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Should Religion Search for God Origin?

#1
Zinjanthropos Online
Is it taboo to theorize about the creation of gods? If so, why? Been plenty of imaginative thinking going on over the centuries resulting in some interesting mythology about how deities supposedly put it all together but few seem to want to tackle deity origins, although I think there must be some out there who have tried. Do gods pop out of nowhere, are they themselves designed/created? 

I don't understand why theologians don't look for an answer to a god's beginnings. I would think Theology is incomplete without at least giving it a go. Another thing that I think Theology should look into is to what came first, gods or a place to put them? Even if it was suggested gods and their places of business were created simultaneously, it would still mean the god(s) did not create it. IMHO, you need a place to put something before you create it.

Could it be they're waiting for science to offer up a tidbit, something that might clue a person onto god origins? Personally, I can't give any credence to acceptance of a god without having any idea where it came from. At least give me a theory I can chew on. 
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#2
C C Offline
You need a term for this. Some dictionaries actually sport a generic definition of theogony as "the study of the origins and genealogy of the gods". Rather than just reference to Hesiod's poem which is limited to the family tree and provenance of Greek gods.

Going beyond just the above broader religious or non-specific usage for theogony, Nick Bostrom also tentatively doles out a naturalistic version of theogony in his famous simulation argument:

Although all the elements of such a system can be naturalistic, even physical, it is possible to draw some loose analogies with religious conceptions of the world. In some ways, the posthumans running a simulation are like gods in relation to the people inhabiting the simulation: the posthumans created the world we see; they are of superior intelligence; they are “omnipotent” in the sense that they can interfere in the workings of our world even in ways that violate its physical laws; and they are “omniscient” in the sense that they can monitor everything that happens. However, all the demigods except those at the fundamental level of reality are subject to sanctions by the more powerful gods living at lower levels.

Further rumination on these themes could climax in a naturalistic theogony that would study the structure of this hierarchy, and the constraints imposed on its inhabitants by the possibility that their actions on their own level may affect the treatment they receive from dwellers of deeper levels. For example, if nobody can be sure that they are at the basement-level, then everybody would have to consider the possibility that their actions will be rewarded or punished, based perhaps on moral criteria, by their simulators. An afterlife would be a real possibility. Because of this fundamental uncertainty, even the basement civilization may have a reason to behave ethically. The fact that it has such a reason for moral behavior would of course add to everybody else’s reason for behaving morally, and so on, in truly virtuous circle. One might get a kind of universal ethical imperative, which it would be in everybody’s self-interest to obey, as it were “from nowhere”.

In any traditions or thought orientations that applied the eternalism view of time to deities, neither they or the universe would literally require such. "Origins" in that context would be (sort of) vertical hierarchical relationships rather than linear cause-effect sequences as expressed in time. Gods would be "prior in rank" to the universe in status and titled "creators" in name and authority only. Both would have actually always existed.

Another way to regard that is that the concept of "cause" should not be treated as more fundamental than the concept of "existence". Since cause (if a genuinely effective / necessary idea) would require be-ing as a property itself. Thereby not every entity demands a cause / origin (the latter is not absolutely universal in scope, it is not the most primary concept). Doctrines which construe gods and universes to be as fundamental as existence -- or rather as what specifically / concretely instantiates and justifies the abstract concept of existence being legitimate to begin with -- are more fundamental than the idea of cause / origin.

- - -
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#3
Yazata Online
I think that most ancient metaphysics, in the classical West and in India at least, thought in terms of what the Indians called 'svabhava' or "own being". This is the idea of something that exists simply as the result of its own inner nature. It's contrasted with something that's brought into being by external causes.

Things with svabhava were believed to be more real than things with merely contingent reality. Ancient Indian metaphysics often consisted of trying to reduce everything transitory, composed of parts, or otherwise contingent to whatever was believed to have own-being, to things whose essence was to exist.

So the ancient Indians identified things with svabhava as eternal and unchanging by their nature.

The Hindus tended to identify eternally unchanging svabhava with the divine. The ultimate God-head Brahman had svabhava as did the divine principle within each human being, his or her unchanging inner-witness, the atman (soul, self, subject of awareness).

The ancient Greeks often had similar (but not identical) ideas that found their way into early Christian philosophical theology in late antiquity. So God becomes that which is most real, that upon which everything else depends, the only thing that exists purely because its own nature is to exist, and hence the only eternal being.
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#4
Zinjanthropos Online
I wasn't actually thinking about god(s) having a bloodline when I penned the thread. BION I was thinking computer game a la Super Mario. You know, trying to get to the castle/princess by avoiding obstacles along the way. We keeping getting more lives so that should give us more opportunities.
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#5
RainbowUnicorn Offline
(Nov 14, 2017 05:10 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Is it taboo to theorize about the creation of gods? If so, why? Been plenty of imaginative thinking going on over the centuries resulting in some interesting mythology about how deities supposedly put it all together but few seem to want to tackle deity origins, although I think there must be some out there who have tried. Do gods pop out of nowhere, are they themselves designed/created? 

