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In Africa, one of the names for the supreme being of the Galla and other Oromo peoples is Waq "sky" , as in the phrases guraci waq "dark sky" and waka kulkullu "calm sky". Among some Ewe peoples, the universal father is called Dzingbe "sky" ; his wife is the earth. Northeast of the Ewe live the Akposo people, who call the supreme being Uvolovu "the high one," or "the regions above".

Among the Tsimshian south of the Tlingit, an irascible supreme being named Laxha also called Laxhage or Laha, "sky" deluges the earth. The connection of supreme beings with the sky is not exhausted by the direct translations of their names. More important, in accounts that describe them as dwelling in the sky, or as expressing themselves through celestial elements such as the stars and the rains, these associations are extended. Another large number of names refer to the antiquity of supreme beings, who often reveal, as part of their own nature, the meaning of what is primordial, most fundamental, a part of the nature of existence from its earliest beginnings.

Primordiality is thus part of a supreme being's nature. The Yahgan of Tierra del Fuego call their supreme being Watauineiwa "the primeval," or "the ancient one". The Botocudo of eastern Brazil believe in a supreme being who lives in heaven and is called Old Man or Father Whitehead.

During the great August sacrifices in Cuzco, Viracocha, the supreme being of the Inca, was praised as the one "who exists from the beginning of the world to its end. A large body of epithets refers to the omniscience and omnivoyance of supreme beings. Baiame, supreme being of the Kamilaroi, Wiradjuri, and Euahlayi of New South Wales , sees and hears everything, especially at night, with his many eyes and ears. Daramulun, according to the Yuin, can observe all human action from his position in heaven. In Assam, the Khasis of the Mon-Khmer nucleus of Indochinese peoples believe in a female supreme being and creator who dwells in heaven and who sees and hears all that happens on earth.

On Madagascar, the supreme being Andriamanitra sees all those things that lie hidden. The clarity of a supreme being's knowledge may be manifested in the light of the bright sky, which, by virtue of its own luminosity, sees and knows all existence that lies below. The Altai Tatars call upon their supreme being as the Ak Ajas "white light". The Khanty refer to Ajas Kan "the bright leader". Buriats speak of the dwelling of their celestial god as "a house ablaze with silver and gold. Other names refer to supreme beings as the source of all life and power.

The Warao of the Orinoco Delta refer to Kanobo "great father" as the author of life. Also in Venezuela, the Yaruro people believe in a great goddess who created the world. Everything sprang from her, and everything living returns to the western paradise where she now lives. All life comes from her, for she begets and contains everything that comes to be.

Her twin sons assist in creation. She rules the cycles of life, death, and rebirth for all creatures. The mother is omnipresent. Life is an intrauterine existence. The Tupinamba of the southern Brazilian coast conducted a search for the land of Tamoi, the supreme being whose name means "great father. In Australia, the supreme being's role as life-giver is recognized in the epithets extended to Baiame, who is addressed as Mahmanmu-rok "our father" among the Kamilaroi and as Boyjerh "father" among the Euahlayi.

Among the Yuin, Daramulun is spoken to as Papang "father". The Kurnai use Mungan-ngaua "our father" as the proper name of their supreme being. Specific references to supreme beings as creators occur in many cultures. Native American creator gods include Awonawilona, the Zuni supreme being whose solar associations are sublimated almost to the point of becoming a speculative philosophical principle of life.

He creates the clouds and the waters of the world from the breath of his own heart. Tirawa Atius of the Pawnee lives above and beyond the highest heaven. The wind is his breath. Tcuwut Makai, supreme being of the Pima, dwells in the west, governing rain and winds. His first creation was crushed when he pulled the sky too close to the earth. In his second attempt, he fixed the stars and the Milky Way in the sky. Ahone is a sky-dwelling creator of sun, moon, and stars. The existence of belief in him is documented among peoples of the Virginia Colony in He had no cult to speak of; instead, sacrifices were made to Oke, a god who punished people with hurricane winds to make their crops suffer.

In Oceania, one may call attention to Tangaroa Tangaloa, Ta'aroa, and many other variants , a widely known Polynesian divinity of the sea; Agunua, the supreme spirit of San Cristobal in the Solomon Islands ; Yelafaz, the anthropomorphic sky-dwelling god of Yap; Djohu-ma-di-hutu "lord above" , believed in by the Alfuri of Molucca; Qat, lunar supreme being of the Banks Islands; Hintubuhet "our bird-woman" , supreme being in New Ireland; and Ndengei Degei , the great serpent-god of Fiji.

Ndengei usually lies immobile in his cave on Mount Kauvandra on the northeast coast of Viti Levu, but occasionally, when he is stirred, he causes earthquakes and heavy rains. African supreme beings who are creators include Deng, the omniscient "free-divinity" of the Dinka people, who is identified as Nhialic Aciek "god the creator". The term nhial "up," or "above" is associated with multiple modes of supernatural expression. Among the Western Dinka, Deng has no shrines but is honored in sacrifice together with Nhialic "divinity itself," an appellation applied to Deng and the ancestors.

In South America , too, there is no shortage of supreme beings who are creators. In Australia, one finds many creator supreme beings celebrated in scholarly literature. Among those not mentioned above are Bunjil of the Kulin, Nurrundere of the Narrinyeri, Mangarrara of the Larrakia people, and, as a collective name for the high god of the Aboriginal peoples of southeastern Australia, the All-Father. Such examples by no means exhaust the number of supreme beings whose complicated nature includes the role of creator.

The supreme beings mentioned above seem principally interested in the creation of the sky, the stars, the earth, and meteorological phenomena. They concern themselves with the creation of vegetation only in a secondary way. However, other creators, a smaller group of supreme beings, interest themselves particularly in the creation of trees, vines, herbs, grasses, and other forms of vegetation.

In general, this second group is more dramatically involved with rain than with other, more ethereal celestial elements. One notices that supreme beings who are creators of vegetation tend to absorb or acquire attributes more commonly seen among culture heroes, specialized deities of vegetation, and storm gods. Control over life is also reflected in the supreme beings' ability to end life when they will.

Celestial supreme beings strike humans with their thunderbolts. The Semang of Kedah believe that the supreme being Kari created everything except the earth and humankind. These last were fashioned by Ple, a subordinate deity. Kari sees everything from on high and punishes humans by dropping on them a flower from a mysterious plant.

Where the flower lands, fatal lightning strikes. Eventually, it is believed, he intends to destroy the world and thereby bring about the end of time. More often than not, the sky is the principal manifestation of supreme being. From this preponderance of historical facts has come the term high god , over whose origin and nature the controversy surrounding supreme being once raged. Scholars have made clear the fact that supreme being is not a simple personification of the "natural" object, the sky. Rather, a supreme being is a distinct divine personality who reveals himself or herself in the power of the sky.

