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?
Magical thinking
What do you call the beleif that gods are just higher beings on other planes of existence?
Submitted 15 hours ago by x4740N@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 54 minutes ago
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.
Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com 56 minutes ago
I like a lot of interpretations here, and while not strictly non religious, Gnosticism is more reverence of the knowledge rather than the institutions, worth looking into if you’re theocurious en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
jasoman@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Stargate sg2 universe
DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Probably most realistic. Our perspective is of 100 years and there’s should be much longer.
GreenShimada@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Apparently not many anthropologists or people interested in history on Lemmy.
There’s a few options, and it depends on what you mean by “gods.” The overall category you’re looking for is called “Folk Religion” which means it’s not organized beyond what local groups chose to believe are the “rules.” Without more details, anything below might fit.
Animism is a starting point, in which you believe that everything has a “spirit” or is otherwise alive in a spiritual dimension. There aren’t gods, per se, but elemental forces are higher forces that are semi-sentient. So, for example, the Sun would be alive, Earth would be alive, the elemental force of water is alive, and each has some sort of sentience, but it’s sort of too high to directly “Talk” with people, but you sort of communicate with feelings.
Shamanism is animism with more nuance. Gods, demigods, demiurges and the like exist - basically there are non-human, non-corporeal entities that operate in a spiritual realm, as do humans, so a shaman does negotiation as a middle-man because they have learned and been trained to be able to operate in both our realm and theirs. While not an organized religion, most forms of shamanism have similar rules and standards. Which is surprising considering that many cultures developed shamanism independently of each other.
As a sort of more detailed step towards specificity, you then have specific things like Native American traditional religion, Shintoism, many African traditional religions, Druidism and European pagan traditions, modern wiccan or other witchcraft-oriented beliefs, where local gods and spirits abound and are deserving of worship and veneration from everyone, not just having the shaman interceding on your behalf.
Slightly more organized, but not really, are polytheistic religions. Hinduism, Hellenism, the Roman Pantheon of gods, etc. Westerners think of these as “organized” but they really weren’t/aren’t in the way that we typically think. There was no main “Church of Zeus” and then after worshiping him, you go to Athena or Nike. A person and household had their god and they gave sacrifices, then also did the same for other gods if they needed their help. It was very ad-hoc, and sort of interesting, as the Greeks and Romans went around the ancient world meeting other cultures, they would find another polytheistic religion and not say “No, our god of war is Ares, and she’s stronger than your god of war.” They assumed that the gods were the same globally, and it was just the names that changed. So more like “Oh, you call the god of war Kartikeya? Cool, we call him Ares. You know him, too, awesome.” So the dogma is actually quite light.
Honorable mention for Taoism and Buddhism, which both can incorporate varying levels of animistic beliefs. However, as philosophies-cum-religions go, there’s much more dogma and convention in play. However, both are Gnostic, in that personal experience plays a role in shaping a personal dogma. I’m not familiar with the Taoist angle there, so I may be wrong about that to some degree.
There are subsets of monotheistic (primarily Abrahamic) religions that are mystical and are less dogmatic. Sufis or Kabalists or Christian Mystics. They sort of do their own thing, and typically are seen as maybe heretical, maybe not, by the mainstream elements of the same religion. This crosses over the last line of what you mentioned about dogma, but worth mentioning.
Finally, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is just about anything you want it to be, and there’s also a Church of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.
scarabic@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
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.
TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub 11 hours ago
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.
angrystego@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
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.
abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
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.
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
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.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
Gods sounds perfectly usable in this example
swordgeek@lemmy.ca 13 hours ago
Lots of good answers here, but what do you mean by ‘other planes of existence’?
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 15 hours ago
Deep Space Nine?
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 9 hours ago
Q continium, a pseudo-higher dimension is the caretaker(nacene)
TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website 14 hours ago
That’s Bajorianism or whatever Dukat was smoking in the last season
Tap for spoiler
You have a great pAgh
boydster@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
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.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 9 hours ago
sg1/ and some trek ascended beings are based on higher dimension/planes of existence, almost alway beings of pure energy thought or conscience. heaven/hell is considered a higher dimension
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I still call it religion.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
Alien Worship Cultist
popcornpizza@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 hours ago
Science fiction, maybe?
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
Yeah my first thought was, “a Neil Gaiman novel”
Sylra@lemmy.cafe 14 hours ago
“spiritual, but not religious”
then explain in more detail
Drbreen@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
What makes something religious? Because at least with Christianity, they claim that God is spirit. Whatever ‘spirit’ is…
adespoton@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
Religion has to do with habits and practices. So someone can brush their teeth religiously.
Christianity is a religion, but it’s also a faith-based belief system that incorporates alternate planes of existence. Some people eschew the religion part but still have the belief system, and some people play inside the religion without actually believing in the spiritual side of things.
I like to explain Christianity as the belief in a multidimensional being who defines the dimensions we can observe and has done a bit of mucking around in a way that was measurable by us. Angelic appearances? Most would call them aliens, as they’d be extra terrestrial intelligences. Spiritual possession? A different dimension that has an effect on the ones we inhabit, but is currently beyond our capacity to fully understand.
Steve@communick.news 13 hours ago
Non-Denominational Polythism would be the term, I think.
Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.org 8 hours ago
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.
ethaver@kbin.earth 10 hours ago
if there's higher dimensions they're still part of the universe as I know it, they're just not in the parts I can perceive. There's very little useful speculation I can do in relation to the parts I can't perceive. Apparently this is called "existence monism," so this would be one of the other things in the Wikipedia theology tree. personally I would classify it as a type of Monolatry.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 7 hours ago
wouldnt another dimension be seperate from the universe, but not reality.
ethaver@kbin.earth 7 hours ago
I mean we've already accepted that we don't know how big the universe is. The way physics has been going lately the universe might actually be bigger than reality.
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
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? 🤔😅
altphoto@lemmy.today 10 hours ago
Those higher beings keep hiding my keys and deliving kids, women and elderly people in the various war stricken areas. And they gave us big orange.
Let me precalculate that on my realshitolometer hold on…hmm, just as I suspected, its a billion percent!
al_Kaholic@lemmynsfw.com 8 hours ago
Have you ever played videogames as a bored kid?
just_another_person@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Spiritualism?
rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio 13 hours ago
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.
Angelevo@feddit.nl 14 hours ago
Whatever you want. All of religion is made up, structure provided for those in need.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 13 hours ago
A religion or cult. It’s still theism.
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 13 hours ago
I’m heard and read that Abrahamic religions don’t have a place for their gods to hang out but the rest they hang out in the Meta Divine Realm
the_q@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
Honestly that’s just religion through science; the purpose is still to give meaning to meaninglessness.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
I don’t know but now I’m wondering, do the Greek gods qualify?
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 9 hours ago
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)
slazer2au@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Are gods lower then titans? The gods are the offspring of them and overthrow them.
Pudutr0n@feddit.cl 11 hours ago
common sense.
Tedesche@lemmy.world 30 minutes ago
Stupid-ass copium, like all religion.