What is God?

B

baumgarten

fuck the man
Registered Senior Member
It's the big question! What is your definition of the the word, as you use it?

For the theists here, try to give your answer as straightforwardly as you can. Poetic answers are nice, but they are too often taken too literally by people who are trying to understand you. Mull it over if you have to, and put it in philosophical terms.

For the atheists, answers such as "that dude who doesn't exist" are only a re-statement of your position vis a vis the existence of God. For you, the question is, hypothetically speaking, what would God be? What concept are you referring to when you use the word?

For both atheists and theists, argumentation over who is right would be counterproductive to the aim of the thread. Thanks in advance for not being jerks.

I do not know for sure what the word God means to me; my uncertainty prompted me to cautiously pose the question here. I have a couple ideas to get things started, however.

They say that the universe is in a constant state of flux, that nothing remains the same. They also say that without light, there would be no shadow; without pain, there would be no pleasure, and so on. Perhaps the only thing that remains eternally constant is God, and without God there would be no change.

Atheists here have pointed out the destructive behavior of God as described in holy texts, claiming that God is evil. Christians here often counter that, as God is goodness, God cannot be evil. God controls and transcends morality, apparently just because that's part of the meaning of the word, or the nature of the being.

I can go on and on. I have heard many properties of God, but no explanations for them. If the theist world is logical, then God is an axiom.

In other words, perhaps God is a definition.

Some have posited that God is the whole of existence; others that God only created everything. A theory of cosmology states that shortly after the Big Bang, the entirety of the universe was in quantum coherent superposition. It is interpreted by some that the reduction of this superposition, the point at which all the matter in the universe was "created," is also the moment at which the whole universe was conscious. This idea, being not very anthropocentric, seems to miss the point of religion to me. It is interesting nonetheless.

Your turn...
 
God:

A thing which has the following properties:

Existence.
Eternity.
Infinity.
Omnipotence.
Omnipresence.
Immutability.
Perfection of that which is logically possible to perfect and which is demanded by necessity.

In essence, existence.

Clarification: The immutability here noted allows for change on a small scale but never on an infinite scale, nor on such things as impossibility and necessity. Similarly, God is not a being, nor has it omniscience, omnibenevolence, the capacity to create, moral sense, et cetera.
 
God: a being, unreachable by humans' intellectuality, but can be felt thru sincere submission by one has faith in It; Its existence is not present in one's brain, it is present in one's heart; is something that makes one crazy to try to think about; but got one in uneasiness by leaving It away.

What is left to think (present in brain) is only Its creation, not the creator itself.

In term of creation subject, It (faithfully) created equilibrium world and the system of self-sustaining it, the very sense of universe. God is God, It is not God of Love (safe to say Provider of just/balance mechanism and resources); It created angel and satan, black and white, good and evil, love and hate; It lends humans the nature, It takes away what It lends (including body from soul); It creates life, disease and antidotes, blessed living being survival capabilities and resources (intenally and externally).

It is hard to think how come this world can be self-sustained in its dynamic equlibrium state, and getting harder to think about what made it that way, the creator.

If God is the near end, then science is starting from the far end to explain universe (backtracking the symptomps, effects, events) and induced partial theory upon them, but never will reach the near end (i.e prime mover, first cause). So, infinite, eternal.

My simple answer, God is the creator, certainly It is a being.
 
God doesn't exist, but since people insist on calling something God, it would be the root cause of the existence of the universe. And since this is not going to be creation caused by some sort of divine intelligence, it's not something that could be called God, but a natural process.

If we had perfect knowledge of the physics of our universe, any theists that would remain, would call this root cause 'God' by way of backpedaling. Theist's have had to backpedal about how large a part God plays in our daily lives thanks to science. My guess is that this backpedaling would continue if science keeps making great leaps.
 
Prince_James said:
God:

A thing which has the following properties:

Existence.
Eternity.
Infinity.
Omnipotence.
Omnipresence.
Immutability.
Perfection of that which is logically possible to perfect and which is demanded by necessity.

In essence, existence.

Clarification: The immutability here noted allows for change on a small scale but never on an infinite scale, nor on such things as impossibility and necessity. Similarly, God is not a being, nor has it omniscience, omnibenevolence, the capacity to create, moral sense, et cetera.
Click to expand...
Why not just call it "existence" rather than place upon it the label of "God"?

To me, GOD is just a label people use to try and explain things that either can not yet be explained or things that have no explanation / answer (such as "purpose").
 
As I noted in another thread, Sarkus:

The usage of the term "God" has an upside that I find useful for speaking of, in that it directly links the concept of existence, to certain philosophical notions, rather than to the ordinary and mundane. When I say "God", the idea of infinity is present within it to most people, whereas if I say "existence" we could simply be speaking about "the universe as understood by science" or something far more mundane. In essence, I use the term to provoke others to conceive of existence in the terms I am speaking of it, that is, within a system of metaphysics that deals with such questions and reasons for why things are what they are.
 
The best person to answer this question is GOD Himself, but this is a useless hope, because GOD never speaks again.
 
baumgarten said:
It's the big question! What is your definition of the the word, as you use it?
Click to expand...