Many peoples are careful to make the same distinction in various ways, speaking of their supreme being as dwelling beyond the sky, or as the invisible sky that lies beyond the visible one, or as wearing the sky for a vestment. Puluga, in the Andaman Islands, is said to reside in heaven. The sky is his house. For Baiame, an Australian high god, the sky is a campground, brightened with stars that serve as campfires and traversed by the river of the Milky Way. Num, the Samoyed divinity whose name means "sky," lies in the seventh heaven, but he cannot be a simple personification of the natural sky, for he is also believed to be the earth and the sea.

For many Ewe-speaking populations, the blue color of the heavens is a veil that Mawu uses to shield her face, and the clouds are her clothing. Because a supreme being dwells in inaccessible heights and displays a passive and transcendent character, his outline tends to be left undefined. Although his personality is awesome and powerful, he often avoids dramatic action in favor of inert omnipresence. He may remain mysterious and vaguely delineated. Associated closely with the power of the word in rituals and chants, he created all things in the world from the mere "appearance" naino of each thing's "nonexisting substance.

Earthmaker, supreme being of the Winnebago, comes to consciousness in the primordium in order to make the world keep still. He then remains aloof.

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What Earthmaker was like, or what there was before he came to consciousness, the Winnebago do not know. The Pawnee contend that Tirawa Atius "father on high" is in everything. However, no one is able to know what he looks like. The remoteness of the power of a supreme being may even be portrayed as indifference. When the passivity of a supreme being is exaggerated to the point of his extreme withdrawal from creation, he takes the form of a deus otiosus , a god who has retired himself and his unique powers from the active world.

He no longer captures the religious imagination in the commanding way of more dramatic supernatural beings. He may, nevertheless, remain the ground for all created and creative possibilities. He then withdrew to the twelfth heaven. Nonetheless, he looks over human activities, especially the longhouse ceremonies, for the center post of the cult house is the staff that he keeps in his hand.

He now lives in the stars. Absent from cult, he still interests himself in moral behavior and punishes the wayward with sickness and premature death. The paradoxical coupling of power and passivity within the supreme being of the sky may be made known in sexual terms. Or the coupling of power and passivity may be expressed in terms of the alternations of the bright sky of day and dark sky of night. Thus Puluga, though omniscient, knows the thoughts within human hearts only in the light of day. In the Banks Islands, it is believed that at the beginning night did not exist.

Qat spread the night over the earth so that creation remained obscure. However, after a while the situation did not suit him, and, with a red obsidian knife dawn , he cut into the darkness. The rays of sunlight that enter through the roof of a house are said to be his spears.

Upset by the darkness, he creates the moon.

SUPREME BEINGS

The power of transcendent height is continued in the supreme beings who dwell on the tops of mountains. Just as mountains symbolically express access to the transcendent realms of infinite power, so other paradigmatic symbols reveal the place of contact with the otherwise inaccessible source of life.

In particular, the cosmic tree or world tree is a startling image of access to the dwelling of the high god. Flathead Indians believe that the roots of the cosmic tree reach down into the dwelling place of the evil being, Amtep. At the upper end lies Amotken "the old one" , a good celestial creator.

Rites are often celebrated in connection with an image of the cosmic tree. Ascending the tree, the shaman reports his voyage through the nine heavens. Contact between this world and the celestial powers is reflected also in images of the Milky Way, the ladder reaching to heaven, and the liana. The climax "ladder" in the mysteries of Mithra had seven rungs fashioned of seven different metals.

Cultures in North America , Oceania, Africa, and ancient Egypt all possess myths concerning ascent to heaven along a cosmic ladder. In Misminay, near Cuzco in Peru, the Milky Way is conceived of as a stream of semen that flows through the center of celestial space just as the Vilcanota River, its terrestrial counterpart, flows through the center of the earth. As the Milky Way encircles the world, it descends into the ocean in the west, absorbing the earth's waters, and travels underground to rise in the eastern sky.

Taking the form of rain, fog, and hail, the heavenly water-semen falls into the headwaters that feed the Vilcanota River. The Milky Way also contains female elements, the yana phuyu "dark spots" , which are the sources of various animal species. Celestial bodies and elements are often portrayed as the more active constituents and expressions of a supreme being himself.

Nurrundere, thunder-voiced god of the Australian Narrinyeri, produces the rainbow when he urinates. The Xhosa of southern Africa believe that hail falls when Utikxo arms himself for battle. On Timor, monsoon rains come forth from Usi Neno, a supreme being with strong solar aspects, as a result of the effort he expends in his intercourse with Usi Afu, goddess of the earth. In Indonesia, in the Ambon Islands, the supreme being called Upu Lanito "lord heaven" sets stars in the sky as a sign that he has gone to warn the sun and moon about an impending attack of nitu "spirits". There are abundant accounts that describe the sky as the face of a supreme being; the sun and moon are his eyes.

It shall be seen that the more active divinities tend to specialize in one life-giving activity or sphere e. In many instances, their activities are expressed in independent mythologies of active supernatural beings who overshadow the remote and transcendent supreme being. The end result is that there exist religious systems wherein the supreme being is supplanted by more active and specialized deities or, alternatively, wherein the formal expression of the supreme being itself is presented not as remote and transcendent but as quite intensely involved with the specific life processes of the universe.

In the latter case, the form of the supreme being absorbs attributes from other important and more active supernatural beings like the culture hero, the trickster, or fertility gods. It has been seen that supreme beings are supreme by virtue of their unique nature, not necessarily by virtue of their achievements or exploits. Supreme being, by its very nature, underlies all that is; its character stands in a direct relationship to what exists, what is ontologically true. In this connection, supreme beings are often invoked as witness to oaths, as witness to what is.

In northwestern Sumatra, among the Batak peoples, reference is made to Debata. When he smiles, his mouth opens to reveal his teeth in the form of lightning.

Supreme Beings

He is invoked in oaths taken over serious matters. He punishes perjury with bolts of lightning. On Ceram, people swear to the truth by Upu Langi "lord heaven" and his female counterpart, Upu Tapene. Otherwise, there seems to be no regular cult offered to them. Swahili speakers frequently testify to the truth of an assertion by swearing to "Mungu mmoja" "the one god" or by saying "Mungu anaona" "God is watching".

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By no means are supreme beings always portrayed as creators. Nevertheless, cosmogonic activity is the single activity that befits their foundational character, their role as the ground of all existence. Some supreme beings leave no room for doubt about their cosmogonic activity. Their powerful thought alone brings the world into being. Such is the manner in which Wakonda, the Omaha supreme being, created the world. At first, all things were in his mind. The same is true of the Winnebago creator, Earthmaker. Creation proceeds from his thought. When he wishes something, it comes to exist, just as he wishes.

The Maidu of California believe that Ko'doyanpe "earth namer" brought about creation after long and intense thought. Likewise, Dasan, the high god-ancestor of the northern Pomo, called the world into being with his words. Whether such sublime notions are preserved from the most archaic traditions or whether they are the fruit of more recent theological speculations that have purified and rarefied earlier ideas is a matter of some dispute. As evident in several examples above, supreme beings' involvement with creation may be more subtle and complicated.

