Comment on Humans didn't invent agriculture

• ssj2marx@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So then what’s the difference between “the gods” and something purely fictional, in your view?

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  • Grail@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The gods are mythical, whereas Frodo Baggins is fictional. People believe in myths. Though of course it’s a fuzzy boundary. You can arrange various characters on a spectrum from myth to fiction. For example, Zeus is pure myth, Lucifer is an originally fictional character that has almost entirely become mythical, Achilles is sort of directly in the middle, Sherlock Holmes is a highly mythologised fictional character, Gandalf is a fictionalised adaptation of a myth, and Jake Sully is pure fiction because nobody gives a shit about him.

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    • ssj2marx@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Ah, so the difference is the weight that people assign the idea.

      Do the gods exist for an atheist who contends that all of the things you called “mythical” are in fact purely “fictional”? Or does a lack of belief among some individuals not matter because the gods are a social construct?

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      • Grail@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        A lack of belief among some individuals matters, but not enough to stop a god from being a god. Because, as you say, gods are social constructs. If we consult Merriam Webster and skip the silly monotheist definition, a god is “a being or object that is worshipped as having more than natural attributes and powers”. Note that this definition doesn’t say the being must actually have these powers. They must only be worshipped as such. The belief is the important thing to the definition, not the truth. This is because divinity is socially constructed. You can’t deny a god’s divinity except by denying the faith of their followers. If you accept that the worshippers really do believe their god is a god, you must accept that the god is a god. They may well be an undeserving god, or a lying god, or a false god, but a god they still are. Divinity is like a job. If everyone agrees that Mr Smith is a plumber, and his boss pays him to fix toilets, then Mr Smith is certainly a plumber. It doesn’t matter if Mr Smith has never fixed a toilet in his life, society has decided he’s a plumber. He could be an incredibly shitty plumber who doesn’t know anything about pipes, but he’s a plumber.

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