Reply #7

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[Mandi]

What if you believe your deity actually has expectations?

If your central deity is one of compassion, might it not be reasonable to hold compassionate behaviour as a tenet of your religion?

Unless you felt emulation of a deity to be the nature of your relationship with them, then no.  If emulation is the nature of your relationship, then how do you choose which aspects are safe and reasonable to emulate?  Especially for those following war, death or underworld gods.

The deity that one feels is one of compassion, another person may believe is one of devotion or health.

Are Gods allowed to have opinions, or make requests?  Because if only philosophy can be involved in determining morality etc, it sounds to me like one is saying 'sit down and shut up God, I'm calling the shots.'

I mean, what if your deity actually *has* requirements?  And what about the theology and cosmology surrounding the *whys* of those requirements?

There are a lot of people who believe that a monistic great goddess somewhere at one point was a central figure in a utopian society and religion in which blood sacrifice, sex magic and meat eating were taboo.  They are thus required to abstain from these things.  Those who don't worship goddesses the same way, are doing it wrong.  They horrible terrible destructive people who are twisting the message of the goddess.

How is writing out a criteria for how any god saying a person should live any different? 

There is also a big difference between saying god wants me to give up cigarettes, and saying god says smoking is bad. (thus people who smoke are not following my god)  The "for me" qualifier is addressing that it is your relationship.  The other is an individual applying their personal message/opinion to others as divine edict.

Once you are in a position where you feel comfortable making judgment against the faith of another person, either based upon their morality, how they worship a deity, or their perception of a deity as being consistent with yours then you aren't listening to a god.  You're pretending to be one.

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