This is a good question, MG, thank you for participating rather than derailing.MG wrote:So, gadianton, at the end of the day do you find the relatable, material God greater than the abstract one?
In the story of the Sneetches that I had AI comment on in this thread, is it better to have a star or not have a star?
Imagine two competing religions that have gone to war for centuries, one worships Zeus and the other Thor. One day while fighting, Zeus and Thor actually appear overhead and everyone stops to watch the great gods do battle. It's hard to say before the fact if a lightning bolt is more powerful than a magic hammer. But suppose Zeus throws this epic bolt that leaves Thor's body crushed to the ground and motionless. The perfect "fatality" move, if you ever played Streetfighter2. Then Zeus throws bolts at Thor's followers, killing them. With the advantage, Zeus's followers begin to capture Thor's followers and imprison them.
Thor's body slowly decays and rots and merges with the elements until nothing is left. Zeus's cult is triumphant. Many of Thor's followers convert and are allowed to live. Many are punished and tortured and convert under duress. A few though don't convert. Rumor spreads among the stalwarts that Thor was just playing dead. His spirit has now absorbed into the wind and he's watching, waiting for the right time to strike. When he does, the wicked who punished the helpless Thorites will be sorry. However, once Thor returns to destroy Zeus once and for all and destroys the truly wicked who showed themselves as villains, he will have mercy on the rest, and even feed the families of the fallen soldiers of Zeus. This spirit-Thor relates not only to the remaining struggling Thorites, but a few from the Zeus cult are listening. Many bit their tongue but just weren't good with Zeus being such a sore winner. After he won, why did he go overboard and start killing everyone for no reason? It made some sense, if you really thought about it, that Thor pretended to lose just to show the truth about Zeus's weakness of temperament. What a master move. What control. The final great battle should be pretty damn good.
So no, I don't think we can say a God with a body is more relatable than a God without a body without more information.
