With apologies to Dante,
I believe that the universe and everything in it can be explained through scientific means, but this neither proves nor disproves the existence of god or gods, soul or afterlife.
Given that, (a form of #9 I guess), what I can know is that if there is a god or gods they engineer on a terrific scale. 
[yoda]Covering faiths/religions we are not. Looking at god type - yes[/yoda]
It appears to me that there are variations of belief in god-type even within the same faith.
Saying you are Shinto-Catholic with Animist tendencies, rich overtones of Humanism and a lingering Hutterian aftertaste does not count.
I am interested in god-type, not religious system.
Sure, that makes sense - a human, a grain of sand and a galaxy may all have the same importance at the universe level.
I can see how you could believe that a universe-creator would make the universe - type 1) god.
But the idea of a universe-creator becoming part of the creation and picking a specific bunch of people (of a specific species) at a specific point in time on a specific planet still seems far fetched - crossing over to type 5) god.
From an asteroid, for example. I would rather put my faith in something that humans could do about it (even though at this point in time, not a lot) than a possible divine entity.
You only can if your blood tests positive for it.
antechinus, God cannt be bound by a simple matter of definition but out your list I can only apply 1. without qualification. God does anwer my prayers but the answer may well be “no” and the actions may be to do nothing or to act in extremely subtle ways. God gave his word but I don’t believe all of his word was handed down verbatim. Some was but much was given as inspiration to be interpreted by flawed humans.
He didn’t ‘pick’ people, He made them for His purpose. On the scale of universe creation this is much more logical than making a universe for your purpose and while you’re doing the stuff you really built the universe for, you sprinkle some hairless monkey’s on a planet for no reason. Triviality is not an attribute I might apply to God.
I’m all for human endeavors. I’ve never waited on God in my life, or relied solely on Him to accomplish anything. I don’t laugh in the face of bullets, or walk off the edge of buildings and wait for God to catch me either. He’s not there for me, I’m here for Him.
I believe in a God who sneezed one day and the Universe was born. He looked at the new universe and said: “what the hell is that?” He then closed his eyes to have a nap and he’s been sleeping ever since.
4 exists but I refuse to ‘believe’.
7 doesn’t exist but i persist to ‘believe’.
6 doesn’t exit but i wish it did, as you know I ‘believe’ in ‘nature’- snigger-
1, 3 and 5…hmm I seem to remember them some where in the future, that is if my precollection of me losing of mind and being born again is correct. Let my have faith in God that it isn’t.
Agreed - the words ‘chosen’ and ‘picked’ does suggest afterthought, rather than planning.
So, a being created the entire universe and made (as part of a plan) some people in a small tribe, on Earth, some 2000 years ago that would act as a conduit for communication from that entity.
Padeye - I find it difficult to understand a being creating the universe and thus existing outside it, being able to listen to the prayers of a hominid species within that creation.
But, thats your faith. I am just trying to understand the different god-types people have.
ps how could one ever determine that the ‘word’ (instructions?) were not handed down verbatim.
Antechinus: That works. If you want to get more in depth about Christian theology and it’s interpretations, you’ll have to post a new thread. I feel like I totally hijacked this one for two days. Well, ok, I did 
I wish I knew.
Though I think of god as a god of connections, really. A god of bridges. A god of empathy. A god of imagination. A god of conscience.
God is the other, the awareness of something beyond self, whether it’s another self or something inexplicable.
And it’s really really hard to define something when you aren’t really sure that you know what it is (or if it exists).
Julie
jsgoddess Sounds like a type 4 god. Isn’t classification great.
I do not [i[believe* in a god, but that doesn’t stop me from speculating…
one possibility is an infinite regression of gods, so you could have a god of the Earth ?gaia? a god of the solar system, a god of the Orion arm and of the Local group- the Virgo supercluster, the expanding universe…
this sort of hierarchy was put forward by C.S. Lewis in the Perelandra books, and there is no reason for it to ever stop-
the god of the branes, of the higher manifold, getting bigger every time.
