xddga

in almost every topic here, it seems almost every other person mentions "God", but yet there is no discussion of what "God" could be. I don't want this turn into flames, or arguments... I just want to hear other people's ideas of what they think "God" is. So, to you, reader, what is "God"? (note: By "God" i mean any higher power [if any] that you believe in, not just the usual religious view)

to me, I don't buy what the bible says. which is why I've spent most of my life trying to figure out what my answer myself. In the bible "God" always seems to be a singular entity with its own opinion and view point, which I don't agree with. If this is true it would really be no different then one of us ruling all of existance, no matter how wise He is. He still has an opinion which is based on his current state in time, which could be wrong from someone elses view point. and who is to say wether one opinion is better then another?

To me, "God" has to be a collective and can not be singular in nature. If it can have an opinion/emotions then it can failable and is no better then it's subjects (us) if they themselves have freewill and can formulate opinions (as all ideas and opinions are just that, and are equal in value in terms of one vs the other).

at the core, everything is made of energy. Everything from the chair your sitting in to your conciousness, every bit of it the most basic fundumental level is exactly the same. I think that all of that is "God", we as a whole make up "our creator". In essence, we are the cells of "God". Just as our actions as a society and how we work together effect the outcome of this world, so do our actions as a whole effect the state of god and existince.

I think what we believe as an individual becomes our own reality, and each person has their own subjective reality (basicly reality, IMO, can be defined as "an individuals perceptions limited by their beliefs"). So if someone truly believes and has faith in something, then it is true and is no better or worse then someone elses ideas. this is kind of what I meant by "so do our actions as a whole effect the state of god and existince".

ok, yeah, it's kinda late for me, have a headache, and not sure I'm making any sense anymore...

bernadette

i vividly remember, when i was 11 or 12 yrs old, sitting in the swings beside my best friend in her back yard. that was the first time i really thought of & discussed infinity.

there's some connection betwixt infinity & faith, so i think...
it's caused me much doubt, conflict, confusion, ... as i've grown up, outgrown & left behind my plaid catholic school girl uniforms.

so, no. i do not believe in some lofty fella sitting on a throan up in heaven. that's a fairy tale to me.

i learned to pray as child. i quit praying as an adult as my doubts rolled in.
but... i have always found myself still talking talking to God when i am in needy times... it's a weird perplexion i've yet to come to peace with.

i don't know what or who God is? i'm not sure i (or any of us) ever will / can know.
i think the bible is a bunch of proganda written by many men. ok, there may be some good advice within the bible (i don't really know, being that i haven't actually read it ever fully). i just know that so many people misconstrue the words to fit their needs & that's what bugs me most about people quoting the bible. i should bother to read the book fully someday i suppose.

anyway... as far as God existing... i continue back to the infinity thing. it warps my head.

tecoyah

I feel this "God" entity is simply the energy found everywhere. The essence of life we can touch in this world, and the deep basic understanding that there is good in our reality. I can see the reasoning for the "Face" we humans put on the "Gods" that are worshipped, and even accept the need (it allows people to SEE what they pray to) but, dont feel the need to label my vision of these energies in such a way.

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Ustwo

God is the imaginary friend adults have to prevent the despair over the pointlessness of life.

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zen_tom

God is a person's highest aspiration of themselves.

He is what we strive to become, either personally or as a society. In ages gone by God, or Gods have had very different personalities, manifestations and numbers. These often reflect somewhat the prevailing civil organisation of the time. The Judao/Christian God (assuming it's the same one) appears to have gone through at least one major personality revision himself. Who knows what paths other Gods have taken?

If we create Gods in our own image, it might be interesting to look in this divine mirror, and learn a lot more about ourselves, and our ancestors in the process.

Charlatan

I like this explaination on many levels...

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

zen_tom

Why is that?

It seems a bit glib to me. It's also ironic, since it implies that one must assume one's life to be pointless unless you believe in God.

martinguerre

nods to zen tom...i guess i don't see much utility in such reasoning.

God to me, is the reason why i can say that i believe love is stronger than death.

