Neo Deist said:
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All of the holy texts that make up the world's dominant religions were written centuries ago, prior to the invention of telescopes, satellites, space shuttles, cosmic probes and planetary rovers. To those people, the sky was merely a canopy over the earth, and the stars were tiny dots glowing within. Little did they know that those stars are so far away that it takes light years to reach them, and that some of them are so massive that they would cover the distance from our sun to Mars. They had no concept of how enormous the universe really is. Many believed in geocentricity, or that the earth was the center of God's creation.
Which leads me to the next part of this topic; the name of God. Obviously the various earth bound cultures and religions have (or had) different names for their chief deity: Ra, Zeus, Odin, Bhagahan, Tawa, Tunkanshila, Akal Purakh, Adonai, Yahweh, Allah, Elohim, Ahura Mazda, etc. Every single one of these is culture bound and reflects a certain area of the world and/or time period.
Let's stop and think outside of the box for a minute. Those names are all man made, based on the culture/language. But what would a being from the planet Neburius (random, made up name) call God? Obviously and most likely, they do not speak any earth bound language. It could be "Kre-a-kahz-phut" for all we know.
I say that because our tiny planet is one of hundreds of BILLIONS upon BILLIONS in the universe. Just because we lack the technology to find life on other planets does not mean that life does not exist. It is only within the past 70 years that we have ventured out into space. We are mere infants when it comes to cosmic exploration, still attached to the umbilical cord called earth.
Getting back to the name of God, I think it is silly for religions to argue over who is right or wrong. Some go as far as to not say or spell out their version of the name. These idiosyncrasies are of human origin, not divine. Someone, at some point, said "you should not do this" and the concept stuck. Personally I don't think God really gives a crap what you refer to "Him" as. How finicky would it be for the Supreme Being and Creator of the universe to get hung up on whether or not someone on earth uses a dash, or draws a picture depicting "Him" in a comic strip. I think God has bigger things to be concerned with...you know, like asteroids on a collision course with planet Bada-wata-hata.
Furthermore, has anyone actually seen God? Does God have male anatomy? The answer is no, so why do we always refer to God as He or Him? Well, because the Judaism/Christian/Islamic culture from long ago was very male chauvinistic and God HAD to be a male, as women were seen as inferior (and still are in many parts of the world). I respectfully refer to God as It, and don't presume to know God's gender, if any.
So why do I call God, "God"? Because I speak English and grew up with that tradition. YMMV.
"We are mere infants when it comes to cosmic exploration, still attached to the umbilical cord called earth."
In other words during all this time lapsed nothing material has changed. Does one agree with it?
Please
Regards