They may take responsibility only for the initial creative impulse toward form, leaving the final shaping of the world to other supernatural beings, especially to a "transformer," or culture hero. In many cases, the supreme being is only indirectly involved in creation. He engenders, empowers, or presides over those beings who create the world and its creatures. His creative activity remains supervisory. In other instances, he may create in cooperation or in competition with other powerful beings.

In any case, a supreme being appears to be more than a rational "first cause" of creation. Life and existence, as a whole, stem from and are maintained in accordance with his own inner nature. I do not speak here of a necessary pantheism or emanationism, since a supreme being is a distinct personality who remains distinguishable from creation. Regardless of the degree of his active participation in creation, once the universe exists a supreme being's major job is done.

He then "retires" at some remove, often to the heavenly heights, where he devotes himself to the passive and transcendent pursuits of maintaining and sustaining life. He may thus leave the world to powers who preside directly over specific domains that are less than cosmogonic in scope and whose activities — the accomplishment and functioning of specific world processes — make sense in a world that already exists.

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Myths often recount the withdrawal of the high god as the event that marks the end of the primordium. A supreme being rarely occupies the dominant position in a pantheon or a divine hierarchy. Once creation has ended, if indeed he was involved actively in the cosmogony, the supreme being yields the mythical stage to more active beings whose personalities are more clearly delineated. A supreme being's link to the very foundations of being is often expressed in temporal terms for example, he may exist before the other gods exist.

Consequently, in the cases in which more active beings take over the religious imagination, his eventual passivity in relation to them may be expressed in terms of old age and its inactive fragility. In the Akkadian text Enuma elish , the primordial couple, Apsu and Tiamat, now grown old, are nettled by the noise and games of younger divinities, by whom they are eventually destroyed.

The god El, as reported in the Ugaritic texts, is weak and senile. While in his palace in Mount Tsafon, El is attacked by Baal. The younger god not only usurps the previously dominant position of the supreme being but routs him to the farthest reaches of creation. In explicitly sexual terms, younger gods may deprive a supreme being entirely of his no longer exercised potency by castrating him. Ouranos, the Greek cosmocrat and husband of Gaia Ge , was castrated by his son and successor Kronos.

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This event interrupted the unbroken coitus between sky and earth during the primordium. When his sexual organs were tossed into the sea, Aphrodite came into being. After nine years had passed, Anu himself was attacked by Kumarbi, who bit Anu's loins. Swallowing part of the god's sexual organ, Kumarbi became pregnant with three children. These violent divine beings express attributes quite different from those of the unchanging supreme beings.

Their dynamism tends to alienate still further from myth and cultic activity the transcendent and passive character of supreme beings. Supreme beings are thus often obscured and their power eclipsed. As is characteristic in the above examples, the younger, "champion" divinities who usurp a supreme being's position are often associated with the fertility of fields and animals.

In their connection with agriculture and fecundity, they are often known in the violent but necessary manifestations of weather and storm gods. Their character is bound up with tempestuous change, the violence of concrete life processes that make fertility of seed and stock possible but unforeseeable. He uses his vajra thunderbolt to kill the monstrous Vrta and thereby release the waters. Also in South Asia one finds Parjanya, son of the sky and god of hurricanes.

He unleashes the rains and assures fertility for animals, crops, and humans. In Iran, the meteorological divinity Verethraghna is dramatic and fertilizing. As illustrated by creators specializing in vegetation, the form of a supreme being may itself contain aspects of these fecundator beings. In such cases supreme beings maintain a more active role in the mythic imagination, but at the cost of losing something of their unchanging nature. On the one hand, the passive involvement of a supreme being in the very ground of being in all its forms may give rise, eventually, to his usurpation or transformation by dynamic figures specializing in one or another specific life form or process: On the other hand, in a parallel but separate development, a supreme being's supervisory capacity, his general omniscience passively expressed, may develop into more active and concrete expression in the form of a sovereign god.

Whether such a sovereign god is the result of a process in which a supreme being, for example a sky god, absorbs the traits of a cosmocrat, or vice versa, must be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. In all these cases, however, the emphasis of the resultant form no longer falls on the supreme being's transcendent supervision of the universe but on his active guardianship of the norms of world order.

Certain sovereign divinities enforce the most general cosmic or "natural" laws inherent in the structures of the universe. By virtue of his own nature, his power is over all existence. In other cases, a sovereign divinity may be interested less in cosmic processes than in human moral action. In such instances, he may send forth moral commandments and laws and punish breaches of the ethical order. As sovereign, a supreme being may even interest himself in the details of socioethical behavior, upholding the proper performance of customs and mores.

The cosmic pillar that upholds the universe, or the columna universalis , is often associated with the sovereign being, himself the upholder of cosmic order. As an axis mundi , like the cosmic tree and mountain, it points to aspects of the sovereign that preserve celestial powers and associations. During their Winter Ceremonial, the Kwakiutl people of the northwest American coast wrap a cedar "cannibal pole" in red-cedar bark to endow it with nawalak "supernatural power".

Projecting through the roof of the house, the forty-foot post is considered to be the Post of the World and the insignia of the great divinity Baxbakualanuxsiwae "man-eater at the mouth of the river". It is an image of the great copper pole that upholds the heavens and provides passage between the spatial realms of the cosmos. The Saxons maintained a cult of a cosmic pillar called Irminsul, one image of which Charlemagne destroyed in the village of Eresburg in It was the "pillar of the universe" that supported all existing things.

Horace reports the existence of such a pillar and similar associated beliefs among the Romans. The Achilpa, an Aranda group of Australia, carry a sacred pole that they call kauwa-auwa , and they wander in the direction in which it leans. It is a replica of the pillar fashioned by the god Numbakula who, after covering it with blood, ascended along the kauwa-auwa until he disappeared into the sky. In his most removed form, as noted above, a supreme being usually inspires no regular public cult.

A relative absence of cult seems to characterize many of those celestial supreme beings whose passivity borders on otioseness. In fact, those celestial supreme beings who do call forth a regular cult seem to be exceptional cases. Among them are Agunua, venerated at Haununu on the southwest coast of San Cristobal in the Solomon Islands , and Tabuarik, who, together with his lightning-wife, De Itji, is celebrated in a cult that features sacred stones for instance, on Nikunau in the Gilbert Islands.

More often supreme beings are invoked spontaneously, and even frequently, by individuals or by a community in extreme circumstances of famine, earthquake, drought, and so on. When this irregular aspect of worship first came to scholarly attention, it led investigators to undervalue the importance of supreme beings. Unable to take seriously the profound truth of myth, early investigators were incapable of seeing that the absence of regular public cult was related to the supreme beings' associations with the ground of all being. A supreme being is often associated with initiatory societies that focus on the knowledge of mysteries.