If you asked the gods themselves at what ever level if there was an ultimate creator, they might be in the same boat as us-
some gods might be agnostic, some might be believers-
it could be as difficult for a god of an entire plenum to imagine any thing higher than herself,
but She might have the niggling feeling that She herself had been created by entity or entities unknown.
Now I don’t necessarily believe in any of this, but it cannot be ruled out…
eburacum45 - interesting. So does that extrapolate to microgods, or are we at the bottom of the soul-chain? Maybe there are cellular and sub-atomic gods too.
brilliant! I never thought of that.
Although another way of looking at it might be that as sentient, self aware beings, we are higher in the fractal pantheon than reptiles, molluscs and virii, who are above quartz.
The god I believe in:
I don’t know if this just occurred to me or I heard it somewhere when I was really young but I believe in what I like to call the “ant farm god” theory.
It goes like this-
simpy put, we are an ant farm for an all powerful being. This being created the earth, all that is in it, at times has appeared to tap the glass, or introduce new stuff to us, but mostly just wants to see what happens.
There is some truth to the bible, koran, etc. Religions are based somewhat on actual praise of the deity, but mostly we’ve made that stuff up so as to structure our world because it’s just too big and complex to fathom on a day to day basis.
Hi, I_D_B_B -
Modal Monarchianism is an understanding of the Trinity that was (I was mildly shocked to discover) officially declared a heresy in AD 260 with the excommunication of Sabellius.
It teaches that the three Persons of the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - are simply modes, or faces, that the one God presents to the universe, when He acts in different ways. In its strictest form, it denies the Trinity.
I don’t go that far, but I usually think of the Trinity in that way. I don’t try to insist on it, since I think that most attempts to define the nature of God wind up insisting on points that don’t make any more sense than the ones they are trying to refute. See the early history of Arianism vs. Athanasianism, Nestorianism, etc., etc.
I like the analogy of Modal Monarchianism - and I don’t think of it as anything more than an analogy - because it ties into another of my theories about how God interacts with non-Christians.
I believe that everyone is confronted with the choice of following Christ all the time. We can always choose whether or not to follow Him, even in situations where it is not clear that this is Who is confronting us. A devout atheist, for instance, can be confronted with the choice whether or not to follow some moral action. It may not look like Jesus to him. It looks, instead, like the choice between acting morally and acting immorally. If he chooses the moral action - especially if he does so because he sees the self-evident Truth of the universal moral principle - he is following Christ, and is therefore a Christian, whether he knows it or not.
In the same way, I could be going to church twice a week, and tithing, and doing all that, but if I am not accepting the light of the Holy Spirit, which is God at work in the universe, I am no Christian.
So Modal Monarchianism looks to me like an acknowledgement that God is at work in the universe in a multiplicity of different ways - and that He could even be speaking thru Muhammed, Baha’ullah, Buddha, or even Zeus. This is not an attempt to define God’s nature, just the way that we can experience Him.
Deism is less obscure. Official Deists claim that although God created the Universe, He does not interact with it. He started things off, and now stands back to watch. The Deists tended to reject all revealed religion, and relied on “natural” religion, a belief in a universal moral law taught by various moral teachers (Jesus among them), and that everything can be explained by reference to natural law - no miracles.
I only tend in that direction, in that I don’t think that God micro-manages the universe. We have, for instance, the consequences of our own free-will choices to deal with, both for ourselves and others, and if God were to protect us too much from those, we would not have free will in any significant sense. I also think that, even if there had been no sin, there would still be pain and death in the physical sense. Even if Eve had never eaten the fruit (it’s a symbolic story, but even if what it symbolized were not true), we would still be confronted with the necessities of a limited universe. Since we would accept all things as from the hand of God, our attitudes would be radically different, and since we would not need to deal with the consequences of sin, life would be very much different from what it is now, and would have been different for all of human history, but we would still age, get sick, and die.
