Talk:God

Proposing a change for this page, throughout it refers to Gods in the plural rather than singular. Proposing a change for this page to Gods, rather than God Which leaves open God for what is currently known as God of the Worldsphere, in all of his appearances he is named as God. Also there doesn't appear to be any links to God. --Tangerineduel 06:12, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, the singular form for a title is the standard here. The human article uses Humans within the article. It also seems like an unnecessary amount of work to have to type out [[gods|god]] every time.

Also, is the God of the Worldsphere a god, the God or something named god? <Azes13 14:33, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Well at the basic level its name is God, he fulfils the role of a God (the God of the Worldsphere), but on his first appearance he/it is called God.

It might be a bit or work, but currently there isn't anything liking directly to God, which is why I was thinking of changing it, as God of the Worldsphere, well God is his/its name. --Tangerineduel 15:27, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Then that seems more like it would warrant the God (Worldsphere)' or God (individual) page title. <Azes13 20:24, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Righty that makes sense, I'll change it to God (Worldsphere). --Tangerineduel 07:42, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh. Well, that was easy... <Azes13 14:33, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

"Also there doesn't appear to be any links to God. " That's a profound statement. Monkey with a Gun 05:32, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

God Status

The beginning article doesn't feel right. Based on my experience with the series, in The Satan Pit, I don't remember the Doctor denying a belief in any kind of God, only that he had faced more things claiming or aspiring to be gods than he could shake a stick at. Unfortunately, I have yet to see Destiny of the Daleks (or any of the episodes that apparently deny the existence of a Whoniversal God, for that matter), but based on a few searches online, I don't see any overt references to God or an equivalent power where they are concerned. I'm not about to go in and change it myself for want of personal experience, of course, but could someone help explain a few details here? - Caswin 22:32, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't seem to be right. I can remember at least two references to Doctor being more agnostic than plain atheist and I can't remember any references to god in Castrovalva, Everything Changes or They Keep Killing Suzie. The fact that it's out of universe doesn't really help its case. I'm just going to remove it. -<Azes13 22:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed i cannot remember any god references in those stories either --Dark Lord Xander 04:12, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll agree that the Doctor's comments in The Satan Pit are more to what Caswin is getting at - that he's in the mindset that this is just another powerful alien that's having delusions of grandeur. While I can't remember any specifics to back this up, I've always gotten the sense of the Doctor's attitude being summed up by "God? Never met the fellow."

I also don't remember anything specific in Destiny of the Daleks, but it was written by Douglas Adams, who was passionate about his atheism. So I'm not saying it's not there, I'm just saying that if it is, I'd be surprised if I missed it.

As for the claims that the Torchwood eps cited deny a Whoniversal God (I like that term), I'd disagree - they only deny the existence of an afterlife. Important difference.

The Castrovalva (TV story) reference is a mystery to me. Anybody care to elaborate? - Monkey with a Gun 05:47, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

In all religions gods create the afterlife for their followers (sometimes it's in another world like Christianity and Scientology, sometimes it's in this world like Buddhisim), so without an afterlife there is no God. ABout the Castrovalva thing, well the first cliffhanger was The Fifth Doctor and his companions were taken to the big bang, the explosion that apparently created the universe, in all religion all Gods created the universe without an explosion, they just said "Let their be light" or something and all of a sudden it came to be.--AKR619 05:52, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Okey dokey, this is not the best forum for this, but... the existence of an afterlife is not a universal component of religions. Hinduism, Buddhism, and yes, Scientology all claim the existence of reincarnation which is a profoundly different concept. The nonexistence of an afterlife only would seem to deny religions that specifically claim an afterlife (most forms of Christianity being the most readily accessible example), and then only the fundamentalist versions of those religions that claim total infallibility. For example, a fundamentalist Protestant Christian, who believes that the Bible is a literal document would make that equation (no afterlife = no God), but a Unitarian Universalist, who believes in an unknowable and transcendental God, would not have his or her faith challenged by learning, as the Torchwood team does, that there is no afterlife.

