How do you believe the universe was created? Do you believe in creator god(s)?

[Riothamus12]

So this was sparked by a debate on another forum.

I'm interested in how you guys think the universe was created and whether you believe there was deity involved with it at all?

 
My views fall more in line with emanationism. I believe the universe and the fabric thereof flowed from them rather than being actively created and everything just sort of shaped around that divine architecture.

[NCPilot]

I'm interested in how you guys think the universe was created and whether you believe there was deity involved with it at all?

Honestly, I've never gotten the feel that Luna was involved in the creation of our Universe.  From my interactions with her, it seems like she's an Earth (or Moon) bound deity, so she's not like Yahweh or Odin who can travel to different worlds and different realms.  The moon and Earth is her home, just like Earth is our (humans) home.  

As for how the Universe was created, I'll have to leave that up to the scientist and if they say the Big Bang created the Universe, then the Universe was created by the Big Bang,

[Fionnbharr]

I'm interested in how you guys think the universe was created and whether you believe there was deity involved with it at all?
Also, if you could say what path you are that would be great.

I come from a view that say Life is Everything that is, have been and ever will be. That it is the interaction between energies that creates and recreates Life. My Mythology of Nothing clearly states that Everything does not need to have a beginning...

In the beginning of when life took form on Earth there might have been beings interacting with each other creating and recreating Earth, and of those some of them we might today describe as Gods and Goddesses - does it make them such or is it just a way for humans to better comprehend these ancient beings? Then again time does not have to move in a linear way, so the start of Earth can be somewhere in the middle of it all and all the beginnings can have been spawned from the thoughts and imagination of beings occupying Earth. If one can think it, then it can be possible if one ask me Just thoughts...

I once read an explanation of the creation of the universe that I loved. It simply said it was a giant leap in imagination.

But really from my POV all of this is speculation about something that does not exist, I see the Now as all that there exist.

[Hearth Keeper]

Big Bang.  I see the planets as starting off with a ball of energy--it's their lifeforce, an energy which can neither be created nor destroyed.  An energy that's always existed.  An energy that helped with birthing the planet itself.  That energy, over time, becomes life: Flora, Fauna, Elementals.  Adaptation and Evolution.  Each soul or spirit is simply recycled, reincarnated, not bound to any one species or breed.  

I believe that Humans created the Gods.  Something to explain the natural, perhaps something to explain the the weather, birth, death, Nature Spirits, the Nomadic Spirits, the Animal Spirits they may have been encountering, as Humans tend to do.  Something to explain human experience.  Overtime, combined beliefs, myths, art, gave these beings power.  Turn them from Thoughtforms into Gods.  Keep in mind, I see the Earth, Sun, and Moon as Gods, only they're not personified, like the Olympians, for an example.  I see them as they are.  As a Mother, Father, and Sister (as She was birthed from the Earth).  However, I also work with Hestia and honor Hecate.  No longer thoughtforms, they have their own lives, existing on another plane, and they are far more powerful than I am, with thousands of years of knowledge and experience.

So, no, there's no fancy creation myth for me.  Mine's pretty scientific for the most part, a combination of science, history, and personal experience.

[Laveth]

Big Bang.  I see the planets as starting off with a ball of energy--it's their lifeforce, an energy which can neither be created nor destroyed.  An energy that's always existed.  An energy that helped with birthing the planet itself.  That energy, over time, becomes life: Flora, Fauna, Elementals.  Adaptation and Evolution.  Each soul or spirit is simply recycled, reincarnated, not bound to any one species or breed.  

I believe that Humans created the Gods.  Something to explain the natural, perhaps something to explain the the weather, birth, death, Nature Spirits, the Nomadic Spirits, the Animal Spirits they may have been encountering, as Humans tend to do.  Something to explain human experience.  Overtime, combined beliefs, myths, art, gave these beings power.  Turn them from Thoughtforms into Gods.  Keep in mind, I see the Earth, Sun, and Moon as Gods, only they're not personified, like the Olympians, for an example.  I see them as they are.  As a Mother, Father, and Sister (as She was birthed from the Earth).  However, I also work with Hestia and honor Hecate.  No longer thoughtforms, they have their own lives, existing on another plane, and they are far more powerful than I am, with thousands of years of knowledge and experience.

So, no, there's no fancy creation myth for me.  Mine's pretty scientific for the most part, a combination of science, history, and personal experience.

 

The universe was hatched by a giant chicken...

