I'm of the opinion that ta lot of those Old Gods were developed from someone's very real, very human, ancestors. As time rolled along and stories were told of the Ancestors and the Good Old Days, those ancestors got "deified" somewhere along the trail, and next thing you know, there were gods.
Gilgamesh was a Mesopotamian "demigod", who started out as just another guy, a king of Uruk. Somewhere along the line, he gained demigod status as folks started thinking of him as "2/3 god, 1/3 man", and later on he achieved full deity in his own right, although I forget what he was god of just now- but I know he was prayed to by Mesopotamians, and sat in judgement on a throne somewhere about something.
According to the Volsung Saga, Odin, too, started out as a village chief of a village named "Asgard". Just another man. but, along the way, he achieved godhood over generations of story-telling, until finally he was prayed to by nearly all Scandinavians.
Christians, too, are turning Jesus into a demigod, to the point that now they are claiming that he is part of a Triune "Godhead", a Trinity... but that belief was not always so, either. I think it was the Council of Nicea - but I may be wrong about which council it was - who turned him into a god with their Trinity doctrine in the 4th century AD. Properly, Jesus is the Savior, a responsibility delegated to him by God, but is not a god himself. How can a god be killed? And, once dead, how could a god raise himself from the dead if he IS dead? The Bilb tells us that "the dead know nothing", so, knowing nothing, how could even a god raise himself up by his own bootstraps?
That's one of the hooks Moslems use to hang Christians on - they have three gods, not one as their own Bible plainly tells them there is supposed to be. So Moslems have a valid argument that Christians are "polytheists", due to their belief in three gods instead of one as a true Monotheist would believe.
Some of them developed from "nature spirits", ro the personification of natural elements - gods of thunder, gods of war, gods of water, gods of air, gods of fire, etc.
That's not to say that there are no real gods or spirits, just that they've been confused by many because, "feelings". The facts are, feelings come and feelings go, and feelings are fleeting, a poor foundation to build a god upon... and feelings are what most of the "religious" run on. Mohammed, for example - his god had a tendency to suddenly think of "laws" that benefited Mohammed, and that usually happened just as Mohammed needed that benefit. How convenient for him, to have a god on retainer to do his bidding!
Yes, I believe in a God, and I believe in spirits, but they're mine, and I don't share. I have no need to go around killing folk that don't think just like I do, because the fact is, no one does, and that would be an awful lot of killing which in the end would just leave me utterly alone anyhow. No percentages in it.
Science has it's uses, if performed correctly, but it's not the end-all, be-all answer to everything, no more than religion is. Matter of fact, science ans religion are two distinctly different methods of inquiry. The answer different sets of questions, and so are not mutually exclusive. Science can not answer religious questions, no more than religion can answer scientific questions. When folks start trying to mix, mingle, and confuse the two, we get weird shit like Young Earth Creationism and Scientology - those are just two sides of the same looney coin. In an effort to appease their gods, folks will try to force square pegs into round holes and call it "science" from their religious viewpoint, and likewise some scientists will try to force round pegs into square holes, and claim it answers a religious question. But really, the two never cross paths.
Science has to be repeatable and "falsifiable" ( that means verifiable, when looked at from the other direction) in order to be good science. Some things will simply not stand still to be poked and prodded fro science, nor will they jump through the same hoops repeatedly in order to be tested and verified. Those things are more properly the purview of religions and philosophies, both of which have their fair share of wannabe overlords who will make shit up just to answer a question they don't know the answer to.
In either case, I'm not willing to throw the baby out with the bath water. I won't turn my back entirely on religion, nor will I turn my back entirely on science - but I do think it behooves one to make a study of learning how to tell "good" science from "bad" science, and "good" religion fro "bad" religion. A failure to do so inevitably leads to folks getting hornswoggled and bamboozled in bth arenas, they get led right down the garden path - in both arenas.
Protip: if your god tells you that you have to kill off everyone that doesn't think like you, try telling your god that, if it's truly a god, it can do it's own damn killing if it wants someone un-alived. If your god can't do it's own killing if necessary, then it's not a god, it's Just Some Guy somewhere who is weaker than you, but expects you to build his empire for him. A "god" weaker than you are is not a god worthy of your worship, now is it? Maybe it should be worshiping YOU, eh?
Another protip: If a scientist somewhere tells you something that you can plainly see is untrue, that's a "shill", not a scientist. He, too, has political aims and goals, and he, too, wants you to build his empire for him. In those cases, trust your gut, and fuck the "science" rather than following it. If a scientific "finding of fact" has a clearly political result, it's not "science", it's "salesmanship". Run away from it, screaming if necessary.
