The Nature of God

[brian]

Okay, let's open up a proper discussion topic! The Nature of God...

My own position is that God is also best treated as a Concept - a mysterious intelligent aspect of the universe that cannot be rationalised nor explained - merely referred to in the abstract. Personally, I also find the anthropomorphised human perception of Divinity to be extremely limiting, and more likely to express ideals of the culture struggling to approach the Concept, rather than any real objective truth. In this way I would agree with Nietsche that "Man has created God in his own image" (paraphrase), but that the original Concept exists, simply that humans find it easier to refer to by giving a personal and cultural image.

Anyway...see if that makes an adequate start...

[Kilroy]

The concept of God exists because people could not grasp how the world was created or exists so this symbol appeared to answer all questions. The problem with the world today is that no one is reponsible to themselves. If you do something wrong, you have only God to answer to. If people stopped trying to measure up to God and started trying to measure up to themselves maybe things would be better. I don't know if God exists, if he does then there is no way it is the being we think it is. The notion that God requires the recognisation of us is bullsh*t. If it does, it has an ego the size of the cosmos it created, not the God we know.

[Survivor]

Sorry, Kilroy, but the notion that we should recognize the existence of God (if he in fact exists) is no more BS than the idea that we should know about the law of gravity. The difference is that Gravity can't care more or less if we fall down and break our necks.

If God loves us (which is the case in the Christian tradition), then He cares that we understand Him and the laws of our own nature, since it is impossible for us to find lasting happiness other than by such knowledge.

[brian]

The concept of God exists because people could not grasp how the world was created or exists

I guess it could even be argued that we are still there to some degree.

The problem with the world today is that no one is reponsible to themselves. If you do something wrong, you have only God to answer to.

That certainly is an issue with institutional religion, to different degrees.

I don't know if God exists, if he does then there is no way it is the being we think it is.

That's one of my key points.


As for the notion of God loving/caring for us - that's an issue I've never been able to rationalise. God=Love I can accept from my own experience - but the idea of a Creator interfering with It's own Creation because a tiny biological construct is not happy is something I've not yet been able to come to any conclusion over. If, however, humanity is evolving towards Godhead then perhaps I understand a little of the point of needing to recognise God - though again, would it be a need?

Questions, questions.

[Survivor]

Well, obviously the point of most all religions is that humanity is not the apotheosis of virtue and goodness.

And most of them provide for the idea of individual humans transcending the bounds of the petty, insignificant concerns of human life. This usually takes on the idea of attaining some state of Divine grace or virtue as the moral being progresses beyond...and so on and so forth.

Anyway, the only rational alternative to nihilism is to believe that you can become something more than nothing. Yes, man is nothing now. No philosophy can deny this fact once the question is raised. And if man can never be anything more or better than he now is, then he will always be nothing.

Religion is nothing more or less than the rejection of nihilism.

The rejection of nihilism can go to the limits of human apprehension or it can be bogged down in the instinctive cowardice that is so typical of humanity, but there is no other alternative to nihilism.

[nemesis]

What is wrong with nihilism? We live we die. Why do we need a reward or punishment for doing so?

[Survivor]

Point taken.

Philisopically, there is no way to reject nihilism. It is self-fulfilling. If you are a nihilist, then nihilism is true.

And if there is no God, then nihilism is true anyway.

But certain people have discovered strong (but not logically compelling) evidence that things like logic, truth, love, happiness, and so forth really do exist, and since none of these things can exist for us if we accept nihilism, then perhaps there is an alternative to nihilism.

Logically, once you accept that nihilism is not necessarily all there is to life, you get into questions of meaning, morality, and eventually have to confront the existence of God.

But as I mentioned before, logic is not compelling. No one is forced to accept a logical argument, no matter how clear (for a good example, see Lewis Carrol's infinitely expandable proof).

Which allows most humans to flit somewhere between religion and nihilism. Of course, that is where all unbearable suffering occurs...the truly nihilistic and the truly religious can bear their suffering (though in entirely different ways). So maybe it is not all that good for men to be caught between the two. On the other hand, if there were no slope, nihilism would be the default option for anyone that didn't start out morally perfect. So religion wouldn't be a significant alternative to nihilism.

[Michael]

Everybody's on to something, but nobody's quite right and nobody's quite wrong. That's what I think anyway.

Philosophically, I'm a panentheist.

[Eldo]

God is a man with sandals, a toga and spectacles who drinks Earl Grey and English Breakfast. He has a control centre which he uses to make things happen. He never sleeps. His sex is the universe and his orgasm is the planet Earth. This sounds stupid but I don't care it's what I believe.

If we're good when we die we meet him, Jesus and the Saints before going to heaven.

(I don't feel like getting too deep so I give you my childish comment.)

