In numerous threads and debates about God, the starting premise of many questions is the idea that there exists a person, the same as you and I are persons, who just happens to occupy a unique position: this person is the omnipotent omniscient creator of the universe and everything in it. This “Bruce Almighty” scenerio usually leads to absurdities. But is this what theologians really claim is who/what God really is- a sort of Q? Is God more of an abstract principle, like in Hindu/Bhuddist theology? Or is it that God is “like a person”, in some sense but beyond the human concept of personality?
God is (IMHO of course) not a person. God does not experience the passage of time in the same sense we do (if at all). God does not cogitate, mull over ideas and notions and reach conclusions, rethink things that were thought about yesterday, or have a change of opinions. When one prays, one hopes for an effect upon one’s self, greater understanding or clarity, or the emotional and moral strength to cope; one does not set out to have an effect upon God. (Yeah, maybe some do, but their notion of God differs from my own).
God is an abstration, yes. God isn’t tangible, is not animal vegetable or mineral or even energy, or anything else that specifically manifests as a phenomenon that could be studied and analyzed. God manifests as everything. The universe in its entirety is God having fun. Wanna see a manifestation of God at close range? Go to the mirror.
Of course to say “God is everything” is to make the term kind of useless. God is bed sores? God is shit? God is the smell of decomposing bodies?
But God is perpetually in process. Things aren’t just “what they are”, so to “see” God in “That Which Is” you have to think in all four dimensions. What has it been and where is it perhaps going?
We are human (duh). We are young (10,000 years since the earliest dawn of agriculture; a million at best beng “us” in some recognizable sense and that may be pushing it). We are in the midst of accelerating change (agricultural civ was pretty stable overall from 4500 years ago until, say, 1700; a person from the time of Ramses of Egypt could have adjusted fairly easily, if we ignore language issues, if somehow transported to Germany, the UK, or America circa 1700; but dump them into the latter 20th century or the early 21st and you’ve got a dramatically different world).
You and I and even our parents have been here as the change has been occurring, so whatever we feel about live generically and our lives specifically and life in the modern era socially and politically is not something we’re readily able to separate out into “how we felt about it before all these changes started” versus “how we feel in the midst of all these changes”.
But our worldviews, moral codes, social mores, and our political and social structures are one foot in the present and one foot in the past. There are huge areas of anachronistic discontinuity. In eras such as the 1960s we have tried to start afresh, disavowing the rules and understandings of the past, only to find it ain’t simple to make new rules and convey new understandings; and in response to a world in which no rules and no morals seemed to apply, reaction set in and people tried to reëmbrace the old codes and rules, for the world was more stable and predictable and KINDER then… but the old ways just don’t smoothly fit, the world HAS moved on.
So there’s a bit of a thirst for God: Yo, get your shiny-ass butt down where we can access you and you tell us what the fuck is going down. We want to know, to understand, perhaps to play a meaningful part, what with all hell breaking loose and things all fluid and in transit. Maybe life could become really bountiful and good or maybe dystopia and armageddon could happen.
The important process is the process conventionally called “prayer”. People who engage in it tend to come out of it with vivid visions that they want to share; they want to participate in making the new world.
God is a participatory phenomenon.
So I guess the question is, is God one of us?
Just a slob like one of us?
There isn’t any god, remember?
So, you’re a slob on your own.
Hmmm…I can see how this might be subject to misinterpretation.
My comment was not directed specifically at “Leaper”, but rather at all of us.
Does might make right? Most would agree that doctors are smarter than the average bear, or at least they have more time to devote to their specialty. A person who could kill someone smarter due to brute force is better? Or are they just lucky?
I guess it would depend on your beliefs. If you believe that the Bible is true, and that the sentence, “God created man in His own image” is true, then that would seem to imply that God shares at least some attributes with his human creations. The passage isn’t specific as to exactly which attributes, though. The God of the Bible also seems to behave more as a being with a personality than as an abstract principle.
