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When people talk about "god" they are talking about themselves.

What about worship of the Egyptian gods and goddesses, such as Isis (not Daesh; not quite O Mighty Isis)? I ask because I have a friend who actively worships Bastet (I think). We've had a few chats about the translations of texts that may have been destroyed in Alexandria, that may have shown goddess worship.

Throughout my years in and out of the Secular movement and communities, I've rarely encountered threads such as these that included the Esther, Ruth, and Rahab stories; much less Lilith, much less Goddess Isis.

The religions listed so far all seem to have decidedly male deities, Jussayin... I don't know much about this topic, but I know what I don't know.
 
steve_bank said:
So when someday talks to god they are really talking to themselves, makes sense to me in terms of [psychology.
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Not in terms of neuroscience, though, those are very different processes as far as the brain is concerned. You may make the case that a person is not talking to a real person when they talk to a god, but if so, their nervous system is unaware of that fact.
 
Janice Rael said:
What about worship of the Egyptian gods and goddesses, such as Isis (not Daesh; not quite O Mighty Isis)?
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Iset! As was.

She's had quite the growing cult in the US lately; the goddess who symbolizes of the otherwise hopelessly broken has a great appeal to the modern Pagan.

We all come from the Goddess, and to her we shall return. Good luck starting a conversation about thealogy here, though! Not much interest.
 
Janice Rael said:
...all seem to have decidedly male deities
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Asherah, queen consort of . . . Yahweh (Israelite religion)...
--"Canaanite religion §.List of deities". Wikipedia.
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Deuteronomy 32:8–9] suggests that Yahweh, originally a warrior-god from Sinai / Paran / Edom / Teiman, was known separately from El at an early point in early Israel.
--Smith, Mark S. (2002). The Early History of God: Yahweh and the other deities in ancient Israel. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 32f, n. 45. ISBN 978-0-8028-3972-5.
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The Hebrew Bible frequently and graphically associates goddess worship with prostitution ("whoredom") in material written after the reforms of Josiah. Jeremiah, and Ezekiel blame the goddess religion for making Yahweh "jealous", and cite his jealousy as the reason Yahweh allowed the destruction of Jerusalem.
--"Asherah". Wikipedia
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Politesse said:
steve_bank said:
So when someday talks to god they are really talking to themselves, makes sense to me in terms of [psychology.
Click to expand...
Not in terms of neuroscience, though, those are very different processes as far as the brain is concerned. You may make the case that a person is not talking to a real person when they talk to a god, but if so, their nervous system is unaware of that fact.
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Fictional characters are like that.

People pray to gods; They also yell at their televisions, even though they know on an intellectual level that the fictional characters on the screen can't hear them.
 
Neuroscience and psychology are two different things. As a loose analogy computer hardware versus software.

When Pense contemplated running for president he said he prayed a lot and communed with god looking for guidance. He was working it out through an imaginary agent to talk to. God as a sounding board. I'd say Christians do it without being consciously aware of what they are doing.

That js what myths and religion are for at the grass roots level.
 
Apparently modern metaphor is not your bailiwick.

It is good sometimes to close the books, come back from the bast, and experience the world as it is today.

Our brains are programmable, we can be conditioned to think one way or another. We can learn to hate or like something.

That is the software. Psychology studies how different programing, bf occurs in our brains ad how t manifests. And how to fix bugs in our programming.
 
T.G.G. Moogly said:
Is there any other explanation that makes as much sense? Even if we discuss a particular god of a particular sect of a particular religion we find differences and different interpretations of that "god" and its behavior among individuals in that particular group of people. They may agree on a majority of alleged characteristics but are never 100% in agreement. People who talk about god appear to be merely projecting themselves onto this human archetype.

If I worship a god that commits genocide and I explain it away by saying that my god is mysterious then obviously I approve of genocide. If I worship a god that allows children to die of cancer than obviously I approve of children dying of cancer. We shouldn't be asking someone why their god allows evil but be asking why they themselves allow evil.

The difference between a good person that does bad things and a bad person that does good things is the things those persons do. Claiming that I have a god is just my attempt to put some space between my behavior and personal accountability for same.
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Your fist paragraph is spot on. That's why I don't blame religion nor am I afraid of it. Now people, I am afraid of people. I don't see one trait of man that is caused by religion. I see everything in religion caused by man. Any institution of man that gets too big tends to tread on people.

The way people reject any and all gods also tends to be a projection to me. They special plead at every turn. One fundamental atheist actually told "we are not part of a system". We are part of a larger more complex system thats just a fact. It may be alive (not a fact). Key phrase "may be", I am not saying it is. Its just the best explanation I have. "Random" is not what we see. In fact, we see a predictable path. For the most part so far.

Your genocide comment is very limiting. It is actually special pleading to me. I do not have to approve of genocide to see the need for it in some cases.

You also miss one important option. "It allows it" because it can be no other way. Maybe the people are describing the thing wrong. Like my 6 yr old stunned that I didn't know everything. The poor kid, he looked at me and said "But daddy, you know everything."... welcome to the jungle son, welcome to reality my little man.

"God" is a place holder to me too. Like dark matter and dark energy. "Dark God", there is something, I just have no idea what it is. "killing in the name of god" is a red flag. Killing a very bad person is not just killing, it is helping. So they are helping in the name of a god. What is good and bad can be discussed. But killing can be done out of love.

How a person describes the god of the bible is the best ink blot test I know. An all loving/malice god description means we have a broken person. We just need to be careful, they are land mines. To me anywayz.
 
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