A report on Deity and Transcendence (religion)

Kobayashi Eitaku painting showing the god Izanagi (right) and Izanami, a goddess of creation and death in Japanese mythology.
Pantheists believe that the universe itself and everything in it forms a single, all-encompassing deity.
Statuette of a nude, corpulent, seated woman flanked by two felines from Çatalhöyük, dating to c. undefined 6000 BCE, thought by most archaeologists to represent a goddess of some kind.
Yoruba deity from Nigeria
Egyptian tomb painting showing the gods Osiris, Anubis, and Horus, who are among the major deities in ancient Egyptian religion.
A 4th century BC drachm (quarter shekel) coin from the Persian province of Yehud Medinata, possibly representing Yahweh seated on a winged and wheeled sun-throne.
The Kirkby Stephen Stone, discovered in Kirkby Stephen, England, depicts a bound figure, who some have theorized may be the Germanic god Loki.
Vellamo, the goddess of water in Finnish mythology, pictured as a mermaid in the coat of arms of Päijänne Tavastia.
4th-century Roman sarcophagus depicting the creation of man by Prometheus, with major Roman deities Jupiter, Neptune, Mercury, Juno, Apollo, Vulcan watching.
The zoomorphic feathered serpent deity (Kukulkan, Quetzalcoatl)
Deities of Polynesia carved from wood (bottom two are demons)
Holy Trinity (1756–1758) by Szymon Czechowicz, showing God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all of whom are revered in Christianity as a single deity.
The tetragrammaton in Phoenician (12th century BCE to 150 BCE), Paleo-Hebrew (10th century BCE to 135 CE), and square Hebrew (3rd century BCE to present) scripts.
Padmavati, a Jain guardian deity
Investiture of Sassanid emperor Shapur II (center) with Mithra (left) and Ahura Mazda (right) at Taq-e Bostan, Iran
The Greek philosopher Democritus argued that belief in deities arose when humans observed natural phenomena such as lightning and attributed such phenomena to supernatural beings.

In religion, transcendence is the aspect of a deity's nature and power that is completely independent of the material universe, beyond all known physical laws.

- Transcendence (religion)

In most polytheistic religions, the different gods and goddesses are representations of forces of nature or ancestral principles, and can be viewed either as autonomous or as aspects or emanations of a creator God or transcendental absolute principle (monistic theologies), which manifests immanently in nature.

- Deity
Kobayashi Eitaku painting showing the god Izanagi (right) and Izanami, a goddess of creation and death in Japanese mythology.

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The Mesha Stele bears the earliest known reference (840 BCE) to the Israelite God Yahweh.

God

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Usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith.

Usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith.

The Mesha Stele bears the earliest known reference (840 BCE) to the Israelite God Yahweh.
The word 'Allah' in Arabic calligraphy
Trinitarians believe that God is composed of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
God Blessing the Seventh Day, 1805 watercolor painting by William Blake
Thomas Aquinas summed up five main arguments as proofs for God's existence. (Painting by Carlo Crivelli, 1476)
Isaac Newton saw the existence of a Creator necessary in the movement of astronomical objects. Painting by Godfrey Kneller, 1689
99 names of Allah, in Chinese Sini (script)
And Elohim Created Adam by William Blake, c. 1795
Ahura Mazda (depiction is on the right, with high crown) presents Ardashir I (left) with the ring of kingship. (Relief at Naqsh-e Rustam, 3rd century CE)
Use of the symbolic Hand of God in the Ascension from the Drogo Sacramentary, c. 850
The Arabic script of "Allah" in the Hagia Sophia, Istanbul
Praying Hands by Albrecht Dürer

God is most often held to be incorporeal, with said characteristic being related to conceptions of transcendence or immanence.

Atheism is an absence of belief in any God or deity, while agnosticism deems the existence of God unknown or unknowable.

The circled dot was used by the Pythagoreans and later Greeks to represent the first metaphysical being, the Monad or The Absolute

Monism

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Distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One. In this view only the One is ontologically basic or prior to everything else.

Distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One. In this view only the One is ontologically basic or prior to everything else.

The circled dot was used by the Pythagoreans and later Greeks to represent the first metaphysical being, the Monad or The Absolute
A diagram with neutral monism compared to Cartesian dualism, physicalism and idealism.
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Panentheism (from Greek πᾶν (pân) "all"; ἐν (en) "in"; and θεός (theós) "God"; "all-in-God") is a belief system that posits that the divine (be it a monotheistic God, polytheistic gods, or an eternal cosmic animating force) interpenetrates every part of nature, but is not one with nature.