__________________
For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life.

-John 3:16

Ustwo

Utility is what I think it is all about. The belief in god serves a function, and gives meaning to answerable and distrubing questions. It is very much the imaginary friend who makes someone feel better when they are really alone. The fact that god would have 'utility' makes it into a tool, to be used for a purpose.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Meditrina

Interesting that I should happen upon this thread now. I have been trying to figure out what my beliefs are and where they fit in. I find it hard to put my beliefs into words. I am going to keep an eye on this thread.

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"Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles." ~Alex Karras

Axiom_e

The rock is God. The air is God. The beat of a single heart is God. The silencing of that same heart with an act of rage is God. The polluting of the air we breathe is God. The destruction of the rock with a bomb is God. God is perfection. He is not the perfect good nor is he the perfect evil. He is the perfect.

Every breath I take is a prayer to the mighty power that is God. God is the equations of existence. I am God and so are you.

At least this is the way I feel about it. (I have also thought about it too.)

I don't see God as an entity and have distanced myself from the worship of a single Entity. I worship all the aspects individually and my worship is to simply live and die as I find my path through this world.

__________________
Life is meaningless.
How awesome is that?
Rock On! Now I can do whatever the hell I want
and give my own life meaning to myself.

Mantus

God is whatever people want him to be. Most often though, God is there to mask the unknown, the incomplete or the unfathomable.

For me God is something of which I hold no knowledge.

Seeker

I like the way you've stated this Axiom..
This also tecoyah..

ARTelevision's view that intelligence as an integral aspect of the universe, an active agent, also adds to my views on this subject.

To me, it is the inherant force within everything. Every thought, action, being or material aspect in the universe, and as real as any property currently known.

__________________
To those who wander but who are not lost...

~ Knowledge is not something you acquire, it is something you open yourself to.

kramus

In fiction, Stranger in a Strange Land, the thread "thou art god' runs through. You, I, the grasshopper on the grass as John Smith lay dieing, all are God.

Works for me.

__________________
And now to disengage the clutch of the forebrain ...
I'm going with this - if you like artwork visit http://markfineart.ca

Xell101

I think of god as being the crux of the universe. The greater the refinement of philosophy, the greater the science, the great the intellect, the greater the will, the better our ability to define god will be. As it stands, I can say that god is the crux of the universe in an assertive voice as apparent conviction gives the illusion I'm equipped to also give an explanation whilst simultaneously dissuading the inquisitive from doing what they do.

All I've got is disconnected theory and conjecture, whose constituent bits make perfect sense in them of themselves, but are sufficiently insubstantiall you'd have better luck piecing together a theory from torn sugar packets while partaking in the contents of one packet of hallucinagens.

Mantus

Axiom_e and kramus, what does God give to the universal concept that wasn't there in the first place?

kramus

My take is that God is an underlying coherence which allowed everything to make sense. We are part of it. Being alive is terribly important for some reason, like a filter or catalyst, but we really are just along for the ride and creating our own possibilities and purposes as a subset of that coherence. When it comes to making sense of God, or Why, or all the rest of that stuff, well, those are human needs being expressed within the subset. We create our importances and requirements and so on. Sort of like a stained glass artist working with the light of the sun, which is so much more than a source of light through glass. But the artist is important, and the light that is transfigured is important, and in the end there is more to all of it. When I "die" whatever I am part of will be reconstituted in some manner which has been transfigured by my life. And my life will have effect on the form of that transfiguration.

Works for me


Works for me.

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And now to disengage the clutch of the forebrain ...
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Zephyr66

The way i see it, God is an excuse to act like you're better than everyone else and that you can tell them what to do and how to live.

xddga

wow, this turned out better then I hoped.

I see this a lot in society, and it's really what worries me. if something goes wrong, we blame God and question His workings and in some cases even curse him for that act. If something goes right, however, they usually say it's just good luck. No one ever really ever bothers to question "Why?" anything happens... they just [eventually] accept it and move on and never learn from it.