That's what I meant by there being an important difference. Within the Whoniverse, there's no afterlife. To some religions, that would be completely incompatible with their vision of God. Others, it would make no difference. Many would just have to admit they got some details wrong and moved on.

Regarding Event One in Castrovalva (and Terminus (TV story)), the issue there is separating cosmology from theology. The Big Bang is generally accepted in astrophysics, but can be irrelevant to religion, depending on how literally one takes the texts. Additionally, not all religions suppose a moment of universal creation - Hindu belief, for example, believe in a cycle of repeating eons millions of years in length, alternating between periods of improvement and decay (in case you're wondering, we're in a decay period right now). Again, a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible would be incompatible with astrophysics, both in our universe and the Whoniverse; but the Big Bang theory meshes nicely with Deism, a post-Enlightenment theology that posits that a Creator (named God, for lack of a better term) created a universe with an orderly set of natural laws, the laws of physics and mathematics for example, and then kicked it off to see what happens. (Being omniscient, of course, the Creator knows what happens, but the point of the experiment is for it to play out.) The Big Bang was simply the start of the process - "light fuse, get away" as it were.

So... how does all this relate to an article about a sci-fi TV show? Well, it means you could write a book about the religious implications of science fiction, and many people have. It also mean I'm standing by my edits of removing an unequivocal statement that there is no One True Whoniversal God, since the matter (to me) appears to be neither here nor there. There may be, but he hasn't showed up in a canon source yet.

</pontification> Monkey with a Gun 06:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Alrighty...I tried to write the Religion article a while ago, then didn't chuck it up on here (I've now added it, still not really happy about it, but hopefully it can be improved upon). In my reading up on God and Religion in Doctor Who I came across these articles:

• NZDWFC: The Rite Way - A look at Religion in Doctor Who
• NZDWFC: The Bible According to Doctor Who
• The Theology of Doctor Who

• The Theology of Doctor Who (full work) (article posted on a blog site, start at base of article and work up to newest post)

All of which may help in our wonderings about God and religion in the Doctor Who universe. --Tangerineduel 12:35, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a good article. Added a "See Also". Monkey with a Gun 03:37, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

It's a very powerful thing...

... to sit here, in my smug atheism, and look at a page that starts "Editing God." Somewhere, Voltaire and Nietzsche are high-fiving like frat boys. Monkey with a Gun 05:36, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Classical emperors

It's pretty well established that, in most classical empires (Roman, Egyptian, Aztec, etc.), some or all emperors (or pharaohs or overkings or whatever) either were gods, or became gods at death. That includes various people that the Doctor has met, such as Nero.

I'm not sure how well these "gods" qualify according to the terms of the article. They were worshipped as divine beings, but they weren't really "beings of immense power".

So, I just added a general reference to the "Other gods and goddesses" list, rather than trying to make a list of every deified emperor who's ever appeared in Doctor Who. --99.33.26.0 23:09, May 4, 2011 (UTC)

From the viewpoint of someone who has read the full version of THE GOLDEN BOUGH, lots of Joseph Campbell and other basic mythographers, you have fallen into the error of a modern view of god. In older days, everything had a spirit -- an anima, cognate with the word 'animal' including people, animals, trees -- all those dryads and Greek nymphs transformed in trees -- rocks, rivers and so forth. A 'god' was one of those whose worship was demanded, usually one who could do something for or to you, like toss a lightning bolt or sink your ship at sea or, in the case of those deified Roman emperors, as a mark of extreme respect. Think of modern presidential 'libraries' as their equivalent. But, really, everything was a god in greater or lesser amount. It's just that once you left the neighborhood, most of them couldn't do anything to you. None of which is an attempt to comment on the truth of any faith. Boblipton 23:45, May 4, 2011 (UTC)

I've read The Golden Bough too--but even if you accept everything Campbell says, I don't see how it's relevant.

