Welcome to Gaia! ::

*Sorry in advance if this is all over the place and insane sounding. I have a lot of thoughts in my head, and I am not very good at organizing them. Also, I wrote this whole thing down once, and then deleted it by accident. You can imagine my level of rage/sorrow. crying scream *

If I somehow offend anyone at all in anyway, shape or form, I apologize. I did not intend to. I am not saying anyone is wrong in what they believe. I even state this fact again later on. If you think something I said was offensive, tell me.

I am very interested in religions/belief systems in a historical sense. I like to study them and what not. Of course, this has raised many questions and made for many discrepancies between sources and such. I figured, why not bring them up to others, and see what kind of feed back I might get.

Firstly I would like to ask, what is your standpoint on the whole “right or wrong” part of religion/belief systems? What I mean by this is, some faiths are very vocal about this with a sort of “my way or the highway” view on things. Personally I think we are all right, and here is why. It’s really sort of something I conjured on my own (or at least I think I made this up. Perhaps someone else thought of it before me, and I do not know yet sweatdrop ). I believe in one entity that was responsible for everything. It got the ball rolling, and then it sat back and watched. I feel that it might have had a sort of vague “sketch” for how it thought or hoped things would go, and perhaps altered what things along the way as it saw things happen. I don’t really think that it anticipated or expected humans, but was pleasantly surprised when we all came about. I think it was rather amused and compassionate towards humans, and so was delighted when we began giving it names. I think it was also touched, and it still touched by our awe, respect, and love towards it. I also feel it is touched by how its existence can give us hope and strength, and so it sees fit to send us signs, or step in once in a while. I also feel it willingly shows itself to people on the basis of how that person wants to view it, or what touches/resonates/speaks to that person. For example: I believe in a universal Goddess that has many aspects and so goes by many different names and personalities though she is one person. This is what feels right in my heart, so this is the face/name I put with the one entity. My friend believes in Jesus Christ as her savior. It feels right in her heart, so God it the face/name she puts with this one entity. And there are some who view many entities as their Gods/Goddesses, and I feel this is because the one entity is rather human in that it has many different moods, and sides. The kind side and the vengeful side of this one entity may show itself to a person as two separate entities, therefore resulting in two different Gods/Goddesses. So now I want to know your thoughts and opinions on this, or for an answer to the question.

Now that I broke the ice a bit with that, here are the bits that pertain more to history and how I view religions/belief systems through archeology and historical evidence.

Second, does the time at which a religion/belief system first appeared in historical and archeological records matter to you? What I mean by this is, do you see it as valid if it came after other faiths, or is a fairly young religion? Admittedly, at one time this was the problem I had with Christian faiths/belief systems. It obviously came after many other religions/belief systems, and so many of it’s stories/symbols/etc were recycled or obviously came from other religions/belief systems. (Please note this is not my major issue with Christianity. The main reason I am not Christian is that it does not feel right in my heart. Also, ever since I was a child, being in churches, or in large groups of people that I know are Christian, is uncomfortable and makes me very uneasy. I have no idea why. question )

Lastly, I wanted to touch on some issues I had in my studies of religions. The main issue I encountered was with the book “The Once and Future Goddess: A Sweeping Visual Chronicle of the Sacred Female and Her Reemergence in the Cult” by Elinor Gadon. In this book it discussed Goddess/female centered religions/belief systems/societies as being among the first. (Please note that I am not sure if I believe that said religions/belief systems/societies were THE first. I believe they were among many of the first, but not THE VERY FIRST. There is a difference.) However, upon reading part of another book (it was a library book, returned it before finishing and never checked it out again stressed ) I find that Elinor Gadon’s book seems to have some inconsistencies. Let me just lay it out in pros and cons.

The Pros: This book argues that the aforementioned religions/belief systems in in above paragraph are among first by using widely recognized archeological evidence such as the famous Venus of Willendorf, and the Seated Goddess of Catal Huyuk. Also, they used scientific methods of dating and proving the age of the evidence they collected.

The Cons: This book includes sources from, and was written/composed during the feminist movement. This could mean that the book is biased, and must be taken with a grain of salt. Also, when this book was revised and updated, in the foreword it is stated that because of advances in the scientific field the original carbon dating was off, so the ages of at least some of the objects in the book could be older than originally thought. If this is the case, could more advances in the field of carbon dating possibly prove the objects are in fact another completely different age?

