The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

There appears to be not one work of fiction in which the Holy Ghost is a character. Handle, it falls to you to write... the first one.

Let us know when you have a draft.

If you dont, I am shipping it with the monkey king in the Ramayana in my own religious fanfics.

I think a friend of mine told me about a book in which there were three people and all three of them were "god", because each one of them was one of the aspects of the trinity. I can't remember what the name of the book was. I think of them was a black woman, the other one asian, and I can't remember the third one.

No. If it's me writing it, it will have a Semantic Power based on holiness puns. Holiday forces the target to rest. Holy Smokes causes the target confusion and disorientation. Holy Ghosting is a way of breaking off a party member through ignoring and ostracising them. Hallowed Ground summons a cemetery, very useful with a necromancer on the team. Holy Wood transports the party and opponents to Faerie, where dreams come true and everything is fake. Consecration gives the target immunity to all criticism. Sacrifice martyrs the target for the cause. And the Annunciation makes a nun out of a nonce and vice-versa. If the target is born immaculate of sin, it allows to summon the Son, though He takes thirty turns to become relevant. The move is named Cue The Son.

Once all three elements of the Trinity are summoned...

edited 31st Jul '15 3:59:53 PM by TheHandle

The problem with the Holy Spirit as a character is that people usually think about it as a cosmic force rather than a person.

One could argue that Star Wars's Force is a Crystal Dragon Holy Spirit, though.

edited 31st Jul '15 3:57:35 PM by Protagonist506

As for a fictional Crystal Dragon Jesus religion I'm writing, I'm thinking that how I'll treat it is that the Holy Spirit-expy is some weird, Elderitch force that created the universe. YHWH-expy is the Anthropomorphic Personification of it, and the Son is a Physical Avatar of YWHW.

If you look at it from the right perspective, the Bible and most other holy books are basically compilations of fan fiction.

In my own opinion, the Trinity always seemed to be trying to explain the various conflicting aspects of god.

You have the close and almost human figure, who can care about you deeply as an individual.

You have the great and often wrathful lawgiver who will bring destruction and harsh judgment if needed.

You have the distant and impersonal cosmic force, vast and powerful enough to create and entire universe.

And somehow they're all the same person.

edited 1st Aug '15 3:50:21 AM by Matues

Personally, how I view it is trichotomy.

The son is any physical aspect of God (body)

The father is Gods mind.

The Holy Spirit is Gods soul.

Most of us have those things (at least if you believe in souls) and don't get counted as three people.

Having experienced so many protestant denominations where each holds their interpretation of the concept as the only acceptable canon, part of me wonders if the idea was created in part just to give the various denominations something to endlessly bicker over.

In that light, is it any wonder that us Muslims consider the whole thing nonsensical?

I'm reminded of the Primordals from the Exalted Tabletop game. They're the primal creators of the cosmos; are so big that the souls of their souls have souls.

The facets of their personalty have their own independent existences as things like people or mobile terrain features.

The history of it is that it's a compromise between factions of Christians who emphasized Jesus humanity, and others who emphasized his god-hood.

A-ha. Conservasumption of Cake.

You could apply this logic to a whole lot of religious concepts.

"I think a friend of mine told me about a book in which there were three people and all three of them were "god", because each one of them was one of the aspects of the trinity. I can't remember what the name of the book was. I think of them was a black woman, the other one asian, and I can't remember the third one."

It's called The Shack. God the Father is an African American woman, Jesus is a Middle Eastern carpenter (because, of course he is) and the Holy Spirit is an Asian woman. A personification of God's wisdom shows up at one point as well.

But how many of them don't make logical sense even to their own adherents?

Most people who believe in the trinity claim it makes sense to them.

If that is true, then it's far from being reflected by the responses to my question on the topic.

Specially for the Muslims it would be incredibly nonsensical, since saying it is "three for one" is basically opposed to the Tawhid

Like trying to explain to your average christian or catholic or whatever the Jinn. "So yeah, so there is god" "Ok. I can understand this" "And he created humans" "Cool. I can get behind that" "And also angels" "He sure did! Great!" "And humans have free will and angels do not" "Fantastic! We are in agreement!" "Also he created free willed supernatural creatures called djinn that basically go about doing random shit" "Wait what" "They are made of smokeless fire" "stahp" "And have a physical form" "y u do dis" "And they can whisper to your SOOOOOOOOOOUL" "..."

Djinns make way more sense than the trinity and are far simpler a concept. Spirits with free will. What's hard to understand about that?

I'd compare the trinity to the wave-particle duality. It's just wierd and hard to grasp for a human mind.

I don't get the Djinn tho. They don't worship god. They don't fuck with anything.They don't seem to form part of anything. Seems like god just up and made them for shits and giggles. Which is fine and understandable but you know. Since it is not mentioned something of the likes of "and on the 8th day Allah rolled up a good one and totes made this badass smokey things, man", the Djinn seem to fulfill no purpose at all.

Like the wacky sidekick in the story that does not seem to further the plot but is still there. They are the third wheel of god's creation.

Maybe there's more than one God and/or Parthenon at play?

I occasionally ponder really dumb ways religions could turn out wrong.

Like, maybe the trinity is sort of right, but instead of three distinct personas god actually has, say, forty-six.