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so i hear so many times the question asked "does god exist?"

i don't know, but i do know in order to answer that question one needs to define god.

so, what is god?

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We are all God, experiencing ourselves in a 3rd dimension perceived reality!

God is E Motion, ie, Energy in Motion, and it is with E Motion we create our Reality.

That's my take on it, anyway.

God I Am

ps anything you state to the Universe, beginning with I AM is what you Create in your Reality.

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I'The fundamental thought in the Oriental philosophical world is that the mysterious, ultimate truth, that which you seek to know, is absolutely beyond all definition. All categories of thought, all modes of imagining fall short of it. When we ask, “Is God merciful, just, loving? Does he love me, does he love my people more than those? Are these not chosen, are those not rejected?” this from the Oriental standpoint is sheer kindergarten stuff. This is the projection of anthropomorphic forms of thought and feelings upon a mystery that transcends even the categories of being and nonbeing. The categories of logic, the forms of sensibilities of time and space—all of these are functions of human thought, and the mystery that you’re seeking lies beyond it. This is taken seriously; the absolute is absolutely transcendent of all thought.


In Occidental theology, the word transcendent is used to mean outside of the world. In the East, it means outside of thought. To imagine that your definitions of your God have anything to do with that ultimate mystery is a form of sheer idolatry from this standpoint. Your God is good enough for you and mine’s good enough for me. A God, from this point of view, is merely a reflex of one’s ability to conceive of God. Since people have various abilities of this sort, they have various powers of apprehending God.’',

joseph campbell 'myths of light'

mmmm, sums it up well enough i think. human ignorance extends as far as ignorance of the problems with language, and i'd even venture to say nowhere is this more evident than human attempts at this very discussion or similar discussions.

Edited by ThunderIdeal

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Fundamental attribution error, but in a religious rather than social context

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I don't know the answer Stu, but I do like the thinking behind the the question. I mean, if God can be defined in vague enough terms, debating Their existence becomes meaningless. The great debates and arguments around theism vs atheism have, for much of the history of western philosophy, really been about what God is like.

A classic example is the 'Problem of evil':

  1. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent.
  2. Such a being would not allow evil in the world.
  3. There is evil in the world.
  4. Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent God does not exist.

(If you don't find this very convincing, try substituting 'evil' with 'undeserved suffering').

People take this as an argument that God doesn't exist. But really, it's just (at best) ruling out a particular kind of God that acts a certain way. If God is a tool, or if he's not all powerful, or not all that bright, then such an argument has no traction.

This does give us a starting point though. Whatever God is like, it can't have attributes that do gross logical violence to what we know about he world around us. For example, defining God as a being that never lets innocents suffer, or that instantly grants all my wishes, is just not going to work.

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Doesn't that basically demonstrate that human perspective is too narrow?

Let me give a puny human example. Children aren't capable of defining adults.

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I'm a good adult so I'll just provide unlimited candy to these children plus whatever else they want.

I'm not trying to argue for a "father" god I'm just saying sheesh come on, by definition god is beyond definition. Even the cleverest people have staggering limitations of intellect.

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Human conceptions may well be too narrow. But the argument above isn't about proving God doesn't exist, it's about holding to account those who claim to know the mind of the infinite and use that claim to control others' lives.

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The biggest problem to me is that we at this stage only communicate with one another, and moreso ourselves in words, language etc, all of which are taught concepts, so you can never ever have an original thought, let alone a true concept of god... perhaps we will evolve past noises as a means of communication but we are all defined at this moment by our ability to interperet others thoughts etc by our own taught interpretations.. .

And if you care for my opinion.. . You are god, I am god, and that guy on the street you saw today is totally god! :-)

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So many gods to choose from to give a definition, but I believe your talking about the Abrahamic God. The true giver of life IMO is Sol, there is nothing more influential to our survival and most likely our ultimate demise.

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God is the answer to what each of us know as unknown. Some of us just have the view that the unknown can be discovered and documented, as opposed to speculated and imagined/idolized.

With that said, i believe god is one of the reasons we have got so far as a species - the ability to speculate on what the senses have not recognized - it has no doubt made us seek answers, always a good thing for a species.

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god is spaghett and meatballs? not much use for us vegetarians then

well back to a life of sin then i guess

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If we are going to use words, why cant they have clear definitions ?

I hate when words have more then one meaning, its makes understanding difficult

i like understanding

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That's language.

You're better off naming the god you wish to define

eg jehova, shiva, allah. Then you at least limit yourself to a particular material from which to form an interpretation.