In such secret initiations, many of a supreme being's celestial attributes are maintained. Such appears to be true among Native American tribes of California who possessed what was called the Kuksu cult, wherein the masked initiates impersonated spirits of the dead.

The sound of a bull-roarer imitated the voice of the supreme being and other spirits. The area in which this secret society flourished coincides roughly with the area in which there are clearly delineated concepts of a high god e. However, this connection is a complicated one. Among the Yahgan of Tierra del Fuego, the ciexais puberty initiations involve themselves deeply with Watauineiwa, the supreme being who established them.

In the kina , the secret society rituals of the Yahgan, however, no mention is made of him. Although knowledge of a supreme being may be transmitted, refined, and reshaped in secret societies, it is unwarranted to draw the more general conclusion that supreme beings are the creation of such elites. Among those supreme beings who merge with or yield to more active forms, there exists a tendency toward a more scheduled public cult. This can be seen in cults dedicated to solarized supreme beings.

Although solarized supreme beings share something of the sacrality of the sky, their potency and periodic activity often highlight the manifest rational order of regulated life processes, which outshines the mysterious and unfathomable order of being commonly associated with celestial supreme beings. The attributes and powers of supreme beings, often reflected in their very names, are most clearly made known in sky divinities. The activity that best suits the infinite and omnipotent nature of supreme beings is the creation of the world.

Often, but not always, they create the world through thought, a creatio ex nihilo , which is in keeping with their passive nature. After creation, a supreme being often retires on high and becomes even more transcendent a power. When supreme beings do take a more active role, their form tends to merge with or yield to other divine forms. Such is true, on the one hand, with sovereign divinities who ruled the world and, on the other hand, with fecundators and "champion" divinities.

Knowledge of a transcendent and mysterious supreme being is often better preserved in initiatory secret societies than in the public cults that surround the more active expressions of sun god, storm god, or meteorological beings. There is no doubt that many forms of supreme being, as known today, have been influenced by the religious ideas of historical monotheisms.


  1. General Features.
  2. Memoirs of a White Man.
  3. His Witness To Evil.
  4. Full text of "Nvmen".
  5. Synonyms and antonyms of Pater in the German dictionary of synonyms;
  6. I Havherrens Land!

Such contacts reveal themselves in the very names of many supreme beings, not to mention the influences brought to light in careful study of the histories and religious ideas of cultures around the globe. However, the impact of such historical change ought not to be exaggerated. In the first place, no culture's religious ideas have remained without change through history. Even those forms held by scholars to be most archaic give evidence of complicated historical processes that involve borrowing, deterioration, new inspiration, and reconstitution.

The contemporary era ought to be seen as a further instance of a much larger historical process. In the second place, in those areas where absorption of ideas from monotheisms is clearly evident, one does not generally find inert imitations of monotheisms but lively new syntheses, often in terms that are best understood as part of the religious history of a local culture's conception of supreme being. In the development of the discipline of history of religions, the investigation of supreme beings has occupied a special place.

For more than a century, three factors have especially affected the scholarly debate about the nature of supreme beings: On the most general plane, one may distinguish four important positions taken during the study of supreme beings over the past years. The first point of view, exemplified in the work of Leopold von Schroeder, interested itself in the sky gods known through sacred texts in the Indo-European family of languages. Interest in such exalted forms of supreme being was eclipsed when attention turned to the ethnographic data pouring in from cultures outside the Indo-European sphere.

This second position, developed most successfully by E. Tylor, held that it was impossible to see supreme being as anything but a most recent religious form in human history. Tylor considered the idea of supreme beings to be a rational elaboration of simpler and earlier religious notions. The third perspective began with Andrew Lang , who called attention to the authentic existence of supreme beings outside Indo-European and ancient Near Eastern culture history, principally in Aboriginal Australia.

Taking his cue from Lang, Wilhelm Schmidt carried on an intense and comprehensive investigation of supreme beings in traditional cultures of the Americas, Oceania, Australia, Asia, and Eurasia. Regardless of their judgment on the antiquity and meaning of the various forms of supreme being, these three views of the issue never succeeded in detaching the inquiry into the nature of supreme being from the question of the appearance of historical monotheism with its concomitant theological constructs of revelation, creator or first cause of creation , and moral rectitude.

A historicist search for simple origins, an exaggerated rationalism in defining religion, and a dismal appraisal of the nature of myth are common to all three approaches. It fell to Raffaele Pettazzoni to take a fourth position by reinstating a consideration of the supreme being of the sky, this time in a framework that treated the history of monotheism as a particular, even if related, historical instance. Drawing upon data from all over the world, Pettazzoni centered his research on what were called the "primitive" religions. Taking Pettazzoni's insight about the celestial being as a starting point, Mircea Eliade has presented a morphology of supreme beings that serves as the foundation for his comparative historical studies of religion.

In addition to these general positions and their principal protagonists, a large number of scholars interested themselves in one or another specific aspect of the problem and contributed to the understanding of supreme beings. During the nineteenth century many scholars of religion investigated religious texts from cultures in the Indo-European language family. Their main concerns were philological. When they investigated the meaning of specific religious images and forms, they took a special interest in those forms that were associated with natural phenomena.

Nevertheless, the comparative philology of Indo-European languages pointed to the existence of a supreme sky god. The identification of the Indo-European radical deiwos "sky" in designations meaning "god" for example, in Old German tivar , Lithuanian diewas , Latin deus , Iranian div , and Sanskrit deva lent support for a theory like that of Charles Ploix, who contended in La nature des dieux: In this way, the nineteenth-century attempt to discover a theory of origins of religion in natural phenomena made way also for a sky-dwelling supreme being.

Unfortunately, a shallow understanding of myth in general led to the conclusion that supreme beings were merely personifications of one or another natural phenomenon. In Die Geschichte der Religion , Otto Pfleiderer also laid great stress on the importance of a celestial supreme being. Austrian anthropologist Wilhelm Schmidt had postulated an Urmonotheismus, original or primitive monotheism in the s and it was objected that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam had grown up in opposition to polytheism as had Greek philosophical monotheism.

Some writers believe that the concept of monotheism sees a gradual development out of notions of henotheism and monolatrism, quasi-monotheistic claims of the existence of a universal deity date to the Late Bronze Age, with Akhenatens Great Hymn to the Aten. A possible inclination towards monotheism emerged during the Vedic period in Iron-Age South Asia, the Rigveda exhibits notions of monism of the Brahman, in particular, in the comparatively late tenth book, dated to the early Iron Age, e.

While all adherents of the Abrahamic religions consider themselves to be monotheists, Judaism does not consider Christianity to be monotheistic, Judaism is one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the world. God in Judaism is strictly monotheistic, a one, indivisible. The Babylonian Talmud references other, foreign gods as non-existent entities to whom humans mistakenly ascribe reality, One of the best-known statements of Rabbinical Judaism on monotheism is the Second of Maimonides 13 Principles of faith, God, the Cause of all, is one.

