Why do webnovels and such name powerful characters as Gods? from what i know, God is a omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. that means there can only be one God since there can be no two extistence with omnipotence. And this brings me back to my topic, for example a being like Zeus from the greek methology who gets called a God. on a scale of Human to God is infinetly closer to Humans than Zeus will ever be to God. The 'Gods' that the novels use are just higher beings, or higher lifeforms. since even for us humans immortality is not such a far fetched thing as long as our technology progresses. but true 'God' can basically wipe out or make an universe, multiverse and the omniverse with a single thought.
so you approach from religion definition? cuz your definition indeed closer to monotheistic religion~ go learn other type religion or culture for definition of god will ya? since you mention greek then go try see their approach to what is a god then maybe you can at least know the approach of God on webnovel~ ╮(╯▽╰)╭
The monotheistic definition of a god that you're basing your thoughts on is only really prominent in the Abrahamic religions as far as I'm aware. There are vastly more old polytheistic religions such as Greek, Norse, and ancient Egyptian beliefs among others. Similar to how you say Zeus or similar deities are infinitely far from the monotheistic God than they are from humans, it could also be argued that in their near humanity they are infinitely more conceivable as opposed to something that is already all powerful by every metric demanding worship from lesser beings. Such omnipresent omnipotence is more akin to an Eldritch deity now that I think of it.
"God" (big G) is not the same as "god" (small G) That's God, you got that right, but not (likely) the case of "god" There's a reason we have "goddess" and "gods" after all Another note, English may use the "same" term for "the being that rules over human beings", but many other languages have different words to distinguish these two beings.
Even in Christianity, there are many "gods": while there is only one Creator and Supreme God, he created many among his heavenly host, and originally appointed them to the different races on earth. Many rebelled and set themselves up as specific gods of their appointed races. One of the purposes of Christ’s coming was to vanquish these usurpers, and thus paganism/polytheism, which obviously has been successful. Islam, some sects of Hinduism and many others exist and are just a single search engine query away...
Islam is one of the Abrahamic religions I mentioned, which primarily consist of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Hinduism in general is polytheistic, unless you count the unity of existence as a deity I suppose. Followers sometimes worship a single deity, but not usually to the detriment of other beliefs as far as I'm aware. I certainly don't know everything on the subject so there probably are some smaller monotheistic beliefs I don't know of though.
While I'm not bothered with the usage of the word god, I am bothered with how some novels put gods/deities so low on the power levels they don't have meaning anymore. From what I get from my Hindu acquaintance, his understanding is that the 3 main gods (Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu) are the incarnations of the One God. We didn't get to the lesser gods in our conversation, but I'm guessing they're either also incarnation or manifestation of power of the main gods?
The funny thing is, many of the polytheistic religions have an omnipotent deity like the one you're mentioning, but then the children of the deity kill that deity because as the children of God they each inherited some of his powers, so together they're stronger. The reason being usually something along the lines of "Hey, our parent is really dangerous to us and to the world and s/he's all-powerful so let's get rid of him/her". The only difference between those scenes and the ones from Abrahamic myths is that the angelic host wasn't united against that particular God. Plus, there wouldn't be a need to call God "the Almighty God" repeatedly if being omnipotent was part of the definition. It would be about as redundant as "ATM machine".
Huh, learned something new today. From what I've heard I mostly knew there were multiple deities and the attempt to escape rebirth by unifying with existence. Now I'm curious whether that would count as either mono or polytheism. Since despite there being the concept of the Trinity within Christianity it is still considered monotheistic, but would that hold up for how, as you mentioned, there are multiple lesser gods that probably are also incarnations along with the main 3 incarnations.
Think about it this way- there is no such thing as the same story (excluding plagiarism). No two stories will have the same magic system and ways to use magic. They might be similar but no way copy and paste. It’s the same here. We have our definition of higher beings and the novel has its own. It happens to be some words overlap.
True. As a Muslim myself, I can actually proof that we believe in one God, Allah. Sometimes I have to be carefully when written on paper so rather than his names we write “God” “Lord” or “Creator.” Monotheistic belief is a good example to explain our religion, Islam. But remember. We have two different title for people in this religion. Muslim and Momin. Sometimes we consider every one who enters Islam as a Muslim if they are doing/had done the five steps, they are important to be consider as a real Muslim. A Momin are people who are really religious and are emotionally attached to Allah, love fear and a third one I’m not sure what exactly is in English. The Quran is also one of the important ones in this religion. Our book is basically messages he told his angels to write down from him. (Interested in their writing but the original papers probably didn’t survive due to many people back then had burned multiple of our books…) And some people separate themselves from Sunni and Shia. If you are a true person to Islam, we don’t separate each other just due to a belief that the Muslims split in those two people(if you know about the difference between them). Abu Bakr and Ali are both our last prophet friends and people sometimes just do whatever they want without consulting them about it. Eh, that’s all I’m going to say since I don’t want to bother you guys much about it just I’m afraid by researching can lead to the wrong places
In Chinese cultivation stories, becoming an immortal makes you a god. And you can become an immortal through cultivating your "soul". The only difference between a mortal and a god is infinite life and massive amounts of magical power. And obviously, if you continue to cultivate after you become an immortal, you become a more powerful god. The most powerful can break the chains of reality and go to different worlds where there are yet stronger immortals. Eventually, I suppose the strongest of the strong must be considered the big "G" god. But it's not a fixed person. Become strong enough and you too can become the almighty! By that time though, they are so far removed from the lives of mortals as to be as amoeba to them. Insignificant, invisible, and not thought of in the slightest except by those who study them. Which, when you're the almighty "G", you have bigger problems on your hands, like beating down the next challenger and trying to make sure your very existence doesn't destroy too many realities. Can you blame the mortals for being satisfied to call the weakest of immortals, gods? They're the only ones that are closest to their comprehension of what existence even is.
Yes, I get what yall mean but the novels should change their names to something more like a Deity than God, because most of people think of The GOD when the word god is mentioned and more often than not it often breaks my immersion in the novel. Or just come up with a new word altogether for beings with divinity or faith related powers.
I don't think anybody jumps to THE God when reading that. Especially when you're talking about the Japanese and Chinese novels, the primary audience for which aren't even that well-acquianted with monotheistic religions and are more polytheistic in general.
That's just the problem of translation. Also I think it's a YOU problem because I never think about G-d when I read these East Asian novels. Their essential belief is 'overriding cosmic power' that guide everything, even these little gods.
you sound like a christian... there's this term call polytheistic.... Also In most xianxia novels, god can be a birth right or its a certain "level" you achieve. It doesn't necessarily mean ur omni LMAO also this is something cultural. Chinese dont see gods as all might and omni. To put it nicely, they're gods. To be harsher, they're our workers/employees. Literally. That's our whole attitude.