Anyway that's what people want right? Something that DOES fit in a box, so it may be championed or ridiculed. That's what I find ridiculous: The notion that a big enough box would encapsulate infinity, or infinity plus one.

Edited by ThunderIdeal
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It all ends up being a bit paradoxical. In one sense, if there is an infinite being, then the questions of its existence becomes, simultaneously, the most significant question there is, and the most banal. Significant, because there is no bigger thing to discover than the existence of an infinite intelligence. Banal, because even if there were such a thing, its infinite nature seems to make it impossible for us to definitively say anything about it.

I might be wrong about that though. People are always saying that we couldn't understand the infinite being. But if the infinite is divisible, then we could understand finite parts of it - though relative to the whole, we would be only understanding an infinitely small part. Kind of like our relationship with reality I guess.

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the flying spaghetti monster serves to illustrate how any theologian can posit the existence of their particular god and scientists are powerless to falsify it. they can however proclaimi the theory to be presently unfalsifiable. some scientific theories fall into this category also.

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at the moment at my place god is an ice cold beer.

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define god as that force of power, that amazing clarity shaka haka god in the dance you do while in the plants in the Forrest .

i'd sassy my own version of what god is this day as pretty simple.

We all seek solace. The fact we all define god differently is what actually makes god exist.

God is a word many fight with. It invokes fear, repression, bad memories, evolution. Evolution is not that a bad place to start.

God to me is a place i created out of my own free mind. In this place we find each other, that is, like mindedness not religion.

If god did really existentially make rules for us mere humanoids, i'd like to think 'it' meant good for humainity

or your over thinking existance, over internationalization or even over intellectualize

basically we all create our own version of god.

whether it's mean't or imagined , we all do it i reckon at some point in full on journeys.

make you and your mates gods by listening,empahathasisizing , for whats its worth who cares i reckon

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basically we all create our own version of god.

Or someone else creates the version of god and we put our own personal spin on it.

It seems to revolve around two main concepts from my perspective - power and guilt

A select few hold the power and everyone else has some form of guilt that needs to be appeased and/or punished.

The guilt becomes a form of psychological blackmail and those in power have an avenue to diminish that perceived guilt and gain more power in the process.

So if anyone has any underlying feelings of guilt send me a PM with your paypal donation of $10 and you can be forgiven after confessing your sins. You will then be guaranteed to enter the afterlife in a pure form and take your rightful place as a higher being in the kingdom of heaven. :devil:

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I have found it hard to reconcile the 'carrot' element of many religious frameworks, or in other words the spiritual materialism exhibited by many religious ideologies of the world.

"If you do x, y and z, and don't do a, b, c then you get (insert carrot statement here)"

The carrot might be eternal life, forgiveness, reincarnation in a 'better' life, etc.

It's an oversimplification I know, but isn't it true that at the end of the day, if there was no carrot, you probably wouldn't 'follow' x religion? :huh:

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Or someone else creates the version of god and we put our own personal spin on it.

It seems to revolve around two main concepts from my perspective - power and guilt

A select few hold the power and everyone else has some form of guilt that needs to be appeased and/or punished.

The guilt becomes a form of psychological blackmail and those in power have an avenue to diminish that perceived guilt and gain more power in the process.

So if anyone has any underlying feelings of guilt send me a PM with your paypal donation of $10 and you can be forgiven after confessing your sins. You will then be guaranteed to enter the afterlife in a pure form and take your rightful place as a higher being in the kingdom of heaven. :devil:

nah

my own version of dog is not my interpretation of what somebody else has predetermined for me - has nothing to do with guilt , punishment or power - that sounds like your perspective is coming from a religious standpoint.

my dog is nothing like you could ever imagine. I mean how could you? This dog is my dog not yours.

My dog has protected me through the most evil days of my existence. The battle that rages within us is something people find terrifying and many turn to some form of religious intervention and use the term God. This god protects them and that's enough for them. Growing up with parents who were illiterate immigrants, i quickly rejected the stereotypical view of religion and rejected what they held to be true.

The difference is that i taught myself to read and write and educated myself slowly to the ways of the world.

Through education and free thinking, i realised that my dog was not their God and we co-existed peacefully until detachment day came. I never pissed on their parade because i understood that to these farmers who looked into the skies above and pondered their origins - they only knew this pathway.

The beautiful thing between all the misunderstandings was that plants and gardening was the great equalizer of all our differences.

My Dog cannot be broken by empty rhetoric espousing spirituality that can only be reached by getting in touch with God.

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Eileen showed me god......intricately linked atoms holding the universe together. That's god.

Edited by Getafix
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