I don't understand why theologians don't look for an answer to a god's beginnings. I would think Theology is incomplete without at least giving it a go. Another thing that I think Theology should look into is to what came first, gods or a place to put them? Even if it was suggested gods and their places of business were created simultaneously, it would still mean the god(s) did not create it. IMHO, you need a place to put something before you create it.

Could it be they're waiting for science to offer up a tidbit, something that might clue a person onto god origins? Personally, I can't give any credence to acceptance of a god without having any idea where it came from. At least give me a theory I can chew on. 

"the foibles of the feeble human ego"

mostly those espoising god paradigms have done so to gain power & authority over others.
once they have that power and authority they seek to take control of other peoples money.

soo...
you need to extract that type of system & person from the equation before you start trying to define what the sums of the equation might be.

the essence of normative mass religion is the ability to give up and do nothing.
this giving up to authority is the mechanism of the process to which the breeding has been bent.

Thus you find most people accepting no proof with no will or motivation to seek out proof, only sitting around waiting to do the least possible by saying "no" to everything.

thus puritanical conservatism was born.

thus you are literally wasting your time asking the vast majority of theologans as they have no actual motivation to seek anything other than the authority by which has dictated that they shall never question certain things.
creationism.. which your question falls into is very much inside the "not allowed to offer alternate theorys about" because it is co-wrapped with absolutionism which is their personal saviour.

some theologans would be able to have a great debate about the ideas with you, but they are very far and few between & have no desire for the baubles of a patriarchal facist lip service debate.
ive chatted with some over time, they are on the whole quite fascinatingly intelligent people.


linear cognitive adjunct distopia.


that is what you are faced with on the whole.

"i can not start unles i create a starting point"
this is effectively a mental handicap through brain washing, one which is widely spread and normalised.

is a single creator, singular ?
... probable not, as it defys basic actualism as it in its self denys the existance of the original item as you have pointed out.
thus what other concepts might allow for creationism ?
a question many want others to do all the hard work for them.

biologically (creationism)god is female
distructively (death) god is male

singular creationism is hermaphrodite
thus god must be hermaphrodite by nature & devoid of gender.
though as you will be starkly aware of, most conformist religous people are fanatics & define gender as a state of god belief rather than nature.(interesting considering they use the nature debate as their own sense of fanatacist explanation).

soo... we have a no point starting point seeking to define its self outside that which we have the ability to point at.


[Image: cell_division.jpg]
[Image: cell_division.jpg]



bubble universe ?
what nature is co-existant to enable spontanious existance actuation ?
i guess a sense of universal consciouseness.


i would suggest the nature of humans perceived god is a consciousenes that comprises its self of the living beings inside the universe.
like a virus that has spawned inside a big magic soup.
we are the soup, the total amount of living items is the soup.. god is the virus living among the living.

(Nov 14, 2017 09:43 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: I wasn't actually thinking about god(s) having a bloodline when I penned the thread. BION I was thinking computer game a la Super Mario. You know, trying to get to the castle/princess by avoiding obstacles along the way. We keeping getting more lives so that should give us more opportunities.

should we limit our paradigms to exclude the possibility of a god aspect being outside our natural biological universe ?

what of an AI like living entity that exists as a brain pattern ?
moving independently among all living brains ?
able to exert will upon anything it chooses while also being subject to its very own effect and will.
would this not be a god ?

meanwhile genetic abilities and liniage being of a liking to any aspect of genetics, right handedness, ability to move objects with your mind, read any language ever defined... where we draw the bounds for genetic ability and intuitive mental ability of the conscious mind are like misty smoke trails blending into the morning mist rising off fields that look familar yet new to every glancing aspect.
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#6
Syne Offline
(Nov 14, 2017 05:10 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Is it taboo to theorize about the creation of gods? If so, why? Been plenty of imaginative thinking going on over the centuries resulting in some interesting mythology about how deities supposedly put it all together but few seem to want to tackle deity origins, although I think there must be some out there who have tried. Do gods pop out of nowhere, are they themselves designed/created? 

I don't understand why theologians don't look for an answer to a god's beginnings. I would think Theology is incomplete without at least giving it a go. Another thing that I think Theology should look into is to what came first, gods or a place to put them? Even if it was suggested gods and their places of business were created simultaneously, it would still mean the god(s) did not create it. IMHO, you need a place to put something before you create it.

Could it be they're waiting for science to offer up a tidbit, something that might clue a person onto god origins? Personally, I can't give any credence to acceptance of a god without having any idea where it came from. At least give me a theory I can chew on. 

It's not taboo, it's just that Christians, and many others, believe god is eternal...similar to how some cosmologists believe the universe to be eternal.

"The motivation for believing in an eternal universe was the desire to avoid invoking divine intervention to create the universe and set it going." - http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-origin-of-...verse.html

And the motivation is the same...to keep from invoking further origins, especially those that require an infinite regress. If every god or universe has a cause, and that cause has another cause, ad infinitum, there's just little point in the exercise. So some scientists seem to agree that there need be no further cause.
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