Know of many dieties who would look so wonderful, if we took all of the stories told about them, at face value? The stories are expressions of ideas held about them by human beings, and human beings aren't always so wonderful, themselves.

But again ...

Let us begin by considering our goddess. That is to say, let us consider the outlook that is expressed through her actions in the stories (paying particular attention to how that attitude seems to evolve), and what it is that one with such an outlook, that she is moving toward, would expect of us. That is, in lieu of any body of teachings as we find in the account of the lives of Christ, Buddha, et al., might be regarded as a suggestion as to what she calls on us to do. It is to be emphasised that we are not blind to the moral imperfections displayed in the portrayal.

Unlike Orthodox Jewry, and Pauline Christendom, we don't imagine dieties that knew all, and were perfect from the beginning of time. Indeed, even in the stories, the gods had to be born, and weren't even there, going back to the beginning of time. Instead, we imagine that the Olympians had to discover the truths of morality, just as we do. Further, we are not so naive as to take the myths as history, in some fundamentalist sense. We see those myths as folk tales, in which the gods are portrayed very broadly, to make their personalities and especially their personal needs, likes and dislikes, and quirks, stand out in bold relief for the less sophisticated audiences of a time when Philosophy was just being created, and the study of Psychology was thousands of years off in the future.

This is in sharp contrast to a conception of a God who exists outside of time. It also avoids some of the difficulties that one encounters, if one holds this. There are, of course, the obvious issues of causuality and free will that result. But also, we are left with the fact that God, in the standard Christian canon, begins the Bible by acting in a far less Christian fashion than he will be later on. If we see Him as dwelling in time, this does not diminish Him in our eyes, for it is He, in that account, who discovers and reveals to us the very moral truths that some, in a secular setting, would call Him to account under. But otherwise, it can be extremely perplexing.

Let's return to our previous discussion.