetlefK]

27. The fantasy-novel "Aera" tackles that:

In it, all gods are real... and they have returned to Earth on New Year's Eve 2000 to again rule over their respective peoples and territories. All gods have shown up as walking&talking persons with supernatural powers... except for Jehova/God/Allah. He's the only one who's still missing.

"Aera" has very interesting premises, but the novel is so badly written the end will leave you frustrated and rage-filled.

[janterry]

28. Li-Young Lee writes

Is prayer, then, the proper attitude for the mind which longs to be freely blown?

from The City in which I Love You

it kinds of sums it up for me. Deities, on the other hand, are beyond my ken..

[left-of-center2012]

30. Yes. There is a "deity clubhouse" where they all hangout

I think it's in the Zeta Orionis star system.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

31. Reza Aslan's interesting book, "God: A Human History," talks about

the related notion of "god(s)" as being humanized in almost all religions and cultures:

Author Reza Aslan’s “God: A Human History” is less a biography of God than a study of why and how humans tend to anthropomorphize the divine. As societies developed from small groups of hunter-gatherers to large, specialized populations supported by agriculture, ideas about God changed as well. At the core of all belief systems, Aslan observes a tendency to seek a “humanized God,” which has been “embedded in our consciousness the moment the idea of God first occurred to us.” Studies have shown that although most followers of monotheistic faiths believe God is an abstract force, they will nevertheless describe God “as though they were talking about someone they might have met on the street.” What we say about God, in other words, says more about us than about what God might actually be.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-we-made-god-in-our-own-image/2017/11/16/94df18ee-bd7e-11e7-8444-a0d4f04b89eb_story.html?utm_term=.490c03b41b11

If you're interested in theology, even as an aspect of anthropology if you aren't a believer, it's an interesting read.

[grumpyduck]

33. When I was a kid in Catholic school in the mid-60s

we were of course taught that there's only one true God. And I remember sitting there one day in the 7th grade, thinking about this while the nun went on and on. Of course, I couldn't ask or bring this up -- I would have been burnt at the stake for heresy. Okay, maybe not. But here's what my young, irreverent, and curious mind was thinking:

If we're being taught that our God is the only true God, I have to believe that other religions teach the same thing about their god. What are they going to do otherwise, tell their kids that they're worshiping a false god?

So all these religions believe their god is the real one, yet as far as I knew, nobody has ever seen Him (or Her).

Back in the Egyptian/Greek/Roman/etc. days, there were multiple gods, each one a specialist in one area. The term "multitasking" didn't exist back in the mid-60s (or if it did, I certainly didn't know it), so there were places like Mt. Olympus where all these specialists hung out and had their arguments and figured out how to torment humans.

Later, the idea of many gods was replaced by a single god. Did most of them get fired?

But, in any case, if a real Supreme Entity exists, and all these various cultures and religions are convinced that their Supreme Entity is the real one, how do we know that there isn't just one Supreme Entity and that all these people are just calling Him/Her by different names?

That's when I caught myself, sitting there in class, having to stifle a chuckle. Poor Guy, sitting up there being called all these different names and being worshiped in different ways.

I would really love to know how Sister would have responded to that.

[Pope George Ringo II]

37. Considering children's relationship with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny...

I don't think you can limit this to gods. Isn't the only real difference between Odin and Batman or Captain Kirk in this context a question of age? Does anything besides age of believer and myth really separate Jesus from Sauron or Darth Vader?