What Makes A God?

In my opinion this is because the old and new testament are two different "gods" not the same one who had a son. The thing described in the new testament does not care if you acknowledge it or not. It's not going to punish you for not going someplace every week for an hour. It simply is if you acknowledge it or not and for it to care is like a human being mad an ant does not worship it. To worship it is a little more like simply being moral. Very few people go to "hell" because hell is not a place with fire as much as the absence of that energy coming from "god" and it's really only for those who want that absence. Those who I would call truly evil the people who murder 20 people and don't care for example. Some of the purpose of life on earth if to make mistakes you are not expected to be perfect.

 

Perhaps atheists aren't so much against what they don't believe in as much as they are against the ideas that stem from what others believe in. For instance, an atheist might be against the belief in God because in the wrong hands, that belief might be the motivating factor behind the making of public policy. It would be disturbing to hear a presidential candidate say something like, "I'm a god-fearing wo/man, and if I'm elected, abortion will be a crime, and gays will never be allowed to marry."

 

Atheism doesn't mean you're "against" god, it means you don't believe in god. Two very different things. Now, as it happens, there are severe moral problems that arise when belief in god arises, and as such, many atheists, who don't believe in god, are also against the notion of believing in a god on bad evidence and in structuring a moral framework around that belief.

Agnosticism seems like a way to sidestep the choice, but really it's also a choice in itself. Agnostics can also have the opinion that knowledge regarding the issue is ultimately unknowable; this is an epistemic position.

Here we come again to the problem of what it means to be a "christian", and what "christianity" is exactly, and why, if any generic version is true, is it so easy to interpret the supposed word of god in so many different ways on so many vitally important issues. A huge proportion of the christian world disagrees with you and believes that hell is a real place, and the way to avoid hell is to have faith in jesus christ. it really is their word against yours, and its funny that nobody who believes this stuff thinks for a second about how ambiguous this holy text is on these matters. you'd think the creator of the universe, humanity, intelligence, and language, could figure out a way to let us know the important details without shrouding it in 2,000 year old metaphorical hearsay.

Mark 16:16 The one who believes and is baptized will be saved, but the one who does not believe will be condemned.

 

Quit acting like the Bible is all there is to Christianity and Christ in general. Do you know anything regarding The Gospel of Thomas? These Gospels were left out of the Bible, and present a Jesus that was much more akin to the Buddha. Here, he talks about looking within to find your Gnosis, Enlightenment, Salvation, whatever you want to call it.

This is where he points to your Eternal Self, and awakening to that.

The Bible isn't the full story to all of it. You need to research and not just assume you know all the facts of the history of Christ and how different religions came about.

http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html

 

Yes, because the top picture they are dressed in a ceremonial ritual fashion that makes them more pretentious? Give me a break.

 

a huge phallus..

 

What i am against is it being shoved at me everywhere i go.....There is supposed to be separation between church and state.........I am against the constant bull shit brainwashing number people try to do to others......You want to believe in St. Nicolas..That is your choice and your freedom....but keep it to yourself....and stop standing in the way of progress with religious ideology.

 

I'll entertain the question based primarily on some impressions of theology and philosophy for the 'hell' of it. As a disclaimer, these do not necessarily represent my actual beliefs.

Properties of God

Primary Creator: Must have created and maintains all possible dimensions as well as all (parameters) of the the Universe/Multiverse.

Eternal: Cannot succumb to any process of decay, otherwise we can infer that the first proposition is false.

Supernatural: Not bound by any Natural physical laws.


Limitations

Cannot directly intervene in any natural world, otherwise he would become constrained by natural laws.

 

Brilliant.^ ...though I would add he/she

Here's a thought. If God is omnipresent in all things and all people and creatures and situations, then why doesn't God exist in the imagination, or through mythic archetypes? How is this any less real, just because it deals with the imagination? I think that praying and rituals are a form of Pure Theatre, where you are actually talking to the deepest dimensions of yourself. To talk to God is to talk to your deeper Self, IMO.

