CONVERSATIONS IN THE PANTHEON - The Truth about God and Religion

Where did the Ancient Gods Go?

Thomas: Last year I took my family to Rome and part of the guided tour was a visit to the ancient roman Pantheon. We were amazed that it's still standing and so well preserved. We were told that it was actually a temple and used to be filled with the effigies of the ancient roman gods. Then, when Catholicism became the empire's religion, they were unceremoniously thrown out. Nowadays, not too many people can recall their names. They disappeared into the dustbin of history. Such is the fate of the gods!

Mathew: They met the fate they deserved. They were imposters and were defeated by the true god, which the emperor Constantine recognized almost two thousand years ago. If it hadn't been for him, Christians would have continued to be martyred until none were left. But god, fearing this outcome, appeared to Constantine in a dream and told him to stop the persecutions.

Mary: We will never know the truth. If god had been really concerned about the christian persecutions, it would have put a stop to them long before. He didn't have to wait three hundred years to do it. Some history books suggest that it was Constantine's mother that pressured him to accept Christianity because she was sympathetic to Christians. Some even say that she had secretly converted. She was the real power behind the empire!

Thomas: Why didn't the roman gods fight back? There were so many of them; they could have easily overpowered the christian gods (father, son and holy spirit). I know what you're going to say Mathew – the roman gods were mythical; they had no real power – but it was under their guidance that the roman republic prospered and then became an empire. Those mythical gods led roman armies from victory to victory and emperors paid homage to them. Where these emperors not intelligent people? Each one, in a long succession of consuls and emperors, went before the gods to honour them.

Mary: How do we really know that the roman gods were mythical? Has anyone of us seen the christian god? How do we know that he is not mythical? Belief in god is simply taken on faith. The Romans, just like the Greeks and other peoples before them, had strong faith in their gods. Look at the number of temples they built to honour them. Some are still standing to this day! The ancient Greeks were no dummies. They invented philosophy and mathematics. Think of Archimedes, Euclid and Pythagoras, or Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. 

Mathew: Almost two billion people call themselves Christians. They can't all be fools. They don't see god but they feel his presence. Everything they do is guided by him. Look at all the good work that's been done by christian missionaries all over the world. They all did it in the name of god and were guided by him. Thanks to them, Christianity has spread throughout the world. It's a global religion because god wanted it that way. People of all skin colour in every part of the world worship the true god. There has to be a reason why they gave up their previous gods. They must have seen the light sent from god and converted.

Mary: Sometimes that light was a bullet at the end of a gun. History tells us that many conversions, especially those in the new world were forced. That's not denying that many missionaries were altruistic and did a lot of good work, but their missions were to convert people to enrich the Vatican, not for the glory of god. After all, they didn't consider American natives as enlightened and cultured people, which they were, but as savages and heathens who were better dead than alive, if the didn't convert. This colonial mentality prevails even today. How could the christian god have allowed such brutality?

Thomas: If the christian god is the true one, as you claim, Mathew, why do we have other gods and religions? Three quarter of the world's population doesn't believe in Christianity. How can that be? Isn't your god all powerful? Why does it tolerate so many imposters? Of course, other religions believe their god is the true one. So, logic suggests that there is no true god. They're all imposters, just as true and mythical as the ancient greek and roman gods.

Mathew: I can't speak for all the other religions, but my god is the heavenly father; the creator of heaven and earth. Nothing existed before him and everything exists because of him.

Thomas: My Hindu friend makes the same claim you do. Hindus believe that Brahma was the creator of the universe. Brahma is part of the trinity of gods, which includes Vishnu and Shiva, who are responsible for creation, preservation and destruction, respectively. They also believe that the universe was created and destroyed many many times. In fact, they also believe that the universe sprang forth from the golden egg, a concept similar to the big bang, which now has overwhelming scientific support.

Mary: I personally don't understand the big bang because I'm not a physicist, but my physicist colleagues do and are convinced about its truth. They tell me that there has been so much independent verification of the theory that there's little doubt about how the universe began. It's fascinating because it solves the problem of which god created it. It's not just the claims of Christians and Hindus, every ancient culture had a creator god. There were myriads of them.

Thomas: I have looked into the big-bang theory and written articles on it for the paper. As a result, I'm also a strong believer of it. The big-bang theory does away with all creator gods. They were not needed to create it and neither to sustain it.

Mathew: Supposing that the universe was created by the big bang, and I'm not saying it was, why do we have so many religions claiming that their god was the creator? Seems to me that every ancient culture felt the presence of god innately. Each may have referred to the same creator using different names and given it different characteristics, but clearly, they all felt god's presence. To me, that means that god exists and everything we see was created by him.

Mary: Whether god exists or not is still a question to be debated, but can you stop calling god a he? If god exists it would most likely be a she because it is the female that gives life. No man has been born but from the womb of a woman! I know what you're going to say. The old testament says that god is a he. But the old testament was written by sexist men, who held women to be subservient to them. Interestingly, in some ancient cultures, god is a female and in others it is neither male nor female. Those cultures were more enlightened than the one that gave us the Old Testament.

Thomas: You have raised an interesting point, Mathew: the fact that all ancient cultures intuited god's presence means that god must exist. This is certainly a point that we will debate next week.