Also, in respect to “The Once and Future Goddess”, the aforementioned book I read part of, which was more scientific/purely historical, raised a point that I do agree with. In this book, it was argued that we may never actually know if societies in which women/Goddesses held sway over, or were equal to men/Gods. This is said because there is no direct link between the prevalence of Goddess/female figures and the status of women in a society. There are many different images and sculptures of Mary in Christian faiths, but does this mean that she is “top dog” or that women are considered better than men in a largely Christian society? Not at all.

Well, as jumbled as it is, I think I said everything I wanted to say. If I was not clear on something, I will try and clarify it. Hell, even tell me about grammatical/spelling/writing issues if you feel the need. I do aspire to be a writer, and would want to know about such things. If there is something you want to question me on, by all means go for it. If I spark the wrong kind of arguments, I am sorry.

Also, I apologize for writing a whole freaking novel. Once I start writing, I often cannot stop. xp

Answer my questions, pose your own, muse a bit, or whatever you like.

I totally agree with you on the mindset of the people involved in creating the religions. I wonder about their sincerity, but I also wonder about their intent towards others. Sometimes it seems people only create these new belief systems to twist the rules of old belief systems around into something they are not, in order to harm others or be predjudiced, as well as getting fame and following, as you mentioned. It's like they have a god complex, and create religions where they are the god.

Firstly I would like to ask, what is your standpoint on the whole “right or wrong” part of religion/belief systems?
Depends on the religion. When a certain belief/practice is a defining feature of a religion then there's some validity to such claims.

Second, does the time at which a religion/belief system first appeared in historical and archeological records matter to you? Nope.

Omg I hate when that happens. Drives me mad. When I'm writing something long I always copy it from time to time just in case.




Depends on the religion. Like Vi said, there are some religions that must be practised a certain way. Or like Catholicism which has a solid orthodoxy - believe what they do, or choose the highway.

On the other hand, if you mean more "believe my religion or else" I'm opposed to that.




This is... actually I'm not sure whether this is soft polytheism or more like monism. I get confused with all of those nowadays.

Why a goddess?



I understand the reasoning behind soft polytheism (all gods are one God). However, there are two things I've never been able to understand. The first is why a soft polytheist would worship the face they can see rather than seeking gnosis of the true deity itself and worshipping said deity. The second is how deities that are opposed for personal reasons can be the same entity. It's fine to say this part is that goddess and this part is that god, but what happens when the god rapes the goddess?



As a Neo-Pagan, I'd be in a rather sad position if I depended on the age of my religion for its validity! All religions were young once.



Christianity is pretty old, relatively. It did come after many other belief systems, but your belief system is your own and you came up with it independently, so your's is a lot younger than Christianity and likewise influenced by what came before.



But lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. What I mean is, it's nice that there are old statues and figures that we assume are goddesses. (I mean, why else would someone make them, right? Personally, my money's on prehistoric porn. YOU KNOW IT BABY.) Hang on, that actually rather prettily answers the question of why there's a lack of male statuettes. If it's porn, women (while they happily enjoy porn) are more inclined towards porn of words than porn of images, and would perhaps have told one another naughty stories instead of making little naked men.

ANYWAY. Point was. Perhaps there were gods in these religions who were considered as if not more important than the goddesses, but for whatever reason there were no figures made of them. Or the figures were destroyed, or were portrayed in other materials, etc etc.



Totally agree. It always gives me pause. Best thing is to read more recent books on the same subject or to read peer reviews of the text. You might find someone who's referenced her on google scholar and see what they said.



Indeed! Although, I don't think women need to have high status for goddesses to be important in a religion. Gaia is the first protogenoi (I can't be bothered looking up the proper term) in Greek religion, and there were some powerful Greek goddesses, but Greek women were pretty shat upon. I mean, often men favoured their boy lovers to their wives and little girls were left on rubbish heaps to die.

Fair enough

Fair enough.

If your saying that the myths are similar than I'll agree. Many myths are similar but they do have differences in there meaning when you examine them within their culture. The flood myth in Judaism has a different meaning to the Greeks, has a different meaning to the Canaanites,...

If you are saying that it was somehow stolen then I'm going to have to ask you to prove it. Also I think of a few Neo-Pagan religions that have recycled things form Christianity as well wink