If you read the old testament in particular, god never denies the existence of other gods, only that he’s the best one. Yahweh was actually just one god in an ancient pre Jewish pantheon. He was like Dionysus, a god of harvest and wine and rebirth. Different tribes had different chief gods, but all accepted the existence of the others. Just happened over time that the people who worshipped Yahweh were the only ones left and it became a monotheistic religion.
I’m sure back in the day, those gods were more similar to Greek gods, flawed and monstrous, and entities to fear. That’s why the old testament god is such a psychopath.
Elohim (one of his several names; I like this one, because it betrays his Canaanitic roots) is one of several Canaanitic gods, which makes a lot more sense than him being the only god yet him being jealous of other gods (that don’t exist).
Edit: El was also portrayed as a calf, which makes the worshipped golden calf make a lot more sense in the story of Israels formation. What does not make sense is the pre-Israelites going to a land they already lived in, historically speaking
I’ve never seen any evidence of him being anything but a war and storm god similar to Baal.
Great video on it for those interested: https://youtu.be/mdKst8zeh-U
Its a shame that a lack of hard evidence and a disdain for looking for more from theological groups resisting demystifying their religion means we don’t know or have records on a lot of the early days of poly to mono theism.
Considering it looks like the 18th Dynasty of Egypt had a push to move away from Poly in Amun that involved building a new captial with the help of skilled laborers from the North Canaanites only to be be attacked for their position by the older poly religious leaders causing the downfall off the new capital falling and the workers fleeing back across the desert…
I mean there is so much to piece together of how politics and the empires of the time influenced how we as humans and religions developed but then you might ruin the idea of magic with real world incredible stories.
Do we know what/who the other gods were?
Some appear in the bible or are mentioned. Baal I know was one. And was later turned into a satan thing by medieval Christians. Ashira as well gets mentioned in the Bible in a vague sense, but she was the wife of Yahweh.
They mentions the egypts gods too, don’t remember where, I only know because my mom got angry at me when I questioned that part lmao
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahwism
At the head of this pantheon was Yahweh, held in an especially high regard as the two Israelite kingdoms’ national god.[3] Some scholars hold that the goddess Asherah was worshipped as Yahweh’s consort,[3] though other scholars disagree.[4] Following this duo were second-tier gods and goddesses, such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte
God created hell so we can one day drag his psychotic ass in.
Based.
Not defending god here but afaik the 7 deadly sins come from the divine comedy
The term isn’t found in the bible,but there are plenty of references to the sins.
Mark 7:20-23 (NLT) 20 And then he added, ‘It is what comes from inside that defiles you. 21 For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. 23 All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.’
Proverbs 6:16 - 19 (KJV)
These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood
An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief
A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren
They aren’t listed in the Bible, but they definetly weren’t made up by Dante
but it is ultimately completely pointless. someone(or rather many someones) made up the OG bible canon and some fanfics are becoming almost canon by being well known. same difference
Revelation is one of the most quoted judeo-christian texts, and I recently learned that it was written as a fanfic and it took the fandom a surprisingly long time to recognise it as part of the official lore.
Most are derived from Psalms, Proverbs, and other locations in the old testament. It came from Catholicism. The weakest of the seven for a Biblical origin is Sloth, as it is derived from a failure to act in line with scripture. The list itself is not of canonical origin but is instead a collection of thoughts in a simplification that is easier to digest and remember.
There is some value in the scripture when it comes to philosophy, however small that may be. It is a great example of what humans were able to directly observe in their time, the ways humans were manipulated with their vulnerabilities, how politics and religion were the same thing in past eras, and many other minor intrigues. Still, 99% of life that has ever existed has gone extinct, and there is not a single reference in scripture that reflects ontological knowledge of the universe. Every bit of every religious work around the world can be explained by human observations and meddling. If a God exists, the least they could have done is prove their existence by giving any of the cosmological constants that are the fundamental building blocks of the universe, or act like a sane person and give me a call any time - my phone is on. Faith is a synonym for fantasy, and primarily persists because of religious isolationist social networking, and teaching faith to gullible children before they have a choice in their social networking development path.
Rules for thee but not for me
I’m not saying it’s real, but if it was, can you really make a case for all 9 billion people (or however many there are now) to have the same powers as a God?
God is a sigma
Almost like God isn’t real and was made up by humans to control people.
I’m sure it wasn’t made to control people, I think it was made to explain stuff they didn’t understand and became a tool of control later
You don’t say?
what??
Where did you hear that?
