As a lot of people have demonstrated, this is a new idea to many people. You have to understand that a lot of people aquired their ideas about God from someone else, their beliefs were given to them, they did not arrive with these theologies about omnipotent spiritual beings from their own personal search or reasoning and much of the time personal searching and reasoning isn't part of the process. If you are willing to believe in something as awesome and vast as a God then why would you think there could only be one? If God's can exist then what other amazing or horrible things can exist? If a God who can fashion a reality can exist then why can't monsters exist? Why can't creatures come from the ocean and destroy us one day? Why can't there be an unknowable amount of powerful God beings in the universe? If a God exists then why in the world is it reasonable for us to think there is only one? If a God can be real, a God who can do anything then obviously ANYTHING can exist and we have no legitimate reason for doubting anything's existence.philoreaderguy wrote:If there can be one god, can there be more? How can you know that there is only one god? It seems you can know that there can't be any gods, because it's impossible; or you can know that there can be (or is) at least one god. How can you specify the number of gods?
If there can be one god, can there be more?
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Re: If there can be one god, can there be more?
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Re: If there can be one god, can there be more?
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Re: If there can be one god, can there be more?
Why call the ultimate source 'God'? True, 'God' is shorter and easier to spell than any other name that the ultimate source is named by.Whatever gods may be would derive their being and essence from the One, the bottom line, the ultimate source. This and only this would deserve the title God.
I presume that anyone who calls the ultimate source 'God' is according it more value than anything else. But why do so since the ultimate source is disinterested? It is more likely that care and love are animal qualities than eternal qualities.When all the animals in the biosphere are vanished from the planet there will be no more care and love.
I stress care and love as the most worthy of worship, because ideas such as the ultimate source cannot be related to feelingly, except perhaps aesthetically. In any case the ultimate source cannot be related to because it is not a creature.
The ultimate source besides being the source of love and care is also the source of death and destruction. Okay the goddess of death and destruction has her place in how things work but she is not herself the ultimate source. For that matter love and care are not the ultimate source either. Love and care is a comparatively recent god in the story of the human past and death and destruction are more primal.
My reason for choosing love and care as what most deserves worship is that only love and care can save us from death and destruction, and that only for a shortish time.
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Re: If there can be one god, can there be more?
Well that would contradict a lot of classical usage of the words, the Titans came before the God's of Rome didn't they? But I do understand what your saying. My point being if a God is possible than frankly anything is possible, our imaginations should be limitless and we should have no prejudice because that one thing that we posit to be true denies all of them.Robin wrote:Hi OTH, regarding monotheism I go back to philosophy on this one, if the eternal exists and it is the sum of all perfections and the Prime Mover of everything, then it has to be One since everything else derives from it. Whatever gods may be would derive their being and essence from the One, the bottom line, the ultimate source. This and only this would deserve the title God.
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Re: If there can be one god, can there be more?
As Philosophers taught through discussions, and religious teachings have changed their identifiable reasoning through applied social religious orders eventuating into today's support of religious ideals. This has to involve questioning belief and what is being discussed in the religious values themselves.philoreaderguy wrote:If there can be one god, can there be more? How can you know that there is only one god? It seems you can know that there can't be any gods, because it's impossible; or you can know that there can be (or is) at least one god. How can you specify the number of gods?
If you proposed One God, this would evaluate a system in creation that supported all quotes of creation to this 1 body. Therefore you could imply many Acts of God, that co-exist to form the hierarchy for the highest value.
1 God would therefore advise that a higher value supports all lower values.
All lower values therefore are never equal to the highest, because they were created as the total effect causing them to be held in the lower situation to support the highest situation.
If you devalued or destroyed a lower God, the higher God situation would therefore alter, but it would always remain as the 1 situation above all else. Therefore a human could identify that they could cause their own self destruction, that in the system of change involving God forces as lower Gods, they would eventually be returned, but returned as a lower God situation.
