If all the Gods in History were real, present, and alive today ...

I hoping this to be more of a 'fun' exercise and a little bit of an illustration.
Once upon a time, every dead religion now considered only mythologies had believers.
For whichever, or whatever reason, the religions died and became the stuff of stories, but, once upon a time their gods were 'REAL'. People feared, believed in and worshiped these gods, just as every god in every religion still followed today is.
What's to make those bygone religions any less worthy or important than any one still in practice?
Because those gods weren't actually 'real'?

Forget for a moment whatever faith you follow right now in reality.

Imagine now a world where all the gods of all of History were indeed quite very real, immortal, incarnate, and present here on Earth today, and every religious belief associated with each god, or Pantheon of gods was proven without a doubt to be a reality.

None of the gods are at war with each other over territory, souls, philosophy or anything.
The world is effectively at peace with no major human political disputes.
You can follow any god or pantheon of gods you want, but also be held to follow all the religious laws with both rewards and punishments traditional each mythology.

You can choose to be a free agent Atheist, barring yourself entry into any number of choices of chance at rewarding or punishing afterlife, or pick a god to follow for a chance at a ticket to whatever afterlife you might think you deserve, but also chancing the risks as well.

Will you bow to Zeus, Odin, The Feathered Serpent, The Abrahamic One God (in a few different flavors), Ra, The Great White Buffalo, Krishna, an oak tree, or what?

Why would you do so when there's so many other options visibly available?
What makes the god you choose to follow a 'better' choice than the others?

Personally, as fun as gods are, I'd be tempted to play mercenary, somewhat in the Roman or Greek tradition in paying favor to whichever and whatever might give me the greatest favor.
For instance, I could sacrifice a bull for a better chance at getting that extremely lucrative contract, more clients, and greater respect from my peers, or, I could flagellate myself on my knees and hold a fast for 30 days, or I could carve deep self inflicted injury into myself that will leave permanent testimonial scars in offering personal blood sacrifice, or any number of options depending the requirement of each god, and the potential power of the juice that god might offer as favor.

Keep in mind, as with any and all religions, not all prayers, offerings, sacrifices, or pleas will be answered or answered in the way you might want. Still, you've absolute guarantee that the god or gods you're praying to have heard your request.

What would you do?
Who would you follow?
Would you play duck duck goose, or pick one and stick with them?
Would you even pay them any matter at all?

Let's try to keep this fun and polite.

Crom versus Amaterasu, winner take ALL!

As Johnny Cage says....


That old geezer's the final challenge? They might as well give me the belt right now. They do have belts, right?



Video game coming soon........................





S&F

Does it have to be an Earth God?
If it doesnt Ill take the God of Tits and Wine from Westeros Pls

I'd go with the God of the Bible. He makes all the other Gods look like wienie.

This is like choosing one hobby or profession and dedicating your entire life to it regardless of waning interest. Boring! Way to encourage division.

reply to post by RealTruthSeeker


Sounds pretty shallow.

Originally posted by RealTruthSeeker
I'd go with the God of the Bible. He makes all the other Gods look like wienie.

I dunno about that. Some of those Aztec gods were pretty brutal.

reply to post by Druscilla


One of them regularly fed on the hearts of sacrifices, right?

I'd rather just go with "the force" and become my own type of god running around slaying all the other supposed gods.

But if I had to choose then I suppose my real god is somewhere between Loki and Ares.

Originally posted by Druscilla
Forget for a moment whatever faith you follow right now in reality.

I think this is where you're going to lose most believers. This just isn't possible for them unfortunately.

S&F for the topic though.

72 virgins? hello?

Just as a matter of curiosity, there used to be ways for mortals to join the gods. I would like to take this as an option as well.

I suppose I shall bow to Nature as I do now.

At least in worshiping nature, I can prove nature exists!



Blessings,
Cirque

reply to post by Druscilla


Hands down, the Sumerian pantheon. All of them.

Why?

Because they evolved into the Babylonian pantheon, which moved North becoming important elements of the pantheons of Ugaritic mythology, who in turn morphed into parts of the Hurrian pantheon, which became the Greek pantheon, that dissolved into bits and pieces of the Norse pantheon. A handful of Canaanite, Phoenician, Hittite, and Hurrian gods also became part of the Egyptian pantheon too, so I'd have a whole plethora of roads open to me then!

I could worship Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Shaushka, Qadesh, Aphrodite and Freyja all at once. Or, I could worship Enlil, Il, Ba'al, Adonis, Zeus, and Odin. Or, I could worship Enki and Ea, and A'a all at once. Or, or, or, or...

* head explodes *

But yeah, that's my choice.

Fun thread!

