What is God?

[We Never Know]

What real thing is denoted by the word "God"?

Qualities like

omniscient,
omnipotent,
omnipresent,
perfect,
eternal,
infinite,
spiritual,
supernatural,
immaterial​

aren't qualities of real things, only of imaginary things.

So given a God who's found in reality ─ by which I mean the world external to the self, nature, where things with objective existence are found ─ in what form does that God exist?

How could we tell whether we'd found a real one or not?

Or do gods only exist as a set of individual notions within a tradition?

If we don't fully understand the world we live in, how would we understand anything that lives outside this world, if its possible?

 

[blü 2]

I keep reminding you, thoughts can not realize the real, whatever exists is God.

No matter how many dimensions mortal calculate, no matter how many stars they estimate, no matter what mortals conceptualize, theorize, hypothesize, or imagine, God is the One that is all.

I can't avoid the conclusion that this is a rationalization and not a deduction.

My concern is to find a god who exists in reality, in the world external to the self, not just as an ideal, or symbol, or faith object, or aspiration, all of which are from internal mental states.

 

[We Never Know]

I can't avoid the conclusion that this is a rationalization and not a deduction.

My concern is to find a god who exists in reality, in the world external to the self, not just as an ideal, or symbol, or faith object, or aspiration, all of which are from internal mental states.

What if god cannot be known until one dies?
How would anyone living know? I reckon that's where faith comes in, believing in the unknown.

 

[alypius]

What real thing is denoted by the word "God"?

What if God is not a thing among all the things in the world?

 

[blü 2]

Again, you're asking 'how' questions.

The answer is, I have no clue. I have no clue about many things. But the fact that we don't know about something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

But it may well mean that we have no reason at all to think it's true, or that it's capable of being true. As you say, that's not the same as knowing it's not true, but it's the basis for making a very substantial wager.

People have believed in magic for millenia because they constantly observed things they didn't understand and didn't think were possible. And we still discover such things. None of them turned out to be 'magic,' they turned out to have naturalistic explanations that we didn't even think were possible before. We've explored less than 1% of the visible universe. Vastly less. We don't even know what questions we have yet to ask about what we don't know.

No argument from me.

So until such time as you find exhaustive knowledge of reality, we have no way to rule out that somewhere, somehow, there is someone omniscient. We don't know.

There are no absolute statements outside this sentence. But the late great-but-difficult James Randi arranged a million bucks for anyone who could do magic things, and his money was never threatened. Some things, as at 2021 October, look pretty dang wellfounded.

 

[blü 2]

What if god cannot be known until one dies?

Then God's m.o. calls into question [his] powers and [his] goals.

How would anyone living know? I reckon that's where faith comes in, believing in the unknown.

They wouldn't know. And people are welcome to their faith.

My concern in this thread is to see if there's any concept of a god who's real, has objective existence, something a searcher after a real god should be looking for. So far, no luck at all.

 

[Left Coast]

But it may well mean that we have no reason at all to think it's true, or that it's capable of being true. As you say, that's not the same as knowing it's not true, but it's the basis for making a very substantial wager.
No argument from me.
There are no absolute statements outside this sentence. But the late great-but-difficult James Randi arranged a million bucks for anyone who could do magic things, and his money was never threatened. Some things, as at 2021 October, look pretty dang wellfounded.

To be clear, I'm not remotely claiming it is true, or even possible, that we'll ever find such things. I mentioned Randi's challenge just the other day to @Estro Felino here (actually it was in Discord).

But we simply don't have enough information to declare dogmatically that such a thing definitively does not exist. That's the trouble with proving negatives. And it's my issue with the kind of 'gnostic' atheism that says, "God does not exist." We simply don't know that. We have no way of knowing it.

 

[blü 2]

What if God is not a thing among all the things in the world?

If God doesn't have objective existence, is not found in nature, then the only way God exists is as a concept/thing imagined in an individual brain. In your example, [he]'d be a thing imagined, no?

 

[We Never Know]

Then God's m.o. calls into question [his] powers and [his] goals.
They wouldn't know. And people are welcome to their faith.

My concern in this thread is to see if there's any concept of a god who's real, has objective existence, something a searcher after a real god should be looking for. So far, no luck at all.

When you go to sleep tonight, can you show me that you will awake tomorrow? You can no more show me that than anyone can show me a god.
Its all based on faith.

 

[blü 2]

When you go to sleep tonight, can you show me that you will awake tomorrow? You can no more show me that than anyone can show me a god.
Its all based on faith.

If faith is the right word, nonetheless it's faith derived from practical experience, an inductive conclusion / expectation from empirical observations. I've woken up often enough before, why not this time?

