What do you call the belief that God’s are just higher beings on other planes of existence while not believing in manmade organised dogmatic religons?
This question is too vague. “Higher beings” is not well defined enough. “Other planes of existence” is not defined well enough. For that matter “the Gods” is not very specific. And in a weird way, what you’re saying seems somewhat circular. Like what do you call it when you believe gods aren’t gods? If you don’t believe they’re gods then who are you even indicating?
Are you asking if there’s a name for someone who believes that humanity’s major religions do worship real living beings, but those beings are simply advanced alien creatures and not metaphysical in any way.
Like what do you call it when you believe gods aren’t gods? If you don’t believe they’re gods then who are you even indicating?
Let me give a possible interpretation. These are hypothetical, both in terms of argument , and in OPs viewpoints.
We live in a simulation. The “higher beings” are the admins that are running the simulation. They can change the settings of the simulation and break the rules with their avatars. They live as common folk on their own plane. Jobs, wife, kids, food and sleep etc. So they don’t have superpowers, they just get to mess with our reality but not theirs.
Gods sounds perfectly usable in this example
Yup. Believing in higher beings from other dimension is just religion with different words. Only when the belief is based on fact and not faith can it not be religion.
Yes, but there are many different types of religion. You can cathegorize it. If someone asks what a car with a roof you can pull down is called, saying it’s still a car is not helpful.
I disagree, there are rules and structure to religion.
Believing in ghosts is not based on fact. But you wouldn’t call that religion.
Numerology is not a religion. It does have rules, but it is not organised and it doesn’t have a central authority. It is absolutely based on faith though.
Okay, it’s superstition, of which religion is a variant. There’s a very thin line between having faith in the supernatural and worship.
Deistic (believing in a god or gods without a necessary religious component) but not theistic. Or pagan, which is just believing in higher beings (or singular being) that are not Abrahamic. There’s probably other words that fit the bill, too.
In Buddhism the God realm is where beings with very good karma go after death. Where they often become apathetic, burn off their good karma, and don’t reach enlightenment.
The cosmology also reflects inflated/deflated egos. The mind needs to be balanced to easily see the path, and the lower realms have a lot of pain while the upper ones have a lot of pleasure.
The idea behind enlightenment is to transcend both pleasure and pain. All the realms of birth and death.
But there’s some God realms looked after by enlightened Buddhas rather than Gods. In Pure Land Buddhism for example, merit practice is about being reborn in one of these realms, so in the next life enlightenment is easier to reach.
Personally, I vowed to be reborn to practice under Kwan Yin/Avolokita. Bodhisattva of compassion. I practice in this life too. But in the next one I’d like to do it in a nun’s robes.
I don’t know but now I’m wondering, do the Greek gods qualify?
greeks seem to have a hierarchy. thier are demigods lower than gods, gods are lower titans, and lower than primordial beings(aka personification of aspect of the universe) like NYX, gaia, ouranous,etc who also birthed the giants, and thier "abilities are more powerful the higher your hierarchy is.
Are gods lower then titans? The gods are the offspring of them and overthrow them.
In European polytheism, there isn’t a clear division between the mundane and the divine, like you see in Christianity.
There are gods all over the place. Your house has a couple of gods in it. They aren’t powerful enough to kill you with lightning on a clear day, but they will still annoy you unless you leave out a little food for them.
Specifically in the Greek context, Protogenoi, Titans, Olympians, Gigantes, Nereids, Gorgons, Furies, Fates, Muses, and Nymphs are all gods of varying strength and prominence. Everybody worshipped Zeus, but only your family worships the house gods.
Likewise, in Scandinavia, you have your Aesir, Vanir, Jötunn, Dwarves, Elves, and so on. Gaels have the Sídhe, Fomoire, Tuatha Dé Dannann, Leprecháns, and whatever else. To an Arab pagan, djinn were a form of minor deity. The kami of Shinto continue to encompass everything from local spirits to the supreme creator, to the point that Japanese Christians and Muslims refer to God as Kami-sama.
[Much more info here]https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polytheism-part-i-knowledge/)
When Christianity caught on, other gods were out, but that didn’t stop people honoring their local house gods. Small gods were reïmagined as fairies; Christian clergy denied their reality, but belief in fairies was mostly seen as a harmless superstition, like not stepping on a crack in the road. Belief in fairies persists in Ireland; ironically, those who genuinely believe in the old gods are the most devout Catholics.
We see a similar phenomenon across history and culture. When Christianity met Vodún, people didn’t stop believing in their indigenous gods; instead, those gods became spirits who God put in charge of particular aspects of the cosmos, which is how we get Vodou.
Likewise, Zarathustra was a polytheist, but by the time Islam rose, Zoroastrians were down to two gods, with the others recast as basically angels. This concept in turn influenced Judaism and Samaritanism; Yahweh, the Hebrews’ patron deity, merged with El, the Semitic supreme deity, and the other gods became angels.
Because Christianity caught on as the Western Roman Empire was disintegrating, people felt like they were living through an apocalypse. Clergy said that, while the physical world was collapsing, the world to come was brilliant, and thus a sharp division was drawn between the mundane and the divine. Modern Euramericans are raised with this division; whatever our beliefs or lack thereof, we see it as fundamental, and thus retroactively and anachronistically apply it to pre-Christian paganism, whereas the pagans saw the divine as simply part of the world.
I still call it religion.
Imagination.
Spiritualism?
Reminds me of the sublimed species in Ian Banks The Culture series
Religion.
You would probably be interested in occult philosophy. Some groups are more organized than others, but they tend more to organize around orthopraxy (same practices/rituals) rather than orthodoxy (same beliefs) which is more typical of conventional religions. This way they can encourage more free exploration, debate, and creativity.
Most of these belief systems are predicated on concepts of reality being made of layers of “planes” with higher beings existing more predominantly on higher planes, and it being a goal to aspire toward those higher planes.
Whatever you want. All of religion is made up, structure provided for those in need.
Science fiction, maybe?
Yeah my first thought was, “a Neil Gaiman novel”
There was a period of my life when I was stoned out of my mind, and I thought “maybe we’re actually tiny things, thousands of levels below quarks, and the solar system is a molecule in a cell, and as we go beyond, maybe we’re inside some enormous being… And then I was like but make it fractal, and nearly went nuts trying to imagine it” 😂
First and foremost that’s personal spirituality. There’s also a new age thing about starseeds aka reincarnated souls from other planets which this loosely reminds me of. Also kinda reminds me of this video I saw the other day.
It loosely reminds everyone of everything because “other planes of existence” is an all-encompassing meaningless term.
Just about every religion or fiction fits this, because they can–and do-- say “oh but it’s in oThEr pLaNeS oF eXiStEnCe!”. Which is a silly excuse because just about only concrete property that “other plane of existence” implies is that things on beings on it can’t affect things or beings on this plane of existence, so any theory (as in “has to make useful, verifiable predictions”) involving interactions between planes of existence is kind of dead on arrival.
It loosely reminds everyone of everything because “other planes of existence” is an all-encompassing meaningless term.
It is to those who can’t sense them. Spirituality sounds like delusion if you haven’t had the neccessary experiences that allow you to understand what faith even means. I’m fully aware of that. I used to be strictly atheist.
Stargate sg1 universe
