• zoltanshields@lemmy.zip
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    22 hours ago

    Most religions tend to involve a deity that is either alive, resurrected, or concepts like death don’t really apply to them.

    Tiamat in ancient Mesopotamian faith is sort of a creator deity, though her death is responsible for creation. The storm god Marduk kills her, splits her corpse in two with one half being the sky, the other the Earth and her tears the source of the Tigris and Euphrates. Tiamat’s spouse and general Qingu is also killed by Marduk and his blood is used in the creation of mankind. So in a sense Marduk is more of the creation deity here who is very much alive.

    But you can’t really get anything from a dead god so there isn’t much record of people worshipping Tiamat, at least not quite like they did Marduk.

    It makes sense really, why would I pray or present offerings to something that can’t listen when there’s plenty of living deities whose favor I could try to earn to bring rain to my crops or give me healthy sons?

  • Zensate@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Many religions seem very puritan, so I don’t think they need to know that their god is ‘living’. He can be just kinda boring, a bit of a shut-in I guess. Might even suit them better.

  • the_q@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    Since gods don’t exist the important part is the belief. Religion exists entirely as a way to deal with death and as a tool for control. That’s it.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    1 day ago

    You could go out and build a list of religions and see which ones have that property.

    In Christianity, Islam, and (checks) Shintoism, there is.

    In Buddhism, there is not.

    It sounds like Hinduism has a pretty broad variety of positions, some of which do and some of which don’t.

    So I guess I’d say that it’s certainly viable to have a religion that doesn’t, but it seems like it’s a common characteristic to have, and that’s probably not sheer coincidence.

    • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      It sounds like Hinduism has a pretty broad variety of positions,

      Someone just discovered the Kama Sutra. 😉

  • lemmyman@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Prominent theologian Trent Reznor famously declared that “God is dead, and I don’t care,” so I’ll go with “not very”

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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    1 day ago

    A lot of the older Western pagan religions had a difference between the gods you worshipped and the Creator God. I feel like part of the reason why the Abrahamic God was the Creator God was done as a way to trump the other gods being worshipped.

  • _NetNomad@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

    Well in some forms of Platonism at least, the creator god and the ultimate God are two different beings specifically because the ultimate God is seen as entirely stationary, always Being and never Becoming, hence the need for a lower divinity who is capable of activity

  • fluffy_cloud@piefed.world
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    1 day ago

    I don’t think it matters too much. it’s just a matter of which story you prefer. And stories are thin.

    Not to say that religion isn’t real, I’m not even going there. it’s that people don’t have a firm grasp on reality. I mean, people often take something real and turn it into a bunch of stories. And that isn’t real. so worrying about what’s real at that point is kind of dumb.

    I think if you want real in religion then you should see the stuff for yourself. Like a proper scientist. And forget the stories.

  • HeroHelck@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    That’s gonna depend a lot on how that religion understands it’s creator god. In cases where they see the god as not just creating but also effectively is the universe, I think it would be very important. In cases where they understand god to be a sort of demiurge/divine watchmaker it matters substantially less.

  • disregardable@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    I’m gonna disagree with the other commenters. If the God is actually dead, there’s no point or benefit in worshipping it. Maybe in a system with minor Gods, some of those can be dead, or in a system where the Gods are “dead” but alive in hell, but not actually dead.

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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      1 day ago

      A god and The Creator God are different things. Many monotheistic religions usually tie the God to being the Creator as a way to trump other gods. However, polytheistic religions can have entire god generations where the old gods are dead but the current generation runs the universe.

  • YappyMonotheist@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I don’t even know how one can be religious seriously and think the One behind everything is not more real than us, the universe depends on Him after all.

    At least the “I have no material evidence for God so I don’t believe in Him” position is somewhat more sensible… except that, the same way that the programmer is not inside of the Sims, God is not inside and cannot be contained by the universe so you won’t find Him here (and even then we share more with the Sims, because we’re both made of the same materials that exist in this universe, who knows what the “God substance” is, if there is even one?).