Christian theology describes God as a person, but if we were to say ‘a person like us’, that would imply all sorts of limitations to which the OP alludes. I think it would be more accurate to say that Christian theology describes us as having personalities and attributes that are subsets or diminished forms of those belonging to God. So God isn’t a person just like us - we’re people somewhat resembling God.
No, God is not a person , just a slob like one of us. IMHO God is not a separate being but the whole that we are all a part of. As someone else noted. Beyond time and space and therefore difficult for us to grasp without assigning person like qualities too.
The oneness thing is hard to grasp. We may feel moments of connectivity with others, our loved ones or moments with our fellow humans. Surrender to that on a day to day moment to moment basis can feel as we’re surrendering our individuality. Often we don’t want to lose the illusion of being separate.
For many in the religion they don’t want to lose the concept of being children and having a heavenly Father who looks out for them and takes care of them. My children are grown now so even though my love for them is the same, I see them as my equals and peers as adults.
Of course there’s the possibility that we haven’t figured out exactly what we are yet. Instead of reading that phrase and thinking God must have some human attributes we might think we share God’s spiritual attributes, if only we seek to discover them.
If there was a god there would be little sense in it resembling a human being. The human form has developed to suit its earthly surroundings, just as the human identity is moulded in reaction to sensual stimuli from birth. If god were to exist it would surely have the form and personality befitting his environment in the spiritual plane.
That God is traditionally perceived as a grandiose patriarchal figure says more about His authors and their societal norms than anything else.
According to the 81st or 82d psalm(depending on what version of the Bible one uses it says,“Don’t you know you are gods sons of the most high”?
Jesus used this quote when making his claim to having God for a father,he is quoted as saying"How is it you say I blaspheme when I say God is my father when your fathers did?"
There is no way one can prove or know what a spirit is composed of,If it were made of any material thing then it couldn’t be called unworldly.
Monavis
No, he’s just a stranger on a bus.
Yes for your description, God is the sum total of everything. I was told that particles called consciousness particles make up everything, God is the sum total of all these particles, these particles are self-aware and very curious, the particles can take any form through thought, these forms are held together by the power/energy of love. The more love the more particles. The more particles the more awareness, understanding, knowledge, and wisdom. When enough particles combine they then have the power to create other forms through thought. It is an endless structure of love recreating itself in new ways, and new forms on its path to self-knowledge. We each add our part to the whole as the whole imparts its truth to us.
Everything you see everywhere is God, we are a part of God.
Could I ask where this idea of consciousness ‘particles’ originates? It sounds like quite a modern explanation, talking of particles to lend it some pseudoscientific weight - cod-quantum physics.
Just like most New Age gobbletygook – throw in “quantum,” “energy” and “vibrations” wherever possible to sound erudite. Hang around Lekatt and you’ll hear a lot more, but since this isn’t the Pit, I’ll refrain from elaborating.
I don’t see why not. I think it’s probably silly to compare gods only to humans - after all, while we accept only humans as “persons” at this moment in time, I don’t see how future evolved animals couldn’t be “persons”, or aliens of some kind, who could be quite different to us. So it’s less a case of comparing gods to humans, but to our definitions of “person”.
I’d define a person as someone with self-awareness, personality, sapience. Under those characteristics, the Abrahamic Gods among other would technically be “people”, while gods that exist as some kind of non-thinking force or experience wouldn’t be.
Sure, in order to communicate with us, my guide and other spiritual entities must use a language we understand. They tell us in words and concepts that are meaningful to us. So that is where the “particles” come from. I have also heard it described in a similar manner using the word “unit.” Hense consciousness unit.
I don’t think you could possibly tell me anything I haven’t already heard on this board, my friend.
I think you nailed it! God is certainly Personal, but God is also trans-Personal. I get the impression that people who affirm the existence of God but deny the Divine Personality in favor of a Process or a Pantheist view think they are saying God is more than just a Big Powerful Human but it seems also at times they are really saying that God is impersonal energy that may manifest personality only through us & other sentient beings.
To simplify that rather confusing rambling I just uttered- those who deny God’s Personhood may think they are saying that God is more than a Person but often appear to be saying that God is less than a Person.