The gluttony one needs work tbh. Bit of a gish gallop there needing reinforcement.
Occasionally, anon discovers a human invention.
For sloth, the dude worked for one week and didn’t do squat after that.
Six days*
To be fair though, according to the book he did like everything during that one week.
I think we should have magic, he stopped working too soon.
Burnout is real folks
Pride, wrath, envy, and sloth are correct. The others are a bit of a stretch.
If He was up there chillin, letting this happen
Doin nothin, He’d be in need of a slappin
-Insane Clown Posse, Where’s God?
As far as I know these sins are only sins for mortals. For example pride is wrong because you worship yourself instead of God. Sloth is wrong because it would be your job to better the world, not God’s and so on.
Right, God knows better than you and is above it all you stupid animal, sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, and blindly follow whatever the newest version of the Bible says, because that’s what “faith” means
Well, it was never implied that God was supposed to be subject to the same commandments. The whole religion is kind of requires holding God above one’s self and others as well, as are many religions with creator gods. It doesn’t really work if God is supposed to equal to us and subject to the same constraints, they’re supposed by design to be omniscient and omnipotent and perfect and that’s why we’re supposed to trust in them and all their dictates if we want to ‘saved’.
It’s not a particularly remarkable insight or cutting blow to point out that God doesn’t follow their own rules since everybody knows that including the devout and they think it’s a good thing. I’d hazard a guess that the ability to accept this so readily probably explains a lot about overlap between strength of religious belief and embrace of dictators who also don’t model their own edicts.
And in the same way God is allowed to have double standards and disobey the rules he set for humanity, Christian leadership is held to a lower standard and allowed to get away with things like pedophilia by the members of their church.
It does make sense that God would be allowed to break rules, its kind of like how a parent doesnt have the same rules as their kids. And no on in a church is allowed to be a pedo, if that happens that is seem by very bad by all the people.
Unfortunately some churches have a reputation for covering up the crime and not punishing the perpetrator.
It’s one thing for the crime to happen; it’s much worse when a bunch of people decide to hide it.
I think what it is are they are friends and their friends promise to never do it again and they dont want to ruin their lives. It is a universal thing and not just a religous thing but we news stories about what is supposed to be a safe place sell more papers.
Uh, it was more of an institutional policy. That’s why it was such a scandal.
I am guessing that we are talking about the catholic church, and I could be wrong because I dont know about their rules, but I dont believe they would have rule not severely punishing or sending to police pedos. I would guess they catagorized it as someone who broke a rule, not committed a crime.
Please read up on it. I’m sure now they do have that policy, but…it was an extremely widespread problem, literally all over the world. Any claim that they’ve fixed the problem is going to be met with skepticism for a long time, and rightly so. They worked HARD to hide it.
I do think the Catholic church was right about one thing - it likely happened in other churches as well.
Yes. It’s much more than just “friends” backing each other. Many times they’ll still have to face the elders of the church or similar things but it is nearly always handled in the church meaning they’re kicked out of something possibly until they repent. The police are very often never involved.
Exmo take: there are divine attributes to each sin.
Sloth is to be meek and humble.
It is good to healthfully “lust” towards your lawfully wed spouce.
Take pride in your work, and family.
Be gluttonous in your education and church studies.
Be envious of God’s attention by doing good acts.
There is a righteous wrath in terms of self defense and protecting others from wrongdoing.
And greed, well you gotta be wealthy in order to afford giving God a nice juicy tithe. Also gotta be self sufficient.
There’s a bunch of mental gymnastics involved but that’s from when I was a “good mormon boy.”
Be envious of God’s attention by doing good acts.
To be fair, the Greek pantheon would definitely punish mortals for upstaging them, so at least this God got some of his priorities in order
Bible god punished and divided all humanity for trying to build a tower to meet him
And greed, well you gotta be wealthy in order to afford giving God a nice juicy tithe. Also gotta be self sufficient.
According to Luke 16:13 Jesus said “You cannot serve both God and money.”
Mark 10:21 “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
Mark 10:22, the guy had “great wealth” and was unwilling to part with it. Donating that money away would have bought him treasures in heaven (why would someone want treasures in heaven if they had absolutely no source of greed?).
As for the Luke 16:13, I’d argue that it was saying you cannot worship money, in the sense of hoarding it and having stupid amounts of surplus.
Matthew 25:14-30 Jesus gives a parable praising the men who double their investments and then disparages the guy whos net return was zero. A sloppy Google search says a talent at that time was worth about a 20 years salary, why are the guys earning around 1.5 mil and 600k good?
