God without scriptures?

[Doug1029 7,625]

I note that there are many references to the Egyptian and pagan gods in the Apocrypha and even a few in the Bible, itself.  Ra, Baal, the Queen of Heaven, Hades, Demuzi, Sin and others are a part of the Jewish (and, therefore, Christian and Islamic) religions.  Even Hathor gets in there by way of a description, if not by name.  In Ireland, people still believe in the Little People and there are still Hindu and Chinese gods.  We'd have some sort of belief in the supernatural, science or no.

Doug

[Doug1029 7,625]

12 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

really?  What about all the other recorded gods, from Egypt, Mesopotamia,  Greece, Rome, China, japan, Africa, pacific ocean meso america etc ? 

You are confusing God with gods.  Just regard God as a collective term.  Problem solved.

Christians who "believe in one god" still worship the Trinity.  If Father, Son and Holy Ghost can be regarded as one entity, why not include Ra, Hathor, Baal, Zeus, Apollo or anybody else you want in the term?

Doug

[danydandan 14,304]

25 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

In Ireland, people still believe in the Little People

No they don't! 

[Doug1029 7,625]

3 minutes ago, danydandan said:

No they don't! 

Let me re-phrase that:  I know of at least one Irishman who does.  He comes from a farming background and says that in the middle of one of his father's fields is a small stand of trees, left there so as not to offend the Little People.

Doug

[danydandan 14,304]

33 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

Let me re-phrase that:  I know of at least one Irishman who does.  He comes from a farming background and says that in the middle of one of his father's fields is a small stand of trees, left there so as not to offend the Little People.

Doug

I've lived here my entire life, that's a long time, and I have never met anyone who thought Fairies are real. Obviously from a pagan and Celtic religious beliefs, and mythology, they are significant and even culturally significant too. Maybe @Ozymandias has heard of someone who thinks Fairies are real, but I haven't?

The only story I heard of where people believed that Fairies or Leprechauns were real, involved an American tour group in Kerry. I can elaborate if your interested, it's actually a really good story. 

 

Edited March 1, 2019 by danydandan

[Ozymandias 3,468]

28 minutes ago, danydandan said:

I've lived here my entire life, that's a long time, and I have never met anyone who thought Fairies are real. Obviously from a pagan and Celtic religious beliefs, and mythology, they are significant and even culturally significant too. Maybe @Ozymandias has heard of someone who thinks Fairies are real, but I haven't?

The only story I heard of where people believed that Fairies or Leprechauns were real, involved an American tour group in Kerry. I can elaborate if your interested, it's actually a really good story. 

Nope. Can't say I do. There was a time when the Irish peasantry believed in them and other associated superstitions. If modern farmers leave 'fairy' forts, mounds or trees undisturbed its more a nod to tradition than actual belief. A bit like you or I choosing not to walk under a ladder or not picking the number 13.

[Doug1029 7,625]

1 hour ago, danydandan said:

I've lived here my entire life, that's a long time, and I have never met anyone who thought Fairies are real. Obviously from a pagan and Celtic religious beliefs, and mythology, they are significant and even culturally significant too. Maybe @Ozymandias has heard of someone who thinks Fairies are real, but I haven't?

The only story I heard of where people believed that Fairies or Leprechauns were real, involved an American tour group in Kerry. I can elaborate if your interested, it's actually a really good story. 

 

For that matter, there are people here that go out hunting for bigfoot.  If bigfoot makes sense to some people, why not faeries?

At any rate, it is my hypothesis that people described in ancient Irish tales were real people whose stories have become garbled over the years.

Doug

[Mr Walker 6,730]

4 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

You are confusing God with gods.  Just regard God as a collective term.  Problem solved.

Christians who "believe in one god" still worship the Trinity.  If Father, Son and Holy Ghost can be regarded as one entity, why not include Ra, Hathor, Baal, Zeus, Apollo or anybody else you want in the term?

Doug

No confusion for me. That is why i don't use a capital for god.

Due to cultural indoctrination, many present day Christians see the term god as referring only to the Abrahamic god. but of course god existed before the Jews or Christians or Muslims.

It was there (either mentally or physically  depending how you perceive gods to be ) for the earliest humans, both cro magnon and Neandertal   It is there now for any human, from  any corner of the earth, and from any culture or belief, who needs it and is open to it.

