I think you need to read some Nietzsche, maybe some Sartre. Then you can drop this “God” business, and get on with the really difficult bit, the bit about being fully human and fully in the world. Wholly here, wholly now, not holy here and holy now.
Hey, GD’s for witnessing…
That’s funny. Nietzsche and Sartre are actually where I started out. :smack:
Truthfully these God debates here really touch a chord with me, because my father is an atheist whose family were devout Methodists (his grandfather was a minister).
When I was 8 years old I figured out that Christianity didn’t make any sense. How on earth could millions and millions of Chinese people be written off completely, simply because they worshipped a different God?
Yet I still felt a God-presence in my life. So I started my own little “church”. My peers were wildly unimpressed. 
When I read bits and pieces of various religious debates here, I tend to think that pretty much everyone IS right. And it occurred to me that they’re all having their own individual God events. So maybe that’s part of what this all adds up to, this God business, maybe it’s a big word for a small, personal event.
It’s probably obvious that I’m just groping my way around this issue. I’m not looking for a limiting answer, just more doorways and paths to understanding.
I wanted to ask you, mswas, about this whole personification of God, of God’s word, as owned and used by a specific group of people. I think that is where the problem is. The dicta of a certain time treated as the immutable word of God. I don’t think atheists are any kind of threat to religion, not as compared to people who presume ownership.
I hope I didn’t go there myself.
But the details vary with respect to the definition of ‘god’, so how is that any different than simply describing based on qualities? It doesn’t clarify anything.
I agree that descriptive language can be more precise and sometimes more effective.
I think it’s fine for people to find more precise and descriptive language to express their joy, their hope, their awe. My point isn’t that we should rebrand the word god, only that we should recognize that we can only understand what it means to someone else in the context of who they are as a person. Similar to the word love.
True and If I go to a church where I feel their definition of God is too different from my own I don’t feel that unity of purpose. It’s a situation moment to moment thing. It serves the purpose of Unity when the timing and the feeling is right.
I think you’ve touched on an important truth here. The inner journey and discovery of God, our relationship with God, our God event, is very personal and unique. People gather together in groups to celebrate the sharing of these events that can be a beautiful thing. The sharing of a song, or a common prayer of hope and gratitude. The unfortunate side effect seems to be that these groups tend to desire so much uniformity that they pressure their members to be forced into a certain path. Sometimes that hinders the journey rather than helps it.
Here’s why I don’t get this whole “God” thing - When people write about it, it pretty much looks like random words strung together in a seemingly syntactically correct pattern, but which are virtually nonsense to me. It appears as though people have pulled adjectives out of a dictionary and randomly inserted them into sentences, like Mad Libs.
“God is the inner essence of knowingness - the beauty of being is encapsulated in the selfness of wonderment. Our spiritual journey is fulfilling the infinite joyfulness of inspiration. Perhaps the nature of God is the spiritual sharing of life-force.”
I know nobody actually wrote that, but that’s how it reads to me. I guess there’s something there that I’m not understanding, because believers seem to understand and agree with each other. 
That’s one of the things that has perplexed me, too, lowbrass. It sounds like stoned-out frou-frou and bullshit. It does. I can’t put it into words any better than that myself, either.
I think the religious state is an “altered” state, similar to that described by users of illegal substances. Doors of Perception and all that. Some of us can get “there” without drugs. I don’t know why.
That’s an interesting point.
You reminded me of the community orchestra I used to belong to. Nobody got paid to play our concerts, in fact we musicians provided financial support to the group (the cost of sheet music and performance venues adds up). But we didn’t mind. In fact it was a privilege.
I suspect that (many?) (most?) of the things people do as volunteers represent their own personal God-event.
That didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid from making a bundle with his trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, Where God Went Wrong, Some More Of God’s Greatest Mistakes, and Who Is This God Person, Anyway?. (With apologies to Douglas Adams, of course.)
If you want to define some event as “God” then, as as mstay says, whatever helps you sleep, but that distinguishes it from the kind of conscious, omnipotent being that most monotheist religions celebrate, and into the realm of pure semantic argument. This makes it not terribly useful in any practical sense.
Stranger
Well, I can certainly understand hanging with people who define it the way you do, but you will undoubtedly discuss the concept with people who are believers (or not) who don’t define it the way you do. Maybe the word should only be uttered in church!