[Riothamus12]

So this was sparked by a debate on another forum.

I'm interested in how you guys think the universe was created and whether you believe there was deity involved with it at all?
Also, if you could say what path you are that would be great.

My views:

I'm a medium- hard polytheistic, somewhat animistic witch but I don't do much with the gods. I have shrines set up and I do acknowledge them but I don't really involve them with my workings.

As far as I'm concerned about the creation of the universe, it was the big bang and all that jazz. No deity involved. I'm a bit unsure about where I believe the  gods came from. I sort of have the belief that they came along with life when it started on this planet, whether they kick started that I don't know or really care. I don't really believe that they have much, if any, influence outside of the Earth's atmosphere and I kind of think they sort of evolved with the Earth. (And for that case, for life on other planets, those planets have their own gods.)  
I'm a bit wishy-washy about the whole thing because it's not an important part    of my beliefs or practises so I don't really give it much thought. Bit like how I don't really hold firm beliefs about what happens after death because I'm more concerned with the here and now.

I believe rather that the universe flowed from them. I am an emanationist with regards to the creation.I also think humans overestimate their relationship to it. The Gods have always been and always shall be. Humans cannot make them, they are too weak. One cannot call for a person that is not already there. Humans carry a sense of hubris with regards to this. They are the mothers and fathers of all things.

Edit: I forgot I already responded. X_X

[Lykeios Lysios]

A lot depends on framework of approach, too.

Some people might interpret "Let there be light!" as being a description of the Big Bang.  Or refer to the event in mythological terms as being a first word, a first illumination, a first orgasm, what have you.

Hesiod's cosmogony is fascinating in this regard, as it can be interpreted to suggest that formless potentiality (Chaos) gave rise to solid matter (Earth) and gravity/other forms of attraction (Eros).  The theory of it is very geocentric - the production of Night and Darkness follows, then Day and the upper atmosphere, then Heaven, in addition to the heavy-elements-first conception of things - but if you look at it structurally you have a set of abstract entities or personifications evolving until the system starts producing more commonly recognised gods (the generation with Heaven as a parent, of course, produces Kronos and the Titans, who then produce the Olympians).

It's hard for me to come up with a coherent answer to this kind of question, to be honest.  Let us return to Eros in the cosmogony as a well-known example: if one believes that a god has as one of their aspects the manifestation of gravity and/or the electroweak force (and yeah, my systematisation of stuff, while Kemetic rather than Hellenic, has that sort of thing in it), it's not "this god created gravity", it's "gravity is this god".  Where did the gravity come from?  Doesn't matter to the theology, really.

Creation is a funky concept if one's dealing with immanent deity rather than transcendent.  If the "creator" is treated as coextensive with being itself, such that "creator wakes up" and "universe exists" are synonymous, that does not seem at all like the same thing as a transcendent "I made that thing" sort of power.  If the "creator" is something like Hesiod's Chaos/Void, is that really an entity in the same way that things we point at and say "creator" usually are?

This is my belief. I love Hesiod's Theogenesis! I feel it fits in very well with my scientific and analytical tendencies including the Big Bang. It also fits well with Jediism and Taoism, my secondary belief systems.

[Istalri]

I'm interested in how you guys think the universe was created and whether you believe there was deity involved with it at all?
Also, if you could say what path you are that would be great.

I'm going to follow science on this subject and say it was the big bang (or better yet, big expansion). I don't think there was any intervention from a deity in that process. Personally, I tend to follow the idea that the deities are not all powerful and that they are just as much a part and product of the universe as the stars, planets and us. I roughly agree with the duotheistic idea of Wicca in that I believe in a god and goddess but I understand that they are, in a way, broken up into many different ideas and characteristics. In the same way that some people see the elephant's trunk, others see the tail and others see the leg, but all these parts are part of a whole. I think that these parts are all sort of complete and autonomous in their own way, but they all come from the same place originally. If you know anything about quantum field theory, I see a kind of field of divine and at different points there can exist the gods and goddesses people are familiar with that look distinct and separate (in the way that photons and electrons do), but they are all actually products of this field. Again, only a metaphor for my own visualization, but it get's my idea across well enough.

[luc798]

So this was sparked by a debate on another forum.

I'm interested in how you guys think the universe was created and whether you believe there was deity involved with it at all?
Also, if you could say what path you are that would be great.