In some forms of panentheism, the cosmos exists within God, who in turn "transcends", "pervades" or is "in" the cosmos.

Immanence

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Manifested in the material world.

Manifested in the material world.

It is often contrasted with theories of transcendence, in which the divine is seen to be outside the material world.

Neoplatonic gnosticism goes on to say the Godhead is the Father, Mother, and Son (Zeus).

The tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew (10th century BCE to 135 CE), old Aramaic (10th century BCE to 4th century CE), and square Hebrew (3rd century BCE to present) scripts.

Monotheism

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The tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew (10th century BCE to 135 CE), old Aramaic (10th century BCE to 4th century CE), and square Hebrew (3rd century BCE to present) scripts.
The Trinity is the belief in Christianity that God is one God in essence but three persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit.
God in The Creation of Adam, fresco by Michelangelo (c. 1508–1512)
Arabic calligraphy reading "Allah, may his glory be glorified"
Mandaean pendant
Baháʼí House of Worship, Langenhain, Germany
Pharaoh Akhenaten and his family adoring the Aten.
Shang Dynasty bronze script character for tian (天), which translates to Heaven and sky.
Krishna displays his Vishvarupa (universal form) to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra.
Faravahar (or Ferohar), one of the primary symbols of Zoroastrianism, believed to be the depiction of a Fravashi (guardian spirit)
A Sikh temple, known as Nanaksar Gurudwara, in Alberta, Canada.
Ik Onkār, a Sikh symbol representing "the One Supreme Reality"
Fictionalized portrait of Xenophanes from a 17th-century engraving
Remains of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece.

Monotheism is the belief that there is only one deity, an all-supreme being that is universally referred to as God.

It has some features of monotheism in that Heaven is seen as an omnipotent entity, a noncorporeal force with a personality transcending the world.

Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses (Juno, Minerva, and Venus), by Isaac Oliver, c. 1558

Divinity

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Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses (Juno, Minerva, and Venus), by Isaac Oliver, c. 1558

Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.

Pantheistic and polytheistic faiths make no such distinction; gods and other beings of transcendent power often have complex, ignoble, or even irrational motivations for their acts.

The Buddha, Laozi, and Confucius in a Ming dynasty painting

Religion

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The Buddha, Laozi, and Confucius in a Ming dynasty painting
"Three laughs at Tiger Brook", a Song dynasty (12th century) painting portraying three men representing Confucianism, Taoism (Daoism), and Buddhism laughing together.
Religious symbols from left to right, top to bottom: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, the Baháʼí Faith, Eckankar, Sikhism, Jainism, Wicca, Unitarian Universalism, Shinto, Taoism, Thelema, Tenrikyo, and Zoroastrianism
Budazhap Shiretorov (Будажап Цыреторов), the head shaman of the religious community Altan Serge (Алтан Сэргэ) in Buryatia.
The Yazılıkaya sanctuary in Turkey, with the twelve gods of the underworld
A map of major denominations and religions of the world
The patriarch Abraham (by József Molnár)
The Torah is the primary sacred text of Judaism.
Jesus is the central figure of Christianity.
Muslims circumambulating the Kaaba, the most sacred site in Islam
The Baháʼí Lotus Temple in Delhi
The Temple of Heaven, a Taoist temple complex in Beijing
Folk depiction of Ganesha in Bharatiya Lok Kala Mandal, Udaipur, India
Depiction of Lord Vishnu
The Padmanabhaswamy Temple houses the Padmanabhaswamy Temple treasure.
The 10th century Gommateshwara statue in Karnataka
Wat Mixay Buddhist shrine in Vientiane, Laos
An 1840 miniature of Guru Nanak
Chickasaw Native cultural/religious dancing
Peyotists with their ceremonial tools
Altay shaman in Siberia
Temple to the city god of Wenao in Magong, Taiwan
Shango, the Orisha of fire, lightning, and thunder, in the Yoruba religion, depicted on horseback
Sacred flame at the Ateshgah of Baku
Ranjit Singh established secular rule over Punjab in the early 19th century.
Average income correlates negatively with (self-defined) religiosity.

Religion is usually defined as a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements; however, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.

Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities and/or saints), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture.