The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

Something of a trend in Kamakura Buddhism, possibly due to the various upheavals of the time. Honen, Shinran, Dogen and Nichiren were all very iconoclastic, but in different ways. A trait maybe gained from their time in Tendai tutelage.

Edited by TerminusEst on Apr 21st 2019 at 9:45:41 AM

Wow, that escalated. Thanks for the feedback y'all.

@ Oruka: Don't worry, I'm not exactly a huge fan of that type of deity either.

Kind of a random question, why are the Easter dates for the Catholic and the Orthodox Church usually different? Does it happen to the other Churches too?

The Orthodox Church still uses the Julian Calendar, if I recall correctly.

Yep. And as a result they calculate easter using a different calendar date for the March equinox. Though occasionally the calculation works out and both calendars have the same day for Easter. I know it happened (purely by coincidence) in 2000 and I know its happened again since then but I can't remember the actual year.

I've been learning more about Mesopotamian mythology. As one of, if not the oldest mythologies, I wish there were more representations of it. Them and the just as old Egyptian mythology having a crossover would be pretty neat

Granted, as far as mythologies go Mesopotamian is pretty obscure.

There's no excuse for the lack of Egyptian myths on fiction, however, most people are at least familiar with the basics of it.

I think part of the problem is that Egyptian mythology, even the basics are complicated. It's quite well attested over an extremely long period of time and it's highly internally syncretic, merging and reshaping gods and their narratives to fit the changing political tides as various cities and priestly orders rose and fell in power. I mean do you want to try and untangle Ra, Horus and Amun?

And that's all without getting into Akenaten's little excursion in religious revisionism. Which quite frankly I'm glad doesn't show up in fiction all that much given a lot of sources working in an Abrahamic cultural framework tend to give triumphalist overtones about a precursor for the "inevitable victory of monotheism". Often ignoring the weirder and more self-aggrandising parts of Akenaten's reforms. Specifcially how only the pharaoh (and maybe the immediate royal family) could worship Aten directly and the commoners were supposed to direct their prayers to him as an intercessor.

Yeah, but Greek myth also has a lot of inconsistencies and complications, and that never stopped anyone.

All the storyteller needs to do is just pick the one version it fits his story best.

They're writing fiction, after all, not an anthropology paper.

Edited by HailMuffins on Apr 25th 2019 at 8:54:22 AM

Part of the problem is, Egyptian mythology never had a Hesiod or Homer who collected a coherent, more or less "authorized" version of the major gods & goddesses. (Or at least, they didn't have one whose works survived!) If the Theogony and Greek epics hadn't been written, our notions of the Olympian gods might be nearly as vague.

Good thing the Greeks absolutely adored Homer then?

Which makes the fact that not the entire Trojan cycle survived pretty spooky doesn't it. You could write everything down and try to preserve it as much as possible and still fail.

I think Homer only wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey, the rest were written by others, and weren't nearly as good.

Don't quote me on that, though.

That is the thing isn't? There is still some knowledge that has been lost to time but we cannot find it due to circumstances that happened in the past.

Maybe Homer wrote some rough drafts or short stories that we don't know about?

Edited by GAP on Apr 25th 2019 at 7:14:30 AM

shrug

Wikipedia's page on Homer

There's a lot we don't really know about Homer tbh. Maybe he was a single blind illiterate genius poet whose poems were recorded by fans for posterity. Maybe Homer as a man never truly existed and was simply a symbol of the many contributors who created "his" works together.

Hence the Homeric Question

Edited by M84 on Apr 25th 2019 at 9:30:06 PM

Another thing to take into consideration is that works like the Iliad have some elements of history such as Troy itself and the Greek cities of the Bronze Age.

While true, what little information we've been able to put together on that period suggest that there was some big changes. For one thing there's no mention of any involvement of the Hittites while possible identification of figures mentioned in the Tawagalawa letter suggest they played a major role in the conflict.

I mean, it does bring up that the Trojans had several allies helping them if I'm not mistaken. Plus I think the Achaeans lost the conflict mentioned in the letter so that's another big departure

so, recently i have been looking at "vs" threads, often featuring some damn broken characters (hello Yhwach) and thought about how yahweh would do in a "vs" thread. his feats are pretty lacking for someone who likes to claim that they are all-powerful, which he does. a lot.

the problem is that people takes his claims as feats, even though unsubstantiated claims have no weight in "vs" threads, making all his big talk merely him blowing hot air. for him to be viable in "vs" threads, people need to be able to see the bible as a fictional universe, which not a lot of people are capable of doing

An all-powerful being has no need to demonstrate anything if it doesn't want to. It just is.

In general though, the development of what Yahweh/God was to become can be seen in the Bible. At one point there are other gods, but Yahweh was (obviously) the biggest and baddest dude in the neighbourhood. Later, there was only him and an eternity of theodicy arguments.

Edited by TerminusEst on May 2nd 2019 at 11:18:16 AM

I mean, He did flood the world and strike most of an entire nation's sons dead. You could maybe argue that the latter was an angel, not Him, but I think most branches of angel...ology agree that they don't really possess free will and thus can't really be considered separate entities by a super technical definition.

Anyway, Death Battle threads are already contentious enough as it is, and you want to bring religion into that?

Edit: Oh, and created the universe, so.

Edited by RedSavant on May 2nd 2019 at 2:17:06 PM

creating a universe isn't high tier in fiction, any sufficiently powerful reality warper can do that, he's universal at best. remember: feats > claims

All of fiction is a claim, as is all of creation myths. In a Biblical context there is nothing more powerful than God. Nothing whatsoever, period. I don't understand what you're going on about, there's nothing to argue here.

Putting old Yahweh against Mahavairocana is absurd, as they simply come from completely different contexts with completely different underlying assumptions.

Edited by TerminusEst on May 2nd 2019 at 12:04:12 PM

yes, but the bible can still be analyzed as a work of fiction, which suits "vs" debates really well, as they operate on feats > claims. and in that context, yahweh comes up rather short compared to other fictional gods and nigh-omnipotents.

analyzing it as a work of fiction would also reveals the flaws it does in storytelling, but that's another discussion

I blame Fate.

Which is probably wise of them not to really bring in old G-man in.

It's very uh, puerile to go powerlevels with actual religious/mythological beings.

But I'm guilty of it too.