The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

That depends by what standard you judge the gods. Greek priests liked to say that the Gods were perfect and, as important as the Homeric tales were, they were inconvenient. On the other hand, YHWH likes to claim he is good, more so in every consequent book, but it's easy to paint his actions as those of a Love Hungry Control Freak tyrant in the style of, say, Stalin.

"And when push comes to shove, I will kill your friends and family, to remind you of my love."

"I've come to try to see things from your perspective, try out all the eating and the crafting and the hurting and the dying, and also grassroots political activism, so I can do bottom-up for once! But remember, you will never be able to live up to the standard to save yourselves; the only salvation is through me!"

"Praise me five times a day, wherever you may be. Kneel and kowtow a lot every time! Also, stop eating until sundown every day for one month out of every year. And thank me, often, if only for being alive. Don't forget to mention how big I am. I'm the greatest!"

You know, I honestly don't understand the whole doctrine about salvation through crucifixion and dying for our sins. I find this especially puzzling, since modern storytellers love referencing it with martyr heroes, but in a very broken way: the hero's pain never heals or saves or helps anyone, let alone their death. The only way a hero saves is by staying alive and winning fights. Hurting, and dying, and coming back, usually is for the benefit of the hero themself; they are the one being somehow morally purified by the experience of self-sacrifice.

edited 21st Dec '16 2:53:19 PM by TheHandle

Oh, I thought that the Greeks themselves didn't think of their deities as moral the same way Christians view YHWH.

I thought they said they were perfect to suck up to them.

Pure Is Not Good.

That too. Greek gods tend to be thin-skinned, and react badly to criticism, let alone to being upstaged. Just ask Arachne.

About Greeks respecting their gods, it fluctuates with the passage of time.

It seems from Homers time, they had little pretentions about how moral their chief gods were, calling them petty and vengeful individual. However at a different time, Zeus was touted as the all powerful omni everything lord of the universe who was to be respected for upholding order and enforcing justice.

The raunchy and earthy tales of rapist Zeus seems to mostly come from the early Myceneans who in their process of conquering the indigineous mother goddess worshiping Pelasgians wanted to have anthropomorphic tales of their proto Sky deity and insert it in the native traditions to assimilate.

Iirc from the few books I read. Certainly Ancient Greece had a continuing struggle over their perceptions and portrayal of the gods.

Truth resists simplicty, but damned if we don't do our best to complicate fiction!

My understanding of Greek religion was that it viewed gods as projections and exaggerations of humanity, so the gods, while not evil, were considered deeply flawed.

One of our Supreme Judges, struck down a law determining that any ''manifestation against the Christian faith'' to be illegal.

Cue screams of Christianphobia and complaints about other faiths malpractices, including but not limited to characterizing how the Islamic faith mistreats women, how Candomble practices animal sacrifices and how any Iconoclasm against the Christian faith should be a crime.

Secular state motherfucker. Do you know it?

I mean,some Gods's ideals for "perfect" probably varies between civilization.Zeus might've been seen as the perfect womanizer back then.

Yeah, everyone knew Greek women were into bulls back then.

That was just two of them; Europa, and that Minoqueen.

It doesnt help that practically all our information about the ancient Greek religion comes from a small handful of Roman-era play-writes and poets (who were almost certainly atheists). I suspect that the myths as we know them have been heavily modified to be more literary and stuff.

They had dangerous Gods going back before history, but the idea of "Evil" as an active force in the world, that has to be resisted by "Good" is fairly recent. Yes, the Zoroastrians came up with it first, but it didn't become popular until the rise of Christianity.

Hindus would probably argue that it was a joint effort. :/

Because trying to work out how much of the surprising overlap was Zoroastrianism influencing Hinduism or visa versa... Good luck with that. <_<

Guys, look what I found:

@Euo: Wait... There's a good vs evil dualism within Hinduism? Can you point me to a source?

About Zeus as Trump: well let me ask you this ¿do you think Trump would prank a king by making is wife fall in love with a bull just to spite him?

.....actually never mind, would all now the answer

I thought Poseidon did that after Minos refused to sacrifice said bull to him.

To be fair is hard to diference the two, that is why I call bot "the dick in the sky and the dick in the sea" Is easy to see why Hades dosent speak to those guys, they are dicks.

Also, im wondering: is there any media were Set is show in more benevolent light? I mean Hades is making a coment back after a while and Loki is now tom hiddenston but Set is still trap into the "Super evil douche" which is a shame.

I don't know anything about Egyptian mythology, but IIRC, Set was the guy that killed Osiris and divided his body into several parts to prevent him from going into the afterlife, so is there any redeeming qualities he possessed?

edited 23rd Dec '16 12:23:43 AM by Ikedatakeshi

Well, Set was one of the only Egyptian gods who could reliably defeat Apep, the serpent who tries to devour the sun and bring about The Night That Never Ends.

let see: Hades wasnt hate as he was fear and him being evil is more with hijack by jesus.

With Loki is hard to said, he seen to be a massive jerkass with a thing for trolling

But with Set...well, he become more and more evil as cult of Horus rise so he become a permanent evil guy, shame

Don't forget that Loki also masterminded Baldur's permanent death.

About Hinduism... it's complicated. But, like Ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley focused more on Order vs Annihilation as a duality around when the Vedas were being put together and later penned. Order is better is therefore a good thing (even if occasionally horrible) therefore the Devas are Good (if occasionally terrible). Asuras as a group would End Everything Early if not stopped (even if the odd one or two are kind of OK as individuals) — this is Bad, therefore Evil. As Hindusim grew and changed, the duality faded away, but the bones of it are still there.

About Set: He started out as the protector of ma'at in the desert. If a bit cruel and capricious, because that's the nature of the wind, heat and sand — the strong survive, and it is a mercy to kill the weak quickly. But, you kind of want what he can do for you (he's always depicted as a physically powerful god you can only defeat through indirect methods or better executed magic) and the small-scale chaos he caused was not in the same End Everything category as Apep. Political disagreements over who should get top billing? Not in the same league as "universal destruction and the end of time".

Want your merchant caravan or army to get across the western and southwest deserts in one piece so you can get sweet, sweet foreign salt, influence or gold? Setesh was the one to go to, as long as you remembered to not piss him off. Because, if you broke ma'at or swore a lie in his name — say goodbye to the caravan/ army. You might lose it, anyway, because some other screw-up meant his "The Weak Die Quickly" function (yay, sandstorm!) got triggered — but, at least that was normal service and not your fault. :/

edited 23rd Dec '16 4:11:36 AM by Euodiachloris

"Its complicated" is pretty much hinduism in a nutshell, I dont want to sound mean but damn, is confusing as fuck.

A pretty sweet animation.