Leaning with Leolaia on this one. Any definition we give to God, is not God, but rather a creation of the mind. We are good at worshipping our own creations; not surprising as they are comfortably familiar.
j
God or Goddess, does the supreme have a gender?
by Sirius Dogma 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Sirius Dogma
I am surprised most are saying non-gender.
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Hyghlandyr
Setting aside the preconceptional bullshit about men being intellectual and women being emotive, the fact is that all life proceeds from the female. Not a single life form reproduces with only the male. Yet there are life forms that reproduce with only the female. Since all life comes from the female, then clearly the ultimate divine would have to be feminine.
That having been said, I dont believe in any of it, though I worship it in its non-existing existence. ..Consider...In order for something to be, something must always have been. Call it energy..a deity...whatever you choose. There have been societies that did not have a creative deity, or myth, the Irish among them. (this despite claims that this or that god or goddess was the irish creator of the world...including the various sun gods...again I will state there was no creation myth among the Irish)
Since something was always, there is no creation. There is only existence. Unless you consider the individual or the group as having been created..Ok then the stars were created by the big bang? Or you were created by your mother...
Which leads to a proper definition of god or goddess, as I use it. Anything that is deified is a deity. The sun, is a goddess in my pantheon (a god in most folks pantheons). We can personify something, this however does not mean that it has personality in the sense that we think of personality. Such traits make the image of the deified thing more vivid.
It is limiting to think of deity only in the confines of that which creates out of nothing, all things. The divine, can be figurative, and imaginative. It does not have to be, and is oft not, literal. I am a god, because I have deified myself. And you....the divine thus is for me, male, and female, and intersexed and genderless. All at once and the same time.
(corrected a typo)
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Carmel
Can the picture conceive of the painter? Even the concept of "unknowable essense" calls upon human ideation. We are incapable of conceiving the deity.
carmel
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patio34
It can make a difference on the worshipper whether the god is viewed as male or female.
According to Joseph Campbell, the worshippers of deities that included females were more settled and tended to be a bit more peaceful.
The worshippers of males only tended to be more warlike ("Jehovah, the manly God of War!"). It's funny how awful that phrase sounds now that I'm not a worshipper.
It also seems noteworthy that it is males who seem to more often view the deity as a male. I can see how that served them well for millenia to dominate females.
Pat
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talesin
What Hyghlandyr said
(thanks, BTW, for your words .. it's what I feel is true, but have been unable to express clearly to others in RL)
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SixofNine
What's that old saying, "the God that can easily be sexed is not a parrot, conures, amazon, african grey, cockatoo,
macaw, lovebird, lorie, cockatiel, parakeet, parrotlet, pionus, eclectus, senegal, or meyers"? -
Insomniac
I can't logically think of a supreme creator as being limited by something so trivial as gender. However, my weak, human mind wants to call God something, so I think of She who gave birth to the universe, as feminine.
By the way, if you ever want to really freak out a bunch of military guys in a bar, sing the song "One of Us" by Alanis Morrisette at karaoke night, substituting "She" for all the "Hes". This is fun, if you can handle all the dirty looks you'll get from the boys.
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Leolaia
Since something was always, there is no creation. There is only existence.
This was even the case in Near East (polytheistic) religions, where creation is not ex nihilo as it is commonly imagined today but a rearranging of matter. This is also the view in Genesis, understanding Genesis 1:2 as the initial state before creation.
Consider...In order for something to be, something must always have been. Call it energy..a deity...whatever you choose.
But that "something" need not be in our own universe. In quantum theory, our universe (or multiverse) may have emerged as a quantum singularity like a bubble within another universe. Maybe in God's quantum mechanics laboratory.
Anything that is deified is a deity.
So deity is something not inherent but ascribed. A view that might well be accurate.
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Country Girl
I'm sure that through the ages our human need for a belief in something more powerful, and our curiosity about our origins and our need to be here, has inspired many cultures to make up theories, using commonly known human traits as ways to tell a story, maintain order, make sense out of chaos. That's entirely understandable. I just can't hardly wait to find out what it is!
CG