This does not mean one as in one of a pair, nor one like a species, nor one as in an object that is made up of many elements, rather, God is a unity unlike any other possible unity. Judaism and Islam reject the Christian idea of monotheism, Judaism uses the term shituf to refer to the worship of God in a manner which Judaism does not deem to be monotheistic. Some scholars hypothesize that Judaism was originally a form of monolatrism or henotheism, in this hypothesis both the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah had YHWH as their state god, while also acknowledging the existence of other gods.

Shema Yisrael are the first two words of a section of the Torah, and is the title of a prayer that serves as a centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services. Observant Jews consider the Shema to be the most important part of the service in Judaism.

It is traditional for Jews to say the Shema as their last words, despite at least one earlier local synod rejecting the claim of Arius, this Christological issue was to be one of the items addressed at the First Council of Nicaea. Deity — A deity is a concept conceived in diverse ways in various cultures, typically as a natural or supernatural being considered divine or sacred.

A male deity is a god, while a female deity is a goddess, the Oxford reference defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. Various cultures have conceptualized a deity differently than a monotheistic God, a plain deity need not be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, or eternal, however an almighty monotheistic God generally does have these attributes.

Monotheistic religions typically refer to God in masculine terms, while other religions refer to their deities in a variety of ways — masculine, feminine, androgynous, some Avestan and Vedic deities were viewed as ethical concepts. In Indian religions, deities have been envisioned as manifesting within the temple of every living beings body, as sensory organs, but in Indian religions, all deities are also subject to death when their merit runs out. Deva is masculine, and the feminine equivalent is devi.

Etymologically, the cognates of Devi are Latin dea and Greek thea, in Old Persian, daiva- means demon, evil god, while in Sanskrit it means the opposite, referring to the heavenly, divine, terrestrial things of high excellence, exalted, shining ones. Originally the German root was a noun, but the gender of the monotheistic God shifted to masculine under the influence of Christianity. In contrast, all ancient Indo-European cultures and mythologies recognized both masculine and feminine deities, the term deity often connotes the concept of sacred or divine, as a god or goddess, in a polytheistic religion.

However, there is no accepted consensus concept of deity across religions and cultures. Huw Owen states that the deity or god or its equivalent in other languages has a bewildering range of meanings. Some engravings or sketches show animals, hunters or rituals, the Venus of Willendorf, a female figurine found in Europe and dated to about 25, BCE has been interpreted as an exemplar of a prehistoric divine feminine.

In Buddhist mythology, devas are beings inhabiting certain happily placed worlds of Buddhist cosmology and these beings are mortal and numerous. God in Christianity — In Christianity, God is the eternal being who created and preserves all things. This began to differentiate the Gentile Christian views of God from traditional Jewish teachings of the time, in the 8th century, John of Damascus listed eighteen attributes which remain widely accepted. As time passed, theologians developed systematic lists of these attributes, some based on statements in the Bible and this never becomes a tritheism, i.

Nontrinitarian denominations define the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in a number of different ways, early Christian views of God are reflected in Apostle Pauls statement in 1 Corinthians, written ca. In John 14,26 Jesus also refers to the Holy Spirit, by the middle of the 2nd century, in Against Heresies Irenaeus had emphasized that the Creator is the one and only God and the maker of heaven and earth.


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  • These preceded the presentation of the concept of Trinity by Tertullian early in the 3rd century. This did not exclude either the fact the father of the universe was also the Father of Jesus the Christ or that he had even vouchsafed to adopt as his son by grace. Eastern creeds began with an affirmation of faith in one God and almost always expanded this by adding the Father Almighty, as time passed, theologians and philosophers developed more precise understandings of the nature of God and began to produce systematic lists of his attributes.

    These varied in detail, but traditionally the attributes fell into two groups, those based on negation and those based on eminence. It is not an invention, but has divine origin and is based on divine revelation. This is reflected in the first petition in the Lords Prayer addressed to God the Father, in Revelation 3,12 those who bear the name of God are destined for Heaven.

    John 17,6 presents the teachings of Jesus as the manifestation of the name of God to his disciples, the Bible usually uses the name of God in the singular, generally using the terms in a very general sense rather than referring to any special designation of God. However, general references to the name of God may branch to other forms which express his multifaceted attributes. The theological underpinnings of the attributes and nature of God have been discussed since the earliest days of Christianity. Vaishnavism — Vaishnavism is one of the major traditions within Hinduism along with Shaivism, Shaktism, and Smartism.

    It is also called Vishnuism, its followers are called Vaishnavas, the tradition is notable for its avatar doctrine, wherein Vishnu is revered in one of many distinct incarnations. The tradition has traceable roots to the 1st millennium BCE, as Bhagavatism, later developments led by Ramananda created a Rama-oriented movement, now the largest monastic group in Asia. The Vaishnava tradition has many sampradayas ranging from the medieval era Dvaita school of Madhvacharya to Vishishtadvaita school of Ramanuja, new Vaishnavism movements have been founded in the modern era such as the ISKCON of Prabhupada.

    The tradition is known for the devotion to an avatar of Vishnu. Key texts in Vaishnavism include the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Pancaratra texts, Krishnaism becomes associated with bhakti yoga in the medieval period. Although Vishnu was a Vedic solar deity, he is mentioned less often compared to Agni, Indra and other Vedic deities, other scholars state that there are other Vedic deities, such as water deity Nara, who together form the historical roots of Vaishnavism. The ancient emergence of Vaishnavism is unclear, the evidence inconsistent, according to Dalal, the origins may be in Vedic deity Bhaga, who gave rise to Bhagavatism.

    In Dandekar theory, Vaishnavism emerged at the end of the Vedic period, closely before the urbanisation of northern India. The character of Gopala Krishna is often considered to be non-Vedic, according to Dandekar, such mergers consolidated the position of Krishnaism between the heterodox sramana movement and the orthodox Vedic religion. The Greater Krsnaism, states Dandekar, then merged with the Rigvedic Vishnu, syncretism of various traditions and Vedism resulted in Vaishnavism.

    At this stage that Vishnu of the Rig Veda was assimilated into non-Vedic Krishnaism, the appearance of Krishna as one of the Avatars of Vishnu dates to the period of the Sanskrit epics in the early centuries CE. The Bhagavad Gita was incorporated into the Mahabharata as a key text for Krishnaism, finally, the Narayana-cult was also included, which further brahmanized Vaishnavism.

    Purusa Narayana may have later turned into Arjuna and Krsna. Shaktism — Shaktism is a major tradition of Hinduism, wherein the metaphysical reality is considered feminine and the Devi is supreme. It includes a variety of goddesses, all considered aspects of the supreme goddess. Shaktism has different sub-traditions, ranging from those focussed on gracious Lakshmi to fierce Kali, the Sruti and Smriti texts of Hinduism are an important historical framework of the Shaktism tradition. The pantheon of goddesses in Shaktism grew after the decline of Buddhism in India, wherein Hindu and Buddhist goddesses were combined to form the Mahavidya, the most common aspects of Devi found in Shaktism include Durga, Kali, Amba, Lakshmi, Parvati and Tripurasundari.

