Who is God?

[Flip McWho]

Depends who you talk too. Usually some form of these three: Omnipotent, Omniscient and benevolent (perfectly good).

But it varies depending on religion. And as for specifics of Gods charactor, well theres no way of knowing without the holy book involved.

[FrostyBoy]

I percieve God to be as he is described, which is something we cannot comprehend.

Omnipotent, omnscient and omnipresent mean what they mean.

That ant - human example does not compare. Sure, we can see more and understand more than the ant, but we certainly cannot see ALL, KNOW ALL, and be EVERYWHERE.

So, in the very sense of the meanings, I believe God to BE EVERYTHING.

When he said he made us in his likeness, that may not mean that God looks like a human, it may mean that he is a superstring (if it exists) - or rather, God is ALL superstrings, which make up existence itself.

[FrostyBoy]

Originally posted by Sava
The idea of a single, intelligent, omnipotent being or "God" is silly and the product of primitive human thinking.

It's obvious that the concept has evolved from other forms of mythology or superstitious thinking... i.e. "spirits" or many "Gods" being responsible for things like the weather, natural disasters, creation, the sun, the moon, the stars, etc...

So what is God?

It's primitive man's way of explaining things he doesn't understand. It's ignorant superstition.

I guess what disturbs me the most is that at this point in our development as a species, we still cannot move past primitive concepts like belief in supernatural forces and beings.

Sava, from my above post, if it is correct (and yes Sava, it IS possible), it would then be primitive thinking, to think that God does not exist, because "God" would simply mean existance. Are you willing to not believe that yourself and everything in and around you exists?

[MosesPresley]

Every discussion involving god devolves into meaningless semantic hair-splitting exercises.

[Berzerker]

We could start with ancient versions of "God" since we essentially adopted the concept from them.

Using just Genesis, which actually does acknowledge the existence of multiple gods, we can see contradictions in how God is defined and portrayed.

Are we to believe the God who created the Heaven and Earth couldn't figure out Adam and Eve would partake of the forbidden fruit because the Serpent was just so damn beguiling? Where did this Serpent come from and why was he more successful than God? Answer: the Sumerian religion.

Anyway, we see examples from the Bible that cast doubt on an all-knowing, all powerful "God" interacting with humanity while the God that created Heaven and Earth must have been quite powerful, albeit suspiciously limited to the laws of physics and geology. Another example, when God was considering Sodom's fate, Abraham's nephew(?) Lot and his family were living there. So Abraham talked God into sparing the city if 5 righteous people lived there (apparently Lot's family didn't count). God then sent two messengers (angels/watchers/somebody you dont want to meet) to find out if the city was indeed wicked. Why would God need anyone to investigate? A God with limited powers...

So inspite of the fact a couple billion people believe in a God that is omnipotent, their own religious texts dont support that belief. Whenever deities interact with humans, their alleged omnipotence disappears.

That leaves us with a couple options:

1) Ancient peoples made up religion in response to natural phenomena and therefore their deities are nothing to be worshiped.

2) Ancient peoples made up religions in response to contact with a more advanced humanoid life form, a life form that appears to be absent now. A common feature in religion is the returning "God", a being that was here but left leaving peoples all over the world to believe in their return.

Given my research into comparative religion I lean toward the second

So I have little reason to believe the God of my forefathers has any control over my soul, if the soul even exists. However, maybe our gods knew more about stuff like that than we did or do even if they couldn't affect the soul. Then there's the really big question: what made the universe? Now thats power! Whomever or whatever did that is beyond my imagination...

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave


sure we are here at this point in time however for fish it would have been outside of realm of imagination or possibility to use nuclear power. Just the same. Not to mention that some of the "godlike qualities" like "eternal life" etc could even now be seen as "on the horizon". We are in the position now like the ancient greek was than about "seeing everything that happens on earth".

Even if you could put "trascending" the laws of the universe as "currently unimaginable" I'd say that the highest improbabiliy or the "true transcendance" happened when those amino acids turned into something resembling life forms eventually. The "physic laws breaking" bit seems just like a less of a challenge. Not to mention that you do not necessarily need to break them, maybe you can just bend them if you know how.

As we have seen so far the sky is the limit and if you want my example from "fish" to "human" is just a good picture of huge gap in life form as it could potentially be from"human" to "God". Or better to say the gap from the "original ocean to human" is surely just as wide as from "human to God". I'd say we are 1/2 way there as it stands, not to meniton that the knowledge is rising exponentially so the time to get there could be considerably less than one bn years. Logically it's a given that others are there already.

Using nuclear power wouldn't seem miraculous to a fish it would simply be incomprehensible nonesense. It's really hard to say actually whether it would be possible to appear ominpotent to any creature unless we limit the discussion to creatures that we are certain would even have the crudest concept of "impossible". For those creatures which can posses a concept of "impossible", I do not think it is possible for a non omnipotent but arbitrarily powerful being to appear convincingly omnipotent to a skeptic member of that species without directly manipulating their senses. It also seems odd that if humanity's concept of God arose from contact with an arbitraily technologically advanced entity that the result would be an assumption of omnipotence of God rather than mere possesion of immense power. (assuming we are differentiating from non omnipotent "gods" and more monothesistic versions of "God").

