Many paths...one God?

[Not a Monkeys Uncle]

Religion fascinates me, in part because there are so many common threads in all the faiths. Perhaps we are like the tale of the blind man and tbe elephant, each of us only able to discern a small portion of what is God. For some, we need an intermediary... like a prophet to show us a path. For others, it is a self-paced journey.

For commonalities...we all know the Golden Rule, and all religions seem to have some version of this. It makes sense, if we followed it, we would be a better society.

But another commonality exists that is interesting: the acquisition of forbidden knowledge.

In some, this is represented by the acquisition of fire (which in actuality was a major turning point in human development. The Greek Promethius defied Zeus and stole fire to give to man. Across the world, a continent away, Coyote, Rabbit and Crow stoke the fire.

For the Abrahamic faiths, it was Eve and the Apple...which you have to admit kind of sucks, forever blaming Woman for Man’s inability to control himself.

In all cases though...there is a punishment for loss of innocence and it usually involves a seperation from the divine even as it separates humanity from his fellow animals.

Food for thought.

One God would not give alternate stories to different people.

 

[Anathema]

Along those lines, would it be preferable for humans to not have free will of choice? I would imagine a loving God would not create life that only moves around and speaks within fixed conditions. A predetermined path isn’t anything I can grasp either. That’s like “fixing the game in advance” where some win and some lose, no matter what they do. Unless one believes that the Creator of life is a game player, that doesn’t seem rational either.

No it would not. That would be equivalent to giving a test and handing the answer key out with the test booklet. It would be pointless.

I don’t believe in a loving God. To me The Deity is little more than a Sentient Mathematical Equation. It has no emotion, no desires, no interest in us as individuals. The role of The Deity is solely as a proctor… administering the exam we call Life to our Souls and then grading the results afterwards.

 

[Coyote]

One God would not give alternate stories to different people.

Why not?

More likely…you only get part of the story because we are incapable of understanding the whole.