No Stupid Questions

Religion.

Imagination.

In Buddhism the God realm is where beings with very good karma go after death. Where they often become apathetic, burn off their good karma, and don't reach enlightenment.

The cosmology also reflects inflated/deflated egos. The mind needs to be balanced to easily see the path, and the lower realms have a lot of pain while the upper ones have a lot of pleasure.

The idea behind enlightenment is to transcend both pleasure and pain. All the realms of birth and death.

But there's some God realms looked after by enlightened Buddhas rather than Gods. In Pure Land Buddhism for example, merit practice is about being reborn in one of these realms, so in the next life enlightenment is easier to reach.

Personally, I vowed to be reborn to practice under Kwan Yin/Avolokita. Bodhisattva of compassion. I practice in this life too. But in the next one I'd like to do it in a nun's robes.

They aren't gods, just manifestations who cast them self into the next high dimension.

They have noticed us, yet.

I call it a (wo...)manmade organised dogmatic religion. Sure, it might be just with a member of one (which is kinda cool and all and probably makes the organizing part a little bit easier) but it's still kind of the same thing..

But seriously, it really depends on the details on such belief. It might be anything from harmless cope to superstition to delusion to paranoia. Or a first brave step in escaping a cult--which I would genuinely applaud.

A useless belief.

Apparently not many anthropologists or people interested in history on Lemmy.

There's a few options, and it depends on what you mean by "gods." The overall category you're looking for is called "Folk Religion" which means it's not organized beyond what local groups chose to believe are the "rules." Without more details, anything below might fit.

Animism is a starting point, in which you believe that everything has a spirit or is otherwise alive in a spiritual dimension. There aren't gods, per se, but elemental forces are higher forces that are semi-sentient. So, for example, the Sun would be alive, Earth would be alive, the elemental force of water is alive, and each has some sort of sentience, but it's sort of too high to directly talk with people, but you sort of communicate with feelings.

Shamanism is animism with more nuance. Gods, demigods, demiurges and the like exist - basically there are non-human, non-corporeal entities that operate in a spiritual realm, as do humans, so a shaman does negotiation as a middle-man because they have learned and been trained to be able to operate in both our realm and theirs. While not an organized religion, most forms of shamanism have similar rules and standards. Which is surprising considering that many cultures developed shamanism independently of each other.

As a sort of more detailed step towards specificity, you then have specific things like Native American traditional religion, Shintoism, many African traditional religions, Druidism and European pagan traditions, modern wiccan or other witchcraft-oriented beliefs, where local gods and spirits abound and are deserving of worship and veneration from everyone, not just having the shaman interceding on your behalf.

Slightly more organized, but not really, are polytheistic religions. Hinduism, Hellenism, the Roman Pantheon of gods, etc. Westerners think of these as "organized" but they really weren't/aren't in the way that we typically think. There was no main "Church of Zeus" and then after worshiping him, you go to Athena or Nike. A person and household had their god and they gave sacrifices, then also did the same for other gods if they needed their help. It was very ad-hoc, and sort of interesting, as the Greeks and Romans went around the ancient world meeting other cultures, they would find another polytheistic religion and not say "No, our god of war is Ares, and she's stronger than your god of war." They assumed that the gods were the same globally, and it was just the names that changed. So more like "Oh, you call the god of war Kartikeya? Cool, we call him Ares. You know him, too, awesome." So the dogma is actually quite light.

Honorable mention for Taoism and Buddhism, which both can incorporate varying levels of animistic and shamanic beliefs, plus gods as higher beings that are out there, but not as high as every human's inner Buddha form (if that makes sense). However, as philosophies-cum-religions go, there's much more dogma and convention in play in some versions. However, both are Gnostic, in that personal experience plays a role in shaping a personal dogma, rather than having someone shout rules at you from a pulpit. I'm not familiar with the Taoist angle there, so I may be wrong about that to some degree.

