[Jane Sherwood]

I think some things in the Old Testimate may have originally been stories from different cultures altered to fit the religion. I can't remember exact details, but I remember hearing about an ancient story (Mesopotamian I think? I know it pre-dates the Old Testimate but I'm not sure what culture it was from) in my Exploring the Arts class that was almost exactly the same as Noah's ark.

Maybe not the most helpful or informative tidbit, but I'm just remembering it off the top of my head from September.

[Despondent]

I like the part where God makes the earth, plants, animals and man- then takes the weekend off. So man can go paint in caves, learn how the seasons work, figure out some tools and that kinda stuff. Then, after a sloppily recorded indeterminate period of time, God picks up and says, "round two." That's my interpretation anyway.

[J m HofMarN]

Jane- You're thinking of Gilgamesh.

[Laura]

I'm basically just against religion and do not believe in their forms of God, though I certainly recognize the possibility, however strong, that there could be a God like that.  Is there a word for that?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry, dude, but I think that's agnostic.

I don't think "agnostic" means "Religion might be right!" It just means "There might be a god." Any form of god, I think. Atheism suggests a more definitive "There is SO no god" stance.

[SimeSublime]

I'm with Laura on this one. The problem comes from people mistaking the word God for Jehova.

[Jane Sherwood]

Jane- You're thinking of Gilgamesh.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Gilgamesh! Yes, that's it!

[Slade]

Yeah, you're still agnostic, VWing. It's greek and means without knowledge. Basically, if you say "Well, we can't know for sure either way, so we shouldn't try to assert either", and you don't follow a religion, you're agnostic.

Gilgamesh - He had the coolest boss music in FF5... Who was he in pre-biblical stories? Not a bungling boss with more bark and theme song than bite, I presume.

[SimeSublime]

Gilgamesh was the King of Urak in Babylonia(now Iraq). He was the son of their God who lived in about 2700BC. He was incredibly strong. The only man who could match him was his best friend Enkidu.

I remember a book called To the Land of the Living. Can't remember who it's by, but it tells the story of Gilgamesh after he died and his experiences in the afterworld. He runs into a host of historic characters, from the ancient Wodan of Norse mythology, to the more recent HP Lovecraft who wrote the Cthulu mythos.

[kdogg]

Gilgamesh was the King of Urak in Babylonia(now Iraq).  He was the son of their God who lived in about 2700BC.  He was incredibly strong.  The only man who could match him was his best friend Enkidu.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Not to be confused with Gargamel, the nemesis of the Smurfs.

[barend]

^^^^

[Shawnathan]

I'm going to say plain as day that "There Is No God". The only reason people feel better and happier when choosing to worship "God" is because it makes them feel safer if anything bad happened to them...like DYING.

Plenty of prisoners over the years who went to the clink for the first time say that they are with God once in jail. And They are changed man...heh, they are up until they get out of jail. Then It's back to being a murder and rapists for them.

[Jordan]

Nice sweeping generalization there pal. And no, that's not why all or even most people believe in God.

[J m HofMarN]

Jordan- No, most people don't come out and say "I believe in god because I like the idea that I'll go to candy land when I die" However, consider this.

[Theoretical situation]
Human scientists and spiritual researchers, working together, have discovered that the soul or the life force or whatever it is to be called, dissipates and burns out at the point of death, meaning that there is NO after life. Do people continue to believe in god and worship and such?
[/Theoretical situation]

[Supes]

I think some things in the Old Testimate may have originally been stories from different cultures altered to fit the religion.  I can't remember exact details, but I remember hearing about an ancient story (Mesopotamian I think?  I know it pre-dates the Old Testimate but I'm not sure what culture it was from) in my Exploring the Arts class that was almost exactly the same as Noah's ark.

Maybe not the most helpful or informative tidbit, but I'm just remembering it off the top of my head from September.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's interesting that youm mention the Biblical flooding of the world and Noah's ark, because this is an extremely good example of a particular story having groundings in pretty much every culture and race of people from the time that we began to record history and before.

Interestingly enough I first heard about all these other accounts of great floods in my school religion class. I went to a Christian school and religion was taught as one of our compulsory subjects. We had a fantastic teacher who stated that there were 42 seperate cultures that had stories about a great flood that engulfed the world. I've since found that there are a hell of a lot more than 42.

There is a fabulous site by Mark Isaak Flood Stories from Around the World that outlines all the various stories he has been able to collect. My school teacher, was not advocating that Noah's story in the Bible was true, but that the sheer number of occurances of this story that appeared in so many far reaching cultures that had had no interaction with one another was enough to provide a very strong amount of evidence to suggest that some sort of large scale flooding did take place throughout the world.

It is not inconceivable that such a thing did happen. Many of the stories stem from ancient times and cultures that could not possibly have had any interactions. What does it mean for religion? Pretty much what Jane is identifying. Religion will take that which they are presented with and turn it to associate with its own doctrine, be it the Greek mythology whereby Zeus flooded the worldand Deucalion built a chest to float in, Christian mythology, whereby God, flooded the world and Noah built an ark to float in or the Aboriginal Dreamtime where the many number of spirits caused the floods and a variety of the kinsmen survived by climbing trees or floating on giant leaves.

Who is right though? Which religions god/spirits caused this flood and thus who is lying to us? Perhaps they are all telling the truth and the creator and god in all these religions is one and the same (a fairly poor effort if you ask me). If not perhaps one of them is right and telling the truth. How the hell are we realy going to know that though? Lastly, perhaps they are all bollocks and are trying to attribute a natural disaster to their own deity to help drum up business.

[Shawnathan]

Nice sweeping generalization there pal. And no, that's not why all or even most people believe in God.

Whoa, calm down. I didn't say that's the reason why everyone believes in God. All I said was how stable the relationship between God and a criminal after he "asks for forgivness".