Heathen Dawn

Many gods are like a single god in their explanatory efficacy: they don't explain, they only add more questions. Laplace could equally say of many gods that "I have no need of this theory".

Pure materialism is not on the way out anymore than pure heliocentrism is. Materialism is the explanation for all phenomena, here on earth and throughout the whole universe.

hinduwoman

All human beings are nuts in one way or other --- worshipping gods is one of the strongest symptoms!

Bumble Bee Tuna

Polytheism is more reasonable than monotheism. It still has the same "lack of evidence" and "human nature leads to made-up religions" problems going for it, but it at least avoids purely logical arguments such as those against the OmniGod.
Polytheism is thus better than Monotheism. I don't think one can be a skeptic and a polytheist unless one is a polytheist because they think evidence leads them to believe that there are gods.
But...But...if Polytheism is better than monotheism, can we extrapolate that the more gods the merrier? Then the supreme belief must be infinitheism!

-B

Happy Wonderer

I'm honestly curious about this statement, it is a new one to me. Could you expand on it a bit? Where does it come from? It seems to me that the straw man here is that "pure materialism" asserts that the universe is a predictable machine that works the same way every time. Even were it a true critique, I'm not sure how one would get from chaos theory to a belief in gods. It seems like the dictchotomy is between a predictable universe and an unpredictable one. The existence of nonmaterial beings is independent of that -- they can (not) exist in either.

Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Thanks!


HW

[ November 26, 2002: Message edited by: Happy Wonderer ]</p>

Agricola Senior

Every human being is nuts in one way or another & and there are many various symptoms!

monkey mind

Hahah. I completely agree with this.

Harumi

The problem with polytheism is that many of the original Gods and Goddesses were used to explain natural phenomena that couldn't be explained then. For example, the chariot of Apollo, or the Thunder God of Chinese Mythology.

Some can be easily disproven, such as Mount Olympus, and I'm sure that if we ever climbed the mountain that no God(s)/Goddess(es) would exist.

I used to be a polytheist, until I completely rejected it after seeing little/no evidence and certain parts the Confucian aspects struck me as extremely unjust (I'm speaking of Chinese deities). The only thing I needn't worry about was that these deities were supposedly good, as they became them by doing good works in their human life, reincarnating as a deity afterwards. The problem is that they're still learning, and are likely to make mistakes.

There really is no point to believing in them because most of them don't send a nonbeliever automatically to hell. They judge on character and deeds instead, which is far better.

Rusting Car Bumper

Yes and No.

What do you mean by god(s)? I can positively disprove that the Sun is a god but I cannot positively disprove that there exists conscious extra-natural entities.

Polytheism avoids the problem of evil.

However, polytheism has a detraction because it is "poly". It is not invalid to posit a SINGLE extra-natural "thing" that started the universe. However, when one posits multiple things (i.e. possibly ploytheism) then that seems a bit more sticky.

One can be a skeptic and anything.

Potentially yes. In the current power structure No.

Of course!

DC

Derec

The "What would Jesus drive" would certainly qualify, as SUV-bashing is mostly a left-wing fetish.

But even more likely "religiuous left" referes to the New Agey hippie mysticism or worshiping of American Indian belief systems. Much as religious right wants science (mostly evolution) to be abandoned and be replaced by Judeo-Christian mythology the Indian religious left wants to do the same for mythology. See Vine Deloria or Ralph Nader's vice presidential candidate.