Yeah, i don't put much stalk into the bible either. it was fully written/compiled over 200 years after the fact, and at a time when people were looking for a something to believe in and being ruled by a paganoistic society that detested belief in anything as well as even went as far as killing people because of their beliefs. also this wasn't too long after man casted off the belief in Zeus and other Greek gods. Kind of reminds of the game you played in kindergarten where everyone would stand a line and tell the next person in line something, then they'd tell the next person, etc. By it reached the end of the line there wasn't a single word beeing passed on that you said. 200+ years is a lot of time to doctor the facts, as well as add your own spin on things.
Granted, there is many good things to be learned from it, but it just seems to me like people believing in Santa Claus their whole lives... instead of trying to figure out the truth, they take other's words for it and take that as the truth. And not many of these people ever try to learn the lessons that it tells either. It just seems as philosophy and actually thinking is something society doesn't want to deal with anymore and there more content with falling into line with other's ideas and thoughts and leave the work to other people. And wether they believe it is true or not is only based on what they themselves believe in the first place. I mean, if some scientists came out and gave proof of intellegent extraterristial life, how many of the ppl would believe it and how many would pass it off as a joke?

Seeker

I don't want to bring this thread too much off topic, though in my questing for answers (God, life, etc.) I seemed to have approached it backwards.

I actually started with a belief in the psychic and paranormal, my family heritage is English on my mothers side, so all this I thought was pretty normal as I was brought up with these beliefs.

I didn't read the Bible, nor did I have any interest in wanting to know it. As I continued I researched many other religions and beliefs. Then about four or five years ago, I finally studied the Bible.

It amazed me, the amount of information it contained. I think it has a great 'blue-print' for living. There are a lot of issues about human behaviours, the shoulds and shouldn'ts. I could also relate much of my other learnings and ideals with what was being said in the Bible. I was surprised at the amount of 'good' information. It is all this that keeps any spark of a God like aspect in my thoughts.

I think I just wanted to differentiate between the information contained within the Bible as opposed to the circumstances or conflicts that surround it.

__________________
To those who wander but who are not lost...

~ Knowledge is not something you acquire, it is something you open yourself to.

Mantus

Kramus,

So God completes the universe. How does this happen? What values does God add to the universe to make it seem complete to you?

xddga

I agree... but I also think it's more of a guide book then strict rules of living ones life. People hold on to it like a shield and quote it without ever trying to understand it or learn the lessons from it. To them, it's the be-all/end-all answer book. when in doubt, just flip to a random page and they'll find a quote to suit their needs. same thing happens everyday w/ Nostradums' Centuries.

if your going to try to find an answer to a question like "what is god?", I think you have to look at many different theories and texts and look at them all with an open mind, rather then one small section with a closed mind.

Like you, I started out on the more paranormal side of thing when a friend of mind said he could Astral Projection and learned what I could on that, and moved on to more mysticism/spirtual subjects, then on to buddhism, and now mainly just other's philosophies. so a lot of my view points tend to take the side of those and have more of an anti-god aproach...

kramus

God completes the universe? I thought the universe was an expression of God - an expression in so far as our current senses and accumulation of consideration agree that it is what ever it is. Probably a lot more to things than that. (Which I figure makes death so important. We get to experience that expression in ways that aren't filtered throught the evolved biochemical exhuberence that is life.)

I'll take the second question as a general "What do I get out of the 'God' idea". There is something underlying all the energies and interactions and what not that we are slowly becoming more aware of. Some basic common whatever that ties it all together. I see it in writings and in art and in all the ways life works with life. I see it in the sky and in the Hubble pictures and in the speculations that popular science writers render comprehensible for folks like me I feel it in my gut and I've held it with my children and I kissed it's cheek a couple of days ago at a visitation in a funeral home. You want me to pull a simple answer out . . .no can do. But when you die you will be reintegrated more directly with the answer yourself.

I figure no worries. Life can suck, death sucks, and there is heaps of cold uncaring shit for billions of light years all around us. So what. It makes sense even if we don't understand it. It makes sense even if we never will be able to while alive.

Works for me

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Seeker

Yes, I agree - there are people that do this. I however have moved through this and just looked at the information presented and applied that with and to all my other learnings. There are only a few things that cause me some conflict, but overall I have found many correlations with other expressions of belief.

I find this interesting as I have found the opposite. I see the information I have compiled as an interpretation of an ultimate intelligence or energy that I assume is given the lable 'God'.

Another reason I do not discount the idea of God is that throughout the ages, man has always appeared to aspire to something 'higher'... it is something I see as inherent within us, something that seems to nag at people, the reason we question and philosophise.

I really like the simplicity of this too. Whether this is God, or something on a consciousness level I do not know. I just find with either expression and the variations in between, it is interesting in that it produces thoughts of evolution or aspiration.

__________________
To those who wander but who are not lost...

~ Knowledge is not something you acquire, it is something you open yourself to.

bernadette

see... i'm still stuck on this infinity thing.

i mean... there's got to be something behind the scenes running the show.
how did this all begin? will it ever end? how could it all just cease to exist?

and maybe this is straying off topic...? but i can't help but to believe there's 2 forces in the universe. one is good. one is not. maybe that thinking stems from my catholic upbringing, learning about god & satan. but god & satan are just names afterall, right? and maybe they're simply names for two opposing universal forces? like magnetics...

Ustwo

Order and Chaos.

Good and Evil.

Light and Darkness.

Yin and Yang

A dicotomy of energy is a pretty common human theme, not just Catholic.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Mantus

I feel that too but why do you need this concept of God to complete the picture? Why not just leave it at a question mark? It's more honest to your experience because you are a being with a limited capacity for knowledge. The soul, afterlife, karma, the mysterious forces underlying everything around us, they all seem a part of this world to me. Until we get to God, and I really don't know what to do with God, shall I use him as a synonym for the universe? Shall I use him to tie up the loose ends of my knowledge?


Bringing God into the picture won't help you unless you choose to stop asking question. If you don't, you will be stuck with the same questions and many more.

If people can say "God just is and always will be" why do people have trouble saying the same for the world around us?

kramus

I don't need the concept of God except as a convenient language tag. Yes, the freight of that word means that the definition will be nibbled to death by ducks. I am not overly concerned with "defining", and I do find the God word much more succinct and suited to my personal aesthetic than "question mark". I could call it the Great Chord, the Sussurus of Completion, many things. God is good enough.

Works for me

__________________
And now to disengage the clutch of the forebrain ...
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cellophanedeity

I've been trying to figure out what my personal definition of "God" is for years.

All I've pretty much come down to is that I cannot believe or accept the idea of a personified God. Lately I've been growing toward the idea of a pantheistic deity, but even then I'm uncertain.

I used to think that God was electicity. It's in everything living, and even in things that aren't. I don't know though. I'm so uncertain.

xddga

Weee... gonna quote myself! =p

I should of clarified that a lot when I wrote it. I didn't mean "anti-god" as in there's nothing out there but us; but "anti-God" as more like the biblicial defination of God. sorry about that, bad terminology I guess.

I do believe in a higher power, but calling it a god, diety, or anything like that is not really correct. I don't think it has a will of it's own, thought, or anything else we as humans expirence such as emotion. To me, it's more of like an underlining current. It's there, it flows through everything, it makes up everything, but it has no (or gives any) direction. I seriously wish I could describe it better...

I actually don't believe in "good" and "evil". right and wrong I do though. and Ustwo mentioned "Ying and Yang" in his response. *sorry if this comes off like I'm an ass, I don't mean it* but Ying and Yang aren't exactly opposing forces. Basicly means "there's a little bit of good and every evil, and a little bit of evil and every good". In the buddhistic (btw, is that even a word?) view of kharma, every action has an oppisite and equal reaction (the value of each effect is equal to that of the cause. i.e., if you do something really bad, you'll get some really bad return on your kharma). In other words, every cause will have two effects (basicly): a good and a bad one. if the cause is good you get an near immediate bad effect, and somewhere down the road you'll get the good effect. if the cause is bad, you'll get a near immediate good effect, and in the future you get a bad effect. as far as the time frame goes of seeing these effects, it's kind of hard to say. Considering sometimes you don't see an effect from your kharma until the next life or even the one after that, but they always go in that order and the first is always soon after.

k, yeah, that was off subject a bit...

