As an atheist I do not believe there are any gods. If there were, I would like them to be the Greek/Roman gods of Olympus: Zeus, Pluto, Appollo, et cetera.
They just have cooler names and a cooler mythology. but they were assholes like all the other fake gods
Why would you like Gods that are notoriously temperamental, vindictive, egotistical, maniacal, jealous, interfering and more than happy to exert their dominance? I'd prefer the deistic variety: non-interfering.
Dionysus/Bachanales (spelling?) The god of wine, parties and general fun. That's the kind of god you need, not all those miserable, vindictive ones.
I'm something of an atheist too, I guess. That's why I haven't given much thought to preferring gods. They are among the most interesting, from a literary point of view. They have some of the most stylish (and occasionally sexy) myths. The old Norse gods are cool too. Gods and goddesses always seem to be imagined as having strong, over-the-top personalities, even Yahweh, thundering on his mountaintop. India has some really aesthetically striking deities as well, just think of Shiva and Kali with her necklace of skulls. Perhaps in another entirely different sense I can say that I'm most inclined to prefer descriptions and accounts of divinity that seem most plausible and likely to me. That would probably be the philosophical functions, such as first-cause or sustainer-of-being. There may or may not be something in reality that corresponds to those. I don't know. Of course I'm not sure why I should call those kind of things divine or automatically assume that they are suitable objects of religious worship either.
I think if there were an atheist version of God it would fit well with the Gnostic version of the Demiurge, a sort of base animal-like creator deity who reigns over material reality. The goal of human existence would therefore be the emancipation of the mind/spirit or inner spark from the darkness of this material substrate, something peculiarly similar to what we envision evolution and science doing for us as a species. The Gnostic mandate thus becomes: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." "Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God and the demiurgic “creator” of the material. Several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Being: his act of creation occurs in unconscious semblance of the divine model, and thus is fundamentally flawed, or else is formed with the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine in materiality. Thus, in such systems, the Demiurge acts as a solution to the problem of evil. In the most radical form of Christian Gnosticism, the Demiurge is the "jealous God" of the Old Testament. Mythos One Gnostic mythos describes the declination of aspects of the divine into human form. Sophia (Greek: Σοφια, lit. “wisdom”), the Demiurge’s mother a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or “Fullness,” desired to create something apart from the divine totality, without the receipt of divine assent. In this act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him to be within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else, concluded that only he himself existed, being ignorant of the superior levels of reality. The Demiurge, having received a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior Pleromatic realm: He frames the seven heavens, as well as all material and animal things, according to forms furnished by his mother; working however blindly, and ignorant even of the existence of the mother who is the source of all his energy. He is blind to all that is spiritual, but he is king over the other two provinces. The word dēmiourgos properly describes his relation to the material; he is the father of that which is animal like himself. Thus Sophia’s power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe: the goal of Gnostic movements was typically the awakening of this spark, which permitted a return by the subject to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source."----http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Jung tells us that the gods are archetypes, instinctive images programmed into our synapses by the vagaries of evolution. Most instincts are obviously survival traits (an animal that doesn't instantly run away from a larger animal with both eyes in front of its face will not live long enough to pass on his DNA) but surely an odd one is occasionally passed down through genetic drift or a genetic bottleneck. The Roman, Greek and Egyptian gods were pretty much the same folks with different names. Same for the Norse gods: Thor ("Thursday") is the same as Jupiter/Jove (French jeudi, Spanish jueves). Bacchus in Latin. The Romans also referred to him by his Greek name Dionysos, changing the ending to conform to Latin grammar.
Tyrion makes a good point. [video=youtube;3pTRIqhkMHY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pTRIqhkMHY[/video]
Yazata: Your mention of the Norse gods reminds me that I like them also. In fact, I like the notion of a god like Loki.
Hard to disagree... I'd still prefer an atheistic society, devoid of any kind of belief in any transcendental and omni-like qualities.
I don't believe that you don't believe that God exists, and all of this play is just an exercise to keep you mindset from accepting God, and putting away your childishness. I also feel this way about most (if not all) thinking atheists, especially the explicit ones. So that said, I would have to say that the Supreme Being is the One the atheist favour most. jan.
Jan Ardena:From your Post #15. Arrogance typical of a theist, especially the bold phrase. You claim to know what I think? As well as believing in a deity, you also believe that you are telepathic or claivoyant? As posted by me elsewhere: It is an erroneous belief, but comforting while life persists.
I wish you wouldn't do things like that. Accusing another person of 'childishness' (and effectively of lying to him/herself) can be a childish thing in itself. It looks like an emotional provocation, intended to make the other person angry and aroused. That would include me, I guess. And no, I don't intend to get into a back-and-forth ego-battle with you Jan, as much as you obviously want to start one. I just told you what I think of what you're doing and I'll leave it at that. I don't think so. Just about everyone in this thread has written about gods and goddesses taken from polytheistic traditions. That's apparently because these deities are the most interesting in a literary sense. They have the most distinct and developed personalities. They are portrayed as actually having motivations and purposes in their myths. They respond to difficulties and challenges. Monotheistic deities seem to me to typically be less fully developed literary figures. There's only one monotheistic deity, so it can't socially interact with the rest of a pantheon the way the Greek and Norse gods did. Monotheistic deities are utterly alone. And since the monotheistic deity has to incorporate every conceivable divine interest, virtue and attribute into itself, it can't possess the personal interests and agendas that the polytheistic gods and goddesses so often have. I guess that as time goes on, religious believers tend to exalt and exaggerate their deity more and more. We see this process happening in the history of religions, as deities seem to ascend higher and higher into the sky and become increasingly remote from humanity and from our concerns. The growing popularity of monotheism over the last 2000 years or so is part of that evolution. The concept of the divine has certainly become more cosmic, but it's also lost something in the process. It's lost the humanity, the personality that the myths of gods and goddesses once emphasized, leaving us with bloodless philosophical abstractions like "supreme being".
Is that your god is really so diferent from any other god you would care to mention? Included the ones already mentioned here so far?
Interesting to note that Albert Einstein did not believe in any personal God. He viewed the Universe or Mother Nature as more relevant than any one supposed omnipotent being.