 

[Ben Dhyan]

I can't avoid the conclusion that this is a rationalization and not a deduction.

My concern is to find a god who exists in reality, in the world external to the self, not just as an ideal, or symbol, or faith object, or aspiration, all of which are from internal mental states.

It is not a deduction, nor is it a rationalization, it is simply what it is. Concepts are mental creations of the mind, you mistake them for reality, instead of them being thoughts about reality. The human mind having thoughts, theories, hypothesis, calculations, equations, about reality, but the reality itself is totally independent of the human mind.

To try and find a God in reality is like water trying to find water in water, God is the sum total of reality, and it is an indivisible one.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I don't see how that can be correct. We have our sense of self, brain and body (sometimes mainly brain), and we have the realm external to that where we get our air, water, food, shelter, society and so on. I'm not present where you are and you're not present where I am, for example.
I'm very aware of how language works, and how the brain uses abstractions ─ love, justice, corruption &c ─ all the time. But these are evolved phenomena, ways the self deals with the external.
Then I wish you well of it.

Try thinking of the universe and everything in it as one huge and impermanent molecular dance. Every atom in your body and brain has been part of something else, from a collapsing star, to the spray from a hot spring. What you are now, is merely a temporary coherence of phenomena, a coming together of waves and particles maintaining a state of equilibrium for the duration of a human lifetime - which is a mere nano second in the context of the 14 billion years since the Big Bang.

We are not separate from the world, we are in the world, and the world is in us; all that we see, we see in our minds, but the mind, which holds an image of the world within itself, is itself within that world; such is the paradox of our limited perspective. Neither is other, the otherness is an illusion, though a convincing one. The question remains, is there a God’s eye view of the universe, even if only as an abstraction? If there is, then that abstraction may be at least as real as the one we each hold in our separate minds.

Clearly I am where you are, and you are where I am, for just so long as we are able to read each other’s words.

 

[Segev Moran]

No, it describes magic, the bringing into existence of either all the EM spectrum, or the missing visible part of it, by wishing. The alteration of reality independently of the rules of reality is what magic is.

So when you talk and convert movement into words, you are doing magic?
In that sense, I assume we are all magicians.
And how do you determine it was independent of rules of reality?
And how do you know what the rules of reality are?
We know only a tiny fraction of what our reality is and how it works.

Exactly as [he] spells out in the Garden story and again in the Babel tale, [he] really really hates competition.

Lol. You can interpret it like this, or actually read the words.

A non-spatial realm is by definition nowhere. The prosecution rests.

In that case, our universe cannot exist.

 

[sayak83]

What real thing is denoted by the word "God"?

Qualities like

omniscient,
omnipotent,
omnipresent,
perfect,
eternal,
infinite,
spiritual,
supernatural,
immaterial​

aren't qualities of real things, only of imaginary things.

So given a God who's found in reality ─ by which I mean the world external to the self, nature, where things with objective existence are found ─ in what form does that God exist?

How could we tell whether we'd found a real one or not?

Or do gods only exist as a set of individual notions within a tradition?

In monistic Hinduism, we speak in terms of the ultimate foundational reality which is described as the true Self-nature in all things. This "experiencing presence " that we have as we interact with ourselves or with the so-called external world comes from this foundational reality. So a key trait of this ultimate reality (or Brahman) is that it the One that experiences in all things and it is the Self-nature of all things.
Then the differentiated flux that we see as the "objective world" is Brahman (ultimate reality) interacting with itself through various modes during which certain partial aspects of this Self becomes emergent as "properties" or attributes that are perceived during the course of the interaction. These partial aspects include material properties, abstract properties or personality properties...none of which are ultimately fundamental but are partial emergence of the Ultimate Self during these surface level interactions.

 

[rational experiences]

O science said God was the earth owner of all numbers as a mathematical proposition. How a man of god wisdom could convert it.

Science of God by man.

O earth he said is the stone ark mass that as m a s s M 13...M1000...M God O in the middle of a womb travelled.

Space equalled gods presence of mass stone the planet.

O God owned as a God the earth God it's earth gods heavens

Scientific human stated. God.

O stone does not talk.
O stones heavens does not talk.

Human men theists talk design.

Observing.

Natural design says when I look observe a tree I SEE a tree. Natural design.

Science doesn't not observe natural design. They quote I search for the spirit of God.

Men are conscious in a heavenly owned space womb body not gods.

Space plus spirits gases mother and her heavens. A thesis. O zero womb owned gases and water by direct zero pressure. Not God.

A human owns human presence. Human for human self consciousness only.

A human said I am not God.

Science the theist however wanted gods earth stone body to convert into spirit bodies....
Gases.

The teaching human scientists ignore about self human presence and relevance.

As machine became their stone AI God that also never owned the spirit gases of the heavens.

Lying is being a human scientist.

So if you said does God have an ego?

The information taught says yes he does. As egotism chooses to destroy and harm.

So God as told by theists as science owners of ego are proven liars. As it is their self destructive human theisms that had human life destroyed

As only a self destructive mind personality understands nuclear destruction and how to build activate bombs.

 

[blü 2]

To try and find a God in reality is like water trying to find water in water, God is the sum total of reality, and it is an indivisible one.

If you want God to be the sum of all real things, that's your call. The problem comes when you want to attribute sentience, purpose, emotion, to that sum. Only a tiny fraction of that exquisitely tiny fraction of reality that represents living things is capable of sentience, purpose, thought, emotion.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

If you want God to be the sum of all real things, that's your call. The problem comes when you want to attribute sentience, purpose, emotion, to that sum. Only a tiny fraction of that exquisitely tiny fraction of reality that represents living things is capable of sentience, purpose, thought, emotion.

That is your mind's conception, your mind's hypothesis, your mind's theory, stop thinking and all will be self evident, think and you are no longer in touch with reality directly, but indirectly through mental symbols. They each have their purpose, but if its God you are interested in, then stop thinking.

 

[blü 2]

So when you talk and convert movement into words, you are doing magic?

No you're doing physics.

And how do you determine it was independent of rules of reality?

You make a video of it so that your experts can examine it very carefully afterwards ─ the way they caught Uri Geller, for instance.

And how do you know what the rules of reality are?

You can read up on physics yourself, or ask a physicist. Of course as in life so in physics, there are no absolute statements; but truth is our best understanding for the time being.

Lol. You can interpret it like this, or actually read the words.

I suspect it's you who haven't read the words. God is unashamed of [his] selfish purposes and declares them out loud at the start of the bible. The storytelling and the characters get more soigné later.

In that case, our universe cannot exist.

Our universe has at least three spatial dimensions ─ I've come to rely on them on a daily basis ─ so I'm not clear on what you're arguing.

 

[Segev Moran]

No you're doing physics.

Exactly.

You make a video of it so that your experts can examine it very carefully afterwards ─ the way they caught Uri Geller, for instance.

Great. When you find the video of the emergence of light, give me a shout. we can examine it together.

You can read up on physics yourself, or ask a physicist.

I do and I have, Way too many times than I should

Of course as in life so in physics, there are no absolute statements;

Agreed.

but truth is our best understanding for the time being.

Truth is subject to change based on evidence.
Quantum, for example, completely changed what we regarded as true.

I suspect it's you who haven't read the words.

Not all of them It usually takes me a few days to understand most verses.
The reason for that is that the Hebrew language is far more complex than you think.
In order to understand one word like "משיח" (messiah), you need to read the entire scope and contexts this word is being used.
In fact, we have a university that specializes in that. I consult with them on almost every word I read.

God is unashamed of [his] selfish purposes and declares them out loud at the start of the bible.

So I tell my son not to put his hand in the fire cause it will burn him, I guess it can be regarded as selfish, as I have my own agenda not to see my kid hurting.

The storytelling and the characters get more soigné later.

What do you mean by that?

Our universe has at least three spatial dimensions ─ I've come to rely on them on a daily basis ─ so I'm not clear on what you're arguing.

As you claimed, our universe is spatial, apparently tri-dimensional. So we have an agreement here.
I claim, that vacuum, in which our universe expands, is as you claimed before, non-spatial by definition.
The fact is, our universe, expands inside this vacuum (or whatever you choose to call it).
So our spatial universe, resides inside a non spatial vacuum.
This means your argument that spatial and non-spatial cannot exists on in another, seems not valid.

 

[Brian2]

Nope. The ONLY place those things are found are as concepts and things imagined in individual brains.

None of them is a quality found in reality.

Are you sure?

"Mind" is a word for a rather vaguely defined set of brain functions, like thought, reason, memory and language. The brain is a very complex biological device and wields all those things. To a certain extent you can watch the brain doing this in real time.

Are you sure?

The revelation is internal for many things. But in each case they're only real if they have a counterpart with objective existence, something God notoriously lacks.

We can't really imagine God, He is someone we are told about and believe exists and can subjectively see evidence for. We can also have a relationship with this invisible friend even if it is for the most part subjectively.
You should realise that your thinking is like scientific thinking,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,this is thinking which lacks the childlike quality of belief in magic. Nothing is real for you unless you can count it, touch it, smell it, test it, and all done objectively.
Matt 18:3“Truly I tell you,” He said, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.…