Does God need have a material form?

[Tonymai]

Mind experiences is dependent on sensing the world including your ability to sense yourself. Sensing is sensing whether outward or inward.

Outer sensing is interaction with material reality, inner sensing can be interaction with mind reality, where human self is, or/and with spirit reality. Physical system subordinates, intellectual system coordinates, and spiritual system is potentially directive if the self within the intellectual system cooperates with the spirit system.

 

[Madhuri]

I'd like to add that the material universe is the material form of God.

 

[rusra02]

Jesus told the woman at Jacob's well "God is a spirit.". He also taught her to worship God in spirit and in truth. We really do not need to subscribe to the superstitious tradition of worshiping idols and expecting material evidence of God.

That is true. Exodus 20:4 and many other scriptures show that worshipping an idol is an affront to the true God. According to the Bible, worship of idols is actually worship of demons, wicked spirits such as Satan who turned apostate and now promote false worship. (1 Corinthians 10:19-22) No wonder the Bible urges us: "Therefore, my beloved ones, flee from idolatry." (1 Corinthians 10:14)

 

[BruceDLimber]

Does God have a material form?

Can you rephrase?

No!

Clear enough, I trust?

Bruce

 

[idav]

No!

Clear enough, I trust?

Bruce

K, well I disagree.

edit: BTW your quote didn't speak too much about your answer. It didn't address a material aspect or lack of in the sense of what god is.

 

[idav]

Outer sensing is interaction with material reality, inner sensing can be interaction with mind reality, where human self is, or/and with spirit reality. Physical system subordinates, intellectual system coordinates, and spiritual system is potentially directive if the self within the intellectual system cooperates with the spirit system.

What I was pointing out is that we utilize the same faculties to see within as we use to experience anything including the world around us. There is no significant different between experiencing material or spirit since spirit does have substance. Your mind has to be detecting something, it can't detect nothing.

 

[sojourner]

Jesus told the woman at Jacob's well "God is a spirit.". He also taught her to worship God in spirit and in truth. We really do not need to subscribe to the superstitious tradition of worshiping idols and expecting material evidence of God.

I'm not aware of Christians engaging in idolatry. Nonetheless, since we are corporeal beings who live in bodies, and since the church itself is referred to as the body of Christ, and since the church has sacraments, which are outward and visible signs, I suspect that we have material evidence of God in these very physical things.

 

[sojourner]

Worship becomes a spiritual inner exercise/experience than outer performance of bodily forms. Worship God via the spirit of God living within one's mind.

Except that the word "worship" implies outward events that are acted out before God and each other.

What about the spirit of God living in the center of one's being, as well as in the spaces between people? Oughtn't that spirit be worshiped, too?

 

[idav]

Oughtn't that spirit be worshiped, too?

As a separate Entity? Worshiping god would be worshiping in spirit.

 

[Skeptisch]

Which God are we wondering about? Einstein’s, Sagan’s and Spinoza’s?
Or this guy?

1. Because God liked Abel's animal sacrifice more than Cain's vegetables, Cain kills his brother Abel in a fit of religious jealousy. 4:8

1. "I will destroy ... both man and beast."
   God is angry. He decides to destroy all humans, beasts, creeping things, fowls, and "all flesh wherein there is breath of life." He plans to drown them all. 6:7, 17

1. "Every living substance that I have made will I destroy."
   God repeats his intention to kill "every living substance ... from off the face of the earth." But why does God kill all the innocent animals? What had they done to deserve his wrath? It seems God never gets his fill of tormenting animals. 7:4

1. "All flesh died that moved upon the earth."
   God drowns everything that breathes air. From newborn babies to koala bears -- all creatures great and small, the Lord God drowned them all. 7:21-23

 

[idav]

I'd like to add that the material universe is the material form of God.

Are you saying god is both material and spirit form? Cheater!

 

[chinu]

Some religions appear to worship their holy scripture; that's form.

Not some religions, some people

_/\_
Chinu

 

[Shades-o-Blue]

True.
Nor should we expect anyone to accept any version of God without that evidence.

Belief in a deity or deities is based solely on unverifiable faith.

