Who is God?

[bigbadbogie]

Define perfectly.

[Sonic]

Well here's a thought completely out in left and right field at the same time. A few friends and I have a mythopoeia going on. If you do not know what that means, google it. In these stories we have a particular character who goes by many names but commonly is called MM who for many reasons is God. The catch here is that while we agree he is God, we do not make clear if he created reality or if reality created him. In fact, if you look at our time line, you will fine massive paradoxes of his existence. The idea though is MM is basically an 'avatar' of reality itself. So reality is inside him while he is inside reality. This gets more and more complex but makes an interesting "God" for our stories. We almost never reference him as God but as I said, for all basic purposes, he could be considered God (even if he/she/it is unperfect).

[sabrebattletank]

Define perfectly.

You understand how every fiber of them works, you are able to predict their response to every question, their follow-up questions, what they want to hear in response to those follow-up questions, when they'll be hungry, when they're sad, when you know every tidbit of possible information about them and synthesize it constantly, and what they don't know about themselves. When you understand the wants and desires that someone has and doesn't know yet. When you can understand someone with the same compassion and depth and breath of knowledge that God understands someone, you'll understand them perfectly.

And I guarantee you, never once in the history of humanity has that happened. Except Jesus.

(And if you don't accept Jesus, then fine. But you get my point.)

EDIT: I'm sorry that sounds weird. But I think it conveys my point: in my view, the whole point of a God is that we can't fully understand him. If we could, then would he really be a god?

[bigbadbogie]

You understand how every fiber of them works, you are able to predict their response to every question, their follow-up questions, what they want to hear in response to those follow-up questions, when they'll be hungry, when they're sad, when you know every tidbit of possible information about them and synthesize it constantly, and what they don't know about themselves. When you understand the wants and desires that someone has and doesn't know yet. When you can understand someone with the same compassion and depth and breath of knowledge that God understands someone, you'll understand them perfectly.

Sounds a bit like stalking someone to me.

in my view, the whole point of a God is that we can't fully understand him. If we could, then would he really be a god?

Um... Y-eah he would. What relevance does our understanding have on whether god is a god?

[Feared_1]

f there was a god, with our intelligence and logical ability we could understand him/it perfectly (unlike the amoeba which obviously lacks this).

Intelligence and logical ability.

There is also no such thing as chaos. There is only order, and the entwining of seperate forms of order.

The universe is constantly moving from order to disorder (chaos).

We are the pinnacle of creation. There is nothing above our level... only below it.

You're at the zoo. You end up in the lion's cage with the hungry lion inside. The lion is still below your level, right?

If there is nothing above us, where is our sixth sense?

Why do people wish into existance these unexplainable and ridiculous mystical elements when we ourselves are truly at the top of the ladder? Its almost like we don't like being the best of the best after all. Maybe we don't want the responsibility.

US President Bush was at the top of the ladder, too. Would you like to be in his current position?

--

Understanding other people is easy.

Sounds a bit like stalking someone to me.

" " is right.

--

I'm just pointing out that when you're debating on issues like this (that are never, ever, EVER going to be resolved) you want to keep an open mind. Try to understand what other people are thinking. Don't be so "I'm perfect, period".

Believing in God has never gained me anything, but I haven't lost anything either. Don't quote me on this and shoot back "YOU WASTE YOUR TIME" or something along those lines. I don't consider my time wasted at all. I could think that creating a Battlezone II mod by yourself is a giant waste of time, but I still respect the work that you put into it and the time that you spend to make the game a better place.

--

So my answer is "God is a being so far above us that we'll never understand even the smallest part of Him, despite any religion's attempts to do so..."

Agree.

[bigbadbogie]

Believe what you want.

[Red Devil]

Just an observation, but I have found that vain people tend to not like believing in God.   Even Lucifer - who was in heaven an in the presence of God - thought he was better than God, bringing about this situation.  But, hey, each to their own.

[cheesepuffly]

You don't lose anything?

You will lose heaven if god isn't real...

Well thats not how i looked at it but yes.

[sabrebattletank]

Um... Y-eah he would. What relevance does our understanding have on whether god is a god?

I meant "Would we really use the term God to label a being we could fully understand?"

Our understanding has no direct influence on God's being, rather, it is a reflection of ours.

[Axeminister]

I've always looked at our lives as gifts. There is a certain proper way to give a gift. When you give a gift to someone you care about it is then inappropriate to mention the giving every time you visit. We have zero communication with any being that may have created us. Therefore my conclusion is that if there is a being that is giving out life then he is happy enough for us to say thank you for the gift. And is not a Indian giver.

A Christian Southern Babtist is what I was brought up as. And during the times as a young boy my parents told me a tale to help me believe that the greatest sin to "God" was to not be satisfied with what he had given. The story was something like: God has created all the angels and humans and given power to some angels. One such angel had been given almost as much power as God himself. His name was Lucifer, and when he asked for more power God became angry, since he had given Lucifer so much, and yet he was still unhappy with what he had been given. In his anger God cast Lucifer from Heaven.
The lesson I was supposed to learn was not to be unhappy with what we have in life so that God may find a place for me in heaven. This lesson can also be used to predict how some humans will react to unhappiness also.
Now that I'm older I do as MrTwosheds has said and question everything. I'm sort of on this kick of questioning all religions. It brings to mind the Mideastern people of nowadays who say the Holocaust did not happen. I mean I do not think that all life on this planet began once I was born. This is something for a psychologist to help you with. But for Southern Babtist to be the only correct religion, this would have to be the case. Since it is not, then can we say the oldest religion is the most correct. No we can not. Can we say that all Christian religions are good enough? Jesus allowing himself to be crucified even though he had enough power to protect himself makes him a martyr, that is a mideastern thing. So can we say Islam is correct then.
I'm pretty sure "God" gets the point no matter what religion you have been taught/choose or have forced on you. You are saying thank you for the gift. Now no further communication is needed once you have done this, that's how proper of a friend he is to us. So enjoy the gift, play Battlezone II.

[sabrebattletank]

Jesus allowing himself to be crucified even though he had enough power to protect himself makes him a martyr, that is a mideastern thing. So can we say Islam is correct then.

Actually, in the Islamic tradition, Jesus never died on the cross. Essentially, Jesus is the prophet second only to Muhammad. And, since Allah is all-powerful and Jesus is a prophet of Allah, doing His work on earth, to have Jesus die would mean that Allah would have failed. But Allah cannot fail, so the Muslims believe that Jesus was taken up from the cross before he died.

[Warfreak]

Funny how every religion can agree that Jesus was actually a very just man from what we know of his adulthood.

(Don't bring up the whole "well, whats to say Jesus was 'blah' as a child" thing, cause obviously thats a whole other badly recorded thing of history)

[cheesepuffly]

Funny how every religion can agree that Jesus was actually a very just man from what we know of his adulthood.

(Don't bring up the whole "well, whats to say Jesus was 'blah' as a child" thing, cause obviously thats a whole other badly recorded thing of history)

Jesus´s childhood is not gone into in great detail. Infact the only once do we know of something that happened then.

[sabrebattletank]

There WERE a bunch of Gospels that talked about Jesus' childhood though, and not all of them fondly. They weren't adopted as cannon.

[cheesepuffly]

In the Bible there is only one instance of something happening during
Jesus's childhood. Which would be when he went to some place and amazed the priests.