Let me start with my definition of God. I was reading this book Native Wisdom for White Minds by Anne Wilson Schaef (White as in western culture) and she quotes Albert Wednt a Samoan writer who says:
God...was in the food they ate, in the water they drank, in the air they breathed, in the earth they trod and died on, in the words they spoke, in the sleep they slept, and in the dreams they dreampt in the everywhere and everything. ~Albert Wendt
She comments that:
Some Pacific cultures don't even have a name for God. It's not because God does not exist. God is self-existent. He is assumed. God is so present that there does not need to be a term for Him because God is life itself.
So, what traits, to you, are required for something to be a god or goddess? What criteria must be met? Please explain why, and what something would be if they met some but not all of those traits.
I was fumbling around for a word that would define life. When "God" is in the food you eat and the water you drink, you really don't see anything outside of how you relate to the world on a daily basis.
So traits that would define life would be
1. Birth. Seeing a baby born and just the baby coming from a sperm and egg by itself is a miraculous event. You are seeing a human coming from, practically nothing. We are part of our parents; so, life is an interconnection with our family and roots.
2. A parent. When we eat what the earth provides rather than artificial foods, we know the earth takes care of us in the sense of nourishment. The earth is more water than land; and the Smythsonian as well as I was taught that we came from the water. We can't live without it, so our survival what we need for our bodies.
The earth takes care of us--it takes on the trait of a parent.
3. I hate to bring some new age into this, but at its basic, you have the four elements--earth, air, fire, and water.
- Earth--the parent that is the source of the rest of the elements below; as well as our nourishment.
- Air--our life (without air, no life)
- Fire--our energy (without the Sun we wouldn't be here)
- Water--which is also our nourishment. I could add purity given we use water to cleans ourselves as well.
4. What drives the earth and moon to circle around each other and the sun, what keeps our heart pumping, baby's born, etc... is what many call the Spirit (or God).
The characteristics of the spirit is described above.
5. Many of us feel a calling or purpose in life to do something for the good of oneself and/or for others. That is a trait from life as well.
6. Also, you have human interaction. The love we bring to all living not just people. We have relationships and such.
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If one of these traits were not met, say there is no air, there'd be no life. If we didn't have our callings/purpose we would find no reason to want to survive. Without physics, the universe wouldn't be in line for us to exist. Without water we would be dead; without the earth, nothing on earth would exist.
So life IS the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe.. etc.
As such, because a deity denotes the source of all things (whether Creator or not), that deity would be life.
That's how I define God/deity. Without life, there is nothing.