Do you belive other gods exist?

[cheese_sdc]

This suggests that many gods are not real at all, but just an invention of human imagination, does it not?

Not necessarily. People throughout the centuries have experienced Divinity. Because Divinity is infinite, there are infinite possible interpretations that a human can put on that experience. This interpretation is shaped by their culture, history, geography, personality, etc.

Saying that those “gods” are an invention of human imagination, I think, oversimplifies the issue.

 

[Lokadottir]

Not necessarily. People throughout the centuries have experienced Divinity. Because Divinity is infinite, there are infinite possible interpretations that a human can put on that experience. This interpretation is shaped by their culture, history, geography, personality, etc.

Saying that those “gods” are an invention of human imagination, I think, oversimplifies the issue.

Like two people knowing one person and thinking totally different things of him?

 

[dshix]

Not necessarily. People throughout the centuries have experienced Divinity. Because Divinity is infinite, there are infinite possible interpretations that a human can put on that experience. This interpretation is shaped by their culture, history, geography, personality, etc.

Saying that those “gods” are an invention of human imagination, I think, oversimplifies the issue.

The bolded sentence is your mistake. Just because something is infinite does not mean there is an infinite number of ways to interpret it; that is a non-sequitur.

If you can logically prove it, however, it may be open to discussion.

 

[Kallisto]

The bolded sentence is your mistake. Just because something is infinite does not mean there is an infinite number of ways to interpret it; that is a non-sequitur.

If you can logically prove it, however, it may be open to discussion.

It doesn’t mean there is only one way to interpret it either. “Infinite” by definition is not subject to limitation or external (i.e., human) determination. So if you invalidate one human attempt to determine, all attempts are equally invalid.

 

[Cider]

Not necessarily. People throughout the centuries have experienced Divinity. Because Divinity is infinite, there are infinite possible interpretations that a human can put on that experience. This interpretation is shaped by their culture, history, geography, personality, etc.

Saying that those “gods” are an invention of human imagination, I think, oversimplifies the issue.

Isn’t that similar to the whole God is an Elephant explanation. You know, one group has the front leg, one has the tail, one has the back ( random examples).

 

[cheese_sdc]

The bolded sentence is your mistake. Just because something is infinite does not mean there is an infinite number of ways to interpret it; that is a non-sequitur.

If you can logically prove it, however, it may be open to discussion.

Interesting point, and you may be correct. It probably is better so say that, “There are as many possible interpretations of Divinity as there are individuals”. Since there is certainly not an infinite amount of people… I’m sure you understand.

However, I can demonstrate a similar point this way: No one person knows the “True Me”. The people at my office know one facet of Cheese, my ex-wife knows another facet. My gaming buddies know another facet. My ex-girlfriends know yet another facet. My close friends know “another me”. Etc, Etc, Etc.

In fact, the people here know a different facet “of me”.

Which is the real “me”? They all are, to a degree. I’d even argue that I don’t even know myself fully, so do I even know the “real me”? People are complicated and we show different persona’s at different times and to different people.

Furthermore, each of these other people’s knowledge of me is shaped and molded by their own history, personality, and experience.

And when we deal with an infinite Divinity, I think we have the same phenomenon.

 

[cheese_sdc]

Isn’t that similar to the whole God is an Elephant explanation. You know, one group has the front leg, one has the tail, one has the back ( random examples).

Pretty much.

 

[Contarini]

Pretty much.

It seems to me that the only reasonable response to this “elephant argument” is a kind of agnosticism. Obviously if all I can experience is part of the elephant, I can’t know that another person doesn’t have another part. But I also can’t know that they do. The problem I have with some versions of “pluralism” is the assumption that the pluralist does see the whole elephant, indeed, that pluralism is the elephant!

I can only judge the truth or falsehood of another person’s beliefs in relation to what I already believe to be true or false.

Edwin

 

[cheese_sdc]

It seems to me that the only reasonable response to this “elephant argument” is a kind of agnosticism. Obviously if all I can experience is part of the elephant, I can’t know that another person doesn’t have another part. But I also can’t know that they do. The problem I have with some versions of “pluralism” is the assumption that the pluralist does see the whole elephant, indeed, that pluralism is the elephant!

I can only judge the truth or falsehood of another person’s beliefs in relation to what I already believe to be true or false.

Edwin

Or one could accept that Divinity is unknowable but marvel at the little portion that has been experienced/revealed.

 

[Contarini]

Our one could accept that Divinity is unknowable but marvel at the little portion that has been experienced/revealed.

Indeed. But we do sometimes have to take stands regarding other people’s claims about divine revelation.

For instance, if someone tells me that it’s God’s will for them to kill women for not covering their heads, I am not going to say “well, that may be part of God that you have seen and I haven’t.” I’m going to say, like Peter in Prince Caspian, “We really do know Aslan–a little bit, I mean,” and he isn’t like that.

No one really treats all claims about divine revelation as if they are quite likely to be true–only those that don’t contradict what we deeply care about. The problem I have with a lot of liberal Christians is that their religion seems centered on tolerance and civility rather than on the Incarnation. Hence, it’s not that they are really accepting of all religious expressions–they are generally pretty sure that fundamentalists have God wrong–but that the standard by which they decide what they will be open to is something other than orthodox Christianity.

Edwin

 

[cheese_sdc]

For instance, if someone tells me that it’s God’s will for them to kill women for not covering their heads, I am not going to say “well, that may be part of God that you have seen and I haven’t.”

Do we really need to have a discussion about how one person’s decision to start killing innocents is not Divinely inspired?

There is darkness in man, and we extend that darkness to our experience of the Divine. We twist Divinity to our own purposes and self destructiveness.

 

[Lokadottir]

Do we really need to have a discussion about how one person’s decision to start killing innocents is not Divinely inspired?

There is darkness in man, and we extend that darkness to our experience of the Divine. We twist It to our own purposes and self destructiveness.

cough Conquering of Caanan cough WHO SAID THAT?

 

[cheese_sdc]

cough Conquering of Caanan cough WHO SAID THAT?

Shush! I’m trying to be diplomatic here.

 

[Lokadottir]

Shush! I’m trying to be diplomatic here.

Sorry!

 

[benjohnson]

I’ll certainly grant that the story of Slaughter of the Canaanites is difficult to hear if one isn’t Jewish or Christian.

But I do find it amusing that those that have grown up seeped in the Judeo-Christian moral sensibilities that life should be protected are shocked to find the wicked punished for their child sacrifices and other evils per the very scripture they don’t understand.

If we are to lambast the Jews (and ourselves) for the God-commanded destruction of the Canaanites, what are we to say of ourselves who have aborted 50 million of our own children in the supreme comfort of our civilization in the last 40 years.

 

[Skadi]

I’ll certainly grant that the story of Slaughter of the Canaanites is difficult to hear if one isn’t Jewish or Christian.

But I do find it amusing that those that have grown up seeped in the Judeo-Christian moral sensibilities that life should be protected are shocked to find the wicked punished for their child sacrifices and other evils per the very scripture they don’t understand.

If we are to lambast the Jews (and ourselves) for the God-commanded destruction of the Canaanites, what are we to say of ourselves who have aborted 50 million of our own children in the supreme comfort of our civilization in the last 40 years.

That still dosnt change the fact YHWH supposedly ordered the mass execution of an entire ethnic group without so much as an attempt to save them from the firey hell he was condemning them to. I have had people actually try to convince me that this is a “loving” action, like a father spanking a child.

 

[Lokadottir]

That still dosnt change the fact YHWH supposedly ordered the mass execution of an entire ethnic group without so much as an attempt to save them from the firey hell he was condemning them to. I have had people actually try to convince me that this is a “loving” action, like a father spanking a child.

… spanking them to death… :doh2:

 

[Peter_Plato]

That still dosnt change the fact YHWH supposedly ordered the mass execution of an entire ethnic group without so much as an attempt to save them from the firey hell he was condemning them to. I have had people actually try to convince me that this is a “loving” action, like a father spanking a child.

