(February 19, 2020 at 3:07 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:(February 19, 2020 at 12:59 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: The usual definition of 'god' is fine by me: a superhuman divine being or spirit worshiped for its supernatural powers. If I capitalize it, I'm talking about one of the 'created the universe' ones. Why would a just deity necessarily be the one that created us if we were created by any deity at all? Maybe the god of clay molded us out of river sediment and the god of justice handles all the 'being just' aspects of reality. Myths are very malleable, and so are deities, their backgrounds and attributes depend largely on what people want them to be. Maybe the gods of clay and justice are still with us and actively participating in human affairs without being obvious about it; and we'd get more justice and better ceramics if we prayed to them instead of the wrong gods. If you only want to talk about Gods, that's fine, but you have no authority to say lesser superhumanly powerful immortal beings don't count as gods.
Also, regarding the gods of clay and justice, even the claim isn't there anywhere, no one ever made it his life's purpose to preach for the god of clay, therefore, a fortiori, the god of clay didn't send anyone . So we can rest assured that, even if these gods existed, they didn't want us to find out, and we shouldn't concern ourselves with them. The versions of God for which there is at least a claim, that is, messengers or revelations making extraordinary assertions, are a good starting point.
Prometheus and Dike were worshipped by the Greeks of antiquity. Prometheus formed humans from clay and gave them the gift of fire stolen from the gods. Zeus had him tortured horrifically for the latter. Dike, daughter of Athena, was the personification of justice, the spirit of moral order, and fair judgment. Presumably she doesn't fault us for not worshiping her as long as we don't better, after all, that would be unjust.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.