Zeus apologetics

[Owlix]

In worshiping myself, I also worship Zeus. How 'bout them apples!

[T.J.]

B-but, the ancient scrolls can be interpret in different ways!

[max-greece]

The good thing about the Greek Gods is that they didn't make any absolute claims. No perfection, omniscience, all-powerful (just very powerful) stuff; also not infinite. The fact that they were capricious, vain, proud and so on actually made them fit into reality a whole lot better than the balmy claims for the Judeo/Christian God.

[genkaus]

The thing about apologetics is that it is directed at "proving" the god of Judeo-Christian mythology. Gods from other mythologies - such as Zeus - have little in common with him other than the fact about there being no evidence. Which is why, simply replacing the words "god" with "Zeus" doesn't work very well because the claims made about god have not necessarily been made about Zeus.

For example, the idea of god being the creator of the universe - Zeus never filled that position. Or the question of morality - the whole objective/subjective debate is not the same when considered in the Greek perspective. The Greeks said at the outset that gods had different moral rules. Incest, for example, was a sin for humans but the gods were fucking their sisters left and right. Similarly, one of the biggest sins a human could commit was being better at something than a god. The question for them was if god's came up with these rules for humans or were they just implementing them - but they never regarded those morals as absolute and universal given that the gods themselves weren't bound by those.

Given the vastly different natures and qualities of different gods in different mythologies, trying to defeat the apologetic argument simply by replacing one "god" with another one is pretty short-sighted.