Perhaps more like a surgeon removing a cancer that could potentially result in the entire human body being impacted to its eternal detriment. The problem is that we do not fully comprehend the nature of evil to claim that God’s action was not the right one at the time. We can make claims, but those are only the thoughts of a limited moral being, not one with the capacity to understand the impact of allowing a potentially malignant way of life from taking hold.

Whatever judgement we have to make on the action God took on the Canaanites, it certainly cannot be from the perspective of omniscience and absolute moral goodness. We might venture an opinion, but if an absolutely perfect and all-knowing God truly did command the Israelites to remove the Canaanite people from the Earth, then his judgement would, by definition, have been the right one and ours simply misinformed.

 

[LivingWaters7]

Correct. Mortality was a learning experience for Christ as it was for us and He came through through victorious.

Luke 2:52 (KJV) And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.

Hebrews 5:8 (KJV) Though he were a Son, yet **learned he obedience **by the things which he suffered;

Hebrews 5:9 (KJV) And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;

Mark 14:33 (KJV) And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed (astonished), and to be very heavy;

A fully divine being doesn’t grow in wisdom, learn obedience, become perfect, and become astonished at something.

LDS like to point out that prior to His crucifixtion he commanded in Matthew 5:48 (KJV) “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” He did not claim perfection yet. However, when preaching to the ancient Americans He commanded in the Book of Mormon in 3 Nephi 12:48 “Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.”

D&C 93:5-18 sums up beautifully Christ’s progression until receiving the fulness of the Father.

5 I (Christ) was in the world and received of my Father, and the works of him were plainly manifest.
6 And John [the Baptist] saw and bore record of the fulness of my glory, and the fulness of John’s record is hereafter to be revealed.
7 And he bore record, saying: I saw his glory, that he was in the beginning, before the world was;
8 Therefore, in the beginning the Word was, for he was the Word, even the messenger of salvation—
9 The light and the Redeemer of the world; the Spirit of truth, who came into the world, because the world was made by him, and in him was the life of men and the light of men.
10 The worlds were made by him; men were made by him; all things were made by him, and through him, and of him.
11 And I, John, bear record that I beheld his glory, as the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, even the Spirit of truth, which came and dwelt in the flesh, and dwelt among us.
12 And I, John, saw that he received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace;
13 And he received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness;
14 And thus he was called the Son of God, because he received not of the fulness at the first.
15 And I, John, bear record, and lo, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the form of a dove, and sat upon him, and there came a voice out of heaven saying: This is my beloved Son.
16 And I, John, bear record that he received a fulness of the glory of the Father;
17 And he received all power, both in heaven and on earth, and the glory of the Father was with him, for he dwelt in him.
18 And it shall come to pass, that if you are faithful you shall receive the fulness of the record of John.

I hope this helps…

Very interesting. So Christ’s learning experience on earth contributed to His divinity, making Him more divine than He already was prior to His incarnation (i.e. as Jehovah, God of the Old Testament, in the LDS view)? Does this mean that the Jews were worshipping a not-fully-divine God (just thinking of the implications of this)?

The Catholic view is that yes, Christ certainly did learn and grow during His mortal ministry. However, this learning and growth was in His human nature. When Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, He remained fully God, while also being fully man. For Catholics, there is no “somewhat God” or “Divine, but not fully Divine”. You either are or you aren’t. You can’t be 3/4 divine, and then have to learn the rest. Those verses referenced from the Bible do not conflict with the orthodox view that Christ has been eternally fully God (including during His earthly ministry), because He was also fully human, and experienced human emotions, learned, grew, etc. This of course is a difference from the LDS view. LDS view man and God has the same type of being, the same “species” if you will, and the only difference is that of progression. Traditional Christians view God and man as having a chasm between them (bridged by Christ), a “species” difference if you will.

We could always start a separate thread if necessary .

 

[LivingWaters7]

For those posters that believe in more than one God, do you believe that only the Deities in your pantheon exist? What about those of other faiths? If they also exist, how do they co-exist? Are they seen as emanations of one God or “force”? I think that many Hindus, for example, tend to view all divine beings as manifestations of Brahman, so I’m wondering how others view that.