    The goddess-focussed tradition is popular in West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Nepal and the neighboring regions. Yet, they are declared equivalent aspects of gender neutral Brahman, of Prajapati, the goddesses often mentioned in the Vedic layers of text include the Ushas, Vac, Sarasvati, Prithivi, Nirriti, Shraddha. Goddesses such as Uma appear in the Upanishads as another aspect of Brahman, hymns to goddesses are in the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata, particularly in the later added Harivamsa section of it.

    The archaeological and textual evidence implies, states Thomas Coburn, that the Goddess had become as much a part of the Hindu tradition, as God, by about the third or fourth century. The literature on Shakti theology grew in ancient India, climaxing in one of the most important texts of Shaktism called the Devi Mahatmya, the Devi-Mahatmya is not the earliest literary fragment attesting to the existence of devotion to a goddess figure, states Thomas B. Coburn — a professor of Religious Studies, but it is surely the earliest in which the object of worship is conceptualized as Goddess, with a capital G.

    The Tripura Upanishad is historically the most complete introduction to Shakta Tantrism, along with the Tripura Upanishad, the Tripuratapini Upanishad has attracted scholarly bhasya in the second half of 2nd-millennium, such as by Bhaskararaya, and by Ramanand. These texts link the Shakti Tantra tradition as a Vedic attribute, Shaktas conceive the Goddess as the supreme, ultimate, eternal reality of all existence, or same as the Brahman concept of Hinduism.

    She is considered to be simultaneously the source of all creation, its embodiment and the energy that animates and governs it, according to V. Shaktism views the Devi as the source, essence and substance of everything in creation and its texts such as the Devi-Bhagavata Purana states, I am Manifest Divinity, Unmanifest Divinity, and Transcendent Divinity.

    Science — Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on empirical observations, disciplines which use science, like engineering and medicine, may also be considered to be applied sciences.

    In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of physical laws, over the course of the 19th century, the word science became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself as a disciplined way to study the natural world. It was during this time that scientific disciplines such as biology, chemistry, Science in a broad sense existed before the modern era and in many historical civilizations. Modern science is distinct in its approach and successful in its results, Science in its original sense was a word for a type of knowledge rather than a specialized word for the pursuit of such knowledge.

    In particular, it was the type of knowledge which people can communicate to each other, for example, knowledge about the working of natural things was gathered long before recorded history and led to the development of complex abstract thought. This is shown by the construction of calendars, techniques for making poisonous plants edible. For this reason, it is claimed these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense and they were mainly speculators or theorists, particularly interested in astronomy. In contrast, trying to use knowledge of nature to imitate nature was seen by scientists as a more appropriate interest for lower class artisans.

    A clear-cut distinction between formal and empirical science was made by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, although his work Peri Physeos is a poem, it may be viewed as an epistemological essay on method in natural science. He was particularly concerned that some of the early physicists treated nature as if it could be assumed that it had no intelligent order, explaining things merely in terms of motion and matter. The study of things had been the realm of mythology and tradition, however.

    Aristotle later created a less controversial systematic programme of Socratic philosophy which was teleological and he rejected many of the conclusions of earlier scientists. For example, in his physics, the sun goes around the earth, each thing has a formal cause and final cause and a role in the rational cosmic order. Motion and change is described as the actualization of potentials already in things, while the Socratics insisted that philosophy should be used to consider the practical question of the best way to live for a human being, they did not argue for any other types of applied science.

    Geometry — Geometry is a branch of mathematics concerned with questions of shape, size, relative position of figures, and the properties of space. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is called a geometer, Geometry arose independently in a number of early cultures as a practical way for dealing with lengths, areas, and volumes. Geometry began to see elements of mathematical science emerging in the West as early as the 6th century BC.

    Geometry arose independently in India, with texts providing rules for geometric constructions appearing as early as the 3rd century BC, islamic scientists preserved Greek ideas and expanded on them during the Middle Ages. Since then, and into modern times, geometry has expanded into non-Euclidean geometry and manifolds, while geometry has evolved significantly throughout the years, there are some general concepts that are more or less fundamental to geometry.

    These include the concepts of points, lines, planes, surfaces, angles, contemporary geometry has many subfields, Euclidean geometry is geometry in its classical sense. The mandatory educational curriculum of the majority of nations includes the study of points, lines, planes, angles, triangles, congruence, similarity, solid figures, circles, Euclidean geometry also has applications in computer science, crystallography, and various branches of modern mathematics.

    Differential geometry uses techniques of calculus and linear algebra to problems in geometry. It has applications in physics, including in general relativity, topology is the field concerned with the properties of geometric objects that are unchanged by continuous mappings. In practice, this often means dealing with large-scale properties of spaces, convex geometry investigates convex shapes in the Euclidean space and its more abstract analogues, often using techniques of real analysis.

    It has close connections to convex analysis, optimization and functional analysis, algebraic geometry studies geometry through the use of multivariate polynomials and other algebraic techniques. It has applications in areas, including cryptography and string theory. Discrete geometry is concerned mainly with questions of relative position of simple objects, such as points. It shares many methods and principles with combinatorics, Geometry has applications to many fields, including art, architecture, physics, as well as to other branches of mathematics.

    The earliest recorded beginnings of geometry can be traced to ancient Mesopotamia, the earliest known texts on geometry are the Egyptian Rhind Papyrus and Moscow Papyrus, the Babylonian clay tablets such as Plimpton For example, the Moscow Papyrus gives a formula for calculating the volume of a truncated pyramid, later clay tablets demonstrate that Babylonian astronomers implemented trapezoid procedures for computing Jupiters position and motion within time-velocity space. Agnosticism — Agnosticism is the philosophical view that the existence of God or the supernatural are unknown and unknowable.

    Agnosticism is a doctrine or set of rather than a religion. English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word agnostic in , the Nasadiya Sukta in the Rigveda is agnostic about the origin of the universe. Agnosticism is of the essence of science, whether ancient or modern and it simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe.

    Consequently, agnosticism puts aside not only the part of popular theology. On the whole, the bosh of heterodoxy is more offensive to me than that of orthodoxy, because heterodoxy professes to be guided by reason and science, and orthodoxy does not. Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, positively the principle may be expressed, In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration.

    And negatively, In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable, being a scientist, above all else, Huxley presented agnosticism as a form of demarcation. A hypothesis with no supporting objective, testable evidence is not an objective, as such, there would be no way to test said hypotheses, leaving the results inconclusive. His agnosticism was not compatible with forming a belief as to the truth, or falsehood, karl Popper would also describe himself as an agnostic. Others have redefined this concept, making it compatible with forming a belief, george H.

