posted February 24, 2013 02:49 AM            

1. What 'created' everything? Including God?

I believe God created everything, and that God is beyond the laws/reason we can think up...he wasn't created, he never suddenly existed, I believe he just always was - 'cause that's God: limitless.
Even saying "he" is habit.

posted February 24, 2013 02:55 AM            

quote:

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PixieJane: Wrong forum?

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posted February 24, 2013 03:42 AM            

First, I'm not including aliens with physical bodies.

As for God/dess as the term is usually understood today I believe there IS something there, but I don't believe our religions are accurate when it comes to them and their nature (but see below about being shaped). There are 2 conceits I consider the most likely:

One is that there is a divine force but it's utterly transcendent of time, space, gender, and unknowable to us humans (though Jungian archetypes might make it so that we can interact, commune with, and even manipulate such a force in small, petty ways), but in this case this God/dess is also utterly uncaring about our mortal lives and does not intervene on its own initiative and the religions have nothing to do with it and probably have no real insight into It (at least no more than Star Wars or Harry Potter does). It's aware of every sparrow that falls but it shows no concern for such sparrows or anyone else.

Two, I do think certain daimonic/fairy entities fed off human psychic vibrations, and while minor [trickster] spirits that were probably more semi-sentient at first they could grow with more humans "feeding" them. Quickly summed up the process would be devout & passionate superstition shaped astral constructs/thought forms/collective tulpas (or fed already existing daimons) which slowly became sentient, like a fetus growing into a baby, and the more sentient it became the more proactive it got and began shaping the beliefs to its own ends (but not particularly caring what they were and greatly inspired by the beliefs that gave birth to it in the first place, or put another way humans made the gods in our own image). What fed them was psychic energy fed by belief, and hypocrisy or casual wouldn't do, it would take the very self-sacrificing (murder also works) kind, and as a result many of these trickster spirits or "animated thought forms/mega-tulpas" that became more aware also became hostile to rival spirits and thus had a tendency to command "have no other gods before me" and forcibly mandate worship, or at least intense fear which also works as much as devotion, the key being utter belief in the god/dess and the fewer competitors for that psychic energy the more they could harvest for themselves (in some cases I think they got tied up into pantheons because the beliefs were so intertwined that once they gained enough sentience to become greedy for more they couldn't fully separate and so the fate of one was too likely to be the fate of all unless handled very carefully by the scheming spirits that saw us as cattle to cultivate).

Likewise many religious rituals (such as I saw in a Russian Orthodox church) were similar to shamanism which opened one up spiritually and directed the psychic energy into the imagined religious entities, that is the classic techniques were using the spirits (and being used by them) also helped harvest us like a rancher harvesting cattle. That said, even a rancher can care somewhat for cattle so these spirits (or God/dess pretenders) could actually work some weal for its followers just to keep being fed, and I suspect in the rare case where worship is truly ruled by giving love that the spirit may be charged with that and act accordingly (so healing miracles become possible, for example).

What I'm unsure about is like if the monotheist religions truly have One God/dess which they attune to (and can get the "right/left hand" depending on the energy and type of acts of faith they put into it) or if the various denominations and such (perhaps even churches of the same denomination) are independent of each other. I also don't know what to make of the "charismatic" churches where people writhe on the floor speaking "in tongues" (though I suspect such a force would have a white & black hat to wear to motivate worship, pretending to be demons one day to terrify them and the Holy Spirit the next). But in any case even many who believe today don't believe as they used to (where they willingly went to their own death and ritually and/or methodically tortured people to death in the name of their god) so they're getting a lot less energy from us, enough to remain existent, but dying...and I think that's for the best.

That said, I do believe that the Jungian archetypes which the gods have also become can instead touch that Unknowable Force, though this is best done when God/dess is seen as an abstract concept rather than very specifically defined (that's not to say the god can't be very defined but is more dependent on the beliefs and mindset of the individual). That is, if the God/dess-form is seen (or at least treated) as symbolic of forces we can't understand rather than a literal entity that makes sense to human minds then it IS a symbol rather than an empowered thought form. So if one say prays to "God" as more like "love" while not paying too much attention to all the myths & stories then I think it goes beyond the tulpa/thought form and goes directly to the divine (though it's not THE truth, it's just a symbol that works similar to Siberian shamanism and magick). IOW, the symbols then become tools that shamanically tap that force and create an affect or response in this world, but it's not any entity like our minds can know but rather a "spiritual reflection" of reality that our minds grasp & use with Jungian archetypes like tools that shape the Above/Divine and so the Below/Mundane. (Here's my own personal example where I think my Granny managed to send forth divine aid with her love to me.)