Ra, Thor, dryads, nymphs, native gods  from indigenous cultures, are  all interpretations, expressions and perceptions of the same force/power entity ; which our minds shape into a form most useful and appropriate to us and our culture. 

 

[Mr Walker 6,730]

4 hours ago, danydandan said:

No they don't! 

It depends if you use the term people to mean all Irish or some There certainly are a few who still believe even though the vast  majority do not.  So put "some" in front of people in the sentence and it is true.

quote

 Asking an average Irish person, ‘Do you believe in the fairies?’ will get a response similar to asking an average Irish person, ‘Are you stupid?’ But for hundreds of years, the average Irish person held strong beliefs that fairies were everywhere. Today, most Irish have no beliefs in the fairy folk, yet there is still a respect for the beliefs of their ancestors.

https://vagabondtoursofireland.com/fairy-ireland-irish-mythology/

 

Tongue in cheek but informative is the next source 

quote

F or centuries we Irish have believed in and lived with the Little People; we’ve gone out of our way to avoid annoying them, not bringing foxgloves into the house, maintaining fairy forts, etc. It’s not long since WB Yeats was communing regularly with them. Our first president, Douglas Hyde, admitted to seeing “a strange horse run round a seven-acre field and change into a woman”.

We all know people who crossed them and suffered the consequences. Even, the ultimate pragmatist, Samuel Beckett, claimed to have spoken with a fairy man in Trinity College’s front square. Our first taoiseach, Éamon de V alera, was not a noted fairy man, but his wife, Sinéad, was a renowned expert on the subject and it was on her instigation that he established the Folklore Commission to research the phenomenon.

But what about now? Does anyone still believe in them?

I would have thought not, until my bank manager, while discussing my property portfolio (a shack and some gnarly woodland), asked me whether there were fairies on the land. I laughed politely, but he insisted that back home in Mayo their best section of bog was still set aside for them. I told this to another bank employee and she admitted that her aunt had been trapped in a field for a day by fairies until her grandmother broke the spell with a mirror.

I realise that banks are now part of the Underworld, glorified leprechauns guarding vanishing pots of gold, but do they tend to believe in the Little People more than others?

 

The NRA had previously been mired in fairy controversy with the €90 million road scheme in Latoon, Co Clare, back in 1999. The folklorist/seanchaí, Eddie Lenihan, had campaigned at the time to save a whitethorn bush which he claimed was an important meeting place for supernatural forces of the region, and warned that its destruction would result in death and great misfortune for motorists travelling on the proposed new road. The NRA ended up rerouting the Ennis bypass around the tree.

It appears the NRA may now have learnt their lesson, as their spokesman, Sean O’Neill, admitted to me in an unofficial capacity that, “you don’t mess with the Fairies. In the words of the great Aretha Franklin . . . Respect . . . the Fairies!”

Lenihan had tried bringing the issue to court, which made me wonder what the Bar Council of Ireland’s standpoint was. Jeanne McDonagh, their spokeswoman, was as circuitously cautious as you’d imagine a member of the legal profession: “With a membership of more than 2,300 barristers, the Bar Council had difficulty getting consensus as to the existence of fairies but we fully support their right of access to justice.

Reassuringly, the chief spokesman for the Arts Council of Ireland, Seán MacCarthaigh, made it clear that, “While as far as I know we have not so far received applications from other worldly beings, the Arts Council as an official body would not rule out processing such applications if they appeared.”

This seems like great news for the fairies, although the general manager of Siamsa Tíre, Catríona Fallon, took me severely to task for using that term: “You should never openly refer to them as ‘Fairies’. They are to be known as the Good People or even the Little People. You risk their displeasure otherwise. As I have no personal evidence to prove they do not exist, I am inclined to go along with my 7-year-old daughter’s theories who is convinced of their existence and is yearning to meet one.”

 

When I asked her if she thought our belief in them would die out entirely, she said that aspects of the vernacular imagination are retained as long as they are relevant and that while there are now those who would dismiss belief in the supernatural, there are still many who believe.

Her colleague, Bairbre Ní Fhloinn, said, “It’s a passive belief, but it still includes a lot of young, well-educated people. There is a reluctance to interfere in things which have an association with the fairies or with the other world. We would all rather be safe than sorry. People are not taking unnecessary chances. Life is complicated enough.”

