The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

In a hypothetical scenario where there is an absence of human life on planet Earth, would the Gods still exist?

Why/why not?

(Just something I've been pondering and thought I'd open it up for discussion).

I don't see why not. Although some would probably have different areas of concern (e.g. those deities whose many focus are various human activities).

I think it can go both ways.

It could be the gods have found particular interests that coincide with human interests. It could also be that humans would propitiate certain gods who seemed like they might be good at x-human-thing, and over time those gods either developed a like for those things, or some other kind of interest. Hope that made sense.

I think most of them would, since they are a part of the natural world (at least in my personal beliefs). Deities whose domain is only human-related stuff like commerce might be in trouble, though.



I believe most deities also existed before we did--and mythologies generally support that idea--so I don't see why they couldn't go on existing without us.

In a hypothetical scenario where there is an absence of human life on planet Earth, would the Gods still exist?

Yes I think they would,  this is a bit of a blog post that I love to reread and think on, the full link to which is
http://forestdoor.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/gods-not-our-own/
 ( I am using this instead of trying to articulate it myself for the sake of retaining clear communication I am afriad I'll garble it up horribly )

We tend to speak and think of plant/animal/etc. deities as singular, rather archetypal concepts, and primarily in relation to their significance to humans. In other words, we might conceive of a deer god (separate from any deer aspects of other deities), a god that appears as a deer, watches over deer, and has what we think of as deer-like qualities. But humans do not just have one deity who appears in our form, one deity for every location in which we live, or even one deity who governs over a particular human concern (such as agriculture, communication, etc.). Since other entities in this world are just as real and just as capable of a spiritual existence (in fact, they likely do not even have such a self-imposed dichotomy between material and spiritual realities as we do), why should we not then assume that their gods are myriad? Is it not likely that there are, in fact, quite a few deer gods who are tied to different regions, different species, different cervid qualities and concerns? (Perhaps we have even glimpsed these different gods and mistaken a multitude for a single entity due to the same kind of cross-racial recognition difficulties we have within just the human race.)

Extending this further, there are also probably many oak gods, many granite gods, many lichen gods, although perhaps some of those forms of life are so different from us that their deities would not be recognizable as such to us, nor would they necessarily perform the same functions or interact the same way as ours do. There’s no reason, either, to assume that every god of significance to oak trees is, itself, an oak tree – just like not all of our own gods appear as human. An oak tree would have reason to be intimately connected to gods of rain, soil, insects, fire, fertility, drought.

Now for me this works great and makes pretty awesome sense It might not for everyone else. Some gods would be affected if humans ceased to exist..but for the most part I think that they would just keep on truckin.

In a hypothetical scenario where there is an absence of human life on planet Earth, would the Gods still exist?