Defining God

[Lightkeeper]

Is attempting to define God the act of worshipping a false idol? Do atheists define God in order to reject the concept? In other words, do you have to define something in order to reject it? How would anyone know their definition is correct?

[Amergin]

Originally Posted by Lightkeeper

Is attempting to define God the act of worshipping a false idol? Do atheists define God in order to reject the concept? In other words, do you have to define something in order to reject it? How would anyone know their definition is correct?

What exactly is God? How can we argue about the existence of God if none of us can define that about which we are debating? 25-30% of humans think of the humanoid Christian God, a personal and a specific living being of some kind. But is that justified?

There are several different quasi-definitions of God.

The classical type of is the anthropomorphic god. This God usually has a human personality with human emotions, human virtues, and human vices. These qualities are manifested by jealousy, anger, rage, love and hate, compassion and indifference, capriciousness, justice and injustice, narcissism and insecurity (need for adoration as assurance of his supremacy), and forgiveness along with vindictiveness. In other words he behaves just like us. Yet He is also omnipotent, omniscient, and the creator of all reality. This anthropomorphic god can range from the minimal anthropomorphism of Monotheistic Allah to the markedly human raging of Monotheistic JHWH. It can include the biologically human Jesus Christ. Christ is also a God-human hybrid in a Trinity that believers like to call Monotheism. But that is arguable.

There are relatively undefined or poorly defined gods such as the one recognised by Deists, Unitarians, and Bahai’s. This god is defined as conscious and non-conscious by others. But the Deist God is clearly not human. He, She, or It may or may not have emotions. That is not defined. He/She/It has but one function. That function is to create the universe and the rules by which it runs. The Deist God does not intervene in material or human affairs. Revelation is regarded as self-generated. (i.e. Thomas Paine.)

Another kind of god is the Inanimate God. This god is defined, as perhaps Steven Hawking, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and Stephen Weinberg might say, the elementary forces of nature and the unified field theory of all physics. This god is not a conscious being. It has no personality. It is incapable of thinking (cognition). It knows nothing. But its action results in the formation of a universe, or a series of successive universes. Each universe begins with a big bang. Then it expands from a tiny singularity. The super hot energy cools and condenses into the subatomic particles, and later true atoms of Hydrogen. Atoms fuse to form larger atoms, each of which has unique natural properties. They are the elements. Elemental atoms bond to other atoms to form molecules, each of which has its own unique properties. Many scientists’ idea of a creator (metaphor) is the Big Bang and all of the properties of energy and matter. But it offers no proof, and instead of science, it is philosophy.

Those innate properties account for the evolution of matter from energy and nanoparticles, and the evolution of life from atoms combining into a series of increasingly complex molecules. Life evolves through stages of mobility, which requires some self-awareness and reactivity. More complex life evolves to cognition and intelligence. Intelligence is merely an animal behaviour evolved over many stages for adaptation.

This adaptation includes finding food, finding reproductive mates, and avoiding predators. Consciousness, thinking, and intelligence are not necessary for a creator god. A cosmic creative force needs no food, needs no reproductive mates, and needs no fear of predators. We know of no Theophages or God-eaters. A Cosmic creator-god no more needs intelligence than a sponge needs a computer keyboard.

Amergin

[arthra]

Baha'is generally do not define God and are not involved in theological discussions about the nature of God nor are there any theological schools among us based on a point of view.

So we reject defining God and honor God by remaining silent about the Divine Essence: "God is an Unknowable Essence".

One writer described it this way and bear in mind this is only one view:

"The main substance of Bahá'í "theology", however, is manifestation theology or theophanology, that is, a theology calculated upon an understanding of the metaphysical reality and teachings of the divine Manifestation. This manifestation theology is cataphatic. Cataphasis dares to speak about God but recognizes that God transcends the human analogies used to describe divinity."

Source:

http://bahai-library.com/?file=mclea...bahai_theology

Baha'u'llah revealed:

"The essence of belief in Divine unity consisteth in regarding Him Who is the Manifestation of God and Him Who is the invisible, the inaccessible, the unknowable Essence as one and the same."

- Gleanings LXXXIV

[RunicSage]

I personally see the divinity of the cosmos as inanimate ,yet at the same time I see it having a conciousness unlike our own therefore I choose to not debate such things in which I can not expound fully with my own limited mortality.

The Gods I worship and venerate I see as energies of this inanimate cosmos that exist in human anthropomorphisms.

And yet at the same time I see the Gods as all being under the prime directive of lord Odin who I see as the embodiment of the cosmos.

Do I believe the Gods to be conscious? Yes ,but seperately from my own because again I see them as energies and functions of the cosmos symbolically or actively at the same time.

Human beings tend to anthropomorphize many things besides the unknown or religion. Human beings anthropomorphize animals for instance in studies. ( And many other things too we like to Anthropmorphize.)

Anthropomorphizing are symbolic representations of the human psyche in understanding the very creation around us because man was not given a definative absolute form of information from the very start of his creation.

I think the flaw of atheism or people just studying religion in general from a objective observation is the point in paying too much attention to the symbolic representations.


Does any of this make sense?

[RunicSage]

When it gets down to it all the Gods and even the high lord Odin that I worship I see as all being apart of the divine cosmos.

Divine cosmos as in all creation and existance that gives us life,meaning and substance.

People speak of proof and evidence which I find odd because the proof is all around us.

All of life in our solar system came from somewhere and I happen to revere the singularity in worship that gave or defined me existance.

All other people and creatures came from this singularity too.

The singularity itself came from the eternal cosmos that gives all meaning in it's ad infinitum.

[Storm2008]

Originally Posted by Lightkeeper

Is attempting to define God the act of worshipping a false idol?

I see it more as trying to solve an unsolveable puzzle. It's an exercise in futility, but I for one am compelled to try.

Do atheists define God in order to reject the concept? In other words, do you have to define something in order to reject it?

No, I think atheists reject the definition with which they're most familiar.

How would anyone know their definition is correct?

We don't.

[Tonyamendola]

To know God is to experience God through Revelation

That is available to everyone

If you ask