Jamie_L

Ah, but...

Is it really simpler to explain one God creating this mad jumbled mess that is our universe?

Or is it actually simpler to explain how multiple, competing gods might have created this chaos by constantly getting in each other's way, or by not cooperating with each other?

One god may be simpler than many. However, the explanation that goes along with one god seems more complex than the explanation that goes along with multiple gods.

I think that's why most older religions are polytheistic. Because it was simpler to explain things with lots of gods than it was to explain thing with one big god. Religion later evolved into the more complex form of monothesim.

Just a thought, anyway.

Jamie

Shadowy Man

Occam's Razor is basically a "rule of thumb" to choose between theories that have exactly the same observational consequences. In that case, choose the simpler, i.e. the one that requires the fewer theoretical constructs.

Jayhawker Soule

Yep - things that are opposite to each other are opposite to each other. The 'point' is as tautological as it is irrelevant.

Someone, somewhere, might have mentioned any number of things. So?

Pretentious poppycock. What, for example, distinguishes (a) Ulimate Reality, (b) Reality, and (c) reality? What is meant by "by default".

More importantly, at issue is not the distinction between 'approximate' and 'absolute', but between 'applicable' and 'inapplicable'.

om mani padme hume

Brother Fred

I understand that within religion they might have reasons for believing that there is only one god e.g. scripture. But my question is whether there is an argument such as the cosmo, theo, etc. - that doesn't necessarily depend on religion.

I think it is an even bigger challenge for theist to prove that only one god exists than simply proving that a god exists at all. I think it's crucial to their position that they do so.

Give it a test. Instead of asking the theist to prove that god exists, ask him to prove that only one god exists. Watch 'em squirm.

K

Jamie_L:

Excellent point. And let's not forget that Christianity and Islam are also polytheistic. Satan has all of the properties of a god from other religions. He may be a lesser god, but he is still used to explain parts of our universe that many theists would rather not assign to their "one true God".

Darth Dane

You are missing my point.
If as someone mentions, there is a lot of Gods fighting eachother, where are they fighting? In our universe? in their own universe? Their "universe" must be ONE universe where they all can fight eachother, how can you fight someone that is not even on the same existential level of existance. i.e. another "planet" to keep a metaphor that can be grasped. What determined that these God's can interact with eachother?

There is one "reality" that everything else is included in.

Nothing much, the world is my evidence, I have yet to see someone provide evidence for knowledge not gained through teh world.

Heheh pretentious, MY point is that all these "realities" (a,b,c) are in essense the same thing, there is no distinction, all is one.
Can you distinguish them?

Try to explain to me what a tree is. I haven't seen one before or experienced it.
If you say that it has leaves, they are green, it sucks up water through it's trunk, it has roots, this one is called an oak, it is also brownish, it is 5 meters tall, weighs 500 kg and so on. All these expressions of what a tree is, is NOT the tree in and of itself.
Only the tree itself can express what a tree is.
Take music. Explain me music.
You take notes, intonations, majors, minors, the hz of the string, the resonace in the instruments. But all these attempts of trying to explain what music IS, can only be approximative.

You see my point clearer now?





DD - Love Spliff

Jayhawker Soule

No, I am dismissing your point.
If someone mentions that there is one God, where is it? And what is it about this place that precludes multiple Gods?
Which is precisely what renders the Supernatural out of scope. There is nothing in the real world that justifies the selection of God over God(s).

Darth Dane

LOL, cute retort

This one God I am talking about, is everywhere, God has assumed infinite forms of expressing Godself. Open your eyes and see, open your ears and listen, what you see and hear IS God. The one God, is not seperate from anything. anything at all.
For someone to act with another, you need space to do it in, right?, if there is no space, what can be said about two God's? If there is no space to differentiate them, they must be one.

Well, you see that knowledge can be gained, I said that I haven't SEEN PROOF of it.
Many mystics claim to have seen the "supernatural". Do you wish to test their reality? Then seek what they sought, and maybe you will find it, however, it may take time....and it may not take time.

Who is the God of your reality? I assume it is you, since you determiner whether or not you will beleiev in God, you choose to Love some, and hate others, you choose to create some things, adn destroy other things. It sounds like a God to me, I find in thebible that "GOD" does teh same thing as you do.

You are the highest reality/authority, you choose what is REAL or not. You have freewill to choose wahtever you want.





DD - Love Spliff

Infidelettante

Lobstrosity you are right. Almost the entire OT is the effort of the temple cult of the Hebrews to keep the population from the worship of other gods. As one of the few polytheists here [where are you ladies?] I view polytheism as a social stance as opposed to a theological one. I worship the Goddess Inanna so then how am I to tell a theist his God does not exist when I am devoted to so obscure a diety. She is my Goddess whom I adore with all my heart but I will not insist she exists. It is of no importance to me if any others believe she exsits or not. It is the nature of monotheism to insist otherwise. Think on the fact that the Hebrews existed as a nation untill they encountered an empire one of whose social requirments was polytheism. The theists are unable to envision more than their one God. Even in our own day this causes much social discord.

JT

PS You mat notice that I'm not a logical polytheist.

Kassiana

I almost never post in EOG for a very good reason: most of what goes on here is debate over the Christian/Jewish God. I am not a Christian or a Jew, and I don't believe their God doesn't exist, though I believe a lot of the Christians and Jews who believe immoral things of their God will have a lot to answer for when He gets a hold of them. I do believe the Bible has fallacies, but I don't see the point of debating them all day when (a) the Christians who believe the Bible doesn't have fallacies will dismiss anything we say and (b) the same dratted arguments keep coming up time and time again to be refuted again and again.

I hang out in GRD and occasionally in BC&A, but I mostly lurk there for historial Jesus v. mythical Jesus info, because I lean toward mythical but am interested in seeing if there's any better info for historical than I've heard so far.

Generally speaking, though, Western atheism was spawned by Western Christianity and Christianity tends to be the majority religion where most atheists live...so much of this site doesn't speak to me as I'm not an atheist, a proselytizing Pagan theist (who might feel obliged to post here to convert y'all unheathens), or a Christian. I've tried not to obsess over a religion which is no longer mine, and weaning myself from EOG is a part of that..