~ Wandering Scribe

Good question OP Its like if THEY were to take five steps into... and Go.. To them / there time and to here /this time may not be same. And so after 100,000,000 EA*RTH days they may have went 20 of their days... and so 60,000 EA*RTH days may only be a few days for them away from the. and so the reality of keeping GOOD time especially if using main time reference that moves. So to answer the OP 1 would continue to follow the LORD who has Watched over and Guided 1. The who seems to carry many names but still shines thru with the same GOOD energy and intents over times and space...

NAMASTE*******

reply to post by sonnny1


Hmmm well with that in mind I guess I would worship Raiden and get some cool lightning happening from my fingertips...

Originally posted by Druscilla
I hoping this to be more of a 'fun' exercise and a little bit of an illustration.
Once upon a time, every dead religion now considered only mythologies had believers.
For whichever, or whatever reason, the religions died and became the stuff of stories, but, once upon a time their gods were 'REAL'. People feared, believed in and worshiped these gods, just as every god in every religion still followed today is.
What's to make those bygone religions any less worthy or important than any one still in practice?
Because those gods weren't actually 'real'?

Forget for a moment whatever faith you follow right now in reality.

Imagine now a world where all the gods of all of History were indeed quite very real, immortal, incarnate, and present here on Earth today, and every religious belief associated with each god, or Pantheon of gods was proven without a doubt to be a reality.

None of the gods are at war with each other over territory, souls, philosophy or anything.
The world is effectively at peace with no major human political disputes.
You can follow any god or pantheon of gods you want, but also be held to follow all the religious laws with both rewards and punishments traditional each mythology.

You can choose to be a free agent Atheist, barring yourself entry into any number of choices of chance at rewarding or punishing afterlife, or pick a god to follow for a chance at a ticket to whatever afterlife you might think you deserve, but also chancing the risks as well.

Will you bow to Zeus, Odin, The Feathered Serpent, The Abrahamic One God (in a few different flavors), Ra, The Great White Buffalo, Krishna, an oak tree, or what?

Why would you do so when there's so many other options visibly available?
What makes the god you choose to follow a 'better' choice than the others?

Personally, as fun as gods are, I'd be tempted to play mercenary, somewhat in the Roman or Greek tradition in paying favor to whichever and whatever might give me the greatest favor.
For instance, I could sacrifice a bull for a better chance at getting that extremely lucrative contract, more clients, and greater respect from my peers, or, I could flagellate myself on my knees and hold a fast for 30 days, or I could carve deep self inflicted injury into myself that will leave permanent testimonial scars in offering personal blood sacrifice, or any number of options depending the requirement of each god, and the potential power of the juice that god might offer as favor.

Keep in mind, as with any and all religions, not all prayers, offerings, sacrifices, or pleas will be answered or answered in the way you might want. Still, you've absolute guarantee that the god or gods you're praying to have heard your request.

What would you do?
Who would you follow?
Would you play duck duck goose, or pick one and stick with them?
Would you even pay them any matter at all?

Let's try to keep this fun and polite.

I myself would not follow any of those "pie heads". For me there is only one thing to listen to and that is the Universe. It consists of all these things and so much more. I can never be absolute or guarantee if i follow something other than myself.

I haven't got an answer for the question but if the OP is interested in this sort of thing can I recommend 'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman. They might enjoy it.

reply to post by Druscilla


If all the historical (and modern versions) of gods were around now, in person so to speak, it would be pretty crowded wouldn't it!

The Hindus have about 30,000,000 gods i seem to recall (that's not a typo either), so they on their own have plenty. They believe we and they are all aspects of one ultimate reality, the sheer numbers of deities are meant to convey infinity or the infinite.

Then you have the pagan gods, the native American gods, the Norse pantheon yeah, the gods of yesterday and today would make for a pretty crowded Earth if they were to all appear together!

If nothing else it make you realise that all these religions considered themselves to be correct, right and the true and righteous religion...and many, many, many people have been tortured and slaughtered in their gods name...for absolutely nothing.

They are not all correct, that would be impossible, so neither was / is their religious conviction...or are the religious reasons for murdering people.

They can't all be correct IOW.

What a question! All the Gods ever worshipped? It doesn't bare thinking about as to how many of them there would be.

But, goinging with the flow I suspect by the time one had bowed to everyone one met, made worship and sacrifice to each and every alter, one would be exhausted and off to bed to start the round again tomorrow.

You would really have to hope that they didn't get jealous of each other - but the plus side is that as virtually every thing had a God in charge of it, so we should be leading a happy, content life, well fed and wined. Sun every day and moonlight at night. In fact the world should swing.

But lets face it, they would probably hate each other - as above, so below - and we'd all run for cover.