The Gods, Yesterday And Today

[Vomit Comet]

All the gods that have ever been worshiped are real. However, they receive their power from how much humans are into them. For instance, if a nation (let's say, the Romans) goes around forcing other tribes to honor the Greco-Roman pantheon, butchers those that refuse (early Christians), builds big huge elaborate marble temples that cost a great deal in time, resources, and effort, and if there is a core following of mystics/fanatics that go all out in their devotion, not to mention a highly developed and large priestly/organizational structure with piles upon piles of canonized religious texts, those gods will be very strong and powerful whereas other gods (such as the Celtic gods) will become more marginal. Generally, the different pantheons had a policy towards one another that could best be summed up as "you don't fuck with us, we don't fuck with you", but the Romans changed all that. Also, because conquered territories like Gaul were made to refer to their gods by the names of the Roman gods, those gods were being absorbed by the Greco-Roman gods almost like some kind of ongoing spiritual vampire cannibalism.

 

Gods never die unless they kill each other in battle or commit suicide (though in some cases they can make a return), although they can "fade" if they get subsumed/grafted into another pantheon/system, and if all their followers are wiped out with violence they basically go into a dormant/comatose state unless they get rediscovered centuries later. If the people that had worshiped them all become atheists or Christians (such as with the Slavic gods), then that pantheon will sort of regress into a human-like state and walk the earth as such, though they will retain their immortality and maybe a few "parlor tricks" that they can perform if they have to. The matriarchal goddesses of Old Europe are basically toast because the Indo-Europeans did so much to squash them out, although some of them got absorbed into the goddesses and female creatures (nymphs, sprites, etc.) of the patriarchal Indo-European pantheons and myth systems.

 

Generally speaking, gods do decline in power, radiance, influence, and so on when their earthly cults go into decline. The Greco-Roman gods are currently masquerading as humans, splitting their time between Italian villas, isolated Greek islands, and Malibu. They don't have power to do much of anything anymore, so they just dawdle away their immortality in hollow hedonism, hanging out at the Playboy Mansion (Hugh was let in on their secret), going to Jackie Treehorn's garden parties, living like early 60s international playboys and femme fatales like in some James Bond movie, and so on and so forth. But they have next to nothing to do with world events anymore and are just kind of along for the ride like most the rest of us. They've saved up wealth so they can basically live as idle rich pretty much forever. They don't have much hope in neo-Hellenistic paganism because it just ain't ever gonna be like it was.

 

Also, pagan gods, even the surviving remnants of the goddesses of Old Europe and old Palestine and whatnot, are generally not too happy with most neo-pagans, because most neo-pagans seem to practice something resembling "pantheism" rather than old school "polytheism." They're also mostly not too sure if they appreciate the attention just yet. So the Greek gods, the Norse gods, etc., are like "hello? This isn't helping us much!?" They worry that if pantheistic neo-pagansim gets strong enough that it might cause pantheons to implode upon one another and then explode into one another, losing their agency as discrete sentient entities, especially if neo-pagans advance an overarching metaphysic that doesn't correspond with how the gods know the cosmos to actually work.

 

Their policy towards neo-paganism is that they're hoping that they'll grow strong enough again from the renewed attention that they'll be able to step in and intervene at just the right moment and before it's too late, telling the more potentially influential neo-pagans "hey! Your mom and your aunt aren't the same people, right? It's, like, totally the same thing with us, dudes!!" Until then they're carefully watching and waiting, biding their time.

 

However, whenever they encounter a neo-pagan group that practices strict old school polytheism, they are grateful and appreciative. For instance, the Norse gods appreciate the fundamentalist Asatru guys that take seriously their reality as discrete beings rather than as being metaphoric archetypes of the force or whatever, even though the more open-ended neo-pagans believe that that's too rigid.

 

YHWH got the upper hand historically. Originally he was just the god of some hick tribe in the Levant, but he put together a winning formula. 1) I'm jealous, okay? So no other gods before me. So all the other gods in the area (Ba'al, etc.) said "dude, you're like such an asshole!" 2) Fuck the rest of them. Let's butcher them, burn down all the temples, and take the whole land for ourselves. That was considered to be a real asshole move on his part. 3) Then with the whole "Jesus" thing, you have to go out and save the world, and stop people from worshiping "demons" (basically, all other gods) no matter how many centuries ago their ancestors began worshipping them. At first, Zeuss/Jupiter and the others were like "whatever, dude." But once it started gaining traction in the Empire, they were like "oh shit... not good." None of the pagan gods ever thought that this YHWH guy would manage to extend his brand of assholery beyond his little corner of the eastern Mediterranean.

 

However, YHWH's been in reactionary panic mode since the Enlightenment and it just keeps getting worse every century. (With the Reformation, and with the Catholic/Orthodox schism before that, he just had fun pitting the factions against one another like a kid with plastic green army men.) His absolute hegemony over the Western mind and his ability to spread far and wide beyond home base (Africa, China, etc.) had been one hell of a run. The other gods to this day debate angrily like petty bickering university academics about whose fault it was that YHWH managed to get the upper hand, the implications for the future, and so on. Also, just like Constantine ditched Rome for Constantinople, God has ditched Rome/Europe (he first went there because they were much swankier digs than Palestine) and set up shop in Texas because he really likes their style (he lives in a wealthy ex-urb of Houston); he even likes to go thundering around on a white stallion and a cowboy hat, running spiritual cattle across the prairie. (Kind of like Bush at his phony made-for-TV ranch in Crawford.) The USA is his new home base, and from there he goes forth on his expeditions into Latin America, Africa, southern and southeast Asia, China, and so on. A lot of the gods in those places are very annoyed with the USA for that reason.

 

As for YHWH setting up shop in the Bible Belt and refusing to spend much time in Europe or California or the northeastern US, it's kind of like how L. Ron Hubbard threw himself into Scientology in his progressively deranged twilight years, to the point of believing his own invented madness, because he'd become such a pariah everywhere outside of Scientology.

 

Also, when Allah (a distant cousin) got going, YHWH was like "whatever" at first. Allah was a marginalized pagan Arab god who decided to try and beat YWHW at his own game. Well, once the Islam thing started to get traction, YHWH was like "awwwwww shit!!!" and they're still duking it out to this day. Though secularism, atheism, etc. is more of a threat to YHWH than Islam these days, it certainly did get really hairy when the Arabs nearly took Constantinople, and when the Turks nearly took Vienna. And YHWH was pissed the hell off when Allah took Jerusalem. Allah was fond of continually rubbing it in YHWH's face ("hah hahhaa!!! Neener neener neener!!!!" ), all the way up until the British took it back and then handed it to the Jews. Needless to say, it was Allah's turn to be super-pissed. All the other gods tend to think that YHWH and Allah are real jerks who deserve each other. A few mischievous characters, such as Loki, secretly think "man, I wish I would've thought of that first!"

 

The Hindu gods are still on the up and up because India is rising as a power and even most educated modernized Indians go all out in systemically honoring the Hindu gods. They've never had their position threatened, so the Western and Indigenous American gods envy (and in some cases resent) them for their exceptional luck. Still, their reach is mostly limited to the Subcontinent and to the various diasporic communities. (This was why Alexander's men were afraid to go into India. "Dude, like, the gods are strange here." And the Hindu gods were like "what's the matter? Chicken?" to their Greco-Roman counterparts.) Nevertheless, the Hindu gods have a very uneasy and often hostile relationship with Allah (who's been in the neighborhood for a while), and when YHWH showed up they got really pissed. "Oh great, the last thing we need is both of you here!" Currently they've got the Hindu fundies worked up in a tizzy to try and discourage YHWH's encroachment (YHWH has been going after the Third World since his grip in most the First World has slipped so dramatically), even though fundyism usually isn't their style.

 

Since Buddha was a human, he basically just went where all other humans go (nobody really knows) when they die, although the various little demons and spirits and ancestors and whatnot that Buddhists venerate are sort of running around as minor ghosts, and the people that revere Buddha as a god may yet turn him into one, wherever he is (he may already be one, but nobody knows where he's hiding). China is a weird case because they're more metaphysical than religious, although the various little kitchen gods and venerated ancestors do dwell in the mix. They have very little power and influence, but there are billions of them so they're quite numerous. If it wasn't so fragmented and diffuse, they'd be a force to contend with. They don't benefit much from China's rise as a great power, and didn't benefit much when China was A-1 in the world prior to the ascendancy of the West.

 

The Shinto gods were riding high during WWII but when Japan lost their fortunes basically took a shit. The other gods are still rather pissed at them and were rooting for YHWH in that one, even though YHWH was only tangentially involved (with a great many Americans and a handful of Europeans bringing him into it with their prayers, fears, etc.). However, the gods think that YHWH fucked up big time by allowing the Holocaust to happen. YHWH tries to pass the buck to the German/Scandinavian pantheon, pointing out the romanticist heroic modernism and the blood and soil rhetoric of the Nazi propaganda machine (Hitler himself of course thought that was all a bunch of silliness, as far as neo-paganism and the Thule Society went) and they're like "nice try, but no." Some of the gods pin the blame on German Catholicism... at any rate, it's a debate that'll probably never be resolved, and YHWH likes to take all the credit for the Allied victory while pretending that the godless Soviets had nothing to do with it. (Sound familiar?)

 

This all begs the question: where did the gods come from? In time immemorial, the ancestors that were the most valued and vaunted by their tribes basically were launched into "eternal spirit-hood" where they became cognizant specters with some power to intervene in human affairs, and they could also take material form again in instances where they thought it necessary. The more elaborate and huge and serious the religious apparatus of a given people-group became, the more prominent these spirits became, and the more dim and foggy the recollections of their human origins became (sort of a convenient forgetting, due largely to the game changing so much with the rise of human civilizations).

 

What of atheism? It scares the shit out of YHWH and Allah, but so far Allah's luck has been much better in that regard. It caused YHWH to abandon Europe, and he feels like a tourist whenever he goes back there. He told the current pope to take back Europe for him, but he's not holding out much hope. However, there's an exception: he loves visiting Poland and the Baltic states. Now, African despots discourage education because educated people do not support the despots. (I met a Ghanian guy from OxFam and he said that's probably the #1 reason why Africa remains so low.) YHWH and Allah discreetly encourage this policy because they know that educated people are more likely to choose secularism. The other gods think that's kind of lame but they can kind of also understand.

 

The old pagan gods are actually rather fond of atheism/secularism in an ironic way. First, they had already lost it all for centuries and centuries before the Enlightenment kicked off (let alone Darwinism) as a result of the rise of the church, and secondly they've really enjoyed seeing the massive headache and decline in fortunes it's caused for YHWH and to a lesser extent Allah. They see it as them getting a taste of their own medicine.

 

So that's basically it.

[Vomit Comet]

Oh, I forgot. Regarding satan. Satan is YHWH's kid brother, and somehow only the Mormons halfway realized this. They had a big falling out, and Lucifer managed to set himself up as a foil to YHWH so that his continued existence would be tolerated (unlike that of the other gods in the region), even though YHWH absolutely can't stand him and pins the blame on him for all kinds of stuff that he really didn't do. Satan also likes to go and fuck with Allah's people, and Allah is like "what the fuck, dude?" to YHWH for letting his annoying kid brother get all up in Allah's business. YHWH gets a kick out of satan fucking with Allah, though, which is perhaps the one remaining reason he allows satan to continue doing his thing.

 

Satan is fond of the gods of ancient Sumeria (who are even more diminished than the Greco-Roman gods, so they ride on satan's coattails), probably because YHWH was originally a god among several others there (as was Satan) who pulled a fast one on the others in his pantheon when he got Abraham to go west. Satan tagged along and YHWH was like "go home you little bastard!" Satan's love for ancient Sumeria and his support of the remnants of the Sumerian pantheon annoys YHWH to no end because he doesn't like to be reminded of that. The other pagan gods all think it's pretty amusing to watch, though they know that satan is a scheming sleazebag and they don't want much to do with him. (Although Loki is one of his biggest fans.)

 

Satan gets his power not so much from the direct worship of satanists (because most don't really believe he exists, and they're quite small in number to begin with) but from Christians because they expend so much energy worrying about him and freaking out about him. Which is one reason he's such an asshole, because that's where his "food" comes from. He has mixed feelings about atheism: on the one hand it really freaks out YHWH and Allah, but on the other hand it could cause him to diminish as well. He could get power from his status as a cultural icon (imagine some psychobilly greaser band doing a song about the devil cruising for chicks in his hot rod) but it wouldn't be the same as all that potent angst, fear, and paranoia that Christians send his way.

[Vixentrox]

Very entertaining read that. You know, you could really expand on that so many directions and write a series of books on it.

[Vomit Comet]

Very entertaining read that. You know, you could really expand on that so many directions and write a series of books on it.

 

I might!

 

I was wondering if anyone could give additional input, additional directions, suggestions, insights and whatnot. (I'd give credit where credit is due!) I'm always big on collaboration.

[freeradikle]

One of the books that's been on my reading list for a while ("American Gods", Neil Gaiman) sounds similar to this. I haven't read it yet, but supposedly the plot is that Odin is trying to jump-start the old religion in order to resume sucking mental energy from his worshipers.

 

I think this is an excellent idea, and you should definitely keep fleshing out the detail for the backstory here. You could already tease a huge number of discreet storylines just from what you've written here. If you want a push, I would personally recommend the original conflict between Yahweh and the gods of old Mesopotamia, to set the stage for the rest.

 

P.S.

I can totally see the Greco-Roman gods as spoiled SoCal playboys living it up in the Santa Monica hills.

[Neon Genesis]

So, if the gods become more powerful the more people believe in them, then if more people believe in the god of deism, will it become a theistic god? What if more people start to believe in pantheism and believe everything is god? Will humans start to get supernatural powers, then?

[Vomit Comet]

So, if the gods become more powerful the more people believe in them, then if more people believe in the god of deism, will it become a theistic god?

 

There never was any god that went on to become the/a Deistic god in this fictional cosmology, so the Deists would continue sending their thoughts and non-prayers into the emptiness of space, just like most Taoists and Buddhists do unless they turn and focus on a discrete, sentient being that happens to exist. Some people pray to gods or beings that never existed (there's been some discrepancy or mix-up), so it has no effect. Maybe Buddha will make a surprise appearance at one point; he was one of the rare few mortals that had the same... level of personal essence that the gods did back in the primeval "time immemorial" when they were human beings.

 

In prehistory (or in primitive societies that exist still today, even though there are exceedingly few of them left), humans had more "spiritual power" or "mojo" due to the interaction of their above-the-other-beasts cognizant abilities and their full immersion into nature, producing conditions that are something like a Jean-Jacques Rousseau "State of Nature." (Nature has a lot of hidden energy yet undetectable by science). When the civilizations emerged, the further away people got from those primeval conditions, the more detached they were from nature's energy, and the fuzzier and more immaterial the gods' memories of having once been mortal becomes. (So they start making up bullshit and imparting it to whatever human civilizations a given pantheon comes to be associated with.

 

What if more people start to believe in pantheism and believe everything is god? Will humans start to get supernatural powers, then?

 

The gods are worried about pantheistic tendencies in neo-paganism because it may cause their historically separate pantheons/domains to bleed together and, worse yet, it may cause them to lose their individual agency and personalities, eventually becoming a non-sentient indistinguishable mush of "spirit." Actually, they have no idea what might happen and they don't want to find out. It's actually a big mystery that none of the gods knows the answer to, and they don't want to risk having it come to pass.

 

Humans would remain humans. Theoretically, when a human dies, if they were "radiant" enough they might go on to join the radiant spirit mush. But really, nobody has any idea what might happen. The only empirical cases the gods have to work with are Buddhism and Taoism (and a few other such religions), but the problem there is that they only have absence; there's nothing to observe. Maybe what the energy of Buddhists has produced exists at a level or in a realm that the gods cannot observe. Nobody knows. The gods generally just assume that the Buddhists are directing their energies at an empty void and that Buddha has gone where almost all other dead humans go to. Nobody knows the answer to that one, either. It's kind of like in the Lord of the Rings: the elves knew where they would go if they got killed, but humans had no idea what happened to them when they died... it was just halfway assumed that they would go past the stars and go beyond all knowledge.

 

That said, some dead humans do get chosen to live on in the hereafter, but it's a big pain in the ass for the gods and it takes a lot of energy to make the human "essences" transmigrate, so they won't do it for just anybody. The Norse gods, for example, take much interest in this because they've been building an army of ghost warriors for some time, and here and there they'll claim a woman that dies young and pretty, or maybe some crone or wizard that had especial essence... for the sake of variety. However, the ghost warriors are only pale shadows of their earthly selves and have only the fuzziest memories of their lives on earth. When they first reach Valhalla they're almost empty shells and have to be resocialized just as if they had regressed into small childhood (and in their state it can take as long as decades), but with the bodies of grown men.

 

However, a lot of the physical and instinctual skills these ghosts had as earthly warriors are retained, just like one of those Oliver Sacks neurological case studies where the guy has no memory of anything that happened after his accident and forgets absolutely everything that happened to him the previous day when he wakes up each morning, yet he can remember how to instantly do a puzzle that took him several hours to figure out the day before.

 

Unfortunately, the Norse gods don't want to waste energy on peasants and other common people, or on mediocre/average fighters, so those just end up where all the other humans end up. As for where they choose their warriors from now, they really miss the days when they had plenty of Germanic/Norse pre-Christian warriors to choose from, so now they mostly try to poach dead elite fighters that are atheists or not particularly religious, along with the occasional Wiccan/neo-Pagan, and these can be of any race/ethnicity from anywhere in the world. They do this less and less frequently, though, and much more selectively, because their power has diminished so much since pagan times and it takes much more energy to appropriate someone that doesn't believe in them or that doesn't fully believe in them.

 

YHWH does the most to raise dead humans from the dead, as it were, because he's so powerful with so many followers. However, there is no heaven (nor is there a hell). It's just a story that he invented in an effort to get people hooked. He'll select exceptionally fanatical/devoted believers (called "saints"), whereas everyone else, good or bad, just fades out. The ones he selects basically become "angels." Since those that die lose almost all concrete memory of what they were before, it almost never occurs to them that they were lied to or cheated, and YHWH basically molds them into his loyal servants/messengers/soldiers.

 

Allah does the same thing, and he does indeed actively encourage martyrdom, especially now that the Islamic world is so militarily disadvantaged compared to the West. Allah actually thinks that the peaceful Muslims are pussies and he generally lets them fade away when they die... that is, except for females that die young and hot, and preferably virginal, because Allah and his male followers are real horndogs. Allah gets first dibs on the hottest ones and his martyrs get the rest of them. (The goddesses of the pagan pantheons think that Allah is a disgusting pig.) He wishes all his followers were as bat-shit fanatical as the Al-Qaeda/Taliban guys because it would make him far more powerful than he is. He seems to be hungrier for expansionism than he's been since the Dark Ages, whereas YHWH is just trying to hold things together, while preying on disadvantaged potential converts among the illiterate/semi-literate/undereducated masses of the Third World and on primitive tribes whose gods are comparatively weak and small.

 

On a related note, when YHWH first started expanding Christendom beyond the land of the Hebrews and into Greco-Roman turf, the gods started getting really worried once they saw it was catching on. (The Jewish diaspora that existed since Alexandrian times never worried them much because the Jews weren't out to convert anybody.) They knew that eventually the Christians would get numerous and powerful enough to turn on the pagans and conquer them, which is exactly what happened. When this began to happen, Venus/Aphrodite offered herself to YHWH to basically be his wife/sex slave for all eternity, and all her handmaidens would come with the package; in return, he would allow for the permanent coexistence with Greco-Roman paganism and would forbid conversion efforts that went beyond gentle persuasion, while also putting less emphasis on the heaven/hell thing. YHWH was sorely tempted to the point of anguish, but then the cognitive dissonance made him flip out and things got even more nasty and violent in his renewed resolve. Allah, on the other hand, would have lied so that he could trick her and hold her permanent captive while he continued with Plan A.

 

Some of you may be wondering: so who was Jesus? Just some guy that YHWH singled out to help him implement Version 2.0 of his kingdom. In the words of Nietzsche, the Romans took "the bait" right off from the cross and the rest is history.

[Neon Genesis]

Just a nitpick here, but isn't Allah the same god as Yahweh, just a different name for god? And what about Mormons? Would god receive energy from them since Christians don't consider them to be "real" Christians?

[Vomit Comet]

Just a nitpick here, but isn't Allah the same god as Yahweh, just a different name for god?

 

When Allah decided to try and beat YHWH at his own game, that was just another several lines of bullshit that he added to the Koran to get people to fall for it. He did so because it would be more conducive to Jews and Christians being poached into Islam, and it was also his way of implying that he had gotten a "one up" over on YHWH. Like "hahahaha!!! They think I'm the boss of you now, sucka!!!"

 

Well, what Allah means to imply with that is that he's caused Muslims to believe that Jesus was the #2 prophet as opposed to the #1 and final prophet (which is of course Mohamed) that came and told everyone what the real deal really is. That's one of the things that Allah has done that pisses off YHWH the most. "Dude, why you gotta be riding on my jock like that? Why couldn't you just do your own new thing instead of trying to be an impostor like that!?" But the reason that Allah decided to start Islam was to one-up YHWH and hopefully take his place as A-1 in the world, and one thing that helps in his quest is to make people think he's the bigger, better, new and improved "YHWH 2.0" rather than a separate and formerly minor god that decided to steal YHWH's schtick.

 

Allah was a pissant by comparison back when he was simply the moon god in the pre-Islamic Arab pantheon, but he and Mohamed managed to round up some hardcore fanatical motherfuckers, and YHWH was all "whatever..." at first until the Arabs pulled that massive upset over Persia and then went from there. And then YHWH was like "fuuuuuuck...."

 

And what about Mormons? Would god receive energy from them since Christians don't consider them to be "real" Christians?

 

That's a mixed bag. YHWH is okay with most rank-and-file Mormons because they don't know their own weird doctrines very well, so they tend to direct naively sincere energy his way, although he does have to "filter" it just a bit. However, he's very wary of the higher-ups who've fucked up his Scriptures and basically just puts them on his "ignore" list, to use internet lingo. He does appreciate that they seem especially good at expansion/conversion these days compared to the mainstream church, because then the new Mormons tend to remain ignorant and that's more naively sincere energy that he can feed off of. Some days he thinks about showing up at Salt Lake City to set them all straight, but in the end he decides it's not worth the effort.

 

As for all the denominational division within the larger church, YHWH actually gets a kick out of it. All the other gods' opinion of him actually sunk even lower during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation because he seemed to view the Spanish Inquisition, the 30 Year War, and all that other stuff as entertainment, like a big epic movie. They also thought that he had lost his marbles because the church was tearing itself apart. But they didn't know what he knew: all that competition and ferocious internal opposition and the fanaticism of the newer sects and the reactionarism of the formerly complacent Catholic church created an additional level of energy that made him stronger than ever before. He didn't exactly intend for this turn of events but at the same time he saw it coming so he orchestrated things as much as he could so that he would benefit from it as much as possible.

 

(Regarding the Catholic/Orthodox split, he gave it the go-ahead because he knew that the Orthodox church would be better at encroaching into Russia and other areas, and he also appreciated the Orthodox guys for sticking so rigidly to the first century way of doing things.)

 

However, hot on the heels of the Reformation came the Enlightenment, and that's when he started to worry. It's been a failing uphill battle ever since, and if it wasn't for the faithful in America he would've been screwed. This is why today, YHWH has interest in the whole "American Century" where America retains its status as the A-1 World Hegemon that it acquired after World War II. Yes, he was partly behind the rise of the neo-cons. But now it's starting to slip, and we're entering a "post-American world", and he's starting to get really worried again.

 

As for which denomination YHWH favors the most, just like Allah wishes all Muslims could be bat-shit martyrdom candidates, YHWH wishes that all Christians could be foaming-at-the-mouth holy roller pentecostal/charismatic fanatics because he just gets the most sheer amount of raw energy off of them. (And so does satan, actually, because those are the believers that expend the most negative energy freaking out about him and his demons.) However, he wishes that they could be tempered by the old staid rarefied hiearchy of the Roman church so that the energy/strength would be more refined and articulated. He regrets that he can't have it both ways.

 

Where does satan get his demons from? They come from three sources: 1) small minor gods, ghosts, spirits, and other entities that joined satan's camp when he first advertised that he was setting up shop as YHWH's foil (he also gets the occasional straggler even today); 2) a handful of turncoat angels that left YHWH's camp for satan's camp, some of them because they're independent minded, but most of them because they got bored and wanted to party, or they thought they would get a better "career plan" under satan; 3) especially mischievous, crafty, or foul and rotten human beings that satan goes out of his way to appropriate, everyone from the most accomplished corporate scam artists to serial killers (these are just token novelties for satan) to gross raunchy slobs like Chris Farley that satan finds amusing. Satan tried to recruit Hitler, Stalin, and a few other big-time human monsters but YHWH said "fuck no" and intervened. Satan will appropriate satanists if he's not distracted or lazy that day, unless they're way too atheistic for his tastes; he examines them on a case-by-case basis, and the ones who find the idea of a real existing satan to be especially "silly" get on his nerves. He'll also avoid the ones that don't take the practice of satanism very seriously and just do it as a kind of occasional diversion or because it sounds cool to call one's self a "satanist."

 

This is fun!

[The Sage Nabooru]

Well a lot of people (kinda including me) believe that God/gods can't help you unless you cooperate with them by truly believing they have the power to do so - real faith, without wandering, which is very hard to work up.

 

Basically, God/gods don't give you everything you want automatically; there has to be a reciprocal relationship, just like any other. Otherwise there would be no point.

 

So that is something that has been kicked around before. Of course the Mayas and Aztecs believed that if they didn't sacrifice people to the gods in a bloody spectacle, they'd be so pissed that they'd destroy the world, but that's a bit different.....

[Neon Genesis]

So, if Yahweh considers fundies to be the true Christians, then what about liberal Christians? Do liberal Christians give more energy to Yahweh or to Satan and who favors them more? And what about people who aren't really non-believers but aren't really Christians either but are just angry at god?

[Vomit Comet]

So, if Yahweh considers fundies to be the true Christians, then what about liberal Christians? Do liberal Christians give more energy to Yahweh or to Satan and who favors them more?

 

Liberal Christians' don't give YHWH nearly as much juice because it's a bit more watered down and not as focused/concentrated as what he gets from the foaming-at-the-mouth fundies. Satan is also indifferent. The fundies think that liberal Christianity was something satan came up with to trick people, but he really didn't have that much to do with it. Satan just kind of ignores them most of the time, although he does like to fuck with them here and there. He's helping to exacerbate the split in the Anglican church; the angst and resentment involved there does give him some "empty calories", kind of like a Twinkie, and he's glad that the African Anglicans are veering towards fundamentalism.

 

 

And what about people who aren't really non-believers but aren't really Christians either but are just angry at god?

 

Most Americans are kind of nominal theists that call themselves "Christians", whereas in the Netherlands if you call yourself a "Christian" that means that you go to church and do at least some of what you're told. YHWH wishes that more of these American "census Christians" were serious so he's always trying to find ways for them to get won over to the Lard, but overall the sheer mass of Americans that nominally say they believe in him does provide much of his juice, and since he doesn't have to do much to maintain it, he doesn't sweat it too bad. I guess they're kind of like the bun, whereas the fundies are the hamburger patty, and the liberals and the sects like the Mormons or JWs are the condiments.

 

Those that are angry at YHWH kind of give satan an indirect kick... empty calories, like a Twinkie. He gets the same "empty calorie" effect from the satanist groups that don't fully believe in him.

[Heavenslaughing]

So, if Yahweh considers fundies to be the true Christians, then what about liberal Christians? Do liberal Christians give more energy to Yahweh or to Satan and who favors them more?

 

Liberal Christians' don't give YHWH nearly as much juice because it's a bit more watered down and not as focused/concentrated as what he gets from the foaming-at-the-mouth fundies. Satan is also indifferent. The fundies think that liberal Christianity was something satan came up with to trick people, but he really didn't have that much to do with it. Satan just kind of ignores them most of the time, although he does like to fuck with them here and there. He's helping to exacerbate the split in the Anglican church; the angst and resentment involved there does give him some "empty calories", kind of like a Twinkie, and he's glad that the African Anglicans are veering towards fundamentalism.

 

Methinks this fiction buys into the Fundy mindset if liberal Christians or deistic Christians count as watered-down Fundies. Why are we saying the prayers of these groups, or for that matter even differently-minded fundamentalists, go to the "same" god, just with a greater or lesser degree of fervency? Liberal Christians can have just as powerful or meaningful a belief, conceivably even more so; they simply worship a substantively different god.

 

In this universe, we wouldn't plausibly have a single YWHW gathering the most power from the right wing and just a little from the libs. We'd have a bunch of different YWHWs, including several different YWHWs as imagined by the Jews millennia ago, several YWHWs as worshiped by the Calvinists, a couple more as praised by theistic Unitarian Universalists, and probably a few who suffer from severe schizophrenia from the inherently contradictory claims of their faithful. Each one would claim to be the most real, and they would vie among each other for the faith of Christians. The Hindu gods all find the whole thing hilarious, since they're already plural and don't have to worry so much about this problem.

[Tabula Rasa]

Very interesting read Vomit! Now if you really want to make things interesting, you could theorize what would happen if humanity made contact with aliens, and different races took up on residency on earth. If some of them still believed in various gods of their own, would the gods of other planets

try to compete with the native gods of earth so to speak.

[Vomit Comet]

Methinks this fiction buys into the Fundy mindset if liberal Christians or deistic Christians count as watered-down Fundies.

 

Despite my falling out with fundyism and my now seeing it as the greatest scourge on the American nation, I had always thought before that liberal Christianity were lame namby-pamby wishy-washy cherry pickers, and I still think that now. Part of my purpose here would be to piss them off rather than cater to any hippy dippy pluralism they may be harboring. Does that make me an asshole? Probably. Do I care? Let me think about that... no.

 

With that said, I can see where you're coming from.

 

I deliberately buy into the Fundie mindset, now that I think of it. It's a double irony: ironic in that fundamentalism is right after all, but further ironic in that they have no fuckin' clue what's really going on. They're used as tools, and their received cosmology does not correspond with reality. They don't realize that YHWH does not have absolute power over the earth and is in fact competing with the other gods (who aren't in fact demons in disguise but who are in fact other gods in competition with YHWH) and with atheism/agnosticism for spatial and ideological/hegemonic turf.

 

This characterizes fundies of every stripe: Al Qaeda would be shocked all to hell to learn that 1) YHWH and Allah aren't the same dudes; 2) that they're fighting each other desperately; 3) and that satan is himself a god with the autonomy that that entails, rather than the big cheese of the fallen angels. If Al Qaeda learned that, many of them would go "fuck this man, this is bullshit, we've been getting hosed" and they'd throw down their turbans and RPGs and go off to Dubai to try cocaine and hookers. Others would stick around because Allah actually does promise them virgins and shit in Paradise, so it's still kinda true.

 

So as I said, it's the double irony I'm going for. Fundamentalists are right after all, but wrong at the same time, and not wrong in the way that you and I would think that they are. Talk about a double fuckaroo! This double irony would be lost if I went with the fragmentary pluralism you propose.

 

Why are we saying the prayers of these groups, or for that matter even differently-minded fundamentalists, go to the "same" god, just with a greater or lesser degree of fervency? Liberal Christians can have just as powerful or meaningful a belief, conceivably even more so; they simply worship a substantively different god.

 

Have you ever been to a Pentecostal holy roller service? Believe me, it's enough to scare the crap out of any reasonable person, and that includes most people who call themselves Christians. If we could bottle this shit and sell it at the liquor store, mainline/liberal Christianity would be Smirnoff Ice at best and O'Douls at worst, and Charismatic/Pentecostalism would be White Lightning. There's the little old Dutch lady silently praying to herself, and then there's the fat redneck howling like a baboon and thrashing around like an epileptic. A glass of chardonnay versus a double shot of White Lightning... which gets ya more fucked up? No contest.

 

As you can see, YHWH ain't one for subtlety. He doesn't give a shit how subtle and thoughtful anybody's carefully crafted doctrines might be. He wants it to do the trick.

 

In this universe, we wouldn't plausibly have a single YWHW gathering the most power from the right wing and just a little from the libs. We'd have a bunch of different YWHWs, including several different YWHWs as imagined by the Jews millennia ago, several YWHWs as worshiped by the Calvinists, a couple more as praised by theistic Unitarian Universalists, and probably a few who suffer from severe schizophrenia from the inherently contradictory claims of their faithful. Each one would claim to be the most real, and they would vie among each other for the faith of Christians.

 

"I am the same yesterday, today, and forever" YHWH himself said through Jebus. He is what he is. I'm not going to go down the postmodern rabbit hole here.

 

That said, he doesn't care what flavor the fundamentalism comes in, whether it's Opus Dei Catholicism, tight-ass Calvinism, or bat-shit Pentecostalism, as long as they don't stray too far from YHWH's relatively loose but straightforward criteria for orthodoxy that he put into place himself so that his identity wouldn't get fragmented. He's worried that if fundamentalism declined too far and watered-down liberal Christianity or some weird unrecognizable postmodern descendant pretty much took over the whole scene, he would become something he's not against his own will.

 

As for the Jews, same kind of thing. He loves the Orthodox Jews and, unsubtle and greedy that he is, can't stand European secular/cultural Jewry. He'd much prefer one ragtag band of ultra-Orthodox anti-Palestinian terrorists over all the brilliant scientists and philosophers ever to come out of Vienna, Berlin, and Frankfurt. (He envies Allah in that regard; Allah's fundamentalists are so batshit crazy that they blow themselves up and take truckloads of infidels with them!) Arguably, this is why he was so slack on the job protecting his people from the Holocaust. Then again, he dropped the ball when it came to protecting the "shtetl Jews" as well, who I'm guessing were a bit less secular. Some theorize that it was because he was too busy trying to push the Vatican into an advantageous relationship with fascism, but he'll deny it up and down to anybody who asks.

 

Generally speaking, he prefers fundamentalist orthodoxy. Look at it this way. Orthodoxy is the target that he's set up for everyone to hit, and fervor is the size of your bullet. The Pentecostals consistently hit the bulls eye with a .50 caliber Barrett. KA*BOOOM together with "hey diddle diddle straight up the middle." The Puritans did pretty good, too. Your run-of-the-mill upper Midwestern Lutheran has a crappy 9mm and consistently hits the outer rings and often misses the target altogether. The Unitarians are mostly missing the target entirely and are shooting with a BB pistol.

 

The Catholic church enjoyed total hegemony over most of Europe for many centuries, and the Orthodox church enjoyed the same over much of the rest. YHWH actually instigated the Reformation and the 30 Year War because the Catholic church was getting too decadent and humanist for his tastes. Fanatical Protestants picked up the slack, and the fanatical Catholics behind the counter-Reformation picked it up even more. It wasn't until the mid-late 18th century that YHWH began to be threatened by watered-down alternative Christianity. These people either exasperate him slightly or piss him off greatly, depending on how much they fuck up his grand master plan. These people straying from his official party line are Johnny-Come-Latelys if we're talking about the past 2,000 years +++ of history.

 

Basically, YHWH cranked the dial a little too hard with the Reformation and with the CounterReformation. It backfired a bit, giving birth to the Enlightenment, Deism, and so on and so forth. He kicks himself to this day over having overplayed his hand, and now he's pretty much lost Europe as a result. That's why he relocated his HQ from Rome to Houston of all places. The Vatican is now just his vacation home for when he tires of the hillbillies and begins to long for the refinement of the Old World, and he goes and hangs out with Ratzo trying to figure out some way to win chunks of Europe back.

 

The Hindu gods all find the whole thing hilarious, since they're already plural and don't have to worry so much about this problem.

 

The following are YHWH's two greatest deep-seated fears:

 

1) atheism and agnosticism will become so prevalent that he dwindles into nothingness, just like so many mostly forgotten pagan gods that went before him.

 

2) fundamentalism goes into decline and he loses control of his precious identity and becomes someone else. Think of it as slowly and agonizingly losing yourself to the fog of a dementia that is basically a combination of Alzheimer's and Schizophrenia working together in tandem, and then at the other end of the rabbit hole you turn into someone else and have only what historical accounts say that you used to be. And on top of that, the new you thinks that the old you was a real asshole.

 

YHWH, if forced to choose, would actually prefer the first fate. He'd be just as diminished as most of the pagan gods, but he would at least have his identity intact.

 

So basically, something similar what you've described could happen in the future, but it hasn't happened yet, and he's trying like hell to prevent it from happening.

[Vomit Comet]

Very interesting read Vomit! Now if you really want to make things interesting, you could theorize what would happen if humanity made contact with aliens, and different races took up on residency on earth. If some of them still believed in various gods of their own, would the gods of other planets

try to compete with the native gods of earth so to speak.

 

Ah, that has actually occured to me.

 

Question is: would the aliens be peace-and-love all-are-one hippy dippy pantheists? Would they be fundamentalist assholes? Or would they be pretty much atheists/agnostics or something close to it? Also, would they destroy earthly religions, leave them alone, modify them, or introduce their religion(s)? Furthermore, might the aliens have no preexisting concept of religion whatsoever, and then when they come here they observe this "religion" phenomena peculiar (as far as they know) to homo sapiens on Earth and go "dude, wtf?" or "like, whoa..."

[Neon Genesis]

What would the gods do about something like Raelism? Would the aliens the Raelians worship become gods if they believe in them enough or do they have about the same effect as an atheist?

[Vomit Comet]

What would the gods do about something like Raelism? Would the aliens the Raelians worship become gods if they believe in them enough or do they have about the same effect as an atheist?

 

Basically, the gods were powerful humans back in prehistory or time immemorial who transcended the divide upon their death, becoming spirits. Some of these people remained ghosts or spirits whereas others slowly but surely ascended to godhood as the people remembered and honored them and sacrificed for them. Then some of these cultures became the great ancient civilizations, which was the biggest shot in the arm to the gods of those cultures.

 

Raelianism was founded by one particular guy in contemporary times. Unless the alien Pan really did show up, they're basically sending their vibes into empty space. That said, some free agent spirits might come around and play some tricks to try and make the Raelians think that they're the aliens the Raelians are worshipping, but I don't know that that's happened as of yet. What will likely happen is that when the lead Raelian guy croaks (though they'll put him in the freezer, I guess?) he'll be a powerful spirit that has the potential to attain godhood if his cult grows in power and size.

[Neon Genesis]

What effect on the gods do those people who believe all religion leads to God have on the gods? I think they're called omnists or something like that, aren't they? You know, like those people who don't believe in one true way but that all religions are just different ways of worshiping God. Would all the gods receive like a small boost from them?

[Vomit Comet]

What effect on the gods do those people who believe all religion leads to God have on the gods?

I think they're called omnists or something like that, aren't they? You know, like those people who don't believe in one true way but that all religions are just

different ways of worshiping God. Would all the gods receive like a small boost from them?

 

I think the gods regard them as a negligible threat, as they are quite few in number thus far. If they became numerous it would spell trouble for them, because it would cause the gods to become "consolidated" as it were, into one gigantic "Omni-God with, like, several thousand multiple personalities going at once or something like that, or even worse, an indeterminant blob of divine essence. I don't think they much like that idea.

[Vomit Comet]

Oh, and regarding the possibility of fundamentalism/orthodoxy declining as liberal Christianity or some weird postmodern post-Christian variant takes over. YHWH would have three choices: 1) stick around and slowly become something that he isn't (or rather, something other than what he is right now); 2) say "fuck this" and abdicate his position, and go live somewhere in hermetic seclusion (maybe one of the Greek Isles) while hoping that someday he can see fundamentalism/orthodoxy make a comeback (and if it did, he would violently disown all other versions of Christianity); 3) ditch Christianity altogether and try to start an all new fundamentalist religion of some kind. Fortunately for him, the possibility of having to make such a choice thus far seems remote.

 

Some of the pagan gods are in a similar bind: they worry about the relativistic, pantheistic tendencies of many strains of neo-paganism so they shy away from it for worry of what it might do to them. Sometimes they dip their toe in so as to draw energy from these neo-pagans, but it's usually done hesitantly and nervously. In many cases they've officially or semi-officially abdicated their positions while biding their time and hoping that strict old school polytheism gets going again. They see their contemporary position as being rather precarious and they're really not sure what to do about it.

 

In the old days of polytheism, pagans acknowledged other pantheons. It was more a territoriality thing. For example, Alexander the Great's men were scared shitless of going into India because the gods there were "strange." While the Hebrews were by and large a local problem to the Levant up until the advent Christianity -- and aside from the people they genocidally killed off to take the land, which also caused the death of many gods and goddesses, they mostly kept it to themselves and just wanted to be left alone -- the Romans were the first to fuck up this dynamic when they conquered other nations and had the pantheons of conquered peoples absorbed into the Greco-Roman pantheon. (e.g., Julius Caeser referring to Celtic gods like Cirninoss by the names "Mars" or "Mercury".) The gods of the other pantheons of Europe, North Africa, Arabia, etc., were like "WTF!?" but fortunately enough people carried on the proper distinctions and whatnot in secret, and the Romans weren't that bad about it, they just demanded that their pantheon be honored or incorporated. Still, the other gods thought that the Greco-Roman gods were the biggest assholes all the way up until YHWH started taking over. Then Allah paved over the pagan pantheons that remained in what is now the Islamic World.

 

So... this begs the question, what of pantheism? Some form of this seems to exist in India, though my understanding of Hinduism is admittedly quite dim. Paradoxically, to the Western mind at least, the Hindu gods exist in a relativistic unitary state while at the same time managing to maintain their own discrete identities/agencies, though not to the same hard-and-fast degree as the Western pagan gods. It's enough to make a philosophy undergrad's brain explode, but they somehow make it work and strike a nice balance to everyone's taste. The Western pagan gods aren't too keen on the idea, though (for starters, they want to go back to how it was in the old days; secondly, they really don't know if they could pull it off if they tried, and are fearful of unintended consequences should they go that route), and the Hindu gods find it amusing.

[Neon Genesis]

Basically, the gods were powerful humans back in prehistory or time immemorial who transcended the divide upon their death, becoming spirits. Some of these people remained ghosts or spirits whereas others slowly but surely ascended to godhood as the people remembered and honored them and sacrificed for them. Then some of these cultures became the great ancient civilizations, which was the biggest shot in the arm to the gods of those cultures.

So, what if Catholicism became the dominating form of Christianity? Would the pope and all the blessed saints become gods and the Virgin Mary become a goddess? Since Catholicism used to be more dominating, did the pope used to be a god before Catholicism declined? Can gods become humans again if their religion declines? And if the "true" Christians are the fundiest ones, then since the Westboro Baptists are considered to be the fundiest to the point that even most mainstream biblical literalists deny that they're true Christians, does God actually get the most energy from the Phelps? Like so God gets the most energy from the fundiest Christians, but even most Christians hate the Phelps, so the Phelps end up driving people away from Christianity even though they're the fundiest xtians. So in this case does God favor the "true" Christians or does God consider them a threat since the "truest" Christians are driving people away from Christianity?

[Vomit Comet]

So, what if Catholicism became the dominating form of Christianity?

 

It was! Well, it's unlikely now unless Southern and Eastern Europe is effectively rechristianized. But let's say Protestant fundieism declined in the USA and Catholicism spiked dramatically in Europe, Latin America, and parts of the USA. I guess YHWH would consider that a pretty good tradeoff (providing the Catholic faithful were orthodox and hardcore as a rule) because he'd get to move back to Rome and he'd start to believe that his 300+ year old dream of taking back Europe might have a chance at coming true.

 

Would the pope and all the blessed saints become gods and the Virgin Mary become a goddess?

 

Unless they fucked up royally and ended up doing more harm than good to YHWH's plan, the Popes get to hang out in heaven, unlike most Christians unless they're totally hardcore and devout. Most Christians don't make it into heaven because it takes the expenditure of a fair amount of energy to make a human become enough of a post-mortem "entity" capable of being cognizent that they're in heaven and that YHWH's the boss. (Most such souls end up being childlike and emptyheaded if they get to make the transmigration to the other side, though they can learn and eventually develop normal human intellects.) So he won't do it for just anybody.

 

The saints are as well transmigrated spirits. The more people pray to them on earth, the more "divine" these saints become but there are potent limits to how big they can get, because YHWH doesn't like even a hint of competition. They can become mostly powerless demigods at best, capable of a few parlor tricks here and there that have to pass muster with YHWH's bureaucratic control apparatus.

 

Mary, like Jesus, is at or near the top of the "once were human" hierarchy up in heaven. Mary is kind of like YHWH's kept woman, his "consort" if you will, but he's just too uptight to fuck her. (Though secretly he'd like to; she's almost as tempting as Venus was.) Most of the time her function is to give him emotional and moral support and sit next to him looking pretty. Occasionally he'll dispatch her to earth so she can appear on a grilled cheese sandwich or something and get the faithful all riled up. Jesus, who is Mary's son and therefore was a demigod on earth like Hercules (which was why he was able to perform all those tricks), just kind of hangs out and passively absorbs the love and devotion that Christians send his way while relaxing in heaven, though most of that gets intercepted by YHWH whereas Jesus gets the leftovers. Jesus sometimes feels like he got a raw deal, unlike Allah's martyrs who get to live it up if they make it to Paradise. But it beats the oblivion of death, and he has more status than any other former human that made it to heaven, so he can't complain.

 

Since Catholicism used to be more dominating, did the pope used to be a god before Catholicism declined?

 

The Pope was simply YHWH's favorite currently living human. As I mentioned above, most popes get to go to heaven unless they fuck up real bad.

 

Can gods become humans again if their religion declines?

 

Like the Greco-Roman gods chilling in Malibu, they can become "human-like" but they don't lose their immortality. They still retain divine power to some degree but they kind of sit on it and let it accumulate, and will generally only use it in emergency situations or unless some development occurs that they want to address. For example, if a group of hardcore polytheistic Hellenistic pagans started up, one of them might go pay that group a visit to encourage them and to bestow them with a bit of power, charisma, etc. Sometimes they'll interact with the more pantheistic neo-pagans in particular instances where it might help them.

 

If a people group is totally wiped out through genocide or if they go extinct on their own or get totally and completely absorbed into another people group, their gods can die with them. Well, it's more like a perpetual slumber. If nobody's ever going to remember those dead gods, they'll never wake up. If someone remembers them centuries later, whether neo-pagans send devotion their way somehow or if archeologists discover their artifacts, they'll wake up but kind of be stuck in a groggy limbo where they're somewhat cognizant of what's going on around them but can't do much. It's possible in principle that these gods could arise if enough devotion and energy was sent their way, but it hasn't really happened so much in recent memory.

 

Gods can also kill other gods. It doesn't happen often, and it's almost never a "complete" death... more like putting the god into a coma. It is possible for a god to completely and utterly destroy another god, but instances are quite rare, and there have been cases where through considerable effort they were ressurected. Some think that if a god gets killed completely like that they pass onto some unknown realm and go on existing there, but nobody really knows.

 

Also, gods can fuck each other and produce offspring -- sort of pure god children that were not humans first -- though it takes considerable effort and energy to do this and as far as anyone knows it hasn't happened in a very long time. Gods can also fuck humans and impregnate them, or impregnate them by other means (YHWH basically jerked off into a cup and had an angel artificially inseminate Mary), though this takes considerable effort... it's like bending the laws of biology so that a tiger could impregnate a bear and produce fertile offspring. Jesus, Hercules, and others, are examples.

 

And if the "true" Christians are the fundiest ones, then since the Westboro Baptists are considered to be the fundiest to the point that even most mainstream biblical literalists deny that they're true Christians, does God actually get the most energy from the Phelps? Like so God gets the most energy from the fundiest Christians, but even most Christians hate the Phelps, so the Phelps end up driving people away from Christianity even though they're the fundiest xtians. So in this case does God favor the "true" Christians or does God consider them a threat since the "truest" Christians are driving people away from Christianity?

 

Well, it's not that the fundiest Christians are the "true" Christians, it's that their energy is more intense and pure. YHWH doesn't get nearly as much of a kick out of what mainline/liberal Christians send his way and he has to expend some amount of energy to "filter" what they send him so as not to compromise his person. So he just gets a trickle out of them for the most part (though it does vary considerably) and will in some instances block certain congregations or individuals because the effort it would take to filter what they send him would make it uneconomical, or what they're sending him is too far off the mark. Whereas the foaming-at-the-mouth fundies give him a nice heavy stream, as opposed to a trickle, and he just lets it run unfiltered.

 

Nevertheless, every once in a while some kooky idea makes it into the mix and he has to abort it and block it out (like virus protection on your computer) before it does too much damage. It takes a good bit of energy to completely block out something sent his way, so he only does it when he has to, when it would be uneconomical to not do so. The more you block the less powerful you become, so you have to keep enough of the good shit coming so that you'll still come out ahead.

 

If competing sects hate one another, that can actually help him. When the Protestants were fighting it out with the Catholics during the 16th and 17th centuries, that's when he was getting the most energy because both sides were fanatical and their violent, insatiable hatred of one another was like fuel to the fire of fanatical devotion. However, as you can imagine, the Phelps fighting it out with other fundies is small potatoes compared to that. As for how he views the Phelps, on the one hand he appreciates how single-mindedly fanatical they are, but on the other hand they do more harm than good. Well, in some ways. He kind of just ignores them because he figures that the vast majority of people who get turned off to Christianity by them are not likely candidates for conversion anyways, and those Christians who devote much energy to opposing the Phelps have their devotional energy enhanced by that effort. So he sees the Phelps as useful in some indirect second-order kind of way. I think that sometimes they kind of amuse him, in fact.

[PiracyOfTheHead]

VC, I read like the first paragraph.....CHECK THIS OUT....I found it like 3 days ago......

 

 

THat said, I will read the rest, see how similiar your theory and this one is....I love it.

[PiracyOfTheHead]

Very entertaining read that. You know, you could really expand on that so many directions and write a series of books on it.

 

I might!

 

I was wondering if anyone could give additional input, additional directions, suggestions, insights and whatnot. (I'd give credit where credit is due!) I'm always big on collaboration.

 

Seriously, if you have read through my Yahu/Satan thread AND you watch that vid series I just posted you, I think you could put the system together fairly well, you have the imaginative talent and the intellectual capacity to do so, I am impressed.

 

Way to go VC.

 

PS If you have free time and want to get an awesome depiction of the afterlife that may help you further this 'theory', go to sacred-texts and find A Wanderer In The Spirit Realms, I think its in the ESOTERIC section, plus its an awesome friggin read.

 

It contains nuggets that support both yours and my ideas concerning all this...its about a dood who died in his 'sins' but when he died it wasnt like what the Xtians had taught him, he has to work his way through being a corpse into gaining 'energy', and so on...his true love becomes a medium in order to assist him from being bound to his grave and to finally becoming a guide to others that depart and are lost....it gives rise to the idea that because Xtians put so much thought power into hell, that they actually have created a hell but only Xtians go there from what I remember.

 

I think some forms of Wicca teach that idea of the Xtian hell as well.