How many Pagans believe their deities created the universe?

[Theweirdtophat]

Surprisingly I ran into a lot of Pagans, be it Celtic, Greek, Norse ect. and many of them don't believe their gods and goddesses literally created the universe and that the deities are like spiritual allies to talk to and that their form of worship is not as strict as monotheists and many monotheists believe their deity created the universe.

Are there any pagans here that believe their deities created the universe? If you don't believe they did, what do you think make the universe? Or was the universe never created and it always existed and always will exist?

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Surprisingly I ran into a lot of Pagans, be it Celtic, Greek, Norse ect. and many of them don't believe their gods and goddesses literally created the universe and that the deities are like spiritual allies to talk to and that their form of worship is not as strict as monotheists and many monotheists believe their deity created the universe.

Are there any pagans here that believe their deities created the universe? If you don't believe they did, what do you think make the universe? Or was the universe never created and it always existed and always will exist?

The universe always existed. How it was created, if there was no planets--nothing--in the univese, an empty space, I don't see how an absence of something can be created. I also don't believe we are the center of the universe (as a whole). So, when anyone says god created the univese, I'm thinking "you mean, god created, nothing?"

 

[vaguelyhumanoid]

I certainly don't. Norse and Greek mythology start with a primordial chaos or void, which is a lot closer to modern science than "God made the heavens and the earth". The oldest gods might be as old as the universe, but they are still a part of it.

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

I don't. I believe the Universe arose from chaos. I don't believe the gods exist independently from the Universe

 

[Quintessence]

Pagan theologies don't put this wedge between "creator" and "creation" that you see in the classical monotheisms. This happens largely because Pagan god-concepts are immanent as opposed to transcendent - the gods are within the world, or are the world, thus they are "creation" as well as "creators." They're not something "above" the world where "creation" and "creator" can be separate things. So it's a bit misleading to say the gods "created" the universe, as if the universe is somehow separate from the gods, and I guess you can put me in the camp of rejecting the gods literally creating the universe because of that. I really couldn't care less what created things in general. I care far more about the fact that they are here, and that I can have relationships with things, and what those relationships ought to be.

 

[Riverwolf]

I'm a follower of Anglo-Saxon-esque Heathenry.

I believe that the universe formed just as the current scientific consensus concludes: via the event referred to by the misnomer "Big Bang".

Rather than contradict this consensus, I prefer to (sort of) render it in mythological terms. This is my own UPG, not present in any of the historical Lore, and I don't expect (or even really want) this to overright anyone else's ideas.

Death is the Sole Eternal Wight. Alone of all wights, she alone always is and will be. But she is not a God, for despite being Allmother, she is best avoided, not worshiped or sought out. Her firstborn is Weaver, who weaves the Web of Wyrd. But she, too, is best avoided, for as Wyrd is a Web, Weaver is a spider. To seek her out, or to mess around with Wyrd's Web, is to risk being ensnaired by her and gobbled up. Weaver's firstborn are also spiders. They wove the smaller threads together into the Elements, which came together to form the World Tree, and from which blossomed the Giants.

If this seems underdeveloped, that's only because it's a footnote at best in terms of its place in my theology. Also, it still contains traces of classical monotheistic thought, which are only somewhat nullified by the names and descriptors (Death is here only personified in pronouns while otherwise remaining almost entirely passive, web-weaving spiders can live without their webs but not for very long, etc).

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Any being capable of creating the Universe, or the Multiverse, or, frankly, even the solar system, is beyond my ability to comprehend, and I strongly suspect us humans would be well below the level of notice of such, except perhaps in the same degree that we are aware of quarks inside atoms.

 

[GoodbyeDave]

Religion is about living in the world, not speculating about it: that's science. But the philosophical arguments for creation by the divine -- those from design and causation -- are so strong that it's no wonder that many people accept them. If we look at various pagan traditions, we have

1. Belief in a creator: most of the Americas, all of Africa, Central Asia, ancient western Semites.
2. No such belief: Mexico, Peru, Japan, Australia, ancient Egypt and eastern Semites.
3. No belief to start with, but gained later: Indo-European tribes (belief developed in Greece and India).

The tendency to deny creation by reconstructionists of Hellenic and Roman religions, which came to accept it in Antiquity, is interesting: a reaction against Christianity. I've seen a similar reaction in Native American circles.

 

[Nietzsche]

In the Norse myths, the world has always been in some form or another. This is just the latest iteration. We're probably not the first and certainly not the last of the "growths" on Yggdrasil, to use the World-Tree analogy. Eventually what's here now will die, either of its own causes or swept away by change, and something else will eventually take its place. It's cyclic.

