wo/men's idea of god

[Maitereya]

in my psychology class we did this exericse. it was like cherades, and the people doing the cherade their topic was god. so they had to act out god in front of the class. the class knew what the topics are. there was god, men and women.

so when a guy would act out god it would be a power gesture, like muscles and might. and when women acted out god they prayed or bowed.

thoughts?

[naku06]

"to the eye of the beholder."

women pitch towards a women god. of course for centries, pagan followers have followed a goddess and a god. the god birthed from the goddess.

men are just the same, going towards a male. jewish, christain, islamic; all that single god goodness.

if there is a god, theresprobably no gender, just wouldnt need one.

if i were to act out "god," i would just stand there. all powerful being that made everything? i wouldnt have to lift a finger to change humanity.

[runner's high]

Believe it or not, the human idea of God underwent a pretty a big sex change at the dawn of civlization. Most major religions now believe God is male--remember we say "God" not "Goddess"--but the earliest religions generally believed in a very female Goddess or spirit. Let me explain and please understand that I will be forced to make some generalizations.

Most early nomadic peoples believed in a female fertility/mother Goddess. These people were born into a relatively untamed, natural world and they relied on the fertility and abundance of this world, it's plants and animals, for survival. To them, it only made sense that "God" would in fact be a woman because they were born from a woman, and shouldn't the world be the same way? Archaeologists are still digging up little figurines of pregnant, large-breasted women that they assume portray this mother Goddess.



Then comes civilization. Farming replaces foraging. The nomads settle down so that they can more exhaustively exploit the land. Houses, streets, towns form. These new people proliferate, farming, paving, and building over the "natural" world of their ancestors. Now, most of these people's worlds were artificial--the houses and cities they lived in were built, unlike the nomads, whose worlds were born.

This difference in worlds brought about the idea of a maker God. Women were mothers, men were makers. Since these people lived in a made world, it followed that a male God made it. And, as industry and technology developed this distincton became increasingly entrenched. The mother Goddess was all but forgotten or, worse, persecuted. The original religions, the nomad's nature-based faiths, were collectively labelled Paganism.

We are here. I've probably oversimplified things, but I genuinely believe this is to be true and I think it explains a lot about modern society. Despite our relative "enlightenment"--at least intellectually--compared to our nomad ancestors, we are as violent as ever. We are perpetrating all the worst traits of a male God: aggression, destruction, rape, greed.

We are in the age of the male God. And the male Gods--especially Allah and Jehovah--are fighting. These are the Penis Wars.

[hozomeen]

if i tried to act out a traditional god, one that most people would be familiar with, i'd probably throw a brick at the person's head nearest to me and then set the town on fire. but that involves a little more than traditional charade games allow...