[Main Blog Post] What Are the Gods and How Do We Come to Know Them?

[jprussell]

For this week, I thought I'd just dip my toe into a little bit of light theology, attempting to take the model of the planes we discussed a few weeks back and applying it to understanding what's going on in religious experiences. I'd love to know what y'all think, as always.

Comments

[k_a_nitz]

Hmm. "Through our art, stories, songs, and so forth, we come up with particular, perceivable, understandable shapes to represent the Gods". This resonates with me. The way I see it, God(s) is(are) on a plane beyond our understanding, and all we get are glimpses of aspects which we then have to make sense of. The anthropomorphism of God(s) is a product of this trying to make sense of these experiences. And any two people presented with the same aspect may come up with similar but not exact understandings, and the more distant their cultures are from each other the more distant their understandings will be. Whether there is one or many is not something we can determine. We may see many aspects that seem distinct, but that is just a product of our limited ability to comprehend our experiences of the God(s). As you highlight, the important thing is how we experience and respond to that experience of the God(s). Kierkegaard had it right in emphasising that faith is something beyond reason.

I'm very much in the non-dualist camp of Meister Eckhart - there is no us and him(them), rather he(they) are a part of us (though this does not mean they are subordinate to us or made up by us, instead quite the opposite) and we are a part of him(them). You could kind of think of this like being a member of a race - you are a part of the race, but the race is also within you whether you like it or not, and you have a choice of how you interact with that part within you and how you experience it within the bounds it sets - note that describing what it is and trying to delineate it run into problems (just like with traditions and most emergent phenomena) which can be traced to our own limited abilities to comprehend such a higher concept.

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for your blog! To me, it seems that monotheism and polytheism are both human models. Models cannot be true, they can only approach truth.

If you pray to Jupiter, and he doesn't respond, perhaps being a leader isn't for you, or Jupiter is testing you to see if you really want to be a leader.

I don't think the gods are a catalogue of followers and we get to choose one of them to help us. I think the gods are in the lead, and we are the followers, and even our choice of whom to follow is limited by their acceptance.