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Well, Sanspeur, and smh1, to my way of thinking the anthropomorphic and ethnocentric nature of the depictions of gods is more than telling. I suppose one could argue that god revealed itself in a manner most acceptable to the local inhabitants, of course that assumes that god(s) waited for quite sometime, allowing for those cultural distinctions to give rise before introducing itself which is also highly dubious.
Or you could assume, as I do that all gods are inventions, otherwise there would at least be some consistency between them....The gods of isolated cultures in no way resemble each other, nor do they resemble the "mainstream" god worshiped by more developed cultures.
Me personally, I am not an atheist. But I don't believe in any particular God or Goddess either. I just file it in the unkown category-because I don't know. Sort of in the nether world. When I was growing up, I was highly religious, so realize how easy the world is when it seems to be black and white . When everything is known and absolute. When the wrongs of this world can be explained away by being rewarded in eternity or some such or bad people meeting their punishment later. You take that away and life does not make sense-well as in it does not fit any concept we can think of.
Of course now I enjoy being in the unkown-it is rather refrshing and makes you feel like a kid again.
Buddhism,Islam,Hinduism, and Confucianism are branches from the same tree. All monotheist are concurrent. Without contact. just scratch below the surface and you can see. here is an example of Buddhism.
6-days of Creation {6 realms of suffering}
7-day of rest {nirvana}
8-day of circumcision, Resurrection {Noble 8 fold path}
At the hub of each Wheel is the Trinity.
Body-{Right action}Virtue
Soul-{Right thought}Wisdom
Spirit-{Right focus}Discipline
No, it simply means that all humans everywhere feel a need to explain the unknown in order to lessen or alleviate the fear of such.....Thus the invention of gods.
However, the fact that ALL cultures DO HAVE such reported contacts or beliefs is consistent with God's existence.
I used to think that the presence of god(s) in most or all cultures was evidence of god's existence, but not anymore. That was when I was trying to rationalize reasons to continue believing. I didn't think different cultures having different ways to describe god was a problem. It seemed to me that with our knowledge of how culture works, different religions could admit it was precisely because of their different cultures that they developed different religions. Then they could come together and agree on the existence of god and to leave each other alone to practice their own beliefs. Of course, this would have also had the potential for peace... It all seemed so simple.... What wishful thinking...
Eventually I decided that if there really were a god, something would have happened to stop religion from being such a source of conflict. There were lots of other things that made me walk away, such as hypocrisy, unbelievability of narratives one had to accept on faith, how religion is used to control people and their bodies, just to name a few examples.
The OP's question can be answered thusly: an idiosyncratic (in its monism) and ethnocentric tribal religion, focused on the worship of a storm god, splintered into different sects and spread mostly by force.
Whether any of the gods of the religions of 'the people of the book' is the 'true' and real god or not, the simple reality of the broader revelation of these gods is stated above.
It's more likely that your entire belief system and worldview is simply a product of your geographic location and exposure to a particular religion that happened to dominate in that location rather than an actual revelation of truth. But believe what you will. I wouldn't aspire to take someone's religion away from them until it proved to be intolerant of other religions or people.
A better question, instead of the one that wonders why 'god' is only revealed locally, is why does your worldview omit the fact that your entire perspective of the universe and its god is simply a single perspective amongst hundreds of other tribal perspectives that might posit the same thing about why their god was only revealed to them?
The OP's question can be answered thusly: an idiosyncratic (in its monism) and ethnocentric tribal religion, focused on the worship of a storm god, splintered into different sects and spread mostly by force.
Whether any of the gods of the religions of 'the people of the book' is the 'true' and real god or not, the simple reality of the broader revelation of these gods is stated above.
It's more likely that your entire belief system and worldview is simply a product of your geographic location and exposure to a particular religion that happened to dominate in that location rather than an actual revelation of truth. But believe what you will. I wouldn't aspire to take someone's religion away from them until it proved to be intolerant of other religions or people.
A better question, instead of the one that wonders why 'god' is only revealed locally, is why does your worldview omit the fact that your entire perspective of the universe and its god is simply a single perspective amongst hundreds of other tribal perspectives that might posit the same thing about why their god was only revealed to them?
Ah, but what if God reveals Himself to all of us all of the time? What if we are unable to understand what He is telling us due to cultural milieu, cultural restrictions?
Do you really think Mozart would have been able to create the music he did if he had been born in Borneo 5000 years ago?
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