It is quite arrogant of people especially in 2012 to think of God [for those who still believe in a "God"] as a man, if anything God is a transvestite for he/she/it transcends from this physical realm, and is not bounded by sex/gender, because God is truly devine, and encompasses both feminine/masculine energies, for without the feminine their would be no masculine vice versa, and none are dominan...t they are one, this is God. It is PEOPLE who make these subjective distinctions based on their culture/society attempting to describe something that cannot be described, and can only be felt, for people will not find god in some book they must find him/she/it at the core of our being by looking inward instead of outward for answers. OF COURSE people around the time the bible was created would consider God a man for women were so suppressed at this time that all of the revolutionary inventions, and ideas came from men, because women didn't have any other option, but to please the man which was a social norm at this time that took 1000s of years to devolp, for before we created civilizations we lived in tribes, and had to coexist with our sexual counterparts in order to survive the same with all other species on the planet, but once again as we began to transition from tribes to towns to cities to civilizations the ego from the collective vessels [people] who were inherently masculine dominant grew to large, and manifested itself into our culture,religion,society etc. which is the root fundamental cause for this particular epidemic which is/was the false notion that men are superior
the human brain is an organ of mind-boggling complexity. back when cartography was all the rage, people used to imagine the brain as being a map, with different areas being responsible for different emotions, actions etc. then with the invention of clockwork, suddenly the brain was a series of interlinked, interdependent cogs which fired off each other to create thoughts. These days we describe the brain as being a computer and talk about it interms of supercomputers and RAM and all that gubbins. its just an allegory so you can wrap your head around a difficult concept and the allegory that is chosen reflects the zeitgeist. However, like with the brain, the allegory can only hold your hand for so long before it starts getting in the way, when the object no longer conforms to the model. of course the judeo-christian god IS a man, given that he made Adam in his image, he must at some point take on a corporeal form which is aesthetically male (or at least has a penis, an interesting thought- what does god use his penis for?) but yeah, speaking as an atheist who believes the bible to be a work of fiction, it does seem to me that the reason that the allegory of a man rather than a woman was chosen reflects the misogyny of the time in which it was written, bear in mind that the genesis of the word "evil" is Eve, the woman responsible for original sin. see? you can't trust 'em. moreover, i agree with your point that gender is far more of a social construction than a biological dictation, although i'm not sure what you mean by "female and male energy" also, i'd imagine that when we were in tribes, before forming larger communities, those tribes would have been intensely patriarchal, brutal and violent towards women (the earliest skeletons found, both men and women, have often died violent deaths, many even have primitive arrowheads in them) rape would have most likely been the most common form of reproduction, even after evolution meant that we lost our barbed penises (the evolutionary step which caused us to create "family units" within tribes, where the male has a vested interest in the child surviving, and so tends not to murder or eat it. as often.)
"....by which we measure our pain." Actually, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God isn't technically referred to as man or woman, but in Hebrew, nouns have genders, like in Spanish ("el" and "la") and the Hebrew noun for God was male. God isn't really any more male than a table is female in Spanish speaking countries (La Mesa). Societies concept of gender has some biological basis, but of course they're not absolute, and gender stereotypes become problematic when people differ from the norm. I view god as a male because that's the energy I'm most comfortable with him being. It doesn't mean he's literally male. I just don't have a need for "goddesses" the way some people do. I guess it's because I'm female and I've always felt my life has been dominated by other females, I just don't have a need for any more female energy. Not that there's anything wrong when people do have that need. Sexism will always exist, same as racism and whatever other -isms. All you can do is live how you want and don't let other people's opinions make decisions for you.
the collective arrogance of humanity is incredible considering the scale and diversity of the universe. even of just what is already known about it. for a god to exist, it must need transcend not merely gender, but even species, for the people of different worlds are unlikely to physically resemble the people of different worlds then their own. how can a god be a god and at the