First, the Romans weren't primitive Stone Age animists. They weren't modern Christians either, of course--but they were somewhere in between. Even in the Homeric era, there was a clear distinction between Zeus and a local dryad, a difference that only became clearer as the Greeks and later the Romans became more sophisticated (or pedantic, if you prefer) in their theology. Julius Caesar was formally deified by an official act of the Second Triumvirate, and he had an official cult of worship (until Constantine, of course). This wasn't illiterate peasants giving respect to something they didn't understand; it was philosophically-educated civilized people arguing about what constitutes a god and deciding that Julius counted.

More importantly, even if Julius _were_ akin to a local dryad worshipped by Stone Age peasants, how would that make him less worthy of inclusion than Kronos (worshipped by pre-Homeric Greco-Atlanteans), Light (worshipped by Neanderthals), Orb (the Sun, as worshipped by cavemen in 100,000 BC), Kroll (worshipped by pre-Stone-Age Swampies), etc., who are all on the list?

And, one last point: the Caesars and Pharaohs and so on fit in perfectly with most of the other gods on the list. The others are worshipped by the gullible humans, but the Doctor, and the viewers, know that they're just ordinary aliens, time travelers, local tricksters, etc. In the same way, Julius was worshipped by the gullible Romans, but the Doctor, and the viewers, know that he was just an ordinary politician (well, not quite ordinary, but you get the idea--he wasn't actually supernatural). --99.33.26.0 08:39, May 5, 2011 (UTC)

Gods from real-world religions

It's a bit odd that there's no mention of Yahweh/Allah/whatever in this article. If he exists, he's certainly a "being... of immense power", and whether or not he exists, he's certainly worshipped by many Humans of Earth. There's plenty of in-universe evidence that religion in the Whoniverse from 1963-2011 isn't much different from in the real world, which implies a few billion believers and worshippers, and there are plenty of indications that the Abrahamic religions survive in some form into humanity's expansion beyond Earth.

The same point could be made about Jesus (at least some Christians consider him a separate deity from God, a question that led to many schisms, persecutions, and wars in the past).

And of course the same is true (if not to the same extent) about Ahura Mazda, Odin and friends, the Hindu gods, and so on.

But I have no idea how to fit any of this into the article as it stands today. Adding them to "Human gods", when "most... of these gods were revealed to be aliens" seems likely to arouse a bit of controversy from real-life believers, and it's also odd to include them in a list of gods that we've met on-screen (or on-page) when we've only directly met their followers. --99.33.26.0 23:23, May 4, 2011 (UTC)

If you can cite stories that specifically mention Yahweh, Allah or whatever then it can go in the article. As the article shows at the moment it links specific mentions and story sources.

The article has a Wikipedia link, so we're not excluding stuff, just limiting to what this wiki covers. I'm not sure why the sentence "most of these gods were revealed to be aliens" would cause controversy, Stargate says pretty much the same thing and a fair amount of science fiction goes down the gods are aliens route. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:50, May 5, 2011 (UTC)

Non-existent individual

I noticed God is listed in the non-existent individuals category. Now, I'm not religious at all, but isn't this kind of offensive to those who are? WaltK ☎ 02:24, June 27, 2020 (UTC)

The article doesn't refer to any Abrahamic God or Hindu god. Rather, this is referring to "small g gods" as being non existent, things like Zeus. It just so happens that this wiki always refers to "species" in the singular, not the plural. At best this would offend reconstructionist pagans? Najawin ☎ 02:32, June 27, 2020 (UTC)

I fail to see how this article doesn't include Hindu deities within its purview, of any of many other still-existing polytheistic religions. Furthermore, I think that even if we didn't agree it was offensive, the category is unwarranted. The Doctor keeps bumping individuals who are in fact gods, in the mythological understanding of the term. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 09:18, June 27, 2020 (UTC)

Well, it doesn't specify Hindu deities, so I wouldn't see it as being specifically offensive, but I can definitely see the argument. That said, looking at the definition of the category, "Non-existent individuals are those individuals which don't physically exist within the DWU" - as opposed to individuals that have great impact on our culture IRL that don't actually exist (eg Santa), I'd agree it probably doesn't fit. Depending on what we mean by "physical". Najawin ☎ 09:31, June 27, 2020 (UTC)