According to your beliefs, how many literal gods are real?

[ZombieHorde]

[LeftofU]

1. Zero

You should add that to the poll.

[ZombieHorde]

2. I did, but it went away for some reason, I will try again. DU polls are glitchy. nt

[Silent3]

47. Did you use the digit 0 before using the word "Zero"?

Since the forum software is written using PHP, I can guess at the kind of programming logic that would have dropped "0", but not "Zero".

[MineralMan]

3. Well, since all deities are made in man's image,

we must all be gods, so I had to check the last choice.

[Speck Tater]

4. Missing option: No Opinion; I have no way of knowing the answer. nt

[ZombieHorde]

5. The poll is not about knowledge, the poll is about belief. How many gods do you believe in? nt

[Speck Tater]

11. Fair enough: I have NO beliefs concerning the number of gods. nt

[darkstar3]

12. Soooo, Zero. Gotcha.

[Speck Tater]

16. Nope. I DO NOT believe that there are zero gods.

I DO NOT believe that there is one god.
For any value of X, I DO NOT believe that there are X gods.

I have NO beliefs whatsoever on the subject. That means neither a belief that there is some positive number of gods, NOR the belief that there are no gods.

"No beliefs" does not mean some default belief, it means NO beliefs.

[darkstar3]

21. See #20. n/t

[ZombieHorde]

14. You seem to believe in zero gods. nt

[Speck Tater]

17. Absence of a belief does not mean belief in absence.

for x=0 to infinity
I do not believe there are X gods.

I suppose that leaves open the possibility that I believe in minus 3 gods, or in the square root of minus one gods. But I don't mean to imply those default values of X either.

There is NO value of X, positive, zero, or negative, integer, real or imaginary such that the statement "I believe in X gods." is true.

[ZombieHorde]

18. I am not asking how many gods you do not believe in (belief in absence),

I am asking how many gods you do believe in (belief in substance?).

[Speck Tater]

19. Suppose...

Suppose you are in the dentist chair having a root canal and the dentist holds up some instrument and asks you "Do you believe that this is the correct instrument for this part of the procedure, or do you believe this is not the correct instrument for this part of the procedure? What can you say except "I don't know."

So the dentist presses you for an answer. "Do you believe this is the correct instrument?" and when you don't answer, "Do you believe this is not the correct instrument?"

Demanding an answer entails a fallacy known as the false dilemma, or "either-or fallacy".

The only correct answer to the dentist is "I have no beliefs one way or the other as to whether this is the correct instrument for this part of the procedure."

This is why there is a missing alternative, namely "I believe I can have no opinion on the number of gods that exist." To leave out that option is to create a false dilemma.

Even if that were not the case, one might still raise the question "What, exactly, do you mean by 'god'?" Does that word require a "creator deity" or would a non-creator but omniscient "observer god" suffice? Does an entity necessarily have to be conscious (or self-conscious) to be classified as "god", or would a non-sentient (yet animistic) creative force qualify?

In any case, it is still legitimate to say "I believe nothing about the number of gods that might or might not exist." SO that answer is still missing.

[ZombieHorde]

22. I would answer "no," which would be the correct answer,

the "I don't know" answer would be a lie in your scenario, because the scenario is about my beliefs, not facts.

If the dentist asked me "Is this is the correct instrument for this part of the procedure, or is this not the correct instrument for this part of the procedure?" I could honestly answer "I don't know."

(You correctly guessed I have little knowledge of dentistry.)

"I believe nothing about the number of gods that might or might not exist." = "I do not believe in god(s)." because the belief is absent.

There is no false dilemma here, belief in god(s) is either present or absent.

[Speck Tater]

25. I can see that. I accept your logic. nt

[ZombieHorde]

28. I disagree with you. My logic in post #22 is logically unacceptable, and therefore,

your analysis is inaccurate.

[Speck Tater]

30. Ah, but I didn't accept it because it was right, I accepted it because I don't feel like arguing. nt

[ZombieHorde]

32. You are wrong, you do feel like arguing. You live for debate. nt

[Speck Tater]

35. You caught me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM

[ZombieHorde]

36. I was thinking of the same skit, but you're still wrong, if you lived for debate you would not have

conceded your point so quickly.

[darkstar3]

20. That is an untenable position

The statements below are are semantically, grammatically, and numerically simultaneous.

1. "I believe in 0 gods"
2. "I do not believe in any gods"
3. "I lack belief in gods."

You are a self-identified agnostic.
Agnostics 'lack belief'. You can claim all you want that it is impossible to know or prove the existence of any gods, but you still LACK belief in them.
Thus, you believe in 0 gods.

I can write the number ten in all sorts of ways:

10
1010 (binary)
00001010 (byte-wise binary)
12 (base 8)
...the list goes on...

But it is still always ten. Similarly, you can define your lack of belief in any way you like, but it is still lack of belief.

[Speck Tater]

24. We've been here before :) To save time, allow me to conceded your point. nt

[Birthmark]

6. Zero

And that's my optimistic estimate.

[rurallib]

7. Is the trinity 1 or 3?

I vote 0.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. both. Kind of like 3-in-1 oil. nt

[Vehl]

9. 0 or infinity..nothing inbetween

[provis99]

10. only one god. Me. Now bow to your omniscient master.

[juno jones]

13. Literally real?

Like really up and walking around, picking their teeth and scratching their crotch real? None.