 

[1137]

I also believe in a Chaos, though I also believe matter has always existed due to simple logic. If one exists the other must to define it. Chaos consciously acting on stagnant matter leads to creation.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Imo, there has always been existence, it merely changes form. There was no creation. There is only transformation, and we all play a part.

 

[RedDragon94]

If you don't believe they did, what do you think make the universe?

What I believe is that evolution and the Divine are one, therefore the Divine must be both a collective consciousness and a symbol or set of symbols. This is where the creating of deities comes into play. What represents evolution to you? Once you know the answer to that question you in essence have a deity. My path is very personal to me though. I don't have the experience of working with the Divine in the way lots of pagans do, I basically wing it. *shrugs*

 

[Midnight Rain]

I personally don't know. In the way that it works in my path is that the gods and goddesses (all part of "the All") are aspects of the universe itself. They don't stand outside it. It would be much like saying man created the universe. How could we create ourselves? I imagine that the answer is far more amazing and complex than I could ever hope to understand.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Most Hindus believe that their Gods and Goddesses actually exist (of course, on a different plane) - though I do not.

 

[Aštra’el]

I tend to direct my focus towards the present moment rather than the distant past, as it seems pointless to obsess about or mindlessly debate the origins of the world. That being said, I do feel there once was only Chaos.

I perceive this as Abzu and Tiamat- the primeval Chaos, the primordial waters, the Abyss- which might be perceived as the Cosmos before the current state of our universe, or the raging & chaotic oceans of Earth before Life, or the subconscious and imagination from which our own subjective universe unfolds.

Then... from Chaos emerged Order. This has been called Marduk, YHWH, etc. There was Creation & Destruction, Destruction & Creation, and Order triumphed over Chaos...
​

 

[Baladas]

I view the universe as eternal and possibly cyclical.
My gods are a part of the world, arising both from and with it.

 

[vaguelyhumanoid]

Religion is about living in the world, not speculating about it: that's science. But the philosophical arguments for creation by the divine -- those from design and causation -- are so strong that it's no wonder that many people accept them. If we look at various pagan traditions, we have

1. Belief in a creator: most of the Americas, all of Africa, Central Asia, ancient western Semites.
2. No such belief: Mexico, Peru, Japan, Australia, ancient Egypt and eastern Semites.
3. No belief to start with, but gained later: Indo-European tribes (belief developed in Greece and India).

The tendency to deny creation by reconstructionists of Hellenic and Roman religions, which came to accept it in Antiquity, is interesting: a reaction against Christianity. I've seen a similar reaction in Native American circles.

Aren't there multiple views on the issue in Hellenic and Roman antiquity? Like, Aristotle believed in a prime mover, but the oldest narratives start with the primordial chaos.

 

[Cassandra]

Surprisingly I ran into a lot of Pagans, be it Celtic, Greek, Norse ect. and many of them don't believe their gods and goddesses literally created the universe and that the deities are like spiritual allies to talk to and that their form of worship is not as strict as monotheists and many monotheists believe their deity created the universe.

Are there any pagans here that believe their deities created the universe? If you don't believe they did, what do you think make the universe? Or was the universe never created and it always existed and always will exist?

Define "Universe". Do you mean our particular immensely vast Universe in which our planet is smaller than a lepton compared to our body? Or do you mean all the Universes in the entire Multiverse? Or maybe all the Multiverses? Or do you mean infinitely bigger than that, beyond all our observations and perceptions even imagination? Please define the workspace of your supreme God? Is he a small broker in the All or is he infinitely bigger than anything we can imagine?

 

[Paleo]

I have a theory but it's just that; a theory.
I definitely believe the universe came from chaos but intelligent design and the cosmic egg are a short way of explaining things. Out of said chaos serpent wrapped egg floating in the void I believe Baphomet or at least some hermaphroditic deity arose and played a large role in the design and creation of all the deities.

 

[GoodbyeDave]

Coming back here, let's look at this from a pre-scientific viewpoint. Most things we encounter have a beginning and an end, so why not the earth, sun, and moon? The idea that they are eternal is surely rather strange, if you think about it. Now if we consider how things start,

1. Plants and animals have ancestors, but the earth, &c are obviously one-offs, so that can't apply.
2. Human artifacts are constructed, so maybe the universe is.
3. Worms appear from nowhere in dead bodies, so maybe cosmic bodies just arose from nothing -- chaos, if you like. Of course, we know that worms come from flies' eggs, but the belief in the spontaneous generation of life was not finally abandoned until the 19th century! Without that biological analogy, we don't expect things to appear for no reason at all: if something appears on the table, it's because some-one put it there.

I think those analogies explain why the old pagans considered that either the earth was created or that it just happened. Creation was usually attributed to one god (although the Maya thought it was a two-god job) because that's how things were created in pre-industrial times. Nowadays, we might consider the universe to be a team effort, like a car or an office block.