RE: Hindu hell
January 29, 2019 at 7:52 am
(This post was last modified: January 29, 2019 at 7:54 am by Belacqua.)
(January 29, 2019 at 6:27 am)Aoi Magi Wrote: Almost all polytheistic religions which I know of, has a top-dog/leader/king, even the biblical 'god' Yahweh was part of a pantheon,
Well, I'm not as confident of this as you are, for the reasons I listed before.
Animist religions may not be hierarchical. The Greek pantheon had a king but he wasn't all-powerful; the other gods could get over on him. Yahweh was one henotheistic god in the region, but not necessarily in a hierarchy.
Quote:thing is if you look at religions of past to now, the power and agency of 'god' keeps increasing, as our increase in knowledge keeps explaining away the smaller gods.
This seems strange to me. The Gods of Plato and of Aristotle can't be said to have increased in power and agency, and they were largely taken over by Christianity -- any non-literalist non-sola scriptura Christian is in large part in agreement with them. I guess what you say is true if we think of the 4th century BC as the beginning of "now."
In what way has our increase in knowledge "explained away" the "smaller" gods? Are you thinking that the "smaller" ones are merely failed scientific theories?
The changes in the religions of India have been fascinating, but again, Brahman as the fundamental principle of being isn't really in competition with the more anthropomorphic gods.