    Smith rejects agnosticism as a third alternative to theism and atheism and promotes terms such as agnostic atheism and agnostic theism. Agnostic was used by Thomas Henry Huxley in a speech at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in to describe his philosophy, early Christian church leaders used the Greek word gnosis to describe spiritual knowledge. Agnosticism is not to be confused with religious views opposing the ancient religious movement of Gnosticism in particular, Huxley used the term in a broader, Huxley identified agnosticism not as a creed but rather as a method of skeptical, evidence-based inquiry.

    In recent years, scientific literature dealing with neuroscience and psychology has used the word to mean not knowable, in technical and marketing literature, agnostic can also mean independence from some parameters—for example, platform agnostic or hardware agnostic. Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume contended that meaningful statements about the universe are always qualified by some degree of doubt and he asserted that the fallibility of human beings means that they cannot obtain absolute certainty except in trivial cases where a statement is true by definition.

    A strong agnostic would say, I cannot know whether a deity exists or not, a weak agnostic would say, I dont know whether any deities exist or not, but maybe one day, if there is evidence, we can find something out. Therefore, their existence has little to no impact on human affairs. Agnostic thought, in the form of skepticism, emerged as a philosophical position in ancient Greece. Atheism — Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is the rejection of belief that any deities exist, in an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.

    The term denoted a social category created by orthodox religionists into which those who did not share their religious beliefs were placed, the actual term atheism emerged first in the 16th century. With the spread of freethought, skeptical inquiry, and subsequent increase in criticism of religion, application of the term narrowed in scope, the first individuals to identify themselves using the word atheist lived in the 18th century during the Age of Enlightenment.

    The French Revolution, noted for its unprecedented atheism, witnessed the first major movement in history to advocate for the supremacy of human reason. Arguments for atheism range from the philosophical to social and historical approaches, although some atheists have adopted secular philosophies, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere. Atheism has been regarded as compatible with agnosticism, and has also been contrasted with it, a variety of categories have been used to distinguish the different forms of atheism. Some of the ambiguity and controversy involved in defining atheism arises from difficulty in reaching a consensus for the definitions of words like deity, the plurality of wildly different conceptions of God and deities leads to differing ideas regarding atheisms applicability.

    The ancient Romans accused Christians of being atheists for not worshiping the pagan deities, gradually, this view fell into disfavor as theism came to be understood as encompassing belief in any divinity. Definitions of atheism also vary in the degree of consideration a person must put to the idea of gods to be considered an atheist, Atheism has sometimes been defined to include the simple absence of belief that any deities exist.

    This broad definition would include newborns and other people who have not been exposed to theistic ideas, as far back as , Baron dHolbach said that All children are born Atheists, they have no idea of God. Smith suggested that, The man who is unacquainted with theism is an atheist because he does not believe in a god. This category would include the child with the conceptual capacity to grasp the issues involved. The fact that this child does not believe in god qualifies him as an atheist, ernest Nagel contradicts Smiths definition of atheism as merely absence of theism, acknowledging only explicit atheism as true atheism.

    Deism — Deism is a philosophical position which posits that a god does not interfere directly with the world. Deism gained prominence among intellectuals during the Age of Enlightenment, especially in Britain, France, Germany, included in those influenced by its ideas were leaders of the American and French Revolutions. These lead to many subdivisions of modern deism which tends, therefore, Deism is a theological theory concerning the relationship between the Creator and the natural world.

    Deistic viewpoints emerged during the revolution of 17th Century Europe. Deism stood between the narrow dogmatism of the period and skepticism, though deists rejected atheism, they often were called atheists by more traditional theists. There were a number of different forms in the 17th and 18th Centuries, in England, deism included a range of people from anti-Christian to non-Christian theists.

    See the section Features of deism, following, Deism is related to naturalism because it credits the formation of life and the universe to a higher power, using only natural processes. Deism may also include an element, involving experiences of God. Theologians and philosophers of the 17th Century began to give a different signification to the words, both asserted belief in one supreme God, the Creator. I have heard there are of this band those who call themselves Deists, an entirely new word.

    Deism flourished in England between and , at which time Matthew Tindals Christianity as Old as the Creation, also called The Deists Bible, later deism spread to France, notably through the work of Voltaire, to Germany, and to the United States. The concept of deism covers a variety of positions on a wide variety of religious issues. Sir Leslie Stephens English Thought in the Eighteenth Century describes the core of deism as consisting of critical and constructional elements, critical elements of deist thought included, Rejection of religions that are based on books that claim to contain the revealed word of God.

    Rejection of religious dogma and demagogy, Skepticism of reports of miracles, prophecies and religious mysteries. Constructional elements of deist thought included, God exists and created the universe, God gave humans the ability to reason. Pandeism — Pandeism is a theological doctrine which combines aspects of pantheism with aspects of deism.

    It holds that the deity became the universe and ceased to exist as a separate. Pandeism is proposed to explain, as it relates to deism, why God would create a universe and then abandon it, and as to pantheism, the origin and purpose of the universe. It was perhaps first coined in the present meaning in by Moritz Lazarus, Pandeism falls within the traditional hierarchy of monistic and nontheistic philosophies addressing the nature of God. For the history of the words, pantheism and deism, see the overview of deism section.

    Weinstein noted the distinction between pantheism and pandeism, stating even if only by a letter, we fundamentally differ Pandeism from Pantheism and it has also been suggested that many religions may classify themselves as pantheistic but fit more essentially under the description of panentheistic or pandeistic. The earliest seeds of pandeism coincide with notions of monotheism, which generally can be traced back to the Atenism of Akhenaten, Weinstein in particular identified the idea of primary matter derived from an original spirit as found by the ancient Egyptians to be a form of pandeism.

    Weinstein similarly found varieties of pandeism in the views held in China, India, especially in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita. He similarly found that ideas of pandeism were reflected in the ideas of Heraclitus, religious studies professor, F. Peters, however, found with respect to the Pythagoreans and the Milesians that hat appeared. At the center of the Pythagorean tradition in philosophy, is another view of psyche that seems to owe little or nothing to the pan-vitalism or pan-deism that is the legacy of the Milesians.

    This means not only that we understand him, but also that he cannot understand himself. Creation is a kind of effort by God to understand himself. Of Nicholas of Cusa, who wrote of the enfolding of creation in God and the unfolding of the human mind in creation, Weinstein wrote that he was, to a certain extent. This was reiterated by others including Discover editor Corey S. Powell, in the s to s, pandeism received some mention in Italy. Nannetti further specifically criticized pandeism, declaring, To you, fatal Pandeist, the laws that create nature are contingent and mutable, not another being in substance with forces driven by motions and developments.

    Neither Nannetti nor the author defines pandeism distinctly enough to distinguish it from pantheism. God the Father — God the Father is a title given to God in various religions, most prominently in Christianity. In mainstream trinitarian Christianity, God the Father is regarded as the first person of the Trinity, followed by the second person God the Son and the third person God the Holy Spirit.

    Since the second century, Christian creeds included affirmation of belief in God the Father, primarily as his capacity as Father and creator of the universe. While a religious teacher in one faith may be able to explain the concepts to his own audience with ease, many believe they can communicate with God and come closer to him through prayer — a key element of achieving communion with God. For instance, after completing his monumental work Summa Theologica, Catholic St.

    Although God is never addressed as Mother, at times motherly attributes may be interpreted in Old Testament references such as Isa 42,14, Isa 49, 14—15 or Isa This passage clearly acknowledges the Jewish teachings on the uniqueness of God, over time, the Christian doctrine began to fully diverge from Judaism through the teachings of the Church Fathers in the second century and by the fourth century belief in the Trinity was formalized. Judaism In Judaism, God is described as Father as he is seen as the one, indivisible and incomparable, transcendent, immanent. The God in Judaism is the giver of the shabbath and the torahs—written, oral, mystical—to his chosen people.

    In Judaism, the use of the Father title is generally a metaphor, referring to the role as Life-giver and Law-giver, and is one of many titles by which Jews speak of and to God. The Jewish concept of God is similar to the Christian view, being that Christianity has Jewish roots, though there are some differences, and also the concept of God the Father in Biblical Judaism is generally more metaphorical.

    Also Muslims believe God is Wali, Wali means custodian, protector and helper. Since the second century, creeds in the Western Church have included affirmation of belief in God the Father, the primary reference being to God in his capacity as Father and creator of the universe. Tertullian also discussed how the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, while the expression from the Father through the Son is also found among them.

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the concept of a supreme "God" in the context of monotheism. For the general concept of a being superior to humans that is worshiped as "a god", see Deity and God male deity. For God in specific religions, see Conceptions of God.

    For other uses of the term, see God disambiguation. Many religions use images to "represent" God in icons for art or for worship. Here are examples of representations of God in different monotheistic religions. Clockwise from upper left: Christianity , Kaumaram , Vaishnavism , Shaktism.

    Theism , Deism , and Pantheism. Evolutionary origin of religions and Evolutionary psychology of religion. For the original text of the five proofs, see quinque viae. Creator deity , Prayer , and Worship. God the Father in Western art. Classical theism and Theistic Personalism. Mythology portal Philosophy portal Religion portal Spirituality portal. Thomas Taylor Vol. Archived from the original on 3 March Retrieved 30 December Although in the Talmudic part of the Torah and especially in Kabalah G-d is referred to under the name ' Sh'chinah ' — which is feminine, this is only to accentuate the fact that all the creation and nature are actually in the receiving end in reference to the creator and as no part of the creation can perceive the creator outside of nature, it is adequate to refer to the divine presence in feminine form.

    We refer to G-d using masculine terms simply for convenience's sake, because Hebrew has no neutral gender; G-d is no more male than a table is. Ten Studies , Stanford University Press , p. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature , Vol. Orthodox Church in America. Retrieved 16 August Meditations on the Attributes of God: A Theory of Everything.

    This is the belief that God created the universe, is now one with it, and so, is no longer a separate conscious entity. This is a combination of pantheism God is identical to the universe and deism God created the universe and then withdrew Himself. Apart from the unlikely hypothesis of adoption from a foreign tongue, the OTeut. The former does not appear to admit of explanation; but the latter would represent the neut. The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology: A Sketch of Semitic Origins: Encyclopaedia of Islam Online. Archived from the original on Searching for Spiritual Unity Can There Be Common Ground?

    As Illustrated by the Religions of India. Longmans, Green and Co. A Neomedieval Essay in Philosophical Theology. The History of Science: In its most abstract form, deism may not attempt to describe the characteristics of such a non-interventionist creator, or even that the universe is identical with God a variant known as pandeism. This Strange Eventful History: A Philosophy of Meaning. Pandeism combines the concepts of Deism and Pantheism with a god who creates the universe and then becomes it. Pandeism is another belief that states that God is identical to the universe, but God no longer exists in a way where He can be contacted; therefore, this theory can only be proven to exist by reason.

    Pandeism views the entire universe as being from God and now the universe is the entirety of God, but the universe at some point in time will fold back into one single being which is God Himself that created all. Pandeism raises the question as to why would God create a universe and then abandon it? As this relates to pantheism, it raises the question of how did the universe come about what is its aim and purpose?

    Ultimate Truth, Book 1. As with Panentheism , Pantheism is derived from the Greek: Further review helps to accentuate the idea that natural law, existence, and the Universe which is the sum total of all that is, was, and shall be, is represented in the theological principle of an abstract 'god' rather than an individual, creative Divine Being or Beings of any kind. This is the key element which distinguishes them from Panentheists and Pandeists.

    As such, although many religions may claim to hold Pantheistic elements, they are more commonly Panentheistic or Pandeistic in nature. I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity. Translated by Susan Emanuel. The Demon Haunted World p. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. In the most general use of the term, agnosticism is the view that we do not know whether there is a God or not. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

    ENCYCLOPEDIA RELIGION SECOND EDITION

    In the popular sense, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in God, whereas an atheist disbelieves in God. In the strict sense, however, agnosticism is the view that human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist. In so far as one holds that our beliefs are rational only if they are sufficiently supported by human reason, the person who accepts the philosophical position of agnosticism will hold that neither the belief that God exists nor the belief that God does not exist is rational.

    OED Online, 3rd ed. A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of immaterial things, especially of the existence or nature of God. Of or relating to the belief that the existence of anything beyond and behind material phenomena is unknown and as far as can be judged unknowable. The doctrine or tenets of agnostics with regard to the existence of anything beyond and behind material phenomena or to knowledge of a First Cause or God. People frequently adopt an attitude of rejection toward a position for reasons other than that it is a false proposition.

    It is common among contemporary philosophers, and indeed it was not uncommon in earlier centuries, to reject positions on the ground that they are meaningless. Sometimes, too, a theory is rejected on such grounds as that it is sterile or redundant or capricious, and there are many other considerations which in certain contexts are generally agreed to constitute good grounds for rejecting an assertion.

    So an atheist is someone who disbelieves in God, whereas a theist is someone who believes in God. Another meaning of 'atheism' is simply nonbelief in the existence of God, rather than positive belief in the nonexistence of God. A Very Short Introduction. However, earlier authors and published works have promoted an agnostic points of view. While the pious might wish to look to the gods to provide absolute moral guidance in the relativistic universe of the Sophistic Enlightenment, that certainty also was cast into doubt by philosophic and sophistic thinkers, who pointed out the absurdity and immorality of the conventional epic accounts of the gods.

    Protagoras' prose treatise about the gods began 'Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be. Many things prevent knowledge including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life. Summa of the Summa. The Collected Works of Spinoza. British Journal for the History of Science. Archived from the original PDF on Rational Dissent in eighteenth-century Britain. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: The existence of God Prima Pars, Q.

    Examining the Great Doctrines of the Faith. Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms. A Universe from Nothing. Free Press, New York. The end of faith.