Adherents to the Abrahamic faiths -- just like adherents to almost any religious belief system -- see themselves as created in the image of the creator. It is the people of the particular society who are the direct progeny of the mysterious almighty. This is as true for western Christians as it is for those who live in the Amazon rainforest, the native tribes of the North America or the Aborigine of Australia.
Put another way, each of us (both individually and collectively) fashions a god or gods in the image of what is most familiar to us and what is most familiar to us is the society we live in. Our gods are based on our mode of lifestyle, technology, philosophic tradition and, even more importantly, on geopolitical influences.
For me, this is the main point driven home again and again in Robert Wright's bestselling book, The Evolution of God. The deities of religion change as society changes.
This is not to suggest that such changes are monolithic. Various schools of thought within each tradition duke it out, so to speak, to see which will rise to become the orthodox position. Perspectives that lose out in one generation may become ascendant in the next. It all depends on the many sociological variables that define any given society.
This is an important thing to keep in mind in relation to contemporary times. Our world is beset with fundamentalists of various religions who maintain that ONLY they adhere to the religious beliefs of their forefathers. What they fail to acknowledge and/or comprehend is that their forefathers' beliefs were not set in stone. Their beliefs -- just as they are now -- were ever evolving. There has never been a time when there were not competing schools of thought.
Put another way, each of us (both individually and collectively) fashions a god or gods in the image of what is most familiar to us and what is most familiar to us is the society we live in. Our gods are based on our mode of lifestyle, technology, philosophic tradition and, even more importantly, on geopolitical influences.
For me, this is the main point driven home again and again in Robert Wright's bestselling book, The Evolution of God. The deities of religion change as society changes.
This is not to suggest that such changes are monolithic. Various schools of thought within each tradition duke it out, so to speak, to see which will rise to become the orthodox position. Perspectives that lose out in one generation may become ascendant in the next. It all depends on the many sociological variables that define any given society.
This is an important thing to keep in mind in relation to contemporary times. Our world is beset with fundamentalists of various religions who maintain that ONLY they adhere to the religious beliefs of their forefathers. What they fail to acknowledge and/or comprehend is that their forefathers' beliefs were not set in stone. Their beliefs -- just as they are now -- were ever evolving. There has never been a time when there were not competing schools of thought.
how can one define that which is indefinable?
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