360 names for God

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How many names do people from all around world for the past 4.000 years (in all languages) use as a term for God?

How many terms for "myself"?

Do you think it is a coincidence that people from all over the world sense a deity far more than them self in which they fail to describe?

As singular? Maybe 2...maybe a few more.

Without looking too much into it the "Nameless One", is pretty much limited to the Abrahamic religions. All the others that i know of are all named by well names.

like different Gods?

Certainly no coincidence.

Humans anthropomorphize anything; trees, the moon/sun, animals, even the entire universe.
Humans see humans or human like gods everywhere. It is as if we can only see the universe in terms of ourselves.

I read the thread title as, "360 games for God", and thought "Wow! Something to keep The Big Guy entertained!"

Then I read the posts ... never mind.

Who has an actual list of these 360 names for the Almighty?

Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-nine_names_of_Allah

We still have to find the other 261 names.

I suspectb that there are are more names for God than we've seen here. An infinite being would naturally have an unending list of names, encompassing all of Space and Time and Size (infinite bigness/smallness).

And every name he has is of infinite length and infinite shortness, but still infinitely easy to pronounce

I wonder if he can spell them all?

Well, Muslims have 99 names for God, and Jews have around 72. I have no idea how many names Christians have, but the Abrahamic god has at least 171.

And that's not even getting into the myriad of names for the pagan gods...

I thought the exact same thing!

Delirium wrote:

I can't even count all the pagan gods.

I know that language is just symbolic, but my point is that if humans have invented so many names for deities over such a long period of time in our history, how can one deny that there is some basis in fact for such a strong belief. World wide, humans have a tendency to believe in a creator. How can this be coincidental? There must be some truth to such a common human idea.

Depends upon what you call truth. That people have a psychological tendency to look for ultimate causes does not mean that they have discovered one.

Jews have about 72 names for God. How many words do they have to define the self?

Any universal idea does seem likely to contain some truth. Words define our reality. It's not just about searching for a reason to explain why we are here. However, the fact that we have a deep desire to explain the cause of our existence may stem from something real that taps into a supernatural realm. This idea of God is a commonality of our human psyche which experiences God and then wishes to explain it. It seems to be indescribable across all cultures and that is probably why we have more names for God than the self.

There's a lot more money and power to be made in selling fantasies about gods than about the self. Humans always harbor subconscious fears about unknown forces and god protagonists have an easy road to scaring the hell out of (or into) people for their own purposes. It's a great business to promise people wonderful rewards after they're dead since there's no payoff and no complaints.

When Barnum stated that there's a sucker born every minute the world birth rate was a good deal less. It must be down to microseconds by now.

No one is taking money from me in the name of God. The last church I went to is 150 years old and they had collected so much money that they must have stopped collecting it before I was born. That church has plenty of money. Before the pastor needed to leave, we'd sing hymns and read the bible and hear a sermon about it and then talk to each other and have free lunch and cookies. I think they also broadcasted on the radio. I wish they get a new pastor because it is a very nice church compared to any other I ever went to. Even though it is probably the most famous (as a landmark) church on Long Island it surprised me that it was never as full as any other ones I went to.