[Maryjane]

Here goes nothing

Mater and energy both are a mass of electrons whirling around each other around a nuclei called a nutron forming the basic building block of all mater and enregy this basic building block is called an atom. These tiny bodies are governed by precise laws and these laws hold true through out the material universe, as do the galaxies stars and stars with planetary systems. Stars supernova and form massive nebula gass clouds and another star complete with a planetary system is reborn. Some stars colaps creating black holes that produce gravitational ripples that atract nearby selestial bodies and dark energy repells gravitational ripples keeping everything in balance. Then we have cosmic strings, the harmonics of the universe. These precise laws themselves apear to follow some inteligent patern. It doesn't end there as we probe ever deeper into the cosmos, we find that empty space is not as empty as had been thought to be. Parallel universes, collision of parallel universes, the big bang. Quantum levels of reality and multie dimentions an infinity of continuity, We are but a speck in the scheme of things. "Precision" Does chance have any kind of precision? No chance without direction can only produce chaos. Even science has started to prove that infinity is not made mostly of an empty voide but more like a full infiniy. Maybe all that there is, is God. Not an entity, not a being but all that is containned in eternity is the thought in Einsteins either that was made into mater and energy in time and space. Where do we fit into the scheme? One tiny piece in the infinite puzzle.


The infinite cosmos is God


If man can never be anything more or better then he is now, then he will always be nothing in the grander scheme of things yes.

[TGirlPaula]

"God does not play dice with the universe." -Einstein

Who is God? God is the Supreme Being Who Made All Things.
When I was a child I thought as a child.

God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

Interviewer: Does God have a sense of humor?
Jackie Gleason: He made us, didn't He?
(Gleason was a comedian best remembered for his part as Ralph Kramden in "The Honeymooners" on American television in the 1950s)

Paraphrased: If the Divine knows when a sparrow falls it is inconceivable that a nation can rise without His help. --Benjamin Franklin

A business maxim: In God we trust. Everyone else pays cash .

God is everywhere. If that were not so there would be no God because He would not be infinite.

When we are born, what do we bring into this world with us?
When we die what can we take with us?
All between birth and death is God's. And before and after death.

The late Frank Sheed was a "streetcorner theologian" who wrote the book, "Theology and Sanity." One day Sheed was teaching in Hyde Park, talking about the Creator. One of the listeners yelled out, "I can make a better universe than that ^%$#@! God of yours."

Sheed stopped talking to the people who gathered and addressed the man in words like these: "I don't want to tax your abilities but making a rabbit for us would boost your credibility."

IMHO, God is not a being that resembles a man, but how else can humanity deal with the one thing that defies measurement? All we know is change and The Eternal never changes. We deal in meters, kilograms, and seconds, all of which are contained within this universe, and the universe within its Creator. God always was, always will be, and will always remain the same.

Happy New Year to all.

Paula

[Tsujigiri]

I can't really speak about the existence of god, I think that is both a fact in waiting and at the same time a matter of faith.
The Nature of God I would have to say is that of learning. I believe that we are all a part of God working something out, I also believe that we choose the part we play before we play it, but that when we get here we forget our lines and make it up as we go along

[AmonRa]

if i use the word universe in the posti'm using the term 'universe' loosely because i believe there is more to reality than just this one universe, there are probably other dimensions, times, parralels or what ever you want to call them. i believe that there was no creator, there is an everything because it is impossible to have nothing, after all nothing is.... well..nothing. so why does the universe have laws and a nature, and why are the planets, galaxies and animals so well designed? i think that the answer to that is this: IF there was a begining (maybe time doesnt have a beggining middle or end, but just exists as it is) then there would be all of these random possibilites swirling round space at random, all of these possibilites are represented as bubbles, each bubble has a different shape and law, the square shaped, triabular shaoed bubles will pop because their shape is incefficient, no conciousness decided that they should pop. eventually all of the round bubbles would be left, because they were the most efficient. this idea goes for everything else: the most efficient animals survive, they pass on their genes and the weaker animals die out. This is known as evolution.

GOD
===
Even though i don't think there was a creator, i still think there is a god. God is an entity, wether it is organic, pure energy, a chip full of data or something else, which know's every thing there is to know in the universe, because it has either experienced it all or imagined all of the possibilites, all of the square and roun bubbles.
I believe in the evolution theory and i think that nlike others in this thread, believe that the univerese is not contained in god, but god is contained in the universe. i.e IT is a race that evolved so far that it now knows everything there is to know, it even knows what i'm going to write before i've written it.


God On Earth?
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God doesnt nesicarily need to be a 'He'. If god is just a giant store of knowledge, then all you really need is a computer chip which all of the information and posibilities can be stored on. maybe unknowingly humans have created god via the internet - in this thread alone we have talked about things beyond the solar system, which no humans will see in hundreds of years. thats just one page on the net, think of how many millions of pages there are on the net, there is everything in there from the physics of the universe, to literature, to most languages, the anatomy of humans and animels, etc.etc.etc....


disclaimer
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sorry if that didnt make any sense, it's a bit late and i CBA editing any mistakes, that was mostly rambling

[fallenstar]

Let's see...where had I found this quote...a history book. A good remark I should say. "If God did not exist, Men will make Him exist".

[AmonRa]

Originally Posted by fallenstar

Let's see...where had I found this quote...a history book. A good remark I should say. "If God did not exist, Men will make Him exist".

thats a good quote