Seeker

hmmm, I thought good v's evil was more a contium along a spectrum or a sliding scale.. taking my perspective of the ultimate energy and it's expression as our free will to make the choice of where we will position ourselves along that scale.

This is to say that I would call it the same force, not two seperate forces... in this light I wouldn't call it off topic, sorry if it perceived as otherwise.

__________________
To those who wander but who are not lost...

~ Knowledge is not something you acquire, it is something you open yourself to.

amonkie

Sometimes I feel like God is the balance of this world - the nature and the essence around us, both good and bad. The beauty of nature is just as strongly rivaled by its intense power - stronger than man in so many ways... We each draw something different from God depending on what our view is, and this wouldn't be possible, I think, unless the essence was available to everyone in form they so needed.

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Calling from deep in the heart, from where the eyes can't see and the ears can't hear, from where the mountain trails end and only love can go... ~~~ Three Rivers Hare Krishna

Axiom_e

For me God is the universal concept. I just use the term God for others to understand what I am thinking. You know the end all be all.

__________________
Life is meaningless.
How awesome is that?
Rock On! Now I can do whatever the hell I want
and give my own life meaning to myself.

Borgs

I agree with this, though I do think that God is an entity. Whether he be some sort of energy or matter of what have you I don't know. But I do know that God is all loving and all compassionate, and in knowing that he exists and striving to be like him we become better persons. So then, the people that say that god is an excuse, I wonder what exactly he is an excuse for. Loving compassion?

As far as God just being some self actualization within ourselves, I think that, while this approach may work in life, it doesn't work as far as the afterlife is concerned. Nobody is perfect, everyone sins. So then, what happens when we die, are we suddenly self actualized and blissful right when we die? I take the approach that God sees those that try to do good and strive to be like him, and he takes those people into heaven after death. He knows no one is perfect, that everyone sins. Those that truly strive to do away with sin, though, are the ones that he embraces.

Incosian

A figment of our imagination.

__________________
"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious." - Oscar Wilde

jwoody

Indra



From the moment he was born, all the other gods knew their time was up. His parents were the sky god Dyaus Pita and the earth goddess Prthivi; he was born fully grown and fully armed from his mother's side.

First thing on his agenda, kill his own father. He then got his mate to make him a thunderbolt so he could go and kick the arse of some other dude who used to be the hardest god in godland.

He was known as a great drinker of Soma; sometimes he did this to draw strength, and when he did he grew to gigantic proportions to battle his enemies, but more often than not he drank to get drunk.

Hard but fair, he was. During times of drought he would give the people rain but if they failed to pay the appropriate tribute, he'd give them another drought.

That's Indra, the hardest and coolest god in godland.

ChrisJericho

Oh my god..... that made me laugh so hard I think other people in the library are looking at me.

But hell, if you ARE going to believe in a god you might as well believe in one that has multiple arms with SWORDS and rides an oliphaunt! No one can beat that, ever.

__________________
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows us that faith proves nothing." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Easytiger

I'm so distracted by Indra that the serious post I was going to make seems pointless now. Still, it's a good day to have a laugh.

Wyckd

what you just did, is create your own God in which you want to believe in. if you create an idol of your own will, that being is not really a God, is it? you are ITS God... in which, IT does not exist.

Mantus

Every God is a creation. The idea of practicing a religion is having faith in the idea that your concept of God (or whatever your beliefs might be) is the corect one.

Though I am not sure if I agree with xddga's use of the word God. It seem that becomes a synonym for the universe as a whole. Does the universe somehow become more special by calling it God? Saying the universe is God does not give it any new atributes. So why not call things by their proper name?