Secular Students at Iowa, a group for agnostic and atheist University of Iowa students, is planning to host its second annual "Graveyard of Gods" display on the UI Pentacrest during Halloween week.
As with last year’s display, the group plans to fill an area near the Old Capitol with about 50 tombstones that each contain the name of an ancient deity. The display is scheduled to be up from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct. 30.
“We tried to get a broad collection of gods from various cultures,” said Ian Wold, the student group's public relations coordinator. "We wanted a good sample to show that this is a trend throughout history and throughout culture.”
Some of the gods featured on the tombstones will include:
The display, Wold said, is meant to make an a visual argument against the famous philosophical wager offered by the 17th-century mathematician Blaise Pascal: That it’s supposedly in everyone’s best interest to behave as if God exists, because the possibility of eternal punishment outweighs any advantage in this world of believing otherwise.
“Pascal’s wager doesn’t work because it assumes there is only one god to make a wager against,” he said. “It’s simply impossible when applied to the worship of all these gods.”
The display – which is part of a national event run by the non-profit group, Secular Student Alliance – takes inspiration from the late H.L. Mencken's 1922 essay, "Memorial Service.” The essay begins with the question, "Where is the grave-yard of dead gods?" and lists the names of more than 200 gods that largely have passed out of contemporary worship.
http://www.press-citizen.com/story/.../ui-student-group-host-gods-display/74285876/
As with last year’s display, the group plans to fill an area near the Old Capitol with about 50 tombstones that each contain the name of an ancient deity. The display is scheduled to be up from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct. 30.
“We tried to get a broad collection of gods from various cultures,” said Ian Wold, the student group's public relations coordinator. "We wanted a good sample to show that this is a trend throughout history and throughout culture.”
Some of the gods featured on the tombstones will include:
- The Dagda, a father-figure and protector god of Irish mythology.
- Perkunas, the Baltic god of thunder and an important deity within Lithuanian and Latvian mythology.
- Jupiter, the king of the Roman pantheon.
- Loki, the trickster god of Norse mythology.
- Ogoun, a Latin American warrior god and a spirit of metal work.
The display, Wold said, is meant to make an a visual argument against the famous philosophical wager offered by the 17th-century mathematician Blaise Pascal: That it’s supposedly in everyone’s best interest to behave as if God exists, because the possibility of eternal punishment outweighs any advantage in this world of believing otherwise.
“Pascal’s wager doesn’t work because it assumes there is only one god to make a wager against,” he said. “It’s simply impossible when applied to the worship of all these gods.”
The display – which is part of a national event run by the non-profit group, Secular Student Alliance – takes inspiration from the late H.L. Mencken's 1922 essay, "Memorial Service.” The essay begins with the question, "Where is the grave-yard of dead gods?" and lists the names of more than 200 gods that largely have passed out of contemporary worship.
http://www.press-citizen.com/story/.../ui-student-group-host-gods-display/74285876/