That would make for a less interesting SDMB wouldn’t it?
Seriously, they don’t have to consistently define it as I do for me to enjoy singing “I can only Imagine” or “How Great Thou Art.” because for those few minutes the differences don’t matter, but finding a point of unity does.
Also, discussion furthers the thought process and understanding, so I think it’s cool to discuss things with people who believe very differently.
I think you’re right. A sense of purpose and unity. A sense of awe. Spong described it as a sense of the transcendent other. It’s different for different people but there is something truly wonderful about people coming together to find hope, wonder, and a sense of unity, in whatever event works for them.
well the books sound interesting. I think for the term god, like a few other terms, we must realize it does not have the same meaning for all people. My guess is it would vary even within the same congregation made up of members of the same denomination. IMO that places a responsibility on those who are in any discussion to clarify what they are talking about.
If the term has meaning for others other than the one you prefer and that meaning serves their purpose, then I guess it *is *useful after all.
I really like what mswas wrote. I don’t know that my notion of a God-event is possible without the existence of a God – and the God I imagine is just exactly what mswas describes.
My opinion is that God-events predate Official Religious Institutions. I think they were founded in order to tap into the “energy” people were generating, and to use that energy for a variety of purposes (some good, others not-so).
I guess that’s the thing - it ticks me off that religious institutions act like they “own” God. They’ve got all these definitions going. And of course, whoever controls the definition wins the argument.
Just to wax poetic for a moment. When I read this thread the other day I was reminded of a song by Clint Black Something that we do
He is speaking of love but I think some lines relate in thinking about popular religious terms concerning God
That seems a little reversed to me.
You’re not a little dismissive, are you?
I would say: “That distinguishes is from one kind of conscious, omnipotent Being.” And I would find relief that it was not exactly what most monotheist religions celebrate. Perhaps it is a clearer understanding of what they should celebrate.
I wonder what Einstein would have thought of semantic arguments about God. Talk about impractical! Would you have semantic arguments about being in love? Oh you would, would you? 
fessie, these are genuinely thoughtful posts. We all grope our way around this issue. What you have posted is not shallow at all. It’s very hard to talk about this particular subject – to find the right words.
I think of God as an event that is always taking place. You’ve given me a new way to describe it.
Thank you, Zoe and Johanna. I’ve really enjoyed your posts as well, cosmosdan.
I wish there was a way to share one particular concert moment with you. We were playing Mozart’s Requiem, which is just absolutely profound anyway. The concert was a memorial for 9/11, played on the first year anniversary. Groups around the world performed it that day.
We had the incredible luck to be performing in a huge chapel, it seated 1200. About a hundred of us in the orchestra, plus another hundred choir members from groups around the city who wanted to be there that day. Everybody was ON.
The first movement was so stunning, so full, powerful; as it ended, the echoes coming back to us from the cavernous chapel affirmed life and death and God and beauty. I was crying, I thought, holy cow - the angels are here - we’ve risen the dead.
The conductor (who’s an old pro, been around for years) was so thrown by the otherworldly effect that he totally f’d up the beginning of the second movement.
The scrambling that ensued kind of brought everyone back to reality.
fessie That experience you described of Mozart’s Requiem sounds beautiful.
As for the proprietary nature of owning ‘The Word’. When I was talking about ‘The Word’ I meant it as either creation or ‘ohm’ rather than a textbook of scripture. The way I read the bible, Jesus was fighting against the idea of a priest class, and yet it spawned a priest class. The notion that anyone can ‘own’ God seems patently ludicrous to me.
lowbrass I think that when people describe it they often neglect to be clear that they are describing an experience. If you do not share that common experience, then people describing it will sound like babbling idiots. However, have you ever heard people who knew something about a topic you knew nothing about and listened to them sound like babbling idiots, yet they seem to know what the other is saying? In a way the god-talk is Jargon. That is why Christianity for instance, puts such a high premium on ‘revelation’. In a Christian church you get together to share your experience of revelation. If it was not revealed to you, how could you know it?
I’ve had experiences like this. My question is, why couldn’t it have just been a lot of effort producing well played music in a large acoustic place during an emotional time? Why did you think angels were there, or you raised the dead?
I’m willing to bet that if you didn’t have religious expectations, you wouldn’t have attributed the experience to religion.