What is God?

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I was going to say, yes, do tell us, so that we can elevate our righteousness to the same level as yours - but that's probably why it was not said which ones - that way we can not become equals to the poster, who will forever be above us.

the word that strikes me most in that post was "blasphemous", that sounds condescending

I can understand in some way. But I'm serious though. Blasphemous is for example to call Jesus a narcissist, which I did somewhere. Exactly because all he did for us, even suffering, dying. Strange thing though, after reading some things, is that this is even part of narcissism: self-destructive behaviour. Namely he does anything to prove his supernatural gifts, even if he has to dye for it. (and not raise again, if you would ask me)

No, that's not it at all. I don't consider myself to be "holier than thou", but as any impartial observer of this discussion could clearly see, those who are responding to the initial question are obviously NOT taking it at all seriously.

An example: "Or try this one:

What is the Easter Bunny?

vs.

The Easter Bunny is what?


I the term God is probably that far beyond repair." - techstepgenr8tion

There was also someone who thought it significant that the word "God" spelled in reverse gives you "dog", implying that the two concepts are in some significant sense equivalent somehow.

Yes, maybe I shouldn't have used that specific word. I have a tendency to over-react sometimes, to be "triggered" as they say these days. Maybe the next time I see a discussion like this I should just do this -

Never mind. Carry on!

That might have been a brash thing for me to say, I think what's bothered me is how pernicious the term 'God' has been with respect to artificially closing down conversation on the topic to either Zeus on a cloud is real or Zeus on a cloud is imaginary. That baggage seems to leave almost no room for discussing anything that isn't either/or, and in the 2,000 year interim a lot has been discovered.

But, see, it is so much easier for humans to deal with either/or - it gives comfort because either/or is definable, comprehensible, and therefore safe and comfortable.

That's where I come down to this: if there's no pursuit of truth why talk about it?

I came across this definition 5 minutes ago: Badiou's Camel.

an old man is dying and declares how to divide up his camels among his 3 sons:
the first gets half, the second one fourth, and the third son gets one sixth of the camels.
then the man dies, and the sons find that there are 11 camels left to them, and they can't divide them up as their father had demanded.
so they visit a wise man, who, after some thinking, says: I'll give you my camel.
the sons are confused, but the old man starts to divide the camels up:
6 for the first, 3 for the second, and the third one 2.
then the wise man rides away on his camel.

god's that camel.
a structural necessity for things to add up.

I like it!

God is a singular, uncreated, eternal, and intelligent creator, to whom nothing that exists in nature can be compared.

This is how I define God. Anything that failed to fit this description, I think would be unworthy of being called God.

Or as some have said, things must have a cause, there must be a first cause, eternal self-existing infinite non-corporeal God is the first cause.
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There's a theory there are an infinite quantity of physical universes so why not an infinite consciousness too, to me one's not really any weirder than the other.

In my own observations I don't think there's necessarily any guarantee of contiguity between one scale and another.

For instance in our own bodies, trying to make sense of the life of each unitary cell against each organ, each organ against each system, each system against the whole body, its quite difficult to fully make sense of the lower in terms of the higher. We really don't understand how they know of each other or how the lesser forms the greater and the greater then turns around to inform and control the lesser (dynamic systems theories of consciousness are good start but I think they need more development). I think we've also seen some interesting evidence, from various research suggesting mind and environment doing things that they shouldn't be able to do if dead matter as well as studying things like the webbing of galactic clusters, that matter does conduct information in ways we don't fully understand and to which our 19th century naive materialist view of the world was particularly allergic to.

On somewhat of a side note, when John of the Cross and people like him began having their Holy Guardian Angel, or what Carl Jung might call Individuation, experiences it seems like a particular local dynamic of how certain patterns within us interact with other patterns and it's tough to tell how much we're building those patterns vs. how much those patterns are building us (it would make a lot of sense that it's some degree of both).

If the big bang were something like a more completed higher order, lets say a universe working toward some kind of self-actualization and to a large degree found it, this universe could be a seed ground for new developments or for that process to start all over again. There could be an endless or near endless quantity of unconscious substrate that such processes are working to metabolize.

I think that's where it can be highly misleading to automatically assume that a fully self-aware mind covering all things everywhere with perfect control over all is necessarily the gold-standard for evaluating conscious universal processes or gain any particularly persuasive insight into the processes of cosmic evolution.

I like the way Gordon White describes it - that we live in a very haunted and animistic kind of universe. That might not be deeply informative in and of itself about the processes around us but I think it more accurately captures the flavor of our situation as well as it avoiding major roadblocks or unwarranted cosmological commitments by starting with what we can see at ground level.

It's 'Really' simple and complex.
God Is The Big Picture.
Some see less;
Some see more;
in terms of more
and less of Knowing Sensing and Feeling Now
God is not something one can measure by science/words alone;
Poetry/Art tries but still God is Bigger and Smaller depending on 'who' is 'looking'.
A three letter
word not
much
justice in
'thine eyes allone'.

It's kinda like this too; Life is an ink blot
test; fill in two numbers of Be88H with either
Beach or 'other' 'words' that/who are not Happy now.

Meanwhile; 'people' continue to wonder 'what' 'God' 'is'.

Other Animals are not cursed with illusions of pass and future in words.

'They' Do God.

It's as simple as that now; too.

God is Do. 'Nike' has/is the answer already; hehe, in Goddess of Victory way.

God Moves Connects and Creates; so, 'what' 'do' 'you' 'do'; Smiles; Have a Nice Day.

God is a concept of a supernatural being, created in Man's image by flawed human minds. There are as many 'gods' as there are believers in the world.

Obviously anyone can interpret anything as they wish.

I don't argue the religion vs Atheism issue. I discuss, and even debate, metaphysics, but not religion. Religion.isn't really about convincing anyone or debating.

So I'll just say this:

A mistake that Atheists make is to make assumptions and interpretations about what other people believe.

If you're an Atheist, you know what a Fundamentalist believes, but do you categorically know what all religious people believe? If not, then shouldn't Atheist comment be specifically about Fundamentalism, Biblical Literalism? ...or maybe about a particular denomination? ...if you don't know, haven't spoken to, every religious person? Maybe "Atheism" should be re-branded as "A-Fundamentalism".

Anyway, I'm not trying to start an argument, just making a brief comment and suggestion.

Michael829

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EDIT :

I'm adding this comment as an edit, instead of as a new post, because I don't want to seem to be posting too much, and I don't want to seem to be trying to inflate my post-count (I swear that my recent frequent posting has nothing to do with such a goal).

I want to emphasize, to the OP, and to anyone else, that I'm not trying to urge him to change his beliefs. That would be inappropriate. I'm not here to proselytize.

The purpose of what I said in this post was to emphasize that it's best not to publicly evaluate someone else's beliefs, especially without knowing them. ...as is the case when talking about religious people, and their beliefs in general.

In fact, aside from that, though I don't agree with Fundamentalists or Biblical-Literalists, I don't feel any need to publicly evaluate them or their beliefs. Why should that be my business??

I just want to encourage others to consider that attitude toward others.
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Michael829