what does it take to be divine?

I post this question because I am really confused about how the Roman Catholics proclaimed a person to be divine. What does really it take to be divine? Is it the number of followers? Is it the miracles you've done which it so profound with the human world? Is it of your goodness? Is it how many loved you? Is it by not having sinned at all? Is it not marrying a woman or not doing sex? Is it the closeness of God? Or is it just to say you are divine?
If divinity is measured by how numerous your followers would be, then we can say there are many divine people in this world. If we measure divinity by the miracles you've made, then perhaps those miracles beyond human comprehension that are performed by people and practice by some may be called divine as well. Like the paranormals, etc. If divinity is known because of your goodness, then I would rigth now audition for it so that I can be called divine. If for us, divinity is how we are loved by others, then each and every one of us would have been divined since we were born because we are loved by our parents and loved ones. Do we measure divinity by our sinfulness? Like if we sinned less, then we are more likely to be called divine. Or divinity is just like celebracy in priesthood. If you are not married, you're divine. If you have not sexed a woman or women, then you're divine. Divinity is measure by how close we are to our God Almighty since he's the one who created us. But I think, divinity is just a title given only to males. It is a title of supremacy and somewhat political in nature. We say Jesus is divine because he's a male. He has done wonderful things and the lots. But are we expecting that there will be another one to be called as divine? For me, I am expecting someone. HOw about you?
P.S: In your reply, can you answer my question; what does it take to be divine? Thanks.

Its impossible to answer your question. Every person believes differently. The definition of "divination" depends on the person. Its another nature vs nurture arguments. Basically, if you're brought up to believe no sex makes you divine, then by faith in what you are taught you believe it. Why do you think there are nuns. I can answer only what I personally believe divination is. Here's the better questions, What does divination mean to you? What is it to you? and Is there really a such thing as divination or is it a myth in stories of old?

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Originally Posted by accountansiyot

I post this question because I am really confused about how the Roman Catholics proclaimed a person to be divine. What does really it take to be divine?

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Ok I will try to answer this but it is based on my limited knowledge of catholicism (and even that knowledge is not really reliable as it is from being brought up a protestant/ "Rangers man" in glasgow).

Divinity in the catholic church is determined by the Pope and councils such as the one at Nicea.As the catholics consider the Pope to be infallible (always correct) if he says someone is divine, then they are. I am not sure if the many saints are themselves considered to be divine or not......Perhaps one of the catholics on the forum can fill this out.

On a personal level, as a non-believer, I do not consider anyone to be divine.

Saints are not divine. They are holy people. From Wiki:

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Saint is a term used to refer to someone who is a holy person. The term comes from the New Testament, where it is used to refer to all Christian believers. Over the years the term has grown to be used and accepted in other Christian, religious, and even secular contexts, to refer to those who are considered to be exceptionally virtuous or glorified in heaven. Hence a "saint" (cont. with sinner) is a (usually deceased) person whose life is regarded by a community as a good example, and their life story is remembered for sake of inspiring others.

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There is much more and you can read it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint

to be divine u must have the ability of making 1 plus 1 equal 3 and making it make sense!

Hmm...What does it takes to be divine?

Well...I think to be divine is to be godlike or like a God...

Which means to be divine depends on who is your God...

Eitherway, you can't be divine just because you have ONE characteristics of a God...Whatever that may be...

You must have ALL the characteristics of a God...Whoever your God may be...

Now, as far as I'm concerned, there are very few people in the world today that I would considered to be divined or near divinity...Still, I have doubts on them as well...

Hi! Saw this post and thought I would add my two penneth....

I see it this way - very simplistically really...

In the beginning God existed on his own - totally self-contained.
He then decides to create a spiritual family and sets about creating His Son...

(Colossians 1:15-17) .*.*.He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16*because by means of him all [other] things were created in the heavens and upon the earth, the things visible and the things invisible, no matter whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities. All [other] things have been created through him and for him. 17*.*.*.


Then he and his Son set about creating a multitude of other spirit sons - Seraphs - Cherubs and other lower ranking angels.

Then he decides to use his Son to create a physical universe (universes??)
and taking some of his own essence - i.e. part of his own spirit body - he changes that 'dynamic energy' into matter and explodes it in the big bang thereby creating the material universe.

Isaiah 40: 26....*“Raise YOUR eyes high up and see. Who has created these things? It is the One who is bringing forth the army of them even by number, all of whom he calls even by name. Due to the abundance of DYNAMIC ENERGY, he also being vigorous in power, not one [of them] is missing.

Then he chooses a planet that is exactly right for the life-forms he is planning to create and makes the first human pair (Genesis Chapter 1)

He uses his Son to do this ('Let US create')

(Proverbs 8:22-31) . . .Jehovah himself produced me as the beginning of his way, the earliest of his achievements of long ago. 23 From time indefinite I was installed, from the start, from times earlier than the earth. 24 When there were no watery deeps I was brought forth as with labor pains, when there were no springs heavily charged with water. 25 Before the mountains themselves had been settled down, ahead of the hills, I was brought forth as with labor pains, 26 when as yet he had not made the earth and the open spaces and the first part of the dust masses of the productive land. 27 When he prepared the heavens I was there; when he decreed a circle upon the face of the watery deep, 28 when he made firm the cloud masses above, when he caused the fountains of the watery deep to be strong, 29 when he set for the sea his decree that the waters themselves should not pass beyond his order, when he decreed the foundations of the earth, 30 then I came to be beside him as a master worker, and I came to be the one he was specially fond of day by day, I being glad before him all the time, 31 being glad at the productive land of his earth, and the things I was fond of were with the sons of men.

Now.... this is my point....

If we trace the atoms that make up our bodies back we trace them all the way back to that Big Bang and thence to the very body of God from whom all things were made...

So as I see it WE ARE DIVINE in our nature inasmuch as the material we are made from was originally made from a divine source - The Very substance of Jehovah God himself!!

Simples!


David.

I'm pretty sure that Virgil's right, the Catholics don't actually make people "divine." Saints are people who get a special place in heaven, they aren't divine in the sense that they are actually a deity themselves.

However, the ancient Romans did deify people (not Roman Catholics). When an emperor died, it would be declared to the masses that (rather then just being some dead guy) he was made into a god. They'd set up statues, temples, pray to the dead emperor... it wasn't just emperors either, it could be their friends or family too. One emperor had a pretty young boyfriend who was cruising around the Nile on a boat, getting drunk with his friends. The kid fell into the river and drowned, so the emperor just decided to make him a god, and it was so.

So I guess in answer to your question, if you want to be divine you have to either be in a position of power or be friends with someone who is, then you have to die, then your deification has to be declared to the public who are then ordered to worship you. Nothin' to it, really.

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Originally Posted by accountansiyot

If you have not sexed a woman or women, then you're divine.

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:lol:

To be divine is to be content with oneself and have self-realisation. ....like Budhha

No race, religion, caste can claim to be divine. Budhha says Everyone can be Buddha

and Budhha means The Enlighted One

Attaining divinity demands of us many things in Hinduism, purity of mind, body and thought, sacrificial deeds, submissiveness, renunciation, prayers, devotion and the like.
Divinity is kind of attained thru understanding called Gyan. There is no synomym for Gyan in English. The nearest word is understanding. Understanding that one is the universe and all the stuff in it in a microcosm and with this understanding one will be enlightened.

In my opinion, i don't think that the title of "divine" should be used exclusively for very few people.

It is stated very strongly in the Catholic Bible that everyone is a child of god and are all equal. Maybe being divine isn't something that is only decided by the church, perhaps we were all born divine and special. And when we die, we might all go to the same place.

However, if someone commits a heinous act, they would forever lose their divinity.

Divinity is for sale now, and they have packaged it into different sizes, shapes and colors. It is customized and suited to meet your own needs and tastes in point of fact. There are so many addresses you can find in print, on TV commercials and in the Internet. All you must do is prepare yourself for spending your hard earned bucks everything will arrive at your door.

Divinity is commoditized and differentiated tailoring it considering your savor. You can place order and developers or producers deliver divinity instantly to you. It has been cheapened by producing it through economies of scale and you can buy divinity in bulk amounts and refrigerate or shelve them for your future need. It is likened to buying a TV set or new car and the satisfaction you get is likened to having a new car. Mind you, you must change your car every two years or you will find it discussing after a while.

Of course this is allegorically expressed here with the intent to tell you how cheap divinity has been. Of course earlier when I was a child divinity was on sale in churches or temples or synagogues or monasteries or mosques. But now you can find it wrapped up in beautiful and glossy enclosures fairly at a very economic price.

I oftentimes visit temples to come across people who go there to redeem themselves from the sins they have committed and those businessmen who think that taking bribes or dodging taxes is a sin but you can cleanse yourself of it by donating a fragment of it. I see large masses lining up there for redemption.

If you think your sin is too big you can go to a redeemer who has reengineered the booty taking into consideration the size and extent of your sin. The larger the sin the larger the divinity package you must purchase.

In this world everything is purchasable with no exception with divinity.


When I was a child we prayed in chorus. I was told that God is pure divinity and powerful and he is a benefactor. Later on I had come across a pack that had a different idea about God, divinity and heaven. They told me God is a name thru which the corrupt pundits or some priests can cheat the poor and there used to be discussion that involved the topic of indulgence, the fat money those who sell divinity providers amassed. The topic went beyond such issues to a world of communisms and how they developed their countries and the like.

Now of course I do not hold these ideas and I do not hold any particular faith or belong to a particular political ideology and I look on an equal footing now.
That said I am not a die hard atheist and they are not better off with their disbeliefs. All the same all I feel is that today religions have been platforms for atrocity, crime, violence and the like and they birthed fundamentalists massively and I have heard about things in churches and temples.

Divinity in its purest form may or may not exist but the way they are kind of advertized today is something that entails the fact that there is no check and people in being religious are succumbing to irreligious-life.

This question is inherently flawed.

The collective and broadly accepted understanding of what we'd categorize as divine is in all actuality an accepted fallacy. The inherent problem is that the concept of divinity entails a perfect higher state of being; yet this concept was completely created by imperfect, fallible human beings.

How are we, as an eternally fallible creature, supposed to define, categorize, comprehend, and understand a higher state of being? How are we supposed to comprehend something that by our very own definition is supposed to be beyond our capacity to understand?

Defining and understanding divinity is a flawed approach to an end that was never there. No matter how much logic we may use, or how fine-tuned our reasoning skills may be, the act of defining something which we did not possess the ability to create a concept of in the first place is a charade acting in a theater of futility.

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Originally Posted by kilted exile

Ok I will try to answer this but it is based on my limited knowledge of catholicism (and even that knowledge is not really reliable as it is from being brought up a protestant/ "Rangers man" in glasgow).

Divinity in the catholic church is determined by the Pope and councils such as the one at Nicea.As the catholics consider the Pope to be infallible (always correct) if he says someone is divine, then they are. I am not sure if the many saints are themselves considered to be divine or not......Perhaps one of the catholics on the forum can fill this out.

On a personal level, as a non-believer, I do not consider anyone to be divine.

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Nicaea would be in modern day anatolia. Hence, this council you speak of could certainly not be catholic but orthodox...

A whole lot of magic for a whole lot of miracles!

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Originally Posted by Molpadia

This question is inherently flawed.

The collective and broadly accepted understanding of what we'd categorize as divine is in all actuality an accepted fallacy. The inherent problem is that the concept of divinity entails a perfect higher state of being; yet this concept was completely created by imperfect, fallible human beings.

How are we, as an eternally fallible creature, supposed to define, categorize, comprehend, and understand a higher state of being? How are we supposed to comprehend something that by our very own definition is supposed to be beyond our capacity to understand?

Defining and understanding divinity is a flawed approach to an end that was never there. No matter how much logic we may use, or how fine-tuned our reasoning skills may be, the act of defining something which we did not possess the ability to create a concept of in the first place is a charade acting in a theater of futility.

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Just because a perfected, higher state of being isn't here, now, existing in modern society and being propagated doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. What sense would that make? Sri Aurobindo makes the wonderful point in this regard: before humans exsited, an ape would probably not be able to understand that in the future there would live a being on earth who would cross the oceans in airplanes, build civilizations, roads and cities, create language and live in society according to laws governed by reason. The ape probably couldn't fathom these things, much less that said being would evolve from the ape itself.

In the same way, a divine life on earth is difficult for us to make out, to envisage and understand with our mental capacities. Divinity is beyond the mental platform. But if we just look at history from an objective point of view, it is very clear. If we look at our history, what we evolved from, then we can see what we may evolve into - a divine life on earth.

My ideas from Sri Aurobindo come mostly from his work, The Divine Life.

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Originally Posted by NikolaiI

Just because a perfected, higher state of being isn't here, now, existing in modern society and being propagated doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

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At no point in my post did I say that a higher state of being didn't exist. Please read it again.

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What sense would that make? Sri Aurobindo makes the wonderful point in this regard: before humans exsited, an ape would probably not be able to understand that in the future there would live a being on earth who would cross the oceans in airplanes, build civilizations, roads and cities, create language and live in society according to laws governed by reason. The ape probably couldn't fathom these things, much less that said being would evolve from the ape itself.

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And I don't disagree. In fact, you just reinforced my entire point.

At no point in my entire post did I say that a higher state of being or divine nature didn't exist. I said that it was an act in futility trying to define, categorize, or understand a concept which by our very own definition is beyond the capacity of the human mind to comprehend. You said it yourself - go back to the Neolithic Era and ask someone how a helicopter works; not only would he not know how it works, it would be far beyond his capacity to envision or understand. His mind had not evolved at that point to a state of mechanical understanding as advanced as something like what a helicopter is, letalone even the concept of flying.

This was my whole point. I never said that divinity didn't exist. I said that if it does, there is no way for us to know or conceive what it would be like, as it would be above us. It is a moot effort to define what it takes to be divine, as we cannot conceive what divinity is.

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In the same way, a divine life on earth is difficult for us to make out, to envisage and understand with our mental capacities. Divinity is beyond the mental platform. But if we just look at history from an objective point of view, it is very clear. If we look at our history, what we evolved from, then we can see what we may evolve into - a divine life on earth.

My ideas from Sri Aurobindo come mostly from his work, The Divine Life.

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And again, I don't disagree. You just misunderstood my post.

I'm not saying divinity exists. I'm not saying it doesn't either. I'm just saying that it's ironic and contradictory to define what entails being divine if the whole point of divinity is to be beyond our ability to comprehend.

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Originally Posted by accountansiyot

I post this question because I am really confused about how the Roman Catholics proclaimed a person to be divine. What does really it take to be divine? Is it the number of followers? Is it the miracles you've done which it so profound with the human world? Is it of your goodness? Is it how many loved you? Is it by not having sinned at all? Is it not marrying a woman or not doing sex? Is it the closeness of God? Or is it just to say you are divine?
If divinity is measured by how numerous your followers would be, then we can say there are many divine people in this world. If we measure divinity by the miracles you've made, then perhaps those miracles beyond human comprehension that are performed by people and practice by some may be called divine as well. Like the paranormals, etc. If divinity is known because of your goodness, then I would rigth now audition for it so that I can be called divine. If for us, divinity is how we are loved by others, then each and every one of us would have been divined since we were born because we are loved by our parents and loved ones. Do we measure divinity by our sinfulness? Like if we sinned less, then we are more likely to be called divine. Or divinity is just like celebracy in priesthood. If you are not married, you're divine. If you have not sexed a woman or women, then you're divine. Divinity is measure by how close we are to our God Almighty since he's the one who created us. But I think, divinity is just a title given only to males. It is a title of supremacy and somewhat political in nature. We say Jesus is divine because he's a male. He has done wonderful things and the lots. But are we expecting that there will be another one to be called as divine? For me, I am expecting someone. HOw about you?
P.S: In your reply, can you answer my question; what does it take to be divine? Thanks.

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This sounds like homework. Here is a paper that i wrote a while back on what virtue is, for an Honor English class. Divinity and virtue are, as i understand it, essentially the same. (got an A- :thumbs_up)



Socrates states that “we should be right to call divine also those soothsayers and prophets who we just mentioned, and all the poets, and we should call no less divine and inspired those public men who are no less under the gods’ influence and possession...How does this list of divine work into Socrates’ argument?

Meno attempted to attribute virtue to material possession, health, and righteousness, but Socrates showed that all these attribution is flawed and that nobody knows what virtue is. What Socrates stated is the conclusion that evolved from the argument he began: the human soul as being immortal and can be reborn with a latent wisdom of past lives.

Socrates showed Meno that we do not learn but recollect from our past lives by asking one of Meno’s slave a series of questions pertaining a square and its area. In the end, Socrates successfully convinced Meno that the slave already had the knowledge in him and that he needs only to recollect. The demonstration with the slave is an attempt to find the truth of something we don’t yet know, or can ever be known—one of it being virtue. Having Meno come to recognize that virtue is a part of what we don’t yet know because of its nature, Socrates then can attribute virtue to divinity.

Meno asked Socrates in whether virtue is teachable or is it a gift, and if it is a natural gift then how does it come to men. Socrates and Meno concluded that virtue couldn’t be taught with the help of Anytus, a wealth politician. The reason that virtue can’t be taught is that there are no teachers of virtue, and if there are no teachers then there are no pupils to be taught: the most virtuous man can fail to teach his son to be virtuous, or, vise-versa, a virtuous son can come from an unrighteous father. Accepting that virtue can’t be taught, Socrates and Meno investigate further to find what virtue is by speaking about the man with the right opinion to Larissa versus the man who knows the way to Larissa; but the conclusion that virtue can’t be taught is the pinnacle of Socrates’ conclusion.

Virtue, it seems, can only be understood in the context of spirituality and no earthly material would be able to give or defines one’s virtue. What makes the prophets, soothsayers, poets, or writers divine is that they posses what most men can only dream of: creativity. It is the gift that the gods have given to those men that defines virtue; it is their ability to see and understand nature the gods intended them to see; it is “neither an inborn quality nor taught.”

I'm on my knees!

Divine we are already,lend me your lens to look at it through it