“God,God, God, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, God, Jesus, God, Jesus, oh yeah”
You’re really enjoying this debate, aren’t you…
Pervert. ::snootily:: This is a serious theological discussion, keep your filthy mind to yourself. 
ROFL! See, Gaudere, even atheists need God, if not in foxholes, then in orgasms!
The Holy Spirit is the most significant part of God in terms of relationship with him – he’s the part that works within you, giving you guidance, strengthening your heart and faith, all that good spiritual stuff. (Not that I’m belittling it – I’ve done enough witnessing for one day on this board, and I want to mellow my posts on religious topics a little.) He does seem a bit nebulous as opposed to the Father, who is GOD in the up-there all-creator whoopie-doopie sense, and Jesus, who after all is human as well and therefore easier to grasp than spiritual entities (perhaps Snark will post a little on Mormon understanding of spirit – it’s fascinating and terminologically intricate). The best analogy I’ve ever heard is that he’s like a telescope you use to see God; you don’t look at the telescope but at the stars through it. Now make the telescope invisible, and you have the idea. (Hmmm…I can just imagine what responses that metaphor is going to evoke! :))
BTW, the bird thing is from Jesus’ baptism, where “the spirit descended upon him like a dove.” Other Holy Spirit metaphors are “a mighty wind from God” – something “brooding over chaos” from Genesis 1 – tongues of fire in Acts 2. Adam, Jeffery, got any other ones worth noting?
So the Holy Spirit is the result of God eating too many baked beans?
Religious blasphemy really is the only medium-weight non-scatalogical swearing we have, unfortunately, so it gets a good workout in, uh, intimate moments. But somehow “Oh shit!” and “Oh fuck!”, while useful on occasion, sometimes seem a little inappropriate (not to mention often redundant) to use then. They’re more associated with bad things than good things–people rarely say “oh shit” when something good happens. And “gosh golly gee whiz” is just too silly to use. 
I think it was “The spirit of God moved over the deeps” in Genesis.
Poly:
Thank you for your last two posts. I afraid I’m more traditional. But I appreciate an alternate view, especially a well thought out one. It helps me meditate on the subtleties of faith.
Again thanks.
Tinker
Ok… this one had me stumped for a second.
Gaudere said:
As a note, I am not Jewish, but I have Jewish in-laws. I don’t know what the Jewish believers think about the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit does appear in the Old Testament. (I mean no disrespect to those who are Jewish in calling it the ‘Old’ Testament. I just can’t remember the name that the Jewish call it.)
So… anyone out there who knows about Judaism who might be able to explain the God/Holy Spirit issue?
It seems to me that we have two out of the three in Judaism, and they’re just waiting for the third.
Beth
Sorry about the double posts earlier. I was having some problems and it was telling me it timed out and I hit the back button and then hit the submit button again.
I do not have anything to add to the debate at this time, I will have to think on Poly’s earlier posts. I do not think the are incorrect per se, but the nuiances of the trinity can be difficult to understand.
I think we need to help Glitch understand God first and then get into the trinity
Jeffery
Why don’t y’all get together and decide among yourselves on the true nature of God and religion, then get back to Glitch when y’all come to a complete agreement on the subject.
Glitch, you might not want to hold your breath-this just might take awhile! 
LOL, slythe!
I don’t think we have any problems with that:
God: creator, redeemer, sanctifier, loves us, wants to have us love him, expects us to avoid sinning and to repent and ask forgiveness when we do.
religion: process for fostering what God wants. Opinions and tastes vary on this, but we can respect each others’ varying needs and preferences on how to work through that process.
Everything else is detail. You and I are agreed that people should follow (some variation of) the Golden Rule – the hows and whys can be something we work out as we come to them. I think Adam, Jeffery, and I feel the same way about the details of our faith(s).
I agree with Poly on the main points of what we believe to be the same.
But you have to realize that we all come at things with different perspectives. Our different perceptions and experiences shape our view.
Take an average man. Let’s say he is 5’10" and weighs 180. He has short kind of light brown hair.
Now, a person who is 6’3" will likely view this man as being on the short side, yet a person who is 5’1" will view him as being tall. A person who weighs 130 might see him on the heavy side and a man who is 300 would see him as slim. A dark haired person might call him blond while a blond might say he had brown hair.
All these people are talking about the same man. His characteristics have not changed, it is just he is described differently due to different views of the same reality.
We all use the same bible, but our interpretations on somethings may differ due to how we see the world.
Jeffery
I don’t think so. I mean, Jews pray to God alone, not God and the Holy Spirit. “Hear, Israel: The L-rd is our G-d, The L-rd is one.” I suspect the references to the Holy Spirit are much like references to God’s face; not a separate part of God, just a metaphor.
Well, that doesn’t agree with Lib’s “Divine Me”, since the Divine Glitch and Gaudere don’t care if we love Him/Her; they don’t even necessarily want people to know they exist. (Anyone surprised that Glitch and I prefer a God that would seem to like atheists best? No?) Gonna tell Lib he’s got the wrong idea of God?
Our Bog is dood
"Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood
They lisped in accents mild,
But when I asked them to explain
They grew a little wild.
How do you know your Bog is dood
My darling little child?
We know because we wish it so
That is enough, they cried,
And straight within each infant eye
Stood up the flame of pride,
And if you do not think it so
You shall be crucified.
Then tell me, darling little ones,
What’s dood, suppose Bog is?
Just what we think, the answer came,
Just what we think it is.
They bowed their heads. Our Bog is ours
And we are wholly his.
But when they raised them up again
They had forgotten me
Each one upon each other glared
In pride and misery
For what was dood, and what their Bog
They never could agree.
Oh sweet is was to leave them then,
And sweeter not to see,
And sweetest of all to walk alone
Beside the encroaching sea,
The sea that soon should drown them all,
That never yet drowned me."
—Stevie Smith
(Always wondered if she was talking about theists here. I think she is. And I hope this comes under “fair usage” or I’ll have to censor myself. )
test.
Dange Gaudy, I did not know there was going to be a test on this thread.
What should I study for this test? Will there be a curve? Who is making the test? Will it be baised for or against theists?
Too much pressure Gaudy. I hate tests.
Jeffery
Smartass. Just for that I’m flunking you.
(When the board goes wonky, all the new posts won’t show up in a thread until someone posts after the reboot, and I wanted to see my post. And I didn’t delete my test post since it’ll take three days to load a thread this big in the post-deleting screen.)
Well, certainly the god of an atheist would be non-assertive! :rolleyes:
Its taken me two days to get through all of this and its been fascinating. I read through it all because I’m married to an atheist and keep trying to understand him. At least that’s why I started. Then I got wrapped up in Glitch’s search…But, there are other Theists than Christians, and other gods than God the Father (and family) - even outside the Jewish God the Father.
I myself am a Cultural Catholic (all the Guilt, none of the Theology), a intellectual Agnostic, and an Emotional Theist. Intellectually I realize you can’t prove God exists, emotionally, can’t comprehend no Creator. Don’t know much about God, myself. He doesn’t tend to talk to me. But any god I believe in has the following credentials:
S/He doesn’t need worship
S/He doesn’t seem too interested in my day to day life
S/He was there in the Beginning
S/He will be there in the End.
S/He is also handy for directed gratitude and directed hope (usually called prayer by the religious). And darn handy when you need to swear. The rest I make up as I go along. Doesn’t seem to match Polycarp’s definition of a God we (i.e. Theists) all agree on. Also doesn’t seem to be either The Divine Me or The Divine Weasel.
Now, on to working my way through the Atheist threads.
Hmmm…that didn’t say quite what I meant. Try this: Assume God is incomprehensible, though quite able to be appreheneded. Then assume each of us sees in him, legitimately, the idealization of the traits we most cherish.
Would not the conceptualization of God by someone of atheistic bent be desirous of not intervening and influencing his/her life? And if so, would not a real God possessing all characteristics so conceived by all people (theists and atheists alike) honor those characteristics in the atheists by letting them make their own way, at least overtly?
I’m not sure I like where this is going, but I definitely want to explore it.
If you look on the favorite painting thread I said you were my favorite artist. Is that good enough not to flunk?
I sure hope so, I would hate to be flunked on a test about God, by an atheist.
Gaudy’s test one single item.
Question 1: Prove God exists. Show work.
Am I going to non-Hell for that one?
Jeffery
Well the way I see it God lets you determine how much of him you see/understand/know. I want to know and understand more about him, so I seek him. As I seek, I find more about him and this causes me to want to seek him further.
Glitch and Gaudere, OTOH, do not believe so do not seek him. They, AFAIK, have no desire to know him. Glitch does seek the truth as I am sure Gaudere and others do, but seeking the truth in the manner they do does not seek God.
I believe I may have even confused myself. If I can say anything about this thread and others I have participated in, it has made me think, sometimes to the point of a headache.
Jeffery
What of atheists who find God? Did they change first? What of theists who become atheists? Did they change first? The fact that those who need and want a God have a God, and those who don’t, don’t, is not a terribly compelling argument for the objective existence of God. And for a while, Glitch certainly needed and wanted a God, and did not get one. It seems like a variant of the “God knows best” argument that I’ve heard before; that God knows I’m better off as an atheist so He’s not revealing himself to me when I ask. The Divine Gaudere might not perform miracles or need love, but I can’t see Her revealing herself to some people who ask and not to others. She would be at least that honest, I think. While we may see God differently, God should not be different; you can’t logically have a miracle-working and non-miracle-working God simultaneously. If God parted the Red Sea for Moses, I don’t think He can be the Divine Glitch.
“Overtly”–Hmmph. I’m not terribly fond of the “God knows what’s best and guides you without you even knowing” bit. Visions of puppet-strings.