God as a placeholder

StarshipEnterprise said:
This is exactly what I am talking about. you say that God is infinite, undefinable, and unknowable. What is the point of this belief?
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God is infinite, undefinable... but not unknowable. Or perhaps, we can't know God (in God's entirety) but we can experience God.

I don't really know my own mother, in her entirety. But I know her pretty well. I experience my mother. (Same goes for my horses and dogs, my husband, the tree in my front yard, etc.)

There is no point to the belief. I experience something Big, something More, something to do with connectedness with the Universe. I call it God. It isn't about a function, it's about an experience. At least, it is for me.

How is it different from saying that there is much we don't know?
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Well, for starters, I'm not calling the stuff I don't know God. I'm calling a particular Thing I experience God. As such, It is partially known but I'm aware that It is a lot more than the glimpses I've personally had.

I call the stuff I don't know... stuff I don't know. There's even stuff I don't know that I don't know. :)

People have always wanted to personify things in nature. Poseidon was a personification of the sea, Zeus of the sky, Gaia of the earth, etc. Modern theism seems to try to personify "the infinite" (if there is such a thing)
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Actually, on the contrary, I try to avoid personification of God. I do think there are person-like spiritual entities, but God isn't that. God may appear as a person-like entity to meet me or another human being in the mental space in which we reside. But that's not God Itself.

As for personification of nature, well... I do think there are nature spirits. Maybe it's because I "want to" personify. Or maybe it's because we aren't the only persons out there in the universe, and I recognize the person-hood of other beings.

It's all circular reasoning either way.

You say I want to personify, so I see persons where there aren't any. I say you want to avoid personification, so you don't see persons where there are some. Debating God or spirits is a fruitless endeavor.
 
StarshipEnterprise said:
altruism in nature makes complete sense when explained by natural selection alone. An animal in instinctively altruistic in situations in which their sacrifice benefits the survival of the species. Even if this wasn't the case, altruism=evidence for an all powerful being, how?
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The part about making sense deserves examining, no?

First of all, no one says that the universe happened by coincidence. Matter didn't suddenly take the form it is in right now in a single random event. Furthermore, this "finely tuned balance" is completely subjective. If you were a puddle of water, you might think that the hole you were in could never be created by chance because it fits you so perfectly. Intelligence has no special status in the universe. You are just as much a part of this earth as any rock on the face of a mountain.
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What's wrong with subjectivity? Intelligence has no special status in the universe?

M'kay, this sounds like an implied watchmaker argument. We have not been able to create it but it exists. So? It is simple minded to think that everything that exists must have been created in the same way people create things.
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So call me simple-minded then, since intelligence has no special status in the universe. :)
 
Intelligence has no special status in the universe?
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Oh jeez I went off on a tangent there. Sometimes I think too much and talk too little so when I try to explain something it ends up not making sense:p

I spose what I was trying to say was that we came from this world so it seems perfectly balanced to us, the same way it would for the puddle of water in its hole. I guess this brings us back to a circular argument. To beleive this you have to beleive that God didn't create the world for us.

lol, that might not have cleared anything up.

path_of_one said:
Actually, on the contrary, I try to avoid personification of God. I do think there are person-like spiritual entities, but God isn't that. God may appear as a person-like entity to meet me or another human being in the mental space in which we reside. But that's not God Itself.
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By "personify" I don't necessarily mean that you think of God as a person. He is some kind of being or mind, no? Or maybe you don't think that, as you referred to God as "itself" rather than "himself" or "herself". In a way I (might) understand where you are coming from. "God" could simply mean the ultimate nature of things or the feeling of unity with other people and with nature. Depending on your definition of "God" the line between theism and atheism can be blurry. amiright? or just kooky?
 
StarshipEnterprise said:
By "personify" I don't necessarily mean that you think of God as a person. He is some kind of being or mind, no? Or maybe you don't think that, as you referred to God as "itself" rather than "himself" or "herself". In a way I (might) understand where you are coming from. "God" could simply mean the ultimate nature of things or the feeling of unity with other people and with nature.
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I don't see G-d as a being in the sense you seem to imply. I do tend to use the term "He," but only by tradition. I see G-d as encompassing all of the genders and surpassing all of them, all and nothing. It transcends gender though, that is but one tiny aspect. "Ultimate nature" I suppose is one way to try to explain, but it just doesn't quite carry the weight or convey the essence.

StarshipEnterprise said:
Depending on your definition of "God" the line between theism and atheism can be blurry. amiright? or just kooky?
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Yep, you are... ;)

(That's OK, so are the rest of us) :D
 
StarshipEnterprise said:
By "personify" I don't necessarily mean that you think of God as a person. He is some kind of being or mind, no? Or maybe you don't think that, as you referred to God as "itself" rather than "himself" or "herself". In a way I (might) understand where you are coming from. "God" could simply mean the ultimate nature of things or the feeling of unity with other people and with nature. Depending on your definition of "God" the line between theism and atheism can be blurry. amiright? or just kooky?
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Ditto Juan. Sometimes I say It, sometimes He, sometimes She. They. Whatever. God transcends it all...

I think Lunamoth said this at one point, and it really made a lot of sense to me-- God is the Being in which beings live. Or something to that effect. I basically think God is a whole lot more than I can express or even fathom, but what I know of God is that It/S/He/They is the ultimate nature of things, yes. And the foundation of Being. And therefore manifest in our experience of Oneness, or connectedness-- that is to say, Love, in its most pure essence.

But God may come to us in some other way so that we understand, or receive what we need from the universe, from the Everything, at that moment. And I think God was made fully manifest in Jesus Christ, but that's a whole other discussion I've had in other threads.

I'd say the line between theism and atheism is blurry. I've met more than a few atheists that, when it came down to it, thought much of the same stuff I did. And I'm firmly a theist. There's a wide range of what theism and atheism mean to people.

Are ya kooky? Eh, aren't we all?
 
I guess I've said before that I don't find the term God very useful. I do think that it serves as a placeholder, particularly in conversation. What if God really is an all pervasive, impersonal force? Is it still God? Maybe in the real sense, but not insofar as the labeling of things that gives language the ability and authority to tag and transfer things. Since the consensus of custom as it relates to the marker God is so heavily weighted toward the "old man in the sky" conception, I would rather, for the sake of clarity, reserve that term to the classical monotheistic expression. Let God be the dude from the Bible. Let the Force, or whatever it is, be something different. That way when a person says they believe, or don't believe in "God" it actually means something.

Chris
 
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