'Man in God's Image'

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I've seen this pop up a couple times tonight and I'm a bit confused - I always thought that 'made in God's image' was more relative to our capacities, ie. supposedly the law of attraction through faith or rendering possibilities by calling things that aren't as if they are (Dark City tuning-lite). The old testament seemed to be filled with encounters where it was noted that no one had any clue with 'God' looked like (admittedly Job had an encounter - I'd have to read it again to see how literal or descriptive his sighting was), same with the new testament outside of Jesus.

I'd always thought however that the notion that God was humanoid simply came from a Hollywood or pop cultural misread, did I miss something?

God is spirit, so it it is Man's spirit that was made in his image and likeness.

People who do not believe in spiritual things, even denying the existence of their own, would have to apply it to the material.

How does a non physical thing produce physical effects? Only God knows. Right?

ruveyn

Humanity has yet to reach that stage since we have evidence only of physical things. No doubt, with time and technology we will be able to manufacture spirits a easily as we manufacture marshmallows. At he moment spirits are only made for consumption on festive occasions.

That's nothing short of comical though - ie. you need to hold something up against its own internal logic, not slip your own in at leisure to bring it down. I can only imagine how comical evolution would look as interpreted by a Wahhabi cleric/imam with all kinds of colorful 'great satan' language replacing key pieces of how the theory works.

I actually got on another member a while back here when he posted an eleven point proof that God doesn't exist, started with interna religious logic but subtlely (knowingly or unknowingly) inserted the end result as a given in the middle of his argument, when you do that the only that happens is you scratch an emotional itch - like the ID writer who may pick, choose, and ignore certain known truths of RNA in order to prop up faith (which, IMO, making things up to 'prop up faith' is the worst thing you can do - its almost certain to blow up and go precisely in the opposite direction). Yeah, people likely do enough of it without even being aware that they're doing it but when I see it happening so often....geez people....focus a little. Doesn't matter what your leanings are on theism, government/economy, or any issue - its just shoddy analysis guaranteed to yield rather painful results.

And when a young boy alive with glee
went unto a factory
he asked the floor man which machine
built the ethanol for the green
the man just laughed and said in reply
'that's sugar cane by and by'
and then the boy felt kind of dumb
'Oh, so that's how they make the rum'

- tech

The immortal words concerning spirits were written by Ogden Nash : Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.

I think that "made in God's image" means that God has endued within mankind elements that reflect His own nature, His attributes. For instance, like God, mankind has intellect, moral reasoning, emotion, and volition. To be made in God's image also means that people are creative and spiritual. But because God is spirit, not flesh and bones, I believe that "made in God's image" does not refer to mankind "looking" like God physically.

man is in gods image? man is imperfect. does that make god imperfect?

If you wanted to assume that it means 100% likeness I suppose, but then you've got even better arguments than that as ruveyn pointed out.

I concur.

Same. I was just wondering if people actually had any biblical standing to a more literalistic end than that, wondered if I was maybe missing something...

if the word of god wasnt ment to be taken literaly why was it written down?

Apparently the world hasn't always had enough aspies for that to be a problem.

Also, its a book that was written in colloquialisms. If you don't believe me find a used study bible somewhere and look at all the interpretative historical footnotes. This is why it takes a lot more interpretation and historical knowledge to read it accurately in say 2010 than when the specific books of the bible were written.

I'm not sure I can do this in any satisfactory way, but I'll take a stab at it.

Genesis 1:26-27--Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth." So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female.

Note the words "likeness" and "image." The way those words are used here are as synonyms. On the one hand you want to say that means we look like or are modeled after a physical God, literally exactly as God appears. This doesn't work, though, because God is revealed as a SPIRIT being. The words "image" and "likeness" are also used to describe the physical appearance of something that is not materialistic, like a spirit. So we aren't "spirit" exactly in the same sense that God is, we're just the physical manifestation in which the spirit resides. We are NOT God, but as physical manifestations of the spirit, or THE "Spirit," we represent God, and as such are expected by God to be stewards (caretakers) of the rest of the physical world. As such, one of the most important things in this world is human life. In the OT, murder--that is, the deliberate, unwarranted destruction of human life and inherently the destruction of an image of God--is one of a very few crimes in the OT for which there was no equivalent punishment or repayment other than life itself (the death penalty). Making an image of God or of "gods" is expressly forbidden, because God is spirit and man-made "gods" cannot be worshiped in the same sense and lead people away from worshipping God in the Spirit. In Luke 24:39, Jesus explains that a spirit "does not have flesh and bones." Isaiah 31:3--Egyptians are men, not God; their horses are flesh, not spirit. John 1:18--No one has ever seen God. The One and Only Son--the One who is at the Father's side--He has revealed Him. This passage shows the invisible nature of God, as do Romans 1:20, Collossians 1:15, and 1 Timothy 1:17.

So by saying we can't make an "image" of God is to say that God wishes to maintain His invisible nature and that we are to worship Him, not some man-made toy made out of natural materials--worshiping the creation and not the Creator. We ourselves ARE the physical manifestation of the invisible and as such are the exclusive property and dominion of God.

I've never had to really think about that before, to be honest. It really exposes the irony of the Fall of Man in Eden. The serpent tempted Eve with the knowledge of good and evil in order to become like God, but Adam and Eve were already in the "image" and "likeness" of God. Knowing good and evil was seeking to improve on perfection, fixin' what ain't broke, and hence introducing the imperfection of man's imperfect knowledge into his own nature and spoiling what had been a perfect image of God. We remain in God's image, just not a perfect image because of our sinful nature.

Anyway, that's my attempt. Maybe there are some good theologians on here that can give a better answer?

That was a pretty decent shot at it. I think what your saying though, by indirect inference, indicates that God chose not to be seen for a reason (aside from what having such a rush of perception into something so gargantuan would have on our central nervous systems) - we weren't meant to focus on the physical or meant to chase after the question 'what does God look like?' as its utterly irrelevant and a physical revelation would only aid to lock our minds in thinking in the wrong direction.