Question about y'alls theologies!
Does the existence of gods predate or postdate humans as we currently exist as a species?
(atheists need not reply)
@starkatt If I had to say anything, personally, I feel that there were external forces and powers that could be considered gods that predated humans, but that the creative will and narrative energy that humans radiate and shape just by the fact of their existence but refined, defined and shaped those forces and powers into the higher order beings that are currently recognized.
@starkatt I dunno. I've seen something eternal, but it didn't give me its name. I'm not sure if you'd call it a god or not. Probably it's what gods come from, same as everyone else.
@starkatt Do concepts pre-exist the beings that concieve of them?
(Disclaimer: I'm not saying gods are entirely mental constructs, dangit Coyote /stop glaring at me/)
@starkatt @indi Well, as a parallel question, does math exist? Is math discovered or is it decided? Did negative numbers exist before we described them? Square roots? Imaginary numbers? Octonions?
At what point does a concept cease to be a creation or a conceit and become a property of the world awaiting discovery? Depends on your question and your perspective.
@indi @starkatt But... does it?
It really comes down to "what math is." If I've already shared the IdeaChannel "Math May Not Exist" video, I won't do it again, but there's currently an argument in the philosophy departments of some universities as to whether math is a property of the universe or an "unusually effective symbolic language for describing physics." There is an argument to be made we have, at least at some level, "made math up."
@orrery Yes that's what I was trying to say too. :)
@indi Okay, right, I did misread your statement. Vehement agreement! Apologies!
Theology, Craft Sequence
@starkatt This whole thing less me down an awesome train of thought that ended up with me pondering the epic colonialism of the Craftworker mindset. I can derive arithmetic from first principles too, that doesn't mean it's invalid.
Theology, Craft Sequence
I was trying and failing to source a specific quote from Craft Sequence about creation myths, and how they can be retroactively true, earlier in this thread. Something like "as soon as we discovered gods, they had always existed." But maybe that was from Gunnerkrigg Court.
Closest I found was from Fulm Fathom Five (paraphrased): "I suspect that if we could go back in time to the beginning, we'd find all of [the creation myths] happening simultaneously."
@starkatt I'll put my stake in the ground as postdate, with the proviso that inventing a belief that a god predates you and acting on that belief is functionally equivalent to the god predating you in that frame. ^v^
@orrery huh, you're the second person to say something along those lines :)
@starkatt As with many questions of this nature, the answer depends on how one defines the concept of gods, and how one believes gods are created.
In my own view, I believe that there were gods before us and there are gods after us. Not all gods are truly immortal, after all.
@starkatt yes. I can’t prove the existence of gods but Neanderthal culture has stuff which looks like a sapient, non human group believed in *something*. For all I know there are dolphin, gorilla and elephant concepts of godhead they just can’t/don’t as easily articulate. From there we get into weird personal beliefs.
I'm very strongly in the "predates" category.