But then I've always understood 'gods' to be anthropomorphic representations of abstract forces and archetypes.

[MorningGlow]

15. +1

God ain't no dude in a blue robe and white beard sitting up in a cloud flinging lightning bolts at people.

[hyphenate]

27. Of course not,

you silly goose! That's Zeus--can't you tell the difference between them? :silly:

[MorningGlow]

29. Hee hee

I wonder what all those Christians who picture God like that would think if someone pointed out that they were worshiping Zeus!
:rofl:

[hyphenate]

39. I don't think most of them wouldn't get the joke,

unfortunately. Just like if someone compared the Virgin Mary with Isis, most people would not see any resemblance between the two entities, despite the early Xtians copying many aspects of Isis deliberately for their symbology of Mary.

[MorningGlow]

41. You mean this kinda thingie here?

Nope, nothing similar whatsoever. :evilgrin:

[hyphenate]

42. Exactimundo!

For anyone deliberate and objective enough, it's easy to see mythology from the standpoint of a scientist--of any kind, and how we've gone through these periods of zeal to the point of fanaticism many times, repeatedly. And those who followed the Christian myths, they had to make a break from religions of the past, so that things like the nearly identical icons of Isis and Mary would no longer be considered the same. So the world of Christians and the leaders began a connivance to make every other sect of worship declared null and void, or declared them as enemies of the Christian world.

But they left behind enough of their sloppy work to have scientists make solid judgements from the evidence they left. The heretical Gnostic gospels, for instance, the use of former pagan days as their own holidays, with the eye to hoping that people would forget the pagan holidays completely, and favor the Christian equivalent instead.

I don't see any difference between the Christian mythologies and any other religion worldwide, frankly. You take away the veneer of mystery from any of them, and suddenly they're simple stories with an eye toward learning bits of wisdom. It's why I have a lot of animosity toward the fundies, because they are nothing more than fanatics, who don't have the brains to think for themselves. And they aren't interested in the "good" parts of the bible, regardless of which version they follow, only the parts that concern hatred and vengeance.

[juno jones]

37. No the truth is much more profound!

:hi:

Thxbai!

[hyphenate]

43. Ceiling cat!

I love ceiling cat! O holey kitty! Now there's a religion I can get behind! lolcats!

[ZombieHorde]

23. Yes, a biblical or Greek type of deity. nt

[juno jones]

33. But those aren't literally real.

If you scratch the surface of any pantheistic belief and get down into the real nuts and bolts, there is an acknowledgement that gods, per se don't really exist. They are symbolic expressions of natural force. By naming these aspects it was thought one could control them to some extent. The hebrews had 72 different names for the aspects of god. Allah has somewhere around 96 different names. That is how they get around pantheism with only one deity, a name for every aspect. The physical representations are properly used as focus for meditation, not object of worship per se.

The only people who believe gods exist in bodies in real time are ignorant fools who are either being exploited by preisthood, are too lazy to delve further into their so-called religion, or are too stupid to deal with abstraction. Or all of the above.

Like the poster above with the diwali lights said, infinite and none. It's a paradox that most people have a hard time grasping because our society has been conditioned to think of god as some old bearded, physical, corpreal albeit immortal and omnipotent man.

[hyphenate]

26. By the reckoning I use

every single person on the planet has his or her own god--whether their vision matches with anyone else's is a matter of conjecture. And that goes for those who are agnostic or atheistic as well, because their "personal god" is simply some kind of force that set the wheels in motion billions of years ago, when two or more p-branes got together and crashed into each other. Science does have its own definitions of what many might call a "god," though it wouldn't even resemble what others might believe.

PS: I always call the many unanswered questions I have each day "science we don't know yet."

[iris27]

31. "science we don't know yet."

:thumbsup:

[hyphenate]

40. thank you

We have been around long enough to understand some major things, but there are many other things which are either ignored or never taken seriously. We are not anywhere near a point where we could understand or know all, and rather than let these situations be relegated to the cynic's circular file, we might just have to wait until we ask the right questions. We might know those questions yet, though, and that's one of the reasons why science is so exciting. We get to be on the ground floor of finding wondrous things.

We know that if we ever went back in time to almost any period up to Victorian England, we would be considered god-like by the world's population. And that was only a little over 100 years ago. A few hundred years from now, transporters, universal translators, even knowledge of alien races will likely be commonplace, and we would hold it in wonderment...

[philly_bob]

34. Can someone please explain their belief in "more than 100,000" gods? n/t

[tinrobot]

38. What's a "literal" god?

A god who takes whatever you say literally?

[ZombieHorde]

44. The Biblical Christian God and Zues are examples. A self aware magical being

capable of ridiculous power, such as throwing lightning bolts with their bare hands.

[tinrobot]

45. Might as well call them fabled gods

Because that's where they come from - old metaphorical fables that personify a god or gods so an enlightened person can explain abstract spiritual concepts to the less enlightened masses. Kind of like a children's story that personifies an animal or inanimate object to teach a lesson.

Problem is, too many people take these fables literally, much to their own detriment, and much to the delight of atheists -- who seem to enjoy holding them up as evidence of the stupidity of religion and spiritual practices.

I agree there is no "man in the sky with a beard" but the concept of god is a lot more subtle than that. Well, to me, at least.

[OttavaKarhu]

46. Zero at present, but...

...given that intelligence is an emergent evolutionary property of our cosmos, some day it could be one.