register for atheists?

[thir]

I don't know if there are an abundance of people who worship a god who they believe doesn't love them, or have the general characteristics that the three monotheistic religions attribute to god, if there are non mainstream religions that have a god who they know is supposed to hate humans....I doubt they're really popular.

I believe it is difficult for us in a world (Western) where life is relatively safe perhaps to understand how anyone can worships a malevalent god, or at least a god or gods that are completely arbitary in what they do. But I have an idea that if your life is depending on stuff that you have No influence over whatsoever, you try to appease or stay of the right side of these powers, be they god or gods, spirits, forces of nature, overlords or whatever. Basically because there is nothing else you Can do.

So yeah, does god need a name then?

Matter of taste, I suppose, and culture. I guess most Western people would feel alienated if they were supposed to pray to Ganesha, for example. And of course there are people who have more than one god, and therefore need names for them.

Praying to a higher diety, having faith in something that you hope has some control of the universe, that's god.

I would like to hear other opions on this: is we people of the Western world who need someone in charge of everything? Is it that we know that we live on a speck in the universe which can easily collide with another speck, or a thousand other things could happen, and even if they don't, we will die? Are we worse at living with death and arbitarity than more socalled primitive people, who often have a much more filosophical attitude? Do we need to know that our children will make it? Or it is simply a need for a sort of neatness??

UPS! I read 'god' as 'good'. Sorry. But I did not want to erase the question which concerns issues I have been thinking about.

Honestly? I'm more concerned about politicians who decide to use my religion for political mudslinging to win votes. A random pastor at some church with no national or major regional presence is a far cry from shit that's already happening.

All good points, IMO.

I think atheists need not worry, lunatics are more concerned about that moozlim (read brown) guy in town and their crazy mosques, and preventing gay rights.

I would have thought so, but atheists seem to be more talked about lately than usual.

[leo9]

I believe it is difficult for us in a world (Western) where life is relatively safe perhaps to understand how anyone can worships a malevalent god, or at least a god or gods that are completely arbitary in what they do. But I have an idea that if your life is depending on stuff that you have No influence over whatsoever, you try to appease or stay of the right side of these powers, be they god or gods, spirits, forces of nature, overlords or whatever. Basically because there is nothing else you Can do.

Someone who teaches Classical history told me how hard it is to explain to most people the concept of propitiation. That for the Greeks and Romans, and probably for most other peoples of their age, a great deal of prayer was about asking the gods to please leave me alone. Not asking favours, that would be WAY too dangerous, but if you were lucky you could persuade them to just turn aside a fraction and not step on you.

Which, as thir says, is a perfectly reasonable attitude when you're addressing the personification of forces like thunder and earthquakes which manifestly don't care who gets hurt.

Part of the confusion arises because the idea of moral dualism - that God = Absolute Good - is relatively new. The ancient world's gods weren't good or evil, except in the relative way we all are; they might be nice to you if they liked you and you made all the right sacrifices, but everyone knew they'd done really mean things in the past and might do it again if the whim took them. JHVH in the Old Testament is clearly just another such, but then someone retrofitted the Zoroastrian concept of a god of Absolute Good (and its inevitable corollary, a not-quite-god of Absolute Evil) and theologians have been trying to make that work ever since.

Same with "evil" gods. Thorne, it's pretty certain that Baal's reputation comes entirely from the Israelites, who weren't exactly unbiased. There is evidence that Baal and JHVH were different tribes' names for the same deity, and nobody is so hated as the people who are almost like us. As for Loki, the Eddas describe the gods calling on him frequently when they needed a cunning plan; since he's recorded as the patron god of eloquence (or to put it another way, lying,) it's likely that people did the same. Of course you wouldn't want to be the target of his sense of humour, but that doesn't make him a devil.

Campbell's Law states that defeated gods become demons.

I would like to hear other opions on this: is we people of the Western world who need someone in charge of everything?

Not sure, but it is a relatively modern idea that anyone, even the gods, are in charge of everything. The ancient gods were always at risk of defeat by some other pantheon or by the palace politics of their own, and Fate was greater than them all.