Oannes

DAVID STOCKHOFF · 19 Mar 2012, 20:56 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (DAVID STOCKHOFF)
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:56:53 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Oannes
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________________________________
 From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> 
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2012 4:23 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) Oannes

On 3/19/2012 2:57 PM, DAVID STOCKHOFF wrote:
> OTOH, perhaps the Roman household gods were like that---not the family ancestors, but the little guys you'd nod to as you stepped over the threshold or stoked the fire in the hearth. Nobody expected them to speak, but the domain of each was limited to a few square feet. 

And Dan'l Danehy-Oakes also wrote:
> It seems to me that the God of Deism is pretty close to an impersonal
> finite God.

I don't think this is what is meant by an "impersonal god" when comparing it with, say, Zen Buddhism.
I think "impersonal" doesn't mean a Person who is uncommunicative. It means a Person who is "not a personality"...a person who is not "aware" at any time in any sense as we would define it.
Deism only argues that the Creator doesn't respond to personal requests or is even absent. I think the hearth gods were conceived as actual persons even though they had no prophets.
_______________________________________________

Yes, I suppose they were persons in a way, and yet perhaps also like pet animals: creatures with personality but weak objective individuality. Which only muddies the waters, since pets are just such beings, granted personality only by their owners' powers of projection. 

At any rate, if one were to worship one's cat, it would probably be a lot like worshiping an impersonal, finite god.
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