There are subsets of monotheistic (primarily Abrahamic) religions that are mystical and are less dogmatic. Sufis or Kabalists or Christian Mystics. They sort of do their own thing, and typically are seen as maybe heretical, maybe not, by the mainstream elements of the same religion. This crosses over the last line of what you mentioned about dogma, but worth mentioning.

Finally, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is just about anything you want it to be, and there's also a Church of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Magical thinking

What do you call the belief that God’s are just higher beings on other planes of existence while not believing in manmade organised dogmatic religons?

You'd be a Deist. It's why I'm Agnostic Atheist.

I think belief in something without any evidence is a step too far. I simply don't know and leave it there.

Lots of good answers here, but what do you mean by 'other planes of existence'?

Superstition, from the believer side. Mass control from the deity's representative side.

This question is too vague. “Higher beings” is not well defined enough. “Other planes of existence” is not defined well enough. For that matter “the Gods” is not very specific. And in a weird way, what you’re saying seems somewhat circular. Like what do you call it when you believe gods aren’t gods? If you don’t believe they’re gods then who are you even indicating?

Are you asking if there’s a name for someone who believes that humanity’s major religions do worship real living beings, but those beings are simply advanced alien creatures and not metaphysical in any way.

Deistic (believing in a god or gods without a necessary religious component) but not theistic. Or pagan, which is just believing in higher beings (or singular being) that are not Abrahamic. There's probably other words that fit the bill, too.

Stupid-ass copium, like all religion.

Reminds me of the sublimed species in Ian Banks The Culture series

Stargate sg1 universe

Science fiction, maybe?

sg1/ and some trek ascended beings are based on higher dimension/planes of existence, almost alway beings of pure energy thought or conscience. heaven/hell is considered a higher dimension, scifi is obsessed with it, and it tries to add some technobabble into why these exists. in rick and morty, same thing they called it "a paradimension"

"spiritual, but not religious"

then explain in more detail

I like a lot of interpretations here, and while not strictly non religious, Gnosticism is more reverence of the knowledge rather than the institutions, worth looking into if you're theocurious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

Non-Denominational Polythism would be the term, I think.

Alien Worship Cultist

Probably most realistic. Our perspective is of 100 years and there's should be much longer.

I still call it religion.

First and foremost that's personal spirituality. There's also a new age thing about starseeds aka reincarnated souls from other planets which this loosely reminds me of. Also kinda reminds me of this video I saw the other day.

Can you define "god" in this context? Does "god" imply a creator of human existence, or merely a being with abilities not understood or quantified by humans (think Q from Star Trek).

The latter isn't necessarily a belief system in and of itself. It's just the acknowledgement that "higher", ascendent beings can exist because humans are not, necesssarily, the be-all-end-all sapient beings of the universe.

Spiritualism?

You would probably be interested in occult philosophy. Some groups are more organized than others, but they tend more to organize around orthopraxy (same practices/rituals) rather than orthodoxy (same beliefs) which is more typical of conventional religions. This way they can encourage more free exploration, debate, and creativity.

Most of these belief systems are predicated on concepts of reality being made of layers of "planes" with higher beings existing more predominantly on higher planes, and it being a goal to aspire toward those higher planes.

I don't know but now I'm wondering, do the Greek gods qualify?

if there's higher dimensions they're still part of the universe as I know it, they're just not in the parts I can perceive. There's very little useful speculation I can do in relation to the parts I can't perceive. Apparently this is called "existence monism," so this would be one of the other things in the Wikipedia theology tree. personally I would classify it as a type of Monolatry.

Those higher beings keep hiding my keys and deliving kids, women and elderly people in the various war stricken areas. And they gave us big orange.

Let me precalculate that on my realshitolometer hold on....hmm, just as I suspected, its a billion percent!

Still theism, but is also what "spiritualism" usually means. You believe in some deity or deities, but not necessarily anything organized.

I've heard and read that Abrahamic religions don't have a place for their gods to hang out but the rest they hang out in the Metadivine Realm.