Does the fact that different religions have a different types of deities nullify the concept of God?
Of course not. I could start a new religion tomorrow that contradicts someone else’s beliefs. The fact that my new religion contradicts another can not invalidate what someone else believes or nullify another’s concept of God, the afterlife or anything else. If two religions hold irreconcilable contradictory positions it proves only that one is wrong, but not which – and both may be. _______ I am dismayed by the feedback so far… a little logic lesson: The logic of this question is equivalent to asking “Does the fact that experts disagree about who killed JFK (lone gunman, conspiracy, etc.) nullify the concept of JFK’s assasination.” The concept of truth requires that he was either killed by a lone gunman or he was not. Disagreement about a concept only requires that some postions are wrong either in facts, deductions or definitions – not that the concept is invalid. The fact that religious teachings disagree does not mean God can not exist, but just that some teachings are wrong. Maj
No. The concept of God does not depend upon the different views of others. If you believe that God is the one and only diety then there cannot be any others. If you believe that there are many gods then there cannot be only one. Only if all concepts were true would they nullify/cancel each other out, making none of them true (everyone can’t be right but that doesn’t mean that no-one is).
Sure, just like the different concepts of the moon held by the ancients nullified the concept of the moon. I for one think they were all nonsense. A big white thing moving across the sky. YEAH, RIGHT! But seriously, I think the more constructive thing is to look at how the ideas are not so different. Sure the Greeks had their “gods”, but they also had “God”. If you read Plato, he says we know of “the gods” only from tradition, but we know of “God” also from reason. The things he said about God were scarcely different from the likes of Kierkegaard 2000 years later. The Greeks would sometimes use a god (Zeus) to personify God. This was the exact same with Egypt, from which the Greek religion came: gods and God, with sometimes a god (Isis, Osiris or Ra) used to personify God. Exactly the same situation existed and exists with Hinduism, gods and God. (This applies to the central thinkers and writers of these religions. For the material minded, there were just the gods, and they’d do their