Your explanation appears to fit better with humanitys concept of a pantheon of "gods" of limited but transcendant power.

[FrostyBoy]

No, I don't believe that any one entity can be a God.

To be God, you would have to encompass all of existence.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Sn00py
No, I don't believe that any one entity can be a God.

To be God, you would have to encompass all of existence.

That's one way to get a one God but certainly not the only way. The one "God" could simply be unconfined by the existence while having access to all the information in it. Perhaps all of existence could be something like a program that "God" wrote and implemented but is not a part of. God could have access to all the data from all time points of the "program" and as it's creator control over every detail of it but not necessarily "encompass" it's "existence" in the usual sense of the idea.

[Tingkai]

Stephen Chau

[FrostyBoy]

Stephen Chau


Geronimo: I think that is just a few humans wishful thinking.

It sounds like a paradox, to say that you are in full control, yet are not encompassing its existance.

For example, I am my body and mind, but I am not in control of it. Yet, what makes me, me (atoms, proteins, etc), is in control of me, however, those parts cannot make conscious decisions.

This is why I have this belief, that God is the very fabric of everything. But the difference is that God is conscious.

[Vince278]

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Sn00py
Stephen Chau


Geronimo: I think that is just a few humans wishful thinking.

It sounds like a paradox, to say that you are in full control, yet are not encompassing its existance.

For example, I am my body and mind, but I am not in control of it. Yet, what makes me, me (atoms, proteins, etc), is in control of me, however, those parts cannot make conscious decisions.

This is why I have this belief, that God is the very fabric of everything. But the difference is that God is conscious.

That seems as valid a belief in God as any but I hope you aren't suggesting it's the only logical possibility.

I do however think even your idea of God has some difficulties at least as far as the analogy goes. After all, you are a machine. Your consciousness is an emergent property of that machine. the parts that make you up function as parts in a machine. At practically all scales your body could be examined to see this functionality demonstrated in zillions of molecular gadgets. The universe on the other hand doesn't seem to resemble a machine. It has quite a disorganized appearance at most scales. About the only organization seems to be gravitational capture of less massive bodies by larger ones. Maybe you just need to tweak your analogy a bit?

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Sn00py


Sava, from my above post, if it is correct (and yes Sava, it IS possible), it would then be primitive thinking, to think that God does not exist, because "God" would simply mean existance. Are you willing to not believe that yourself and everything in and around you exists?

Have you ever considered that a certain common aspect of human psychology has resulted in the appearance of a God? None of the Gods that have been concocted over the millennia have ever been the same apart from being bigger and more powerful than humans. So no, it is far more feasible that the Gods are a result of a group of human minds than anything more real. You see it in this thread - despite the enormous evidence to the contrary, people still have an innate desire to believe in some controlling being to validate their life...quite bizarre...

[FrostyBoy]

Ok PH, but that is not exactly relevant to what I said.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Well it's getting more interesting

Firstly on "Snoopy God" - It is an interesting idea, and this could quite possibly be out of the realm of such "evolutionary" approach. In any case it is an interesting idea.

Geronimo

Your explanation appears to fit better with humanitys concept of a pantheon of "gods" of limited but transcendant power.

Well not necessarily so, in any case the only logical part that I can conclude that there should be beings that approached such "much higher" level of existance, and now how they/he might want to represent themselves is an open question. Thus either one god or pantheon of Gods is valid in that sense. I'd say this is just a matter of presentation nothing else. (after all many cultures did believe in "pantheon of Gods" )

Provost

Have you ever considered that a certain common aspect of human psychology has resulted in the appearance of a God? None of the Gods that have been concocted over the millennia have ever been the same apart from being bigger and more powerful than humans. So no, it is far more feasible that the Gods are a result of a group of human minds than anything more real. You see it in this thread - despite the enormous evidence to the contrary, people still have an innate desire to believe in some controlling being to validate their life...quite bizarre...

of course but the bizarre thing this might be, as I said it is just going against the "rational" beacuse of experience. I don't think that just "fear" can make you jump to such illogical conclusion as the existance of "something". esp today when there is generally no pressure to "believe" from the community at large in the west.

However this is just "sidestepping the problem" which is equal as saying: "We are the only ones evolved in this universe so far" or another variation on the theme "the universe is too big and noone noticed us yet". IMO those two are even more implausible than the notion that the "God" has other reasons for not reveaing his existance publicly.

In other words in a universe with very likely million/billions or more places with same conditions as ours that life did not get to "God" stage already since it had another 5 bn years extra to develop (at least) and it took us only 1 bn years to get to this stage where we are at now, as I said earlier. In other words "it is far more feasible that the Gods are a result of a group of human minds than anything more real." is a cop out, it it is much less feasible.

That's the question of the thread "Who is God", if you have a concept of "what should God be" even though you personally might not think he exists. IMO that is much more valid question, at the end the "does he" or "doesn't he" exist can neither be confirmed or denied. I am more interested into what you think "he should be" or what you think "he is".