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?
Religion.
Religion with more up to date pop culture buzzwords.
Imagination.
Trascendental polytheism? Are these “gods” involved in any way with our "plane of existences? Are they one or two beings or whole races? Do they have their own “gods” and so on like a multiplanar Matrioska doll? 🤔😅
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.
Reminds me of the sublimed species in Ian Banks The Culture series
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.
I call it a (wo…)manmade organised dogmatic religion. Sure, it might be just with a member of one (which is kinda cool and all and probably makes the organizing part a little bit easier) but it’s still kind of the same thing…
But seriously, it really depends on the details on such belief. It might be anything from harmless cope to superstition to delusion to paranoia. Or a first brave step in escaping a cult–which I would genuinely applaud.
Stupid-ass copium, like all religion.
tips fedora
Non-Denominational Polythism would be the term, I think.
Probably most realistic. Our perspective is of 100 years and there’s should be much longer.
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
Don’t have superpowers. Check.
Life is mundane. Check.
xePBMg9 is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported
Well, it’s not me.
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.
I still call it religion.
Can you define “god” in this context? Does “god” imply a creator of human existence, or merely a being with abilities not understood or quantified by humans (think Q from Star Trek).
The latter isn’t necessarily a belief system in and of itself. It’s just the acknowledgement that “higher”, ascendent beings can exist because humans are not, necesssarily, the be-all-end-all sapient beings of the universe.
