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To: Tribune7

"And what is a good deity?"

Whatever one fits your particular cultural needs. Whichever one or group of them that offers easy to digest answers to the difficult questions like:

What the heck is this place?
How the heck did it get here?
How did all these plants and animals get here?
More importantly, how the heck did I get here?
How am I supposed to act around all these other folks?
Hey! I see other folks dying all the time. What's that about?
What happens to me, the most important thing on the planet, when I die?
Is this all there is?
Why is the sky blue?
What's this wet stuff?
What are those lights in the sky?
What's that big hot ball in the sky? What's burning?
What happens if I kill that guy I hate so much and steal his pretty wife?

Stuff like that. A good deity is one that answers all those questions. Guess what? Every culture comes up with a deity or a dozen of them to answer them.

There are fewer of them these days. It's easier to deal with just one or three than dozens of different once. But, the religions with lots of deities work OK, too. Some of them have been around for a couple of millenia or more. It's just a lot more involved to make offerings to dozens of deities, especially in today's modern, busy world. Lots easier to just tithe to the church and pray once in awhile. Then you can get on with business and not think about that stuff, except once in a while.

Me? I have the answers to lots of those questions. Some are harder to answer than others. But, there it is. I'm just not smart enough to figure them out. I do get new answers all the time, though. I know why the sky is blue now, and why the sun is hot. Heck, I even know, within close tolerance, how far away it is. Isn't science amazing? Who knows what they'll explain next.


186 posted on 10/19/2005 11:55:12 AM PDT by MineralMan (godless atheist)
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To: MineralMan
"And what is a good deity?" . . . Whatever one fits your particular cultural needs.

So Baal or Quetzalcoatl would be good deities?

194 posted on 10/19/2005 11:59:04 AM PDT by Tribune7
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