God, in religious tradition (not atheist tradition) is spirit and not matter. The male principle is spirit, which is why they have God, male. The female principle is matter which is associated with God's female half, who is called Lilith. The image of God is not a material image, but a spiritual image. If it said the image of Lilith (female/material) then a photo would be accurate. The question you need to ask is what is the human spirit? You hear this all the time during recovery from disasters. This is in the image of God. Spirit is closer to mind and will than matter. Humans can reason and have will power and can make choices apart from programmed instinct. We are involved in the creative process; mini-me of God.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Reminds me of someplace I have been years ago. Wait I was drunk then....
Precisely, the phenomenon named spirit is the human ability to empathize. The screaming crowd at a football game is from a common spirit, a community coming together in the face of a disaster, etc. IMO, it is caused by the "mirror neural network" common in the brain of each individual, not a common connection to a higher intelligence.
The trouble with reading into the Bible a polytheistic Hebrew mythology is the fact that the Bible was written down only after the Hebrews made the change to monotheism in the 500s BCE. Any reflections of more ancient polytheism is a relic of oral mythology. The wording isn't explicitly endorsing a polytheistic worldview because the Hebrews had abandoned that by the time they wrote the words down.
One idea about this is that this was during their captivity in Babylon. It would explain some of the historical references to events in that era which otherwise might seem to believers to have happened a thousand or more years earlier, and for which, to support this opinion, it is often explained that those writers were clairvoyant. Except for the evidence of the older polytheism found in the first version of their creation story, by the pantheon "Elohim" and phrases like "in our image we created them", but yes, it's not held to be an endorsement of polytheism by any means. Other examples of the polytheism are the discovery of statues of Asherah at dig sites of Canaanite homes (the supposed wife of Yahweh, probably taken from the Egyptian mythology).
So...the wars against the non-believers is getting quite tiring. But anyways, to the OP question. God created men and women in his own image has much more meaning to it, than people give it credit for. However none of that is really important, what is important is that the relation to God was to establish a better connection between us and our creator or rather...ourselves. Belief in God unites people, its purpose is to unite people and lead people under one common goal of moral laws, the purpose of describing the creation people in an image of God was to create a mental connection between us all so that we do not have to feel alone, forgotten, and not loved. God is not a being, somewhere hidden in the corners of the universe. God is a powerfull consciousness that exists through faith of ourselves.
I almost agree with that statement as written. It basically states that the concept of God was created by humans, for humans and requires faith (belief in an unknown quality of the universe).
I would like to state that the concept was not created by humans...but by anything capable of consciousness.
it is like calling a seed, a planet. We are seeds of the universe, we grow up to become a plant, a tree, a forest of many trees. And forests of continets, make a planet. The analogy of gap is much much bigger between us and what we are to become as God. The best analogy I can think of us separating us between what we are to become to parallel God is: we are the thought of the baby to be born and God is that grown up baby in the future.
How did he prepare individuals to understand anything? To understand the universe well enough to see through his eyes? The next step would be to become god because we have seen through his eyes and understand the universe? Blasphemy? And that would be as seen through his eyes? What is he going to do about it? Send some people to kill you?
Obviously you have not read the Book and took a conversation at face value to establish a religion. In case you didn't realize this, that is how it happened in the past. People will talk and say all sorts of things of which they have absolutely no knowledge. Some others will believe them and in something of which they have absolutely no knowledge. As an ex musician I can speak with a certain authority on the subject. Actually there are no easy answers provided in music as demonstrated in this profound piece by Charles Ives, "the unanswered question'. You want to hear a human discussion of God as imagined by a great composer? I often sit on my porch on a summer's night and watch the stars while listening. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbArUJBRRJ0
What book are you reading? Charles Ives wrote the original composition in 1908 and revised it later around 1930. Frederich Nietsche, died on October 25, 1900. Walter Kaufmann wrote a biography of Nietsche.
Are you asserting Nietsche wrote the song under the pseudonym Charles Ives? To anyone still following this discussion, if this is an example of "religious knowledge", I rest my case.
It means that God has other forms, but he created man in His own form. So God's own (personal) form is like that of a human. jan.
The image of God is not about a facade, like one created by modern celebrity culture. Image of god is more like character than color of skin to quote Martin Luther King. Modern liberal atheism is too shallow and picks what it can understand. An easy way to look this is with a sports car analogy. It is not the body that makes a car a sports car, if you ever drove one. Rather what makes sports car is the motor, drive train and suspension; inner image like character.
All of us realize that ultimate truth is beyond our human capacity to understand completely. However, we can label this ultimate awareness and power as God because we know that the world and universe exist as a result of some kind of progressive, creative process. The human mind doesn't like uncertainty so some of us write out our own explanations of life and its purpose. When these explanations include traditional stories, dogma, rituals, and discipline, we create religions. Religions tend to turn God into a supernatural man. I believe that when we accept what we know, stand on the edge of our knowledge and openly seek new, higher understandings, that represents individual spiritual growth that actually does raise our thinking toward God (ultimate truth and power). From that perspective we tend to realize that even though we are limited in our knowledge and power, the ultimate knowledge and power of God includes, at the very least, all that we are. I think that is what the writer of Genesis meant by "...made in the image of god."
Ok, you have given God the property of looking like a human. Do you mean Jesus as the human form of God? Please clarify and explain why and how you have come to that conclusion? Why human form, with all its limitations? If I were an theist I would say that God is the Implicate of all there is and when we look at the universe we ARE seeing the form and face of God. I am an atheist and that is why I'll stay with the concept of Universal Potential (The Implicate of that which is to become Explicate in reality). You want to hear the voice of God? Check the link below. http://www.ted.com/talks/bernie_kra...ium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_button
