Define god.

I believe that God defines itself. I believe that God is everything, so anything I write defines God. To me, if God is to be accepted as the creator of everything, it logically follows that God must be everything. Otherwise in the beginning there must have been God and a stockpile of supplies . In which case he would be the architect of everything which is constructed rather than the creator of everything.

Or if God is omnipotent, omnipresent...likewise, God must be everything, because #1 All matter possesses power; #2 All matter occupies space. How can God be all powerful if he doesn't possess the power which matter possesses? How can God be everywhere if he doesn't occupy the space which matter possesses?

Otherwise there might be something vastly similar to God in that is it "very powerful" and "knows a lot" and is "practically everywhere". But then logically you could just say, "No, that's not God," call the universe (or everything) God, and then you would have a God that fits the standard definition. The universe knows everything that can be known; the universe possesses all the power that exists; the universe is everywhere; everything is responsible for the creation of everything.

So someone might say, "Why not just call God the universe, then?" In the case of natural pantheism, I don't know why...but classical pantheism goes further in asserting that God is also personal, which is something that isn't immediately evident to everyone where the universe is concerned.

Nature appears very random, but so do the neural processes in your brain. Imagine you'd lived inside a brain your entire life -- you wouldn't have any evidence to suggest that there was a higher order present, but we think we do things for reasons. Then it also becomes a question of whether chaos and order even exist. On various scales and dimensions what is believed to be orderly appears chaotic and vice versa.

For instance, say you're building a house. You think you're doing something very orderly. But if you really look at how this house came to be, the process will appear totally random. Wars, famine, births, butterflies flapping their wings, everything that happens, etc.: This is how your house came to be.

So basically I believe everything is God. Even if everything that exists originally comes from a dumb, dead source, which I doubt...there would be no way to prove this. And in a way, you and I are the source, and we think we're smart and alive. Everything is perpetually being born into what is. The source of everything is everything and everywhere.

Even our births are chaotic, though our parents appear orderly (?). Our parents and their coitus (lol) are the results of what we know as pure chaos. Even the "order" of their desires are the result of seemingly "random" influences. Maybe daddy got spanked too many times as a child and on this particular night mommy was wearing just the right socks or something, you know? We're just gummy bears coming out of the gummy factory. Still made of the same chaotic gummy. Which we "return" to, but actually remain forever.

 

Right, is god a conscious entity, does god know he/she/it is god?
Or is god just god?

If god is conscious does god have emotions, does god make descions is god bias?

 

Very well said. However does atheism mean no religion or does it mean no god?

 

atheism:
a=without
theism= the belief in the existence of one or more gods or deities

hence: atheism= without the belief in god.

 

So, what DO you believe in?

Peace and Love

 

does one HAVE TO believe in something?
methinks not. surely not the god as diety who concerns itself with the everyday goings on and fate of human kind. that, my friend, is purely a hoax perpetrated on human kind everywhere. To even imagine a deity who created you and then allowed you to be a sinner by his own definition is purely ludicrus.

you have been punked by thousands of years of mind control and superstition. wake up.

 

See? You DO have beliefs. You can doubt their accuracy or reject them or even deny their existence. But they are only your beliefs that you doubt, deny or reject. Regardless of whether they are absolutely true representations of reality, or uninspired by-products of your imagination, they are your beliefs.

Until you actually know the inspired realization of the Mystics, the Tzaddiks, the Saints, the Prophets and Boddhisattvas, until you know what it is they are actually talking about, all you are really doing is expressing your dissatisfaction with your own ideas.

The inexplicable paradox is that transcending "God" (whatever YOU think that means) may actually be the holiest act you are capable of performing. If you are as awakened as you would like to believe yourself to be, or at least as honest, then you may be surprised at what exists in place of your beliefs.

Peace and Love

 

lol, that's some funny shite

 

See? what the fuck did that mean/prove?

punked. there is no proof of god's existence.

 

I don't believe in any kind of god. I just believe in myself and in other people. I don't have to believe in something that you cannot see. And, if there is a god who controls everything, then he is a fucking jerk for having so much poverty, cruelty, war, and racism in this world.

 

so young, yet so wise.

 

Good Question.

"Here's your Kazoo, Mr. Hendrix."

There is no proof that this idea is anything but a cheap, oversimplified conclusion.

This discussion, about belief or disbelief in the existence or non-existence of God, whatever the name means, has been going on for the past two or three or five or ten thousand years, a lot longer than anyone or anything you or I personally know of.

I mean no disrespect, but Atheists seem to want everyone to simply stop the conversation. Why?

I just want to know what everyone has been talking about. Maybe there is something I don't know, maybe there is something I can learn, maybe everything is meant to be better than it appears to be. Who knows?

Whether or not you find a good reason to participate, however, I am quite sure the conversation will continue for thousands of years into the future.

Peace and Love

 

is.

 

You could think of it this way.

With polytheist religions - like Hinduism or the Ancient Greek Pantheon- each deity is a personification, or a name, if you will, of some ideal, abstract, eternal reality like Love (Aphrodite, Krishna), Wisdom (Saraswati, Sophia), Creativity (Gaea, Brahma) and so on. There are many of these entities.

I don't know that any sane Hindu ever really expects to see a Blue-Skinned, Multi-Armed Deity walking down the streets of Delhi or Varanasi, but it is just so much easier to learn about and remind oneself about these abstract spiritual realities when they are personified. A wise Hindu (and there are many of them) will tell you that there is a single divine reality expressed through all of these personifications.

The Non-Theistic religions - Buddhism, Taoism, etc. - acknowledge these eternal patterns of reality, but do not necessarily assign any personal identity to them. They do not deny their existence but they teach it is much more important for the individual to recognize and respect these "things" onesself instead of taking someone else's word for it. Someone else's word is inadequate to fully communicate what "It" is.

The Monotheist religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - also acknowledge the existence of the eternal realities like Love, Wisdom, Creativity, Truth, Compassion, Consciousness, Joy, Unity, Transcendence and so on. It is believed that these are, however, not individual deities themselves but conscious expressions of an unfathomable, absolutely transcendent reality that IS the primal being of all that is. "I will be what I will be," as it says in the story.

Now, of course, it may be possible to live a life without looking at the world and seeing reality in any of these ways, but even the most immovable Atheist will recognize the ideals these entities personify.

Love, Wisdom, Creativity, Truth, Compassion, Consciousness, Joy, Unity, Transcendence, and the list goes on and on and on . . .

 

Read Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris etc.

Then you will laugh at anything remotely religious.

 

Read Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Joshua Heschel, William Sloane Coffin, The Dalai Lama, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Baba Ram Dass, Stephen Gaskin, Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodran, etc.

Then you will realize that Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are not really even taking part in the same conversation.

Then you will smile at anything remotely religious.

Peace and Love

 

I always smile at religious things. They are, by definition, great comedy.

 

Religion doesnt exist. God does. Religion is a form of faith and a path to God. God is love. We ARE created in Gods image because we are beings of energy, and God is energy itself, in a way. God is everywhere and everything. I love God.

 

if you could define god, it wouldn't BE god. baha'u'llah, lao tsu, even mohamed and moses seem to aggree on this. certainly what i've experienced personaly bears no resemblence to anything described in any organized belief.

lao tsu said it best of course, with basicly the tao you can name, describe, et c., not being the whatever you want to call it that is.

i think all imposed deffinicians are the antithisis of any kind of real spirituality.
and that no one would be any worse off if no one had ever tried to come up with any.

=^^=
.../\...

 

God: A coping system developed by human beings who have difficulty excepting thier mortality and/or the percieved unfairnesses in the world around them.