What killed Dystheism?

[liveyoungdiefast]

Many ancient cultures made and worshiped wrathful gods whose primary emotions were anger, revenge, and often greed. What is it about our world today where belief in deities is still almost as prevalent yet almost anyone's deity is only full of love and forgiveness. And yes, if you take the Bible literally than the Christian God is very, very wrathful but you'll notice if you've ever argued with a religious fundie that "God sends no one to hell, they choose their own path".

So why is dystheism dead?

[Kylyssa]

It's alive and well.  Google Westboro Baptist Church.

[liveyoungdiefast]

Ahh but even the Westboro assholes believes their God is wrathful to everyone except for them. I'm talking about the gods of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome, and pre-Socratic Greece, people would do their best to please them and expect their God to still be pissed off at them anyway.

[Kevin]

When people kill one god, they come up with another.
I would say probably people started to not believe it anymore, or started finding wholes in it or they just stopped fearing that god in general. So slowly over time, probably, a new god(s) was come up to take its place.

[Recusant]

I don't think dystheism is entirely dead. Though most Satanists do not profess to believe in Satan as anything more than an archetype (and not a particularly "bad' one at that) I suppose some might call their religion dystheistic.  And I think there are still worshippers of Kali and other fairly nasty Hindu gods/goddesses. Tibetan Buddhism has some pretty fearsome incarnations.  Though their fierceness is said to be directed toward destructive, negative forces, they seem to be negative themselves, unless you choose to view them from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective.  Vodun and associated religions acknowledge and pay homage to some tough customers as well.  Then there are shamanists, among whom there are some who are called by the "dark side."
  I think that believers in somewhat dytheistic religions (I don't think there has ever been a purely dytheistic religion, but I could be wrong) believed that even if they couldn't expect much in the way of good to come from a particular 'negative' god, they expected that those who did not worship that god would have it even worse off, so they got a sort of good from it.  I suppose that as such people encountered less malignant gods, they gradually chose to adopt them, when they saw the followers of more benign religions prospering when they should have been struck down by the wrathful hard/impossible to appease gods.  That's just my theory on the topic though.  Interesting thread, liveyoungdiefast.

[Sophus]

I agree that it's probably not entirely dead but Hey!..... we're making progress in trying to make religion more civilized. Kind of a slow process, isn't it?

[Kevin]

I agree that it's probably not entirely dead but Hey!..... we're making progress in trying to make religion more civilized. Kind of a slow process, isn't it?

Very slow. Especially with, after reading your thread, Christians are now trying to call it a 'relationship with God'

Fail.

[dr.zalost]

^^liveyoungdiefast^^

Many ancient cultures made and worshiped wrathful gods whose primary emotions were anger, revenge, and often greed. What is it about our world today where belief in deities is still almost as prevalent yet almost anyone's deity is only full of love and forgiveness. And yes, if you take the Bible literally than the Christian God is very, very wrathful but you'll notice if you've ever argued with a religious fundie that "God sends no one to hell, they choose their own path".

Is it possible that the invention of a devil made dystheism obsolete? I mean the changes made to one's god concept must have been fairly radical once evil was personified. You could now claim that "god is love" and other such mush.