I'm sorry if I seem so out of touch, but have you people come up with a way for the rest of us to witness, first hand, the power behind the formation of our universe? I'm getting tired of being told that the answers to my prayers are just foolish imaginations of my heart. I want to be there before it happened so that I can see, with my own eyes, that God was nowhere to be found.

 

[BruceDLimber]

BTW your quote didn't speak too much about your answer. It didn't address a material aspect or lack of in the sense of what god is.

Perhaps because I abridged the quote.

Here's the whole thing:

"Let no one meditating ... on the nature of the Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, mistake its character or misconstrue the intent of its Author. The divinity attributed to so great a Being and the complete incarnation of the names and attributes of God in so exalted a Person should, under no circumstances, be misconceived or misinterpreted. The human temple that has been made the vehicle of so overpowering a Revelation must, if we be faithful to the tenets of our Faith, ever remain entirely distinguished from that 'innermost Spirit of Spirits' and 'eternal Essence of Essences'--that invisible yet rational God Who, however much we extol the divinity of His Manifestations on earth, can in no wise incarnate His infinite, His unknowable, His incorruptible and all-embracing Reality in the concrete and limited frame of a mortal being. Indeed, the God Who could so incarnate His own reality would, in the light of the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh, cease immediately to be God. So crude and fantastic a theory of Divine incarnation is as removed from, and incompatible with, the essentials of Bahá'í belief as are the no less inadmissible pantheistic and anthropomorphic conceptions of God-- both of which the utterances of Bahá'u'lláh emphatically repudiate and the fallacy of which they expose."

—(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, pp. 112-113)

Peace,

Bruce

 

[Tonymai]

Perhaps because I abridged the quote.

Here's the whole thing:

"Let no one meditating ... on the nature of the Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, mistake its character or misconstrue the intent of its Author. The divinity attributed to so great a Being and the complete incarnation of the names and attributes of God in so exalted a Person should, under no circumstances, be misconceived or misinterpreted. The human temple that has been made the vehicle of so overpowering a Revelation must, if we be faithful to the tenets of our Faith, ever remain entirely distinguished from that 'innermost Spirit of Spirits' and 'eternal Essence of Essences'--that invisible yet rational God Who, however much we extol the divinity of His Manifestations on earth, can in no wise incarnate His infinite, His unknowable, His incorruptible and all-embracing Reality in the concrete and limited frame of a mortal being. Indeed, the God Who could so incarnate His own reality would, in the light of the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh, cease immediately to be God. So crude and fantastic a theory of Divine incarnation is as removed from, and incompatible with, the essentials of Bahá'í belief as are the no less inadmissible pantheistic and anthropomorphic conceptions of God-- both of which the utterances of Bahá'u'lláh emphatically repudiate and the fallacy of which they expose."

—(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, pp. 112-113)

Peace,

Bruce

This is a pretty good comprehension of the infinite Deity who is totally beyond the finite human intellect. Faith is a bridge to such impossible gap. Without faith which is a gift of Deity, searching in finite reality can never yield any evidence of Deity.

 

[idav]

Perhaps because I abridged the quote.

Thats talking about incarnations though. God could still be a distinct substance.

 

[BruceDLimber]

Thats talking about incarnations though. God could still be a distinct substance.

Not if "substance" implies something physical, no! If you just mean He has aspects, that I won't argue.

God is strictly spiritual and has no physical part whatever.

Peace,

Bruce

 

[idav]

Not if "substance" implies something physical, no! If you just mean He has aspects, that I won't argue.

God is strictly spiritual and has no physical part whatever.

Peace,

Bruce

At that level god is close to not existing at all.

My take is that "spiritual" IS physical so God would be spiritual AND physical because they are the same thing. People only talked of the spiritual for things we cannot see but we have learned that the things we cannot see actually have substance.

 

[Awoon]

Humankind is the idol of God.

 

[herushura]

Gods Originated as Human Warlords, Whom Died, and where Written Down, of which became the Gods of the Newer Generation.


The Term "Spirit" "Spiritual" are tricks of Language, by looking at the Etymology, Spirit is nothing but AIR IN OUR LUNGS - The Air of our Lungs IS the Soul.

Humans are the GODS.