I can only use the word god as the supernatural being worshipped by those whom my posts are intended.

For the atheists, answers such as "that dude who doesn't exist" are only a re-statement of your position vis a vis the existence of God. For you, the question is, hypothetically speaking, what would God be? What concept are you referring to when you use the word?
Click to expand...

The word 'god' has as much meaning as any other, used to label a concept. If that concept has no meaning to the individual, neither then, would the label.

They say that the universe is in a constant state of flux, that nothing remains the same. They also say that without light, there would be no shadow; without pain, there would be no pleasure, and so on. Perhaps the only thing that remains eternally constant is God, and without God there would be no change.

In other words, perhaps God is a definition.

Your turn...
Click to expand...

Could you please explain whether the god you refer is that of a known religion; ie. Allah, or whether you refer to your own version of a god?

As you can see, only your definition of god will allow your questions to be answered. ;)
 
baumgarten said:
What is your definition of the the word, as you use it?
Click to expand...

God is the energy that determines and controls the natural laws of the universe.

He is what determines that there can be only two electrons in the first orbital, that there can be gravity, life, space and time.

He is what explains why with 100,000 oxidative insults per cell per day, we can go about fully functional.

He is the Truth.
 
"God" is whatever man wants it to be. Draw your own picture.......
 
What is God?.......What is Man that he thinks himself capable
of finding a rational answer?

The one who came into the world said:
"I am the Way, The Truth, and the Light."

Our intellects are insufficient for this mystery.

We only know what is revealed by the Sacred Magisterium,
a strange body of doctrines that appear to not make much
sense to most men.

everything else, feelings, visions, ecstasies, dreams, speculations, art,
the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit! All down the river! out with the flood!
all are all passing along with the dissolution of this world.
 
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God is something in the imagination of humans, pretty much like santa except santa aint destructive and cruel.
Santa gets my vote
 
Lawdog said:
Marv....? Are you the same Marv from Lifeawakenings?
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Nope. Never heard of it. I'm an atheist. What's Lifeawakenings? Sounds like a cult so I'll pass on the kool-aid.... :p
 
everything else, feelings, visions, ecstasies, dreams, speculations, art,
the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit! All down the river! out with the flood!
all are all passing along with the dissolution of this world.
Click to expand...

Disease, pain, suffering, starvation, parasites, birth defects, carnivores, premature ejaculation etc...
 
marv said:
Nope. Never heard of it. I'm an atheist. What's Lifeawakenings? Sounds like a cult so I'll pass on the kool-aid.... :p
Click to expand...
Lifeawakenings?...used to be a kool site where I was able to shock alot of New-Agers by my right-wing Catholicism.
 
A god is a human created concept with otherwise no clear unambiguous defined properties.

I can imagine that a god might be –

a force-like energy much like the force in Star Wars, or

a member of an advanced evolved race that now dominate space and time, or

a distributed intelligence that inhabits all the minds of all sentient creatures in the universe, or

a compassionate infinite being that exists in a plain that we are not yet able to detect or observe and whose motives are unclear, or

a monstrous being who experiments with his creations for his own pleasure, or

an all-encompassing being that permeates through every fundamental particle of the universe, including us, or

the final result of human evolution where we have learnt everything possible and finally merge and restart time, or

a member of a supreme council where each is assigned the task of seeding new life in certain galaxies and must monitor its progress before allowing it to join the greater community if it evolves to be intelligent, or

.
.
.
.
Add your own favorite fantasy.

Until one is detected we cannot conclude that one exists, might exist, has ever existed, or could exist, or might ever exist. Until then its properties are entirely at the mercy of infinite human creative imagination.
 
I'd just like to point out that baumgarten seemed to be asking for the definition of the word as you use it. That's why he said that making statements such as "God doesn't exist" is meaningless to this thread. Furthermore, he also said that he is looking for the atheists in the thread to consider that God exists, hypothetically, when providing for their definitions. Of course, this is for the purpose of discussion, as it is difficult to discuss the topic if you continuously state that the subject of discussion is irrelevant because you do not believe it to actually exist. If I may add, and he can retract this if he wishes, it would perhaps be more fruitful if the atheists here would provide their definition for the word, rather than provide their opinion as to the validity of the concept.

As to my definition of the word God, I would go with the classical western view and say that God is anthropomorphic, a person (not a human being, mind you, but something with a personality, will, intentions, etc...), supernatural and/or beyond the scope of human understanding, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, beyond time, and the creator of all reality.

However, my definition of the concept, as I would use it, is something more akin to reality itself, with no personality, will, intentions, but definitely living in a sense (this would also require that I define life in a philosophical sense rather than using the biological, which is beyond me), and not in any way supernatural (outside of the scope of physical laws). Although it is mysterious and difficult to understand, the difficulty in understanding it would be more like the difficulty in being able to wrap your mind around quantum mechanics in any honest fashion, and so not at all beyond the scope of human understanding, although one would not use logic to deduce it's properties or scope. I guess it would be something which you intuit, really.
 
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