 

Ive included a fair amount of the article here but everyone should read it all. It is  a hoot 

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/away-with-the-faeries-1.1725375

[DieChecker 27,102]

On 3/1/2019 at 11:27 AM, Doug1o29 said:

For that matter, there are people here that go out hunting for bigfoot.  If bigfoot makes sense to some people, why not faeries?

At any rate, it is my hypothesis that people described in ancient Irish tales were real people whose stories have become garbled over the years.

Doug

I know several people who claim to have SEEN Bigfoot, and many others who truly believe. Yet I know other people who say they've never spoken to anyone who believes. Different circles, different beliefs and opinions. 

[Doug1029 7,625]

14 hours ago, DieChecker said:

I know several people who claim to have SEEN Bigfoot, and many others who truly believe. Yet I know other people who say they've never spoken to anyone who believes. Different circles, different beliefs and opinions. 

I spent 5 five years working in the woods in "Bigfoot Country."  The only large hairy animals I saw were a cow moose and several bears.  No bigfoot.  But I did meet a guy who said he saw one.

Considering how  some of those timber cruisers look, I'd say bigfoot was just a case of mistaken identity.

Doug

[DieChecker 27,102]

7 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

I spent 5 five years working in the woods in "Bigfoot Country."  The only large hairy animals I saw were a cow moose and several bears.  No bigfoot.  But I did meet a guy who said he saw one.

Considering how  some of those timber cruisers look, I'd say bigfoot was just a case of mistaken identity.

Doug

I tend to agree. Eyewitnesses aside, I've seen zero evidence that supports Bigfoot being real.

Point though is some people do believe, and though probably Most people don't know a person who do believe, that doesn't mean no one believes. Whether that applies to leprechauns I don't know, but I think it probably does.

[danydandan 14,304]

4 hours ago, DieChecker said:

I tend to agree. Eyewitnesses aside, I've seen zero evidence that supports Bigfoot being real.

Point though is some people do believe, and though probably Most people don't know a person who do believe, that doesn't mean no one believes. Whether that applies to leprechauns I don't know, but I think it probably does.

Morgan Freeman asked a woman who had left the Westbro Baptist Church "There are 7-8 billion people on the Earth who think what your old Church used to was wrong, and 70 - 80 of your Church members who think they are doing good, did you ever stop to think why that is?"

Anyways she couldn't answer it. I think it's a very good question to ask people, who like to think they are in a counter culture or something!

Edited March 4, 2019 by danydandan

[DieChecker 27,102]

6 hours ago, danydandan said:

Morgan Freeman asked a woman who had left the Westbro Baptist Church "There are 7-8 billion people on the Earth who think what your old Church used to was wrong, and 70 - 80 of your Church members who think they are doing good, did you ever stop to think why that is?"

Anyways she couldn't answer it. I think it's a very good question to ask people, who like to think they are in a counter culture or something!

Westboro isn't like the Pharisees, they are like Saul/Paul before he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Actively persecuting, out of ignorance, those who they should be loving.

I though there were only like 20 people in Westboro, and most were related by family?

[Doug1029 7,625]

Live your life so that when you die, Westbro Baptist Church will picket your funeral.

Doug

[Mr Walker 6,730]

9 hours ago, DieChecker said:

Westboro isn't like the Pharisees, they are like Saul/Paul before he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Actively persecuting, out of ignorance, those who they should be loving.

I though there were only like 20 people in Westboro, and most were related by family?

About 70 actual members  and a bit more broad based than it once was as really a family cult 

Incredible media/social  recognition, and message identification, for such a small group.

Some might argue that not every message is bad, or even unfunny. 

Nor is homosexuality the sole obsession it once was. Divorce, remarriage and same-sex marriage are all branded as sins, as is adultery: “Adulterer in chief, Mt. 19:19 Mk. 6:18,” reads one pasted with an image of President Trump. “Racism is a sin, Ac. 17:26 Jas. 2:9,” preaches another.

https://religionnews.com/2018/07/17/theyre-still-here-the-curious-evolution-of-westboro-baptist-church/

[psyche101 44,398]

On 3/1/2019 at 4:21 PM, Habitat said:

You seem to confuse religion, particularly organized religion, with God. Better not to.