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Gilgamesh was a Mesopotamian "demigod", who started out as just another guy, a king of Uruk. Somewhere along the line, he gained demigod status as folks started thinking of him as "2/3 god, 1/3 man", and later on he achieved full deity in his own right, although I forget what he was god of just now- but I know he was prayed to by Mesopotamians, and sat in judgement on a throne somewhere about something.
According to the Volsung Saga, Odin, too, started out as a village chief of a village named "Asgard". Just another man. but, along the way, he achieved godhood over generations of story-telling, until finally he was prayed to by nearly all Scandinavians.
Christians, too, are turning Jesus into a demigod, to the point that now they are claiming that he is part of a Triune "Godhead", a Trinity... but that belief was not always so, either. I think it was the Council of Nicea - but I may be wrong about which council it was - who turned him into a god with their Trinity doctrine in the 4th century AD. Properly, Jesus is the Savior, a responsibility delegated to him by God, but is not a god himself. How can a god be killed? And, once dead, how could a god raise himself from the dead if he IS dead? The Bilb tells us that "the dead know nothing", so, knowing nothing, how could even a god raise himself up by his own bootstraps?
That's one of the hooks Moslems use to hang Christians on - they have three gods, not one as their own Bible plainly tells them there is supposed to be. So Moslems have a valid argument that Christians are "polytheists", due to their belief in three gods instead of one as a true Monotheist would believe.
Some of them developed from "nature spirits", ro the personification of natural elements - gods of thunder, gods of war, gods of water, gods of air, gods of fire, etc.
That's not to say that there are no real gods or spirits, just that they've been confused by many because, "feelings". The facts are, feelings come and feelings go, and feelings are fleeting, a poor foundation to build a god upon... and feelings are what most of the "religious" run on. Mohammed, for example - his god had a tendency to suddenly think of "laws" that benefited Mohammed, and that usually happened just as Mohammed needed that benefit. How convenient for him, to have a god on retainer to do his bidding!
Yes, I believe in a God, and I believe in spirits, but they're mine, and I don't share. I have no need to go around killing folk that don't think just like I do, because the fact is, no one does, and that would be an awful lot of killing which in the end would just leave me utterly alone anyhow. No percentages in it.
Science has it's uses, if performed correctly, but it's not the end-all, be-all answer to everything, no more than religion is. Matter of fact, science ans religion are two distinctly different methods of inquiry. The answer different sets of questions, and so are not mutually exclusive. Science can not answer religious questions, no more than religion can answer scientific questions. When folks start trying to mix, mingle, and confuse the two, we get weird shit like Young Earth Creationism and Scientology - those are just two sides of the same looney coin. In an effort to appease their gods, folks will try to force square pegs into round holes and call it "science" from their religious viewpoint, and likewise some scientists will try to force round pegs into square holes, and claim it answers a religious question. But really, the two never cross paths.
Science has to be repeatable and "falsifiable" ( that means verifiable, when looked at from the other direction) in order to be good science. Some things will simply not stand still to be poked and prodded fro science, nor will they jump through the same hoops repeatedly in order to be tested and verified. Those things are more properly the purview of religions and philosophies, both of which have their fair share of wannabe overlords who will make shit up just to answer a question they don't know the answer to.
In either case, I'm not willing to throw the baby out with the bath water. I won't turn my back entirely on religion, nor will I turn my back entirely on science - but I do think it behooves one to make a study of learning how to tell "good" science from "bad" science, and "good" religion fro "bad" religion. A failure to do so inevitably leads to folks getting hornswoggled and bamboozled in bth arenas, they get led right down the garden path - in both arenas.
Protip: if your god tells you that you have to kill off everyone that doesn't think like you, try telling your god that, if it's truly a god, it can do it's own damn killing if it wants someone un-alived. If your god can't do it's own killing if necessary, then it's not a god, it's Just Some Guy somewhere who is weaker than you, but expects you to build his empire for him. A "god" weaker than you are is not a god worthy of your worship, now is it? Maybe it should be worshiping YOU, eh?
Another protip: If a scientist somewhere tells you something that you can plainly see is untrue, that's a "shill", not a scientist. He, too, has political aims and goals, and he, too, wants you to build his empire for him. In those cases, trust your gut, and fuck the "science" rather than following it. If a scientific "finding of fact" has a clearly political result, it's not "science", it's "salesmanship". Run away from it, screaming if necessary.
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“Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake