"Gods",and their communications with humans.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

Perhaps those of you familiar with different religions can give me some quick insight into a question that came up in a discussion with a Christian.  Is it common that other gods reportedly communicated with humans through only one mediator at a time?  Similar to the God of our bible speaking through Moses, Jesus, etc.  To your knowledge, has any God ever appeared to a whole group of people at once, and gave his message to the whole group so there wouldn't be any misunderstandings about what he wants of them?    Instead of giving different messages to different people at different times.  You can probably see where I hope to go with this.

[Geezer]

I doubt it, because that would require an actual miracle. It is kind of strange how God only communicates with one person and then only when they are alone. Hmm? 

[♦ Fuego ♦]

I've only heard of it when a religion was already established, such as the camp of prophets during the time of Elijah. 

 That religions start with individuals shows the power and deep flaw of having a charismatic leader and sheeple.

 

 

 

[Myrkhoos]

From the New Testament, the time Jesus was baptized and God supposedly talked with the crowd. In Mount Tabor, when the apostles also heard God the Father. Old Testament/ God as a cloud when the Israilites were in the desert. Pretty much it.

      Maybe in modern Pentecostal meetings where they all think they are experiencing God at once?

 

 

[disillusioned]

49 minutes ago, Myrkhoos said:

      Maybe in modern Pentecostal meetings where they all think they are experiencing God at once?

 

 

 

I've been in prayer meetings where a number of people have claimed to have gotten the same message from God. I can say with relative certainty that it wasn't staged. Usually vagueries, building on things that had previously been discussed, prayed about, etcetera. But people really do have these experiences. The fact that I was never able to personally have such an experience that I could actually attribute to God was significant for me in my path away.

[MOHO]

These are all very insightful responses but, correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't the original post asking about religions OTHER than the Abraham varietals wherein their "god" spoke to one person only?

 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

7 hours ago, Geezer said:

I doubt it, because that would require an actual miracle. It is kind of strange how God only communicates with one person and then only when they are alone. Hmm? 

 

That's one point I am hoping to make.  It occurred to me that this seems to conviently be the case with more than one religion. Sooo, in the interest of truth, how do you determine which one is valid?  Or maybe they are all myths fabricated by humans?

 

So, do all religions start with one individual?

Other suggestions along these lines?

[Myrkhoos]

8 hours ago, Weezer said:

 

That's one point I am hoping to make.  It occurred to me that this seems to conviently be the case with more than one religion. Sooo, in the interest of truth, how do you determine which one is valid?  Or maybe they are all myths fabricated by humans?

 

So, do all religions start with one individual?

Other suggestions along these lines?

Hmm, I don t know of there is an actual real person, but many tend to coagulate around some kind of founder figure. Jesus, Moses, Muhammad,  The original Buddha, Mahavira for Jains, etc. In modern times scientology and L Ron Hubbard. The thing is all of these founders built on pre existing stuff so it's hard to say they were completely original. 

         Many religions do have common group practices like zen buddhist zazen , islamic sufi zikr, christian common lithurgies/ vigils where they can experience similar things. But how one can differentiate this from the feeling of a crowd in a political rally, a football game or a concert? Common practices under common conditions underlied by common beliefs do tend to produce common experiences.

   Emotional contagion plus imitation/ lying about actually having those common xperiences is pretty common. 

    This is and was my probl about prayer. Prayer does produce xp especially in some people but how can you discern the God vs just a normal psychological function? Without hard proof I feel it is almost impossible. Because many religious practices are tehniques that produce altered states of consciousness in themselves. As in they are trance inductive. All one can say for certain is that these are intense psychological experiences. And in some cases elaborate cons.