Its the only unified source that supports the existance of God at all. Any personal ideas, like the UB, or your sages are just derivatives of that concept. It's where the God idea comes from and was spread around. Personal faiths are just plagiarism of that idea. Even your sages are just rewriting what someone else made up. 

[psyche101 44,398]

On 3/1/2019 at 4:26 PM, Sherapy said:

Some don’t include god’s at all and are quite happy and enriched. The difference is there is no compulsion to constantly post about it. 

And its not about an authority figure. As such, although aspects like Buddhism are considered religions, I'm just not sure that descriptor is appropriate. Buddhists have a spiritual nature sure, but also encompass knowledge and change. I can very much respect that. I just see that as a peaceful way of life, miles away from Abrahamic religious ideals. 

On 3/1/2019 at 4:26 PM, Sherapy said:

How are you doing? I am sure great!

Absolutely, couldn't be better and on top of the world. This year is turning around for me big time. I'm loving life again

[Habitat 8,594]

9 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

Its the only unified source that supports the existance of God at all. Any personal ideas, like the UB, or your sages are just derivatives of that concept. It's where the God idea comes from and was spread around. Personal faiths are just plagiarism of that idea. Even your sages are just rewriting what someone else made up. 

Only re-writing because they reached the same conclusion. There are no prizes for novelty in these matters.

[psyche101 44,398]

On 3/1/2019 at 6:08 PM, DieChecker said:

They are the words of God, in the same way that a church is a place of God, and worshippers are people of God. Representative, but not "of" God.

That's not what the Bible says though is it. What about things like the 10 commandments? The people who spoke to God? If there really is a god, what's to say that's not exactly how oy went down? 

On 3/1/2019 at 6:08 PM, DieChecker said:

Disagree. God is, in part, emotion, feelings and desires.  Much of how people interact with God is outside the Bible. The Bible is only one of several methods of interacting with God.

But without the Bible, as the thread title states, would we have the abrahamic  version of God? God is what we have created through the Bible, and in modern times, many pick and choose what they want to believe. If God really does exist, did he not say he is the one and only? And anything else is directly offensive? Then how can personal religions, which really do create many versions of the God who said that not be in defiance of that God? 

[psyche101 44,398]

1 minute ago, Habitat said:

Only re-writing because they reached the same conclusion. There are no prizes for novelty in these matters.

Its still that same basic myth cherry picked, mangled and twisted to suit individuals. Man's writings are the only place we find anything about the god idea at all. What people like those sages do is just expand on that and create their own plagiarism of the original concept. 

[Habitat 8,594]

3 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

Its still that same basic myth cherry picked, mangled and twisted to suit individuals. Man's writings are the only place we find anything about the god idea at all. What people like those sages do is just expand on that and create their own plagiarism of the original concept. 

God is just a word used to fill the blank that reason can't. If reason could fill it, you'd have never have heard if it.

[psyche101 44,398]

On 3/1/2019 at 10:19 PM, Will Due said:

All of these words can be worshipped. 

Anyone can do anything Will. That's the real choice. 

One would be a fool to worship my words, do you not agree? 

Thing is, the god idea are just other words. You think because you firmed an idea that you are worshiping God. You're just worshiping ancient words that have been reworked. 

[psyche101 44,398]

2 minutes ago, Habitat said:

God is just a word used to fill the blank that reason can't. If reason could fill it, you'd have never have heard if it.

That's old thinking though. It was reasonable at one point to think God created the heavens and the earth, made two people out of clay and organised the complexity of the ecosystem, designed the human eye, all these blanks that were attributed to God are reasoned and understood. Why would God still be an answer for anything considering this progression of knowledge? Why would there be a line where knowledge stops and god takes over? How does that make sense at all considering our historical development? 

[Habitat 8,594]

8 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

That's old thinking though. It was reasonable at one point to think God created the heavens and the earth, made two people out of clay and organised the complexity of the ecosystem, designed the human eye, all these blanks that were attributed to God are reasoned and understood. Why would God still be an answer for anything considering this progression of knowledge? Why would there be a line where knowledge stops and god takes over? How does that make sense at all considering our historical development? 

The blank remains. Otherwise this conversation would not exist. As for a line of division, well that would be beyond my ken .