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What makes your God a God?
- Thread starter Jimmy
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Saggath
Member
I've read some say that before the universe came into being there was no matter and no space. That's difficult to understand - okay, that's just about impossible for me to understand. But so is calculus. So I can tentatively accept it until an argument persuades me differently.
As for the spatial relation between "God" and the universe .... hmmm ... I don't know. I think a real "God" would not take up space, and also would not be confined by space. "Permeate"? It seems God must be aware of the universe, and the universe aware of God (subconsciously if not consciously), but I have no idea how that is. I plead ignorance.
Saggath
Member
I tend to see things that way, too, although I don't use the same names. Is your worship of God a necessary aspect of God? Is your worship even necessary? If your God is all and in all, why bother to worship any part or any all of It???
Judaism, Islam and the Baha'i faith consider God unknowable in essence completely beyond the physical, Christianity on the other hand is not consistent as to what the different Churches and divisions believe concerning the physicality of God. .
To me the word God means the highest. I think Bible God is the highest, for example because He caused the Bible, which is why I believe He has also created life.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I do not have a God of my own and I do not believe there is any such thing as your God and my God.
I believe there is only God, one God who is everyone's God whether they believe in that God or not.
That said,, I have a belief about what that God is like, a conception in my mind which is based upon the scriptures of my religion.
“Regard thou the one true God as One Who is apart from, and immeasurably exalted above, all created things. The whole universe reflecteth His glory, while He is Himself independent of, and transcendeth His creatures. This is the true meaning of Divine unity. He Who is the Eternal Truth is the one Power Who exerciseth undisputed sovereignty over the world of being, Whose image is reflected in the mirror of the entire creation. All existence is dependent upon Him, and from Him is derived the source of the sustenance of all things. This is what is meant by Divine unity; this is its fundamental principle.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 167
Jimmy
Veteran Member
Whether they believe or not huh? I hope it’s a nice god haha
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Logically speaking, God is what God is whether people believe it or not, but I am not sure how nice He is.
Nobody can know that even if they believe they can.
Bharat Jhunjhunwala
TruthPrevails
Firstly, we have to define what we mean by God. I think God is the personification of the collective consciousness of human beings. Smaller gods are collective consciousness of a small subset of the human being just as Yahweh is the god of the people of Israel and it is Yahweh is not god people of China or any other place. The God with capital ‘G’ is the collective consciousness of all human beings.
To answer your question, this collective consciousness influences our mind and that is what makes a God is God.
Would it then be fair to suggest that the only manner in which your God is known to exist is as an idea?
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Jimmy
Veteran Member
Something just struck me. It’s very rare that I change parts of my views, but in this case, I think it is necessary. I’ve always viewed infinite space as beyond physical but now I believe it’s physical. Why can’t it be physical. So now I would have to say what makes my God a god is the fact that he is infinite in space.
Spice
StewardshipPeaceIntergityCommunityEquality
My God is "I am." That's a bit lazy on my part because it was voiced long, long ago by others. But it still suits, for my God is God just because He is. He is incomprehensible completeness. He is ineffable emptiness. The Infinite One, the Finite All. He Is I Am.
No, God doesn't require, ask, demand worship. Worship brings us closer to God. Our desire and goal is to reach God, however one understands or views it. My goal and desire is to see him one day, to achieve his state (saccidānanda ... being, consciousness, bliss) once I have been liberated from the cycle of rebirth. Worship is inviting him to come to us. Nothing bad happens to us if we ignore him, we won't be punished, we will just continue on our paths life after life after life. In the Bhagavad Gĩtā, a scripture of my sect, Krishna says that if we remember him at the time of our death, we will immediately be freed from rebirth and go to him. The more fervently we worship, the more God is in our hearts and minds. That's why Hindus chant and sing the ames of God, whichever form of God a person chooses.
Bharat Jhunjhunwala
TruthPrevails
If one denies the unconscious then god is indeed only an idea.
We may be at some variance with definitions here.
I'm aware from my own reflections about myself, some of them stimulated by reading about the results of scientific experiments, that the non-conscious part of my brain does the lion's share of the heavy lifting, and is inclined to tell the conscious-of-self me afterwards, rather than during.
One easy example is speaking, where we utter words formed very usually without conscious thought, and mediated only via our forebrain's censor. This is what inspired Auden to say, "How do I know what I think till I hear what I say?" But others are illustrated by those well-reported experiments around 2010 showing that the brain had made a particular kind of decision and started to act on it up to ten seconds before the conscious mind was aware that that it had so decided. And I'm sure there are many more examples ─ waking dreams where you may have some kind of input into the dream, for instance.
1. God must have a good reason to hide behind, instead of showing up to educate humans directly.
In Christianity, there is a Covenant in place which demands human faith in order for humans to be saved. If God shows up publicly, no human is savable.
2. God is one who claimed to know a future, while humans lack the ability to know a future (i.e., afterlife).
In Christianity, God hid the Tree of Life = He knew that humans lack to ability to know life beyond our physical death. He however chose to hide the details from humans. However He forewarned that the Tree of Life (i.e., afterlife) exists, no details are provided about what it is. That is, no details are put about what Heaven will be like.
3. Since God knows the future, while He's bound to the Covenant too and will not show up publicly, He must make use of the next most efficient way of conveying truth to warn humans about such a future in case there's a serious consequence.
In Christianity, God crafted the Bible to forewarn us about a Judgment of Law (for angels at the end), together with a Judgment of Covenant (for humans only). The way of conveying such a truth is unique but the most efficient possible. Humans themselves failed to reckon such a way of conveying truth but make use of it on the conveying of almost all kinds of truth.
God is God because He knows what this most efficient way of conveying truth is, though humans failed to reckon it but using it on everything and on a daily basis.
4. God is capable of overcoming human weaknesses to convey His truth across human history, as ancient humans lack the ability to convey a simple truth (that's why the fact (assume so for the sake of argument) of Noah's flood turned into the different myths in different cultures.
In Christianity, God harshly trained up the Jews to convey His truth as faithfully as possible with maximum human capability. That's why you can reconcile how consistent the OT Scripture is with today's Bible versus the Dead Sea Scrolls.
5. God must have a contingency plan if His earthly agent failed to convey His truth.
When the Jews, as God's explicit chosen people, failed the job of conveying the truth of Jesus Christ, God has a quick solution. Christianity was set up in the place of Judaism, with authority changed from the Temple to the Church. OT was compiled by the faithfulness of the Jews, while NT is compiled by the mass of manuscripts left behind in a world wide scale. As humans' recording ability increased, God no longer need to train up Christians the hard way as He did to the Jews. Instead, He pushed for the spreading of early Christianity with tons of manuscripts left behind for today's Christians to correctly recompose the Bible content with the intangible guidance for God (the HS) Himself.
Just to name a few.
Bharat Jhunjhunwala
TruthPrevails
Agree. Now, the collective unconscious is God. Would you agree?
Bharat Jhunjhunwala
TruthPrevails
That is the tragedy. The Jews politicised YHWH and that is the cause of theological wars Canaan 1500 bce, inquisitions and jihads.
The truth was known at least from the time of abraham. That truth was all.encompassing. the Jews denigrated that truth and made it political. So there is plus and minus.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Well if a Bible poofed out of thin air in front of people, I'd be impressed.
Of course Moses went up in the mountains out of sight, and came back down with the ' 'god' written ten commandents on stone tablets as the tale is told.