Well.. As a physicist, I believe in the Big Bang theory of course, with its holes and everything (not all models of universe lead to a big bang, for example and the fact that we have no clue what is the dark energy, what drove the inflation period, where are cosmic strings if any? are there topological defects? or our universe has a weird shape (like a donut?) where are the gravitational waves? and what in the hell is dark matter? trough what mechanism is symmetry broken? are we in a truly vacuum minimum or our universe could just dissapear at any instant? ) ... Anyway!

As I was talking to a very atheist colleague of mine (and there are a lot in this profession) I don't go to religion or spirituality to answer this kind of question or to explain a rainbow.  (his argument was that now that we have science what do we need religion for? )

So, for that I have science. I just believe without any proof and have faith in that the Divinity flows and permeates through everything in a way I will never be able to understand. (actually, I will go farther and say that I don't think science will never be able to "detect" anything to do with it) I was actually reading somewhere I can't quite remember, that paranormal experiments don't work (for example, an experiment to measure telepathic abilities) in the way that normal experiments do (confirmation by repetition) but that they seem to work according to some other statistic more "quantum" like (the more you try to measure and repeat the experiment, the more you fail)  however, that shouldn't invalidate the experience... mmm I should just look for the reference

However I try to take all that pseudo-science that takes the term "quantum" to the extreme and tries to explain God/Godesses in terms of science. For me, just don't.

And yes, I belive that our Gods are tied to the human race but we will take them with us if we ever leave the planet :p (related to some other thread that's around)

Oh, and about me, when I'm not doing research on galaxies, I am eclectic pagan (?) that enjoys reading Tarot and praying to a God and a Godesses without name.    (and I see no contradiction on it !)

[Zoness]

So this was sparked by a debate on another forum.

I'm interested in how you guys think the universe was created and whether you believe there was deity involved with it at all?
Also, if you could say what path you are that would be great.

My views:

I'm a medium- hard polytheistic, somewhat animistic witch but I don't do much with the gods. I have shrines set up and I do acknowledge them but I don't really involve them with my workings.

As far as I'm concerned about the creation of the universe, it was the big bang and all that jazz. No deity involved. I'm a bit unsure about where I believe the  gods came from. I sort of have the belief that they came along with life when it started on this planet, whether they kick started that I don't know or really care. I don't really believe that they have much, if any, influence outside of the Earth's atmosphere and I kind of think they sort of evolved with the Earth. (And for that case, for life on other planets, those planets have their own gods.)  
I'm a bit wishy-washy about the whole thing because it's not an important part    of my beliefs or practises so I don't really give it much thought. Bit like how I don't really hold firm beliefs about what happens after death because I'm more concerned with the here and now.

 
The creation is interesting but after hammering it to death back in my Christian days, I haven't really given it much thought since. I pretty much observe the Big Bang as the accepted scientific position to be the case. Maybe there is some God-like intervention to initiate this process but of course, that's an open position.

[Lydia]

I'm interested in how you guys think the universe was created and whether you believe there was deity involved with it at all?

A deity gave me a vision about the creation (if it could be called that), in the early spring of last year. In this vision, I was told and shown that the universe as we know it was created by an entity of unfathomable evil, called 'the maw of all evils' and similar names. In a higher dimension (not the ordinary dimension of time), said entity irreversibly scrambled the previous universe of perfection (which itself was not created, but existed of itself), and infinitely multiplied and spewed out it's scrambled remnants throughout an infinite breadth of space and time, which results in the universe as we know it. And because the 'scrambling' occurred in a higher dimension (not time), and the 'spew' extends infinitely in all dimensions, there was no big bang. Having believed in the big bang, I was doubtful of the truth of this vision, until I googled around and discovered cosmologystatement.org . Since then, the deity has given me another vision with more detail about the cosmos.

Also, if you could say what path you are that would be great.

I don't know if I could be said to be on any path. I just use certain meditative techniques, which sometimes succeed in allowing me to encounter a deity, who tells and shows me things.

[Lydia]

And because the 'scrambling' occurred in a higher dimension (not time), and the 'spew' extends infinitely in all dimensions,

That should be "extends infinitely in the dimensions of space and time".

[outlaw393]

So this was sparked by a debate on another forum.

I'm interested in how you guys think the universe was created and whether you believe there was deity involved with it at all?
Also, if you could say what path you are that would be great.

Yes, I believe in One creator god who created the Universe and everything in it, including the lesser Pagan gods whom I have met many.

From what I have experienced recently I think this One is dead/gone/or never existed in the first place.

I'm leaning toward dead or gone.

My path? I don't have a path.