Philosophy therefore quantified that the Act of the first Creation as God with Adam and Eve proposed its destruction, causing a lesser God situation to evolve as a new Universal Act. This was why they proposed that the Christ Act became the new Act of God. It defined that the previous purpose of Creation Adam and Eve was destroyed and it was returned as the Christ Act of God. In this discussion the Acts of Gods were God's Angels.
Humanity therefore proposed through the system of Philosophy involving Theosophy, PHI calculations and astronomical reviews that our previous Universe and its origin union had been destroyed and it was replaced in a new state of creation. Philosophy therefore predicted that you can obviously destroy the higher state in creation by destroying it, but it will always transform and re-create a new God system.
This is why Philosophy was against Scientific exploration that involved any function of change to matter.
As an example, review the following relating to the Acts of Creation - Tommaso Caccini, a Dominican friar, appears to have made the first dangerous attack on Galileo. Preaching a sermon in Florence at the end of 1614, he denounced Galileo, his associates, and mathematicians in general (a category that included astronomers). The biblical text for the sermon on that day was Joshua 10, in which Joshua makes the Sun stand still; this was the story that Castelli had to interpret for the Medici family the year before. It is said, though it is not verifiable, that Caccini also used the passage from Acts 1:11, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?". "...to check unbridled spirits, [the Holy Council] decrees that no one relying on his own judgement shall, in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, distorting the Scriptures in accordance with his own conceptions, presume to interpret them contrary to that sense which the holy mother Church... has held or holds..."[16] - Decree of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Quoted in Langford, 1992.
Heresy is usually used to discuss violations of religious or traditional laws or legal codes, although it is used by some political extremists to refer to their opponents. It carries the connotation of behaviors or beliefs likely to undermine accepted morality and cause tangible evils, damnation, or other punishment.
Wikipedia
The only reason that any historian-astronomer would apply a spiritual law involving the Acts of Creation would imply by and through the historic information that these human beings were aware of a life threatening situation for Planet Earth, involving damnation or evil. This would have to have been involved in a pre-ceding literary condition that involved the subject itself. This would be through archaeological evidence and also historical acts of destruction that would have reportedly been involved with human scientific exploration and ancient applications.
This would be evident through the information involved in this situation....human beings who we supported during these times as being involved in high intellectual social standards. It is the only reason why any human being has believed in the human ability to not only convert a created cell as a created natural act, but to also cause an effect by converting a created cell.
What we challenge in today's social condition is intelligence itself. Scientists today give a self evaluation that they are a higher informed intelligence than the human beings who have preceded us in life. Only natural acts of destruction as a cause effect from scientific interference would dissuade a Scientist from pursuing the Acts of God or God.
As Scientists in today's situation of life and the apparent natural disaster outcomes from scientific change of nature, they argue, just like in ancient times regarding data and evidence of the data. Some Scientists are concerned for the well being of natural life on Planet Earth whilst others are convinced that they can apply Acts of God and continue to live on Planet Earth as she currently exists as a naturally evolved planet.
Therefore what is actually being researched by Scientists.....how much God information they can try to re-interpret, and still propose that they will remain the same after trying to apply the conditions of our conscious and spiritual awareness?
This was why religious Law was applied in ancient times, for the very purpose of dealing with human beings who proposed themselves as an equal to God and the Laws of the created Act. For anyone to take such drastic measures, as demonstrated by the ancient Roman Brotherhood involved in the keeping of creation/astronomic records would cause any human being today to question this form of brutal law application.
Religion has always involved, loving, kind, caring teachers who held reasons for teaching religious creation. What would religious Teachers do for the sake of humanity....this should be the question you ask. Would they enact cruel laws for the only purpose of trying to keep humanity safe from their own ego? That should be the question you pose in the Philosophy of God.
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Re: If there can be one god, can there be more?
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Re: If there can be one god, can there be more?
They could not find a supreme god to keep them going. Even Zeus all powerful was subject to the Fates. Apparently the Fates decreed they should all die except through the poets who tried valiantly but in vain to keep them alive.
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