Not very short, is it? Sorry.
Regards,
Shodan
greck: do you mean the antfarm god just created earth, or the universe or just humans on earth? So one day, god gets bored and introduces the understanding of nuclear fission just for a laugh.
You have to admit, there are a number of things on this planet that make things comfy for our development. Not in an anthropic sense, but teleological. eg. just the right amount of oil to get us to a new energy source. A nice earth like planet next to us would have been nice though - mars is a dump.
Shodan: Thanks for that explanation. Interesting read.
One point you make (Modal Monarchianism) is that being a ‘good’ moral person is what makes you a christian. Do you think that is a bit biased toward that one religion, when there are other religions that have nearly exactly the same moral principles as christianity? One could also say that the good person would be a buddist or muslim. Sounds like a type 4 god - where god is a moral, informational force that exists within the collective human mind.
So Deism is a type 1 god. (according to the Standard antechinus Theotypical Classification System).
So all you had to say was you belive in a type 4/1 god and think that Jesus’s teachings mesh best with your cultural upbringing.
No, being a good person is not what makes you a Christian. Accepting the action of God in Christ is what makes you a Christian. Good moral actions are a result of that, not a cause.
As far as being biased towards Christianity, of course I am. Christianity is the one true religion[sup]TM[/sup]. But Christianity’s moral principle is God, that is, morality = what is in accordance with God’s will. Therefore another religion with the same moral principles would not be any different from Christianity. This is sort of what I was getting at by asserting that anyone who is following God is a Christian, since Christ is the way that God communicates with humans.
Although I would deny that God is a type 4 god. He pre-dates humanity. Indeed, He pre-dates the universe, since He created it. He is not a Jungian archetype, if that is what you meant.
(Don’t have the Greek fonts on my laptop.)
Regards,
Shodan
For a long time, I thought I didn’t believe in god, but recently realized that I probably do. Naturally, I believe in the real god.
God did not ‘create’ the universe, god IS the universe; and more. God does not ‘watch’ the universe to maintain its existence, god IS its existence.
God of the unexplained, slowly whittled away by science? No. God’s manifestations MAY ultimately be explained, but god itself is, and will remain, far beyond man’s comprehension.
God listens to and acts on your prayers? How could god, when so many prayers would be contradictory? Is god not god? Why then even the NEED for prayer? Does god not know already what we want?
A god that depends for the human mind for existence? In a way, yes, but god also exists independently of man. How could he not, and still be what we mean when we say, ‘god?’
A god that writes books? Surly, U-Jest. Man writes books. Who do you trust?
God not being the cause of nature, but the result of it? No; then Nature would be god, right?
A personal god who exist through one’s own thought and memory? Again, in a way, yes, but since we are all a part of god, and god a part of us, both outlast earthly human bodies.
God requires nothing of you, save that you be the best ‘you’ that you can be. [kind of like joining the army] God accepts us all, saint and sinner alike, for if he were to reject anyone, he would be rejecting a part of himself, as if we were to say of ourselves, “this arm, or this hand is no longer a part of me.” This cannot be.
Shodan:
When you said
I misunderstood it to mean, that if a person behaves moraly then they are a Christian, even without realising it. But in your last post you are saying that being a practicing christian makes you behave morally.
Either way, that has more to do with morals and religions than god. Unless you mean that a belief in a powerful entity makes people behave morally.
This powerful entity, that created the universe, would be a type 1 god, but one that affects peoples behaviour through belief. Thus it is only the concept of a type 1 god that assists belief. But you cannot have ‘belief’ or ‘peoples behaviour’ without humans. So then it must be a god that relies on humans to exist. Thus it is a type 4 god, rather than a type 1.
I did not intend that type 4 god be a Jungian archetype but larger than that. It (they) survive in the conciousness, subconciousness, media, communications networks - any system of information storage and processing that interacts with human minds. These gods affect human behaviour - like morality. Memes exist in this way.