What is your 'idea of GOD'?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by hansda, Oct 12, 2013.

  1. hansda Valued Senior Member

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    It really does not matter whether you believe in GOD or not.

    If you believe in GOD, what is the 'idea of GOD' which you want to believe?

    If you don't believe in GOD, what is the 'idea of GOD' which you don't want to believe?

    As such there are many 'ideas of GOD', whom people worship and pray. Some even worship a tree or a stone as GOD out of faith. There may be many other faiths also.

    My personal idea of GOD is 'omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient'.

    I think 'GOD' is only a name given to some entity out of faith and devotion. What is that entity, which you want to name as GOD.

    I think the 'idea of GOD' was envisioned at a time when much of science was not known. Now, as science has developed to a great strength, can we review the 'idea of GOD' in terms of science, so that faith(the 'idea of GOD') can meet science.
     
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  3. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    To me, if God exists...he is unfathomable.
     
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  5. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    I take God as referring to the supreme, morally perfect and infinitely magical being/person who made everything and who for some reason takes special interest in humans and their daily lives, but not enough to actually appear to anybody as a real objective being or to improve things one iota. For the record I don't believe in this entity. People who say God ISN'T this have the burden to describe what he IS then. Rarely do such people ever do this because they don't want their view attacked. God for them becomes equatable to a vague metaphysical principle like Plato's The Good or Novelty or Consciousness. I fail to see how calling these properties "God" makes our understanding of them any clearer. Any more than personifying time as Father Time helps us understand time any better.
     
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  7. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I wasn't raised in a theistic home, so I never grew up with a particular concept of 'God'. The whole idea has always been a little mysterious to me and I've never been entirely sure what other people mean by the word.

    I guess that I use the word in two broad ways.

    First of all, I use it to refer to a/the monotheistic deity. Since I grew up in vaguely Christian culture, that basically means the Hebrew God Yahweh, in his Jewish, Christian and Islamic permutations. I suppose that I'd include the deities of monotheistic Hinduism in the same heading, Vishnu and so on. So this usage of 'God' refers to a loose and sometimes historically interconnected collection of personas, described in various religious scriptures and theological traditions.

    I'm basically an atheist with regards to these deities, who I believe to be mythological figures with no more reality than Zeus or Thor.

    My second kind of conception of 'God' is the so-called 'God of the philosophers'. This one is basically whatever (if anything) fulfills a vaguely defined set of philosophical functions: First-cause, source of natural law, whatever keeps reality in existence from moment to moment, ultimate teleological goal or destination of change, and so on.

    I'm basically an agnostic with regards to most of this. I don't have a clue what the first cause of the universe was or where natural law came from.

    (I'm reasonably certain that none of our human religions knows these things either.)
     
  8. sunshaker Registered Member

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    I believe we are all God,

    As i believe our universe to be an "electron", Which Would make us all "multidimensioal beings", Everbody exsisting within everbody.
     
  9. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Any which has thus far been put forward, be it "first cause", "creator", "omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent", etc.

    To ask someone who doesn't believe in God for the "idea of God" that they don't believe in is like asking someone who doesn't like football to to name the team that they don't like.

    I also dislike the implication in this question that belief is a matter of "want"... that we somehow choose not to believe because we don't want to.
     
  10. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    That would be my answer also. I would add that he is irrelevant (to us) as well.

    I could also agree with the concept that "God" is us or if you will, the best aspects of us. In that case however it's more useful to just drop "God" all together.
     
  11. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Mankind has to "make sense" of what he doesn't understand. Dreams mean more than they really do, we don't like the idea of the Big Bang having no cause, we wonder how we arrived here and where morality came from, etc...

    There could be a Creator but there very well may not be. If mankind didn't ache so much for certainty, there would be no need to think about the possibility of gods existing. To me, we just aren't collectively happy enough just living life and accepting it for what it is...and isn't.

    In walks "God"...to save us from ourselves.
     
  12. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I don't see "where does morality come from" as being on of the "big" questions. For the religious that's used as a justification but if man hadn't made up "God" in the first place no one would be wondering where morality came from (IMO).

    I also think that if religion hadn't of been made up people wouldn't be wondering what happens after you die. I think they would accept the obvious...you're dead

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    How did the world begin is a "big" question and that's about it (for me). I have to admit however that just talking about the concept of "God" just makes me cringe from an intellectual point of view. It's seems so silly and obviously man-made. No matter how broadly you define "God".

    To wonder about something (anything) and then come up with "God" is similar (IMO) to seeing a light in the sky, not recognizing it, and concluding the it may be a spaceship from Mars.

    It's just such an obviously man derived concept.
     
  13. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    God as an idea is only "What you don't know about your self" ~anon
    In other words, God is everything you don't know.."For only God knows"


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  14. arauca Banned Banned

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    God is the spirit that guided to create conditions to put the chemicals in such a way that life was initiate on this earth
     
  15. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    God as chemist.
     
  16. arauca Banned Banned

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    A multivers scientist
     
  17. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    And if science solves that last problem then there will be no God, right?
     
  18. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Chemical reactions require supernatural help to happen? Since when? It's all about electron bonding..
     
  19. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    God as an extended object residing in some place or environment [supernatural, heaven, etc]. Thereby contradictorily being dependent upon relations, conditions, subjectivity / objectivity rather than the absoluteness ascribed to it. "[They] tell us that the Absolute is unknowable, and that we can therefore know nothing of God." --Henry E. Manning
     
  20. arauca Banned Banned

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    Have you not heard if there is no contact there is no reaction , So some force brought the chemical together then bonds were made,
     
  21. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Hmmm, so God is the force that put those chemicals together? I thought that was gravity, heat and through them Brownian motion.
     
  22. Ogdon Banned Banned

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    Yes. But God was the Primary Mover.
     
  23. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    So whenever you eat a cheeseburger, God must magically exert his power to attract its broken down molecules together to form your living tissues? I thought electrical charge was the attractive force.
     

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