Hindu hell

[The Grand Nudger]

I did say that we project our qualities on our beliefs; my question was "why is the produced creatures/humanoid/natural disaster" is controlled by a God?

Where did the idea of the "God" came from;

We don't know.  Certainly long before any of the current gods were born.  There's data suggesting that god belief (at least of a certain type) may be a product of human biology, so the question of who or where the idea originally came from may be malformed.  Similar to the question of "who invented the bow".  Lots of people, independently, and we don't know who any of them were.  

 and why did it survive and win across history to this day?

It survives because it represents a tenacious set of views, I  couldn't comment on it's "winning"..I don't know what that means.  

That a view is tenacious does not mean that it's worthy, nor..for that matter, would "winning" whatever contest you have in mind certify it's contents as true.

[WinterHold]

I did say that we project our qualities on our beliefs; my question was "why is the produced creatures/humanoid/natural disaster" is controlled by a God?

Where did the idea of the "God" came from;

We don't know.  Certainly long before any of the current gods were born.  There's data suggesting that god belief (at least of a certain type) may be a product of human biology, so the question of who or where the idea originally came from may be malformed.  Similar to the question of "who invented the bow".  Lots of people, independently, and we don't know who any of them were.  

If God's idea is fixed in our minds since birth -product of biology-; then that gives even more assets to the idea that we are created by God, and we do know him since birth.

[The Grand Nudger]

Why would you think that? In mere reality, the inference runs in precisely the opposite direction. God beliefs as a product of human biology don't speak to any existent gods we know.

They speak to gods we manufacture, unintentionally, no less.

[Jade-Green Stone]

Do Hindu's even have a 'hell'? This didn't come up in my questions to my friend who would be a Hindu if it wasn't for the 'No pork' thing.

[yragnitup]

Do Hindu's even have a 'hell'? This didn't come up in my questions to my friend who would be a Hindu if it wasn't for the 'No pork' thing.

According to the Hindus, Hinduism is not a single religion but thousands that were grouped to one in modern context as a reaction to other organised religions (e.g Abhahamic) coming into India. Hell & heaven could be there in some sects but it's not eternal  & it has nothing to do with faith but merely deeds & karma etc. What I'm more intrigued is even the God in their oldest scripture the Rig Veda which is 3-4 thousand years old seems to be an agnostic himself ...at least sometimes..!!! Perhaps the guru who wrote it was high on weeds just like his God Shiva?

But, after all, who knows, and who can say
Whence it all came, and how creation happened?
the gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?

Whence all creation had its origin,
he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
he, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows - or maybe even he does not know.

[The Grand Nudger]

By 600 bce, hinduism had a well developed school of explicitly atheist thought.  We're told by later scholars (who may not be completely reliable, lol) that they believed that heaven was self determination and hell..subjugation.

[Aoi Magi]

I did say that we project our qualities on our beliefs; my question was "why is the produced creatures/humanoid/natural disaster" is controlled by a God?

Where did the idea of the "God" came from; and why did it survive and win across history to this day?

I get your point: just like we have "leaders/kings/presidents"; we assume nature is also running like that.
But why assume that the CEO is a God? why assume this model; even?

Why assume that life is like an organization with a CEO on top? isn't it more logical to say that the "employees like volcanoes" are alive?

The religious model was favored; and won.

If you read into other religions, especially the smaller tribal religions, you'd see that humans do believe trees, volcanoes, rocks, oceans and even animals e.t.c are themselves living breathing gods, not just agents of 'God'. Moreover, the hierarchical structure of a supreme being at the top arises because humans organise themselves in that structure, so it's quite normal to project that same structure on to nature.

Think of it like this, you are a small child, you cannot protect yourself, gather food or survive on your own, so you rely on your parents, from your childish perspective, your parents would be super-beings who can do almost anything. But your parents have their limitations too, in order to meet your expectations, they need to rely on their community for protection, food and survival. Similarly the community in turn relies on a figurehead/leader/king. But this leader too will have their limitations, they cannot control something like say a natural disaster, so they'd need to rely on someone who can, or at least claims to be able to control nature and things beyond human control at that point, so they rely on "wise old men", shamans, spiritual leaders, who in turn claim to rely on yet more higher power, and this chain continues till there is a supreme entity of some sort to bear the burden of all these expectations. However just because one or more entities in this chain are real, doesn't mean all are, and that's where you need a method to determine which links in this chain are real and which are imaginary.

[Belacqua]

Moreover, the hierarchical structure of a supreme being at the top arises because humans organise themselves in that structure, so it's quite normal to project that same structure on to nature.

This sounds reasonable enough from a psychological perspective. I guess we can project things back into the past and assume that things might have come about this way.

Do you know of any animist religions on record as having this sort of hierarchy? Shinto, for example, doesn't. There is no top god. The polytheism of the Middle East seems to have been henotheist, so that each tribe had a favorite, but it wasn't considered to be the boss of all.

Hesiod's and Homer's Zeus was called the king but certainly didn't equate to anything like the god of the Christian theologians. He was frequently opposed and occasionally confounded. It's true that Zeus/Jupiter took on more characteristics of an all-powerful deity in Roman times, but this appears to me, from what I've read, to be the influence of Platonic and Aristotelian thought. They posited a supreme source, similar in many ways to the Hindu Brahman, but certainly not because they assumed that a metaphysical hierarchy had to resemble a human one.

[Aoi Magi]

Moreover, the hierarchical structure of a supreme being at the top arises because humans organise themselves in that structure, so it's quite normal to project that same structure on to nature.

This sounds reasonable enough from a psychological perspective. I guess we can project things back into the past and assume that things might have come about this way.

Do you know of any animist religions on record as having this sort of hierarchy? Shinto, for example, doesn't. There is no top god. The polytheism of the Middle East seems to have been henotheist, so that each tribe had a favorite, but it wasn't considered to be the boss of all.

Hesiod's and Homer's Zeus was called the king but certainly didn't equate to anything like the god of the Christian theologians. He was frequently opposed and occasionally confounded. It's true that Zeus/Jupiter took on more characteristics of an all-powerful deity in Roman times, but this appears to me, from what I've read, to be the influence of Platonic and Aristotelian thought. They posited a supreme source, similar in many ways to the Hindu Brahman, but certainly not because they assumed that a metaphysical hierarchy had to resemble a human one.

Almost all polytheistic religions which I know of, has a top-dog/leader/king, even the biblical 'god' Yahweh was part of a pantheon, 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. Hinduism is a bit fascinating in this respect because, yes, it's not a single religion or belief system and it's roots are quite old but it has many fairly recent offshoots too and combined together you can see these changes happening over time. In the ancient vedic times and even earlier, shiva, brahma, e.t.c weren't that prominent, rather nature worship was including various plants and mountains, rivers, after that indra (thunder), agni (fire), e.t.c came into prominence clearly a bit more powerful than mountains and rivers, also you can clearly see the parallels of these deities to others at that time ( like indra and zeus are pretty much rebranded versions of each other), As forces of nature slowly were understood, prominence shifted to brahma, vishnu, maheswar (shiva), who were yet again more powerful than indra and his pantheon, nowadays the shift is again slowly happening towards a parmatma or an amalgamation of the big three to represent a being as the source of creation.

[Belacqua]

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. 

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.