How do religious characters handle omnipotent characters?

How can religious characters handle the knowledge of omnipotent characters and still keep their faith?

Edit:

Please keep in mind I am talking about omnipotent characters like TOAA and The Presence. Not "gods" like Thor. (Maybe I gave a bad example)

Also this is not a thread to debate the possible existence of omnipotent beings. It is to discuss how fictional characters can believe in an omnipotent being despite having knowledge of another omnipotent being.

That's...a really good question.

Yeah, I dunno. Religion in comics is such a strange thing.

@kairan1979: Tony Stark is an atheist.....didn't know that but, I'm not surprised.

I....honestly don't even know

@peppeyhare: Yep in Marvel having both Norse and Greek gods will make someone question their faith.

@oscars94: Yep, and then somebody like Reed Richards who has actually seen heaven is an atheist. It's just strange

Haha this reminds of Brian from Family Guy

Bruce Banner is also an atheist too.

If I was Reed I'd still be an atheist as well. I'd just file it under alt dimension with all the other crazy places I'd been.

With respect

Yea, I guess that's one way to rationalize it.

Wow, I honestly never thought about this. I guess it kind've would.

In comics,multiple different gods of various cultures exist. In fact,basically any and every god exists in comics.

My question is how the hell a Marvel character could even be an atheist and that's not even considering the mythological gods they hang out with but there are multiple beings that the Avengers have dealt with that meet every criteria for an actual biblical style god aside from the name. Does it really matter if its called God or The One Above All when they're essentially the same being?

same with gods, there all just extradimensional or cosmic beings.

Your answer is aliens.

That's not to make a joke, but to point out that most of them can rationalize it as alien beings of some sort that humanity basically decided to worship. Or maybe even imaginary constructs that gained sentience and life. I mean Reed of all people has a son that is a reality warper... I don't think strange things ever rock his perception of reality at all.

As for the question of being religious after meeting these beings...I'd point out that it is a lot like that line in Prometheus. "They created us, but who created them?"

@jonny_anonymous: So its just semantics then? That seems like a BS justification since an immortal all powerful, all knowing being with power of the whole universe is indistinguishable from the Biblical God.

@darkday: But with someone like TOAA its pretty clear that he is the being who created everything and is stated to exist in all universes and dimensions at once, is all powerful, can create life spontaneously, can raise the dead, alter reality and actually create matter and energy what other than pure semantic BS separates him from God?

depends on your point of view

@jonny_anonymous: My pov is simple, if it looks like a duck and acts like a duck, odds are its a duck.

@joshmightbe: Yea and that's your point of view but to some one on a plane looking at the same duck, well to them it just looks like a dot.

@jonny_anonymous: yea but the dot is still a duck regardless if you can see it clearly or not

Honestly, if I lived in the Marvel U, I would figure that TOAA is God, but inversely I could see how even then there might be characters that don't believe that. So yeah it actually is about semantics, plus no one can make anyone else believe anything. Reed totally looks at TOAA though and probably just thinks he is some sort of cosmic being or ancient alien that has evolved so far beyond humankind that we have no basic understanding of what he is or can do and thus we think of it as magic and him as God. So totally about pov.

@joshmightbe: well I would presume the difrence between real gods and comic gods is that comic gods can be explained with comic science

@jonny_anonymous: Except that wouldn't make sense, considering a being such as God exists beyond dimensions and is always present.

@imthedamnbatman: but you can do that within comic science

@jonny_anonymous: in Marvel cosmic science is pretty much the same thing as magic which goes back to my main point that if 2 things are exactly the same in every way then regardless of terminology they're the same thing.

Batman is Atheist Superman got over it Wonder Woman is actually the daughter of Zeus and Aqua man is related to Poseidon. Doctor Fate has the lord of order. Most DC Characters get over it. Same as most Marvels

Extradimensional beings, reality warpers, mystical beings and many more can do just the same thing. If the unlikely and nigh impossible event of God appearing in our world happened today, do you honestly think atheists and sceptics wouldn't call it out as an elaborate hoax or offer a more plausible explanation for what was seen instead of 'God?' The same applies to the comic book universe even though there are heaven and hell within these realities.

@jonny_anonymous: Yeah, I suppose. But you're right, it makes no sense how anyone can be an atheist in comics, considering they deal with all powerful beings all the time.

@lvenger: I don't understand how anyone could argue with that if he appeared to us today. If they did, it would be out of sheer stubborness.

Also, some proposed science is just as ridiculous sounding as any God is. A single point contained everything in the Universe then exploded? What created that point? And then what created the thing that created the point? You end up encountering an endless cycle of things creating other things. In the end, there has to be something that always existed and was never created.

@imthedamnbatman: My point was about comic science not real science. I can understand Atheism in the real world I just can't understand it in a world where the top scientific minds in the Worls know for a fact that there is a heaven and hell and have in some cases actually met the cosmic entities that decide who goes where when they die.

@joshmightbe: Doesn't Stark just consider magic to be a form of science he doesn't understand yet?

There was a great moment in Busiek's run of Avengers with Firebird who is a devout Christian and Thor at the beginning of the Kang Dynasty arc. I can't find the scans, but they had a great exchange. I need to look it back up unless someone has the scans. I think that it is issue 45 because Thor also has a great speech talking about how great a person that Cap is while they are fighting the Presence.

In real life, we know of many ways that our planet can be destroyed effortlessly and without warning. Thankfully such things are rare because the universe is so massively huge, but we know it could happen. Comic characters like real people can question the concept of omnipotence. It can be dismissed as a simple projection with no actual internal consistency. If something is so powerful it can do anything then there are somethings it can't do and that if it could do incidentally would mean its not omnipotent. So omnipotence becomes situational and it becomes relative. A projection of a creature with limited physical abilities but physical abilities that allow for mental abilities that allow for conceptual abstract projections that may not necessarily be actual or real or true.

So someone in Nightcrawler's position could be aware both of the dubious nature of calling Beyonder omnipotent and his ability to suddenly and indiscriminately destroy the Earth. If he believes in an omnipotent god he might have to do some special pleading to hold both the idea that omnipotence is a man made projection but god also holds this trait or he could simply find the Beyonder or any other characters claim lacking. Also the chance of something happening does not mean that it will happen. Such character could postulate that god is that reason that what could isn't what is.

Alternatively its very easy for a fictional atheist to remain an atheist because words and concepts are different things, even though its helpful for us to use words to convey concepts. Real life has had many humans who have claimed to be a god, and giving them absurd amount of power doesn't necessarily make them so… alternatively their lack of power doesn't necessarily not make them a god, all things considered the word god owing its basis in words where the act of worship and prayer (invoking) was more important than say omnipotence. So the lack or disbelief in a god is usually a specific type of lack of or disbelief and thats towards the concept and idea of a sentient being with overlapping properties shared with many projections of gods, causing/creating reality as opposed to more naturalistic explanations and causes. Sort of how we know that weather existed long before any animals/beings on Earth were around to create or orchestrate it. Then when hominid man was running about, their relative lack of knowledge, understanding, reasoning (compared to humans but extraordinary compared to other animals) coupled with self awareness and cognitive functioning leading to the conclusions some sort of self aware sentient force was responsible for bad weather and good weather.

I'm a Christian, so God in Marvel or DC is referred to as TOAA or the Presence. These other "gods" are just beings who are generally more powerful than our superheroes, the term "god" is used lightly with them.

I think your talking about this one.

@manchine: that's the one. Thank you kindly.

@_gaff_- Well for one Greek gods and Norse gods are little "g" gods. They are different and well are not real. So that should not change a Christians faith.

Secondly comic characters should not have a religion. I must admit that I really like Captain being a Christian but even if they did not mention it you might still think that if they did mention it then that would probably be it. When you bring religion into a comic that is not religiously based then it can cause arguments dislike and like of characters. What business does a fake person have to talk down on a religion? Comic characters will not be in Heaven or Hell for they are not real as we all should know.

Thirdly if there all omnipotent characters it means they can do anything, which they can't. So let's say one day Beyonder killed Reed Richards then next run Marvel might bring him back. So let's say Marvel brings him back in the next three comics, well then apparently he is not powerful enough to keep him dead and therefore they are not omnipotent so they might even make that aware to the comic characters. So therefore if the characters saw that and the writer allowed them to understand then they might just realize that they are apparently not all powerful and so they keep their faith.

Deny anything that goes against their beliefs.

@stormshadow_x: Batman might be Catholic really.

@manchine: Thor looks kind of....stunned? I'm not sure.

So, assuming that Iron Man is really an atheist, would he remain atheist if he met the TOAA? How could he be such a moron? :)

Are most characters really any religion in the comic world? Like c'mon how many religions has Batman been?

@oscars94 said:

@peppeyhare: Yep in Marvel having both Norse and Greek gods will make someone question their faith.

It's even worse in DC. There's Hebrew, Greek/Roman, Egyptian, Hindu, Buddhist (The Source represents DC's Buddha), Norse, Aztec, and Aliens'... You'd think they'd get their creators straight after so many retcons.

Are you serious? Of course people would doubt God's existence if he just appeared today. All appearances of God and divine entities have been mostly proved to be down to hallucinations, mental illness, credulous eye witnesses and other stronger reasons. Furthermore, if God did just appear, this would nullify the greatest reason for believing in God, faith. Faith is what Christians cling onto meaninglessly above all other things and this stubbornly puts their belief in God beyond critique according to them. In a more scientific and secular society, I fail to see how God's appearance wouldn't be critiqued and that it would be the stubbornness of believers that would be at fault, not the secularists/atheists.

Really? You're really going to try and downplay the Big Bang, something I bet you lack significant scientific knowledge or a deep understanding of relating to the origin of the universe. It's utterly fallacious to try and claim "But something must have created the Big Bang because nothing cannot create something." For several reasons. First, the Infinite Regress may be a possible avenue given several philosophical thought experiments like Hilbert's Paradox of the Grand Hotel. Secondly, we have no means of seeing into what came before the Big Bang and the explanation could be explained in terms we understand but we lack the current knowledge or understanding to reach that conclusion. Thirdly, quantum physicists have theorised that the laws of quantum mechanics may provide an avenue into how something was created from nothing. Next, there has never been any shred of empirical, materialistic or reasonable proof that God exists in the observable universe. I haven't heard of anything which proves this point incorrect.

Lastly, so this doesn't derail this thread too much and I won't pursue this conversation even if you do reply to this comment, even if something did create the universe, why does it have to be God? Why can't it be Vishnu, Odin, The Great Ju-Ju in the Sky or a cosmic rabbit that created the universe? Simple; the likelihood of a transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient etc etc being existing is less likely than such an entity being the result of human evolutionary by products and our limited understanding of the world in humanity's earliest years.

What makes the Christian God more real than the Norse or Greek Gods? They might not be worshipped now but in their time they were as prevalent in their culture as Christianity is in ours.

@retconcrisis: LOL