Killer Mike

I just cant help but think that few take the superstition found in Greek and Roman Mythology too seriously. Zeus, Pegasus, Osiris, etc.. name your pick. There is no "serious" debate about their existence and any "debate" would seem a little silly. It would be an oxymoron and no matter how tricky or sophisticated any argument someone could come up with to argue for their existence, it would be as silly as making a good argument that Gilligan really was influenced my a native islanders magic spell and thats why he acted so funny (even though the Professor might disagree).

But along comes the theist essentially saying my superstition is somehow superior. They come up with all sorts of sophisticated arguments from Cosmological to the Anthropic Argument. I cant help but think of the Muppets with their tiny little brains, getting together to come up with arguments for the existence of "god". I envision Kermet the Frog yapping about how fine tuned the universe is for life, and Miss Piggy saying there is just too much information around that cant be explained by natural laws :Cheeky:

These same theists would just laugh at any argument that the gods in Greek and Roman Mythology were somehow real. Its a crazy mixed up world is it not. Perhaps the moon is made of cheese also Its just too silly

Nostalgic Pushhead

Nope, some people here believe in the greek or Norse gods.



Yeah, I don't know either.

Shven

If anything, polytheistic, animistic and pantheistic beliefs make more sense than a traditional monotheistic belief - as they dont presume an omnimax deity.

Nostalgic Pushhead

Only marginally more sense...

But come on, if the greek pantheon really existed, they must be pretty damn inept, for everyone to stop believing in them for so long.

Ojuice5001

Not really. The key analogy from human history is the behavior of peoples who are conquered. For a time they put up a lot of resistance. With the Greco-Roman gods vs. Yahweh, that would be from the fourth century until well into the Dark Ages. But then you have a period when the vanquished mostly go along with their conqueror's demands, and the conquerers, for their part, recognize their need to stay within the limits of what their subjects will tolerate.

I can see your point, the state of Jupiter's religions declined steadily to zero and stayed there until the twentieth century. Like I said, the reason is that Yahweh found ways of making his rule tolerable to the Roman gods, even without many or any people believing in them. But in the twentieth century, the situation in the realm of the gods became more favorable to the old gods. It was like the Magna Carta--the old gods were able to demand the right to create religions that worshipped them once more. And so that's what we see today. These neopagan religions should satisfy the pagan gods by a decent adherence to tradition, and by attracting signficant numbers of worship. And they should satisfy the overlords, Yahweh and the post-Enlightenment gods, by not threating the status quo by attracting too many worshippers, or in any other way. From this we can see that it's desirable for neopaganism to adhere to tradition some, but it's just as important to keep with the times--and that's also what we see today.

Ojuice5001

I used to post those kinds of arguments on this very board. Two of the best threads were this, and this. Most people took them reasonably seriously. Really, not many atheists engaged in the kind of ridicule that you imply most people would. As for the Christians, they had the same low rate of inclination to ridicule my belief as the atheists.

Today, I no longer make intensive efforts to prove the Roman gods exist. I still believe it, of course, and I'd still like it if you guys converted to Roman polytheism. But I no longer see a point in trying. The reason I wanted to convert the atheists was that I'd like to see a total restoration of a realm for Jupiter. But he doesn't have to have people believe in him to dominate a realm of his own. A god can just have to anonymously rule over people who have no idea he exists, and that may be all that is possible for Jupiter in the foreseeable future.

Uh-huh. You have a point here somewhere?

As I said, they haven't made fun of me constantly. Do you know what the true man-on-the-street attitude toward the Roman gods is? I've asked around, and people don't really think of the Greek/Roman gods as silly so much as outdated. Some people have considered the Roman gods and accepted them, some think of them as silly, and some take them relatively seriously but do not believe. But all three of those groups are minorities; the majority attitude is that the Roman gods are irrelevant simply because their cults flourished so long ago.

Crucifiction

Or maybe, just maybe, they're just stories.

Shven

just stories? You seriously underestimate the power of stories. We all live in stories of our own devising.

BDS

Good point. Dismissing something because it is "just" a story is almost as silly as dismissing it because it is "just" a myth.

NearNihil Experience

Or because its "just a theory..."