Dreaming and Psychedelics are also another expression of God/It/The Universe...when they are experienced, it doesn't matter whether it's described as a hallucination or not, THE EXPERIENCE is real. When you go to see the movie, yes that may mean that there is a moving picture creating an image and story that's not real, but that doesn't somehow mean that your experience of the movie wasn't real. What makes it any less real than going to a basketball game? Or to a theatre performance? Or watching a documentary dealing with "real life" experiences? Are those experiences and viewings somehow not real? And if not, then why is someone's subjective experience of God not real?

 

I italicized "he" as to imply I don't mean that literally.

You pretty much highlighted the difference, Unlike the other examples such as going to movies, basketball games, etc. Where there is a verifiable object in question to prove their reality, there is no object(s) in reality in the subjective God experience.

 

There can be an object. A vision takes the form of an object. A coincidence or phenomenon that strikes a person in a deep way is a physical manifestation. There are plenty of ways that people claim that they interact with "God". Even if it's just a feeling, that feeling is still an object.

 

Here is the definition of objective in the context I'm using it.

a. Existing independent of or external to the mind; actual or real: objective reality.

b. Based on observable phenomena; empiricalbjective facts.

2. Uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices: an objective critic.



A meaningful subjective experience does not necessarily equate to reality of its content because there are no objects in the objective sense.

 

Your position relies on conflating meaningful experience with reality.

 

So you're essentially saying that if someone cries that their experience of emotion isn't real or objective if it is in regards to a memory or something "non-physical"?

 

No, crying obviously has an objective basis. Object in this case being tears.

If the person was crying because they were in bed and went into a fugue state for a couple minutes and upon gathering themselves tell their spouse they were abducted by malevolent space aliens, the space aliens have no objective existence.

 

How can you conflate a meaningful experience with reality? Everything about reality is a meaningful experience. I think you confuse physics with reality, bedlam. Physics is a part of reality, yes, but it isn't controlling reality, necessarily. There's simply a disjunct between how we can understand mind, which is undefinable, and body, which seems to be more definable. If something is undefinable, you can't say what it has to do with physics. Period. Erase the body, the mind seems to be gone, but that doesn't really explain what it was. Because this is more than a bunch of atoms functioning; it also is an experience. They're really two separate things, as we understand them. We live in two realities at once. You can say they're the exact same reality all you want, but that proves nothing. So how deep is the mind, really? Is it only as deep as this shell, or do we really know very little about it and where it stems from? What is the life source, in other words? You can't answer that question. I suppose you could say it's the sun, but then what is the sun, really? Saying it's gas proves nothing, except that you've made up a word to call the substance of an entity that as a whole cannot be comprehended, except to experience it firsthand in some way. I might as well say the Sun is Bellarius and is made up of a magical life giving substance called purethane.

 

So if you go into tears because of a piece of poetry that you think of or made up and don't write down, does that also have no objective existence?

 

In the context of subjective experience, It's shown time and time again via hallucinations, occassionally in fictional literature/movies and myth, conspiracy theory, not really all that hard to comprehend really. It probably happens to most all of us in somewhat lesser degrees, such as certain perceptions we deem meaningful when falling in love.

However, I'm not sure how one can maintain that as a philosophical position.

The brain filters reality, so this falsifies the statement. But to pour on and use my own philisophical literalisms, we cannot know all reality, so seems a rather meaningless assumption.

The concept of objectivity applies to many practices including philosophy.


The rest of your post is unintelligible to me or what I gathered from it is we can never know essence of any object, which I don't really care to respond to. Before you go name calling again, I'm just responding since you name dropped me, to defend my position.

 

So if you go into tears because of a piece of poetry that you think of or made up and don't write down, does that also have no objective existence?

 

I'm only deflecting here, since I walked you through the other scenario and I don't feel like doing this over and over. I think you could figure that out, if not I'd recommend picking up a logic and rhetoric book, maybe exploring some more conventional science and taking a hiatus from the fringe stuff. Not meant to sound condescending, I think with a bit more structure, you could formulate stronger ideas and answering one question of this type would suffice your curiousity.

I am in the middle of a book right now but likewise, if you have a Magick book, you feel really captures the topic well and that's digestible
( 300 pages > ) I'll consider reading it.