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Interesting correlation between God and light in major world religions...
#11
RE: Interesting correlation between God and light in major world religions...
(May 16, 2019 at 10:56 am)Ajay0 Wrote: correlation between God and light in the major world religions....

Yes! An important aspect of understanding religion!

I do want to be careful about the use of metaphor when discussing light/God. It wouldn't be good to take things too literally. 

In Christianity, one of the main reasons people talk about the sun and light when they're really discussing God is because God is said to emanate, or "shine out" the world. As the sun shines out light. It's difficult to think of existence emanating from something non-material, so the metaphorical expression is used pretty much constantly. 

There are a number of further uses for this. For example, if God is the Form of the Good -- Goodness itself -- then we can say that the good which appears in the world is separated or divided. Imagine a prism, and goodness shining through it. The goodness is divided on the far side. But its pre-division origin is as wholeness and perfectly white light. If we imagine re-combining the colors into the whiteness, this is a way of imagining God. 

Another metaphor is of reflection. The white light shines out of the sun, but each object in the world reflects a portion of that full spectrum, and thus appears as a color. In the same way, goodness originates with God, and each object or person in the world reflects that portion of the spectrum of goodness that its nature allows. As a leaf reflects the green portion of the spectrum from the white light of the sun, the positive qualities that you and I have are partial reflections of the entirety of the Good. 

All of this is from Dante. 

But again, this is a metaphorical way of understanding, in which we represent goodness as light. We shouldn't say that light is the good per se.

Or as Blake put it:

God Appears & God is Light 
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 
But does a Human Form Display 
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
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#12
RE: Interesting correlation between God and light in major world religions...
Glow in the dark rainbow spaghetti
[Image: How%2Bto%2Bdye%2Bglow%2Bin%2Bthe%2Bdark%...vities.jpg]

R’amen
(August 21, 2017 at 11:31 pm)KevinM1 Wrote: "I'm not a troll"
Religious Views: He gay

0/10

Hammy Wrote:and we also have a sheep on our bed underneath as well
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#13
RE: Interesting correlation between God and light in major world religions...
In the maori religion Io the creator god has many names:
 
"Io-mataaho. His appearance as he moves abroad is as that of radiant light only; he is not clearly seen by any being of the heavens, of the worlds, or divisions thereof.

Io-matangaro (Hidden-faced Io, or Io of the Unseen Face). This name denotes that he is unseen by all things in the heavens, in the world, and various divisions of the heavens, or worlds. No matter what it be, he is not seen, but only when he intends to be seen can he be seen by any being. He is unseen by all beings of the heavens, of the divisions of the worlds, of the waters, of the clouds, of vegetation, insects, supernatural beings, the denizens of the heavens; only when he wills that they shall see him can they do so".
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#14
RE: Interesting correlation between God and light in major world religions...
Personally; I would link it to precious items' reflection of light. Gold shines; diamond shines; comets shine; stars shine. So the common sense is that any precious thing shines.

So God must shine too. I recall reading a Hadith speaking about the myths of "Gaheleya" time; some people thought that God was made out of gold in ancient Arabia.

I do believe that God is "the light of heavens and earth" as mentioned in the Quran; but I don't trust that many humans sought to stress on this fact in their different religions. They simply followed the "example of Gaheleya time", and pictured their Gods as giants made out of shiny materials like gold. Apollo for example.
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#15
RE: Interesting correlation between God and light in major world religions...
(May 16, 2019 at 10:56 am)Ajay0 Wrote: I have come across some observations which depict an interesting correlation between God and light in the major world religions....

Yeah the obvious reason is because people worshiped the Sun. Almost all people around the world connected the Sun as source of life with it's warmth and light and worshiped it. Sun itself was one of the most primal gods. Even Roman emperors were routinely identifying themselves with the sun god and all his symbols: cross, eagle, fire, gold, lion, and so on. Constantine I, whom conventional history hails as the first Christian emperor, was actually a worshiper of the sun god, whose image he placed on his coins, dedicated to “the invincible sun, my guardian.”
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#16
RE: Interesting correlation between God and light in major world religions...
(May 16, 2019 at 3:00 pm)Smaug Wrote: It's of no surprise. Light dispells darkness. And darkness is dangerous. Predators lurk in the dark. This goes from primordal times, I guess. From way before organized religions.

-or God is simply at the end if not beyond the visual spectrum.
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#17
RE: Interesting correlation between God and light in major world religions...
(May 23, 2019 at 11:05 am)Drich Wrote:
(May 16, 2019 at 3:00 pm)Smaug Wrote: It's of no surprise. Light dispells darkness. And darkness is dangerous. Predators lurk in the dark. This goes from primordal times, I guess. From way before organized religions.

-or God is simply at the end if not beyond the visual spectrum.

That would make god detectable by devices.

So we can test for its presence.



You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid.

Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis.




 








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#18
RE: Interesting correlation between God and light in major world religions...
Really, Sun was the first God and all gods that were invented afterward had to have some atributes of the Sun so that people buy them and worship them.

And we could even look at some ancient writings that confirm this:

Strabo (Geographica, XI.14) tells us that "The Persians therefore do not erect statues and altars, but sacrifice on a high place, regarding the heaven as Zeus; and they honor also the sun, whom they call Mithra, and the moon and Aphrodite and fire and earth and the winds and water."

Quintus Curtius (History of Alexander, Bk 4, Ch. 13) describes the scene before the battle of Arbela: "The king himself with his generals and staff passed around the ranks of the armed men, praying to the sun and Mithra and the sacred eternal fire to inspire them with courage worthy of their ancient fame and the monuments of their ancestors."

Lucian’s Zeus Rants and The Parliament of the Gods:  "Bendis is a Thracian goddess, and Anubis is an Egyptian [god], whom the theologoi call ‘dog-faced.’ Mithras is Persian, and Men is Phrygian. This Mithras is the same as Hephaestus, but others say [he is the same as] Helios."

Mithra is Sol Invictus is Apollo is Helios is Kronos is Saturn is... (and Saturn can be equated with Yahweh.) And yet each god keeps his name.

Even early Christians acknowledged this and use it to ridicule pagan gods, like in Clementine Homily VI.10
 
"And I must ask you to think of all such stories as embodying some such allegory. Look on Apollo as the wandering Sun (Peri-Polôn), a son of Zeus, who was also called Mithras, as completing the period of a year. And these said transformations of the all-pervading Zeus must be regarded as the numerous changes of the seasons, while his numberless wives you must understand to be years, or generations."


But of course, Jesus is also filled with attributes of the Sun God. I mean is it a coincidence that Jesus' birthday is celebrated around December 25 (the approximate date of the winter solstice in the Julian calendar) when the sun's fire is rekindled?
And indeed if you've noticed Sun is the one that "dies" every day and then resurrects the next day. But there is also annual death and resurrection of the Sun when the rising of the sun above the celestial equator at the time of the vernal equinox and then the death at the time of the autumnal equinox, when the sun sinks below the celestial equator. Correspondingly Synoptics give Jesus a sun god’s "life" of just one year and his life-path is a circle (the circle of the ecliptic), Jesus is simultaneously the Alpha and the Omega--as is the case for every point in the circumference of a circle.


Then, of course, the royal families of Japan traced their descent from the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. Before Islam, the Arabs worshiped the sun as a Goddess named Atthar. Vikings also worshiped the sun as a Goddess, Glory-of-Elves, or Sol.
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