what happened to the old gods, the ones that no one believes in anymore?

[Heddi]

was watching a show the other night about egypt...pyramids, sphynx, burial chambers, mummification, and all these dieties that aren't worshipes anymore.

where are they? are they still out there, waiting for return of their glory days?

how are Egyptian gods different from god, Mohammed, etc? because those guys have active believers then they are real? were horus and Isis and Osiris just that fake, and Mohammed, etc, that real? what basis do any current religionists have for denying the existence of one set (Isis, etc) but not another??

[pokerfan]

1. Hanging out on Pollux IV

[laconicsax]

3. That episode almost has the most awesome line in the original series.

Last edited Sun Jan 29, 2012, 08:20 PM - Edit history (1)

"Mankind has no need for gods..."

If it stopped there, that would have been awesome.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

5. I think it's a hilarious artifact of religious thinking.

It's such a sneering dismissal of other people's religion that you think only an atheist could be saying that. Then you find out that Jesus and Kirk are BFFs, and it's just too funny how provincial that spacefaring society really is. The humor comes from the fact that we could just as sneeringly dismiss the Christian faith.

It's as though they're saying, "the Greek gods were just fabricated by a cynical priesthood to frighten and control the masses, and hide from them the truth... of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!" I would really like to believe that they were being ironic, but I don't truly think that's the case.

And when you get right down to it, he may as well believe in the Greek pantheon. Would that really be any more absurd if he did? It's a laughably primitive and dangerously outdated set of ideas - a mere leftover from an early epoch. But, when once you make First Contact, doesn't it become clear that all living religions are just as absurd and out-of-date? In a world where there's no scarcity, disease, or war, how is that monotheistic faith is sticking around?

[laconicsax]

9. Picard made up for it.

"Dr. Barron, your report describes how rational these people are. Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the dark ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? NO!"

[ChadwickHenryWard]

17. Thus, the answer to the eternal question.

Picard is better than Kirk. QED.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

38. Both Star Treks were the only television to openly

question religion. They get a bum rap for being geek shows. Brilliant on many levels.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

37. That made me laugh out loud.

[Warpy]

2. Millions of gods have existed and men shook before them

and all but a very few have passed out of human memory, as dead and forgotten as the people who quaked in fear of them.

These gods will pass, too, when their time is up, probably to be replaced by still others.

[Behind the Aegis]

4. Ever see "Mists of Avalon?"

That is one of the best explainations. The Old Gods do as they always have, they just become New Gods.

To my knowledge, Mohammed is not a god.

[HopeHoops]

6. Most of them are waiting for or have been in a movie about them.

[pink-o]

7. Too many of the "Old" beliefs are matriarchal...

Like the Druids and Pagans of Western Europe. The three main religions are of course about mind control, but also about controlling females. I love when my friends tell me I should abhor Islam and the way they treat my gender, but my Rabbi Great-grandfather advocated chicks in the back of the Temple, basically behind a fence so as not to "distract" the scholarly Yeshiva boys from their studies. IOW, we're all Jezebels, and Eves, just put on the earth to sexually tempt poor naive guys who should be doing better things. Their dicks are our fault.

And anyone who thinks this sexism doesn't exist today in Judaism or Christianity...just recently in Israel, an Orthodox dude refused to get on a bus until the chick moved to the back (yup. You thought that all ended with Rosa Parks) and a couple of years ago, some Xian woman who'd for years taught Sunday School was fired, once some guy realized the tenets of their religion forbade women to do so.

Ultimately, ALL religion is there for three reasons: 1): To suppress free thought. 2): To instill fear and: 3) Assuage said fear with comfortable dogma. The olden religions did it, too. But the three modern religions have that built-in sexism as an extra-added nasty bonus.

Oh, and don't even get me STARTED on Hinduism!!!

[mzteris]

10. um - excuse me?

if there were any "good religions" it was the matriarchal ones...,

it wasn't until the "patriarchs" got involved that it all went to sh*t.

The goat-herders really did us in.

[pink-o]

11. That's kinda what I'm sayin'

as a possible reason as to why the old religions were oppressed, and how condescending and hypocritical it is for one to criticize someone for worshiping Big Stones at Solstice when he worships a bloody statue on a cross.


And in the 21st century, not the ninth! It never ceases to amaze me how willfully ignorant people are because they're so afraid!

[Joseph8th]

35. That 1st one's a pretty big "if"... nt

[lindysalsagal]

8. I'm still here.

Where've you been?

[progressoid]

20. I'm confused.

I see a goddess and yet this is the atheist/agnostic forum.

[lindysalsagal]

24. Ok. They accuse us athiests of having no sense of humor....

I really didn't think anyone would take that photo seriously...Sorry.

[progressoid]

25. What? No sense of humor?

I beg to differ.

... http://www.democraticunderground.com/12303278

[sudopod]

33. Huh. Always thought She'd look more Greek. nt

[Arugula Latte]

12. Also, I'm confused about "God's" real name

Is it Yahweh, Jehovah, Elohim, Yeshua, El Shaddai, Adonai or Jesus? Also, does God hyphenate?

[Humanist_Activist]

14. It is confusing...

Yahweh and Jehovah can be considered "proper names" depending on the alphabet and translation you follow(both are more or less variations on the same name. Yeshua and Jesus are like that too. El Shaddai is a different god completely(God of the Mountain), Elohim is not a name but a term meaning, in English, Gods. Adonai is another term meaning Lord. The confusion stems from the fact that the Gods of the Bible were either later edited to be demonized(Asherah and Baal) or were merged into one through later editing(El and Yahweh). Jesus is, in the strictest sense, a demigod, similar to Herakles or Mithra. The concept of the Trinity is another example of trying to reconcile polytheistic beliefs in a monotheistic framework, and its extra-biblical.

[Arugula Latte]

15. Thanks.

Religious people sure have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to force themselves to "believe" in this stuff.

[Humanist_Activist]

19. Oh yes they do, and to make it more confusing...

sorry, I love mythology, so I read up on this stuff. Anyways, the word El was the name of a single god, the head of the Canaanite Pantheon, Yahweh was a God of War, El was the leader, more or less. Its very complicated, and changed from time period to time period, but this is the simplified version. El, being head god, eventually his name devolved to just mean "god" as a generic term. Hence part of the confusion. El Shaddai was Abraham's god, but never really given a proper name(probably was El proper, but how are we to know?) Yahweh is a proper name, but to add to the confusion, in many modern Bibles, its translated to "the Lord" or "Almighty", which leads to some awkward translations.

Yahweh(Jehovah), as I said, was a god of war, a useful god to worship during as portrayed in the Exodus story, when he entered the picture, so to speak, in the Bible.

Note the term El, which is now generic explains the names of most of the angels, which end with "el" which translates in their names to "of god", such as power of god, messenger of god, and so on and so forth.

The mental gymnastics seem to exist only in the monotheistic religions, most polytheistic religions were and are used to mutable and changing gods, gods merge, divide, have different aspects, etc. Hence the reason for so many hyphens, in a manner of speaking, in a lot of gods that were worshiped, particularly Egyptian, Greek and Roman gods, they were combined and divided many times in history, add in the gods of Gaul and of other surrounding regions of the pre-Christian Roman empire and it gets confusing as hell.

[Arugula Latte]

22. Interesting. And, yes, monotheism has big holes in its story.

For example, the problem of good and evil existing under one omnipotent god (who is "love" but will also fry your ass in a fire or wipe you out in a hurricane or give a child cancer ... oh, but he has his reasons and ours is not to know!) is a tricky little problem for the god apologists.

Epicurus:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”

[caseymoz]

31. You have to see how this was confused to believe it.

First of all, the Jews couldn't say Yahweh's name for fear of death (see Life of Brian). The high priest would say it once a year on a certain feast day (they really knew how to party then, huh?) but then they stopped that custom.

Then, when it came time to translate the name into Greek for the Christians, the scribes ran into a some real trouble and plain bad luck. First of all, the Hebrew alphabet doesn't have vowels. The Greek alphabet didn't have the sounds y (or j), h or w. None of them! Meanwhile, any scribe who tried to render it correctly was in danger of being burned at the stake. They hit upon translating YHWH as "the Lord," which is the way you find it in the King James Bible. So, when Christians say, "Jesus is the Lord," they're committing heresy saying Jesus is Yahweh!

"Jehovah" was a late, muddled, attempt to try to reconstruct the word "Yahweh," but there's really no way it was pronounced that way. In fact, we have no way of knowing how YHWH was pronounced.

Elohim and El Shaddai are embarrassments for monotheists, because, first, Ehohim is plural and means "Children of El." El was the chief god of a Mesopotamian pantheon. This indicates Yahweh's origins were in that pagan pantheon, along with his brother and arch-enemy Ba-El (Baal, remember him?) El Shaddai, is similarly a god in that Pantheon, and probably Yahweh's original name before he was groomed by new believers to be the only God. BTW, the names of the archangels, Micha-el, Raha-el, Asra-el, are all minor deities in that same pantheon.

As for Adonai, I just don't remember. Jesus came later and he was melded into the Trinity, which came even later. He's not to be confused with God the Father, The Lord, Yahweh/Jehovah.

Update: I see now, I lot of this is redundant. Oh, well. Hope it helps.

[Armin-A]

13. they are all still there... they are just given a new spin but most stories are recycled

[Goblinmonger]

16. Your OP Title made me think of lines from this song.

[Merlot]

30. "Meet the old boss, same as the new boss?"

Meet the old god, same as the new god.

Some say Clapton is god, Townsend gets my vote - Smash that guitar, Pete!

[xfundy]

18. They lost the Brand War.

Coke v Pepsi is lame by comparison.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. They're inhabiting the bodies of tortoises: can I recommend Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett?

review (with a few spoilers): http://www.sfreviews.net/smallgods.html
http://www.amazon.com/Small-Gods-Terry-Pratchett/dp/0061092177

[AlbertCat]

23. Just last night, my sister said...

.... she believes that untruths never last. They eventually fade with time and the truth remains. That's why Christianity remains after 2000 years (and not the other gods I assume).

1st I asked her how she came to the conclusion that untruths disappear. Then I pointed out that Hinduism is thousands of years older than Christianity and has many many gods, so, by her logic, Hinduism must be even more true than Christianity.

The crap even educated people come up with so they won't have to really die

[Warren Stupidity]

26. Mohammed was a prophet, not a god.

Jesus was reworked from prophet to one of a three sided deity. For catholics and their eastern orthodox cousins, the lesser old gods were absorbed into the pantheon of saints, while the big guys were basically given the death penalty, although a case can be made for the melding of the Germanic warrior gods into the western branch of catholicism as the gothic tribes took over the remnants of the western empire, with a warrior-Christ emerging from that process.

Note that the big holidays, Christmas and Easter, are drop in replacements for their polytheistic predecessors.

[awoke_in_2003]

27. they are living on that island...

with Hendrix and Elvis

[dimbear]

28. Lots of them found new careers in advertising.

Especially for sexytime devices.

[lazarus]

29. They're still around

Read Gaiman's American Gods. Great book. Gods are only as powerful as the number of believers they have. Thus, we have new gods like Internet and Cable TV taking over, while Wotan and Ahura-Mazda are lurking in the shadows.

[DisgustedCynic]

32. What happened to the Old Gods?

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
(In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.)

[RKP5637]

34. They are here/there, the names have morphed into the vogue god and the

fears, superstitions, persecutions, cliques and cults still exist, but often are mammoth today. And the flocks are still present. And new ones will appear. It's a rut.

[darkstar3]

36. kick