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Does God need have a material form?
- Thread starter Tonymai
- Start date
tumbleweed41
Resident Liberal Hippie
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.
Manahel.Fatima
Member
Yes GOD is a spirit and we don't need any materialistic evidence for this. Last prophet told that GOD make many things to give proof that He is the only creator and no other can copy this.
I suspect that those who condemn worship of idols are completely ignorant of what that actually entails.
What does worshiping God in Spirit mean to you?
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.
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Breathe
Hostis humani generis
I totally agree.
@OP: I see God without a material form, however, many humans need an icon of some sort to concentrate on. This doesn't make it 'bad', or 'wrong', or 'superstitious' IMO - but it expresses a perfectly normal common human need. Just because some don't does not mean that they are better, more spiritual, less likely to offend God (should such a thing even be possible), more intelligent, or anything like that. It's just two sides of the same coin: do you worship with form or without?
I don't know any religion that doesn't teach this form of inner connection with the Divine.
And as far as 'outer performance', I am not sure of many religions that don't do this. Muslims, Christians, Hindus etc. There is always some element of 'outer performance'.
The point is that the 'outer performance' helps or guides the inner connection, and so it is not wrong or useless.
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Gaura Priya
IRL
When Christians look at a cross, or when Muslims pray using the name of Allah, or when Jews hold YHWH in complete and utter reverence, they are holding sacred a form in which the direct representation is really essentially God Himself.
Even when one makes an image of God in the mind alone or some inanimate representation of God (light), that person is embodying God's ineffableness and clothing Him in material form, in something that is tangible.
God is beyond our comprehension... however, He uses things like Scriptures, peoples, rituals, and even a spiritual, personal form, in order to reciprocate that love we have towards Him.
Even when one makes an image of God in the mind alone or some inanimate representation of God (light), that person is embodying God's ineffableness and clothing Him in material form, in something that is tangible.
God is beyond our comprehension... however, He uses things like Scriptures, peoples, rituals, and even a spiritual, personal form, in order to reciprocate that love we have towards Him.
flouncing floo
Member
The deity/s is an idea in the mind of humans, and doesn't exist outside the human brain, in my opinion.
chinu
chinu
Friend of Bill W
Member
Some religions appear to worship their holy scripture; that's form.
Man attributes God with human characters, and God inspire man to be Godlike.
BruceDLimber
Well-Known Member
>Does God have a material form?
Definitely not!!
I quote an official Baha'i source:
"[T]hat invisible yet rational God ... 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."
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, pp. 113)
Peace,
Bruce
Definitely not!!
I quote an official Baha'i source:
"[T]hat invisible yet rational God ... 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."
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, pp. 113)
Peace,
Bruce
I think spirit still means having substance otherwise it is non-existent.
I'm having trouble deciphering that. Can you rephrase.
He doesn't need to be made of matter no.
Yes, but spiritual substance and material substance do not directly interact without the intermediary of the mind substance.
Any particular reason you think spirit or god need a middleman?
It does not matter how I think, each person must find out by himself whether there is reality of God, or spirit substance. Man discovers God within his mind experiences, not within his interactions with material substance.
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Mind experiences is dependent on sensing the world including your ability to sense yourself. Sensing is sensing whether outward or inward.