If oxen and horses and lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men, horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses and oxen to look like oxen, and each would make the gods’ bodies have the same shape as they themselves had.
There might be a strong chance that horses and other animals would draw their gods as having human form. Humans tend to protray their gods as being either equal or higher than humanity. Animist gods are protrayed as having characteristics that surpass humans: speed, wisdom, patience, etc. based on the characteristics of that animal. Alternately, sun gods, storm gods, etc.: higher powers.
Some wild horses would have horse gods or weather gods or wolf gods. Some might have human gods, depending on their interaction with humanity.
I’d imagine that domesticated horses would have human gods, some benevolent and some malignant, or both. And some domesticated horses would go “through the looking glass” and develop a horse-god of redemption, with prophecies of freeing them from the toil and slavery of domestication, based on some original downfall of horse-dom that led to them being subservient to humans.
Xenophanes
I’m not sure this makes sense. Empirically many human cultures have deities that are shaped like animals.
Voted up. My quibble is that gods are often anthropomorphic in mind, if not in body.
More likely they would write a treatise on how God wants them to keep pulling carts around.
Well, the Egyptians had animal-headed gods.
With human bodies.
There might be a strong chance that horses and other animals would draw their gods as having human form. Humans tend to protray their gods as being either equal or higher than humanity. Animist gods are protrayed as having characteristics that surpass humans: speed, wisdom, patience, etc. based on the characteristics of that animal. Alternately, sun gods, storm gods, etc.: higher powers.
Some wild horses would have horse gods or weather gods or wolf gods. Some might have human gods, depending on their interaction with humanity.
I’d imagine that domesticated horses would have human gods, some benevolent and some malignant, or both. And some domesticated horses would go “through the looking glass” and develop a horse-god of redemption, with prophecies of freeing them from the toil and slavery of domestication, based on some original downfall of horse-dom that led to them being subservient to humans.
Or something like that.
this should at the very least be turned into a short story.
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu “If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.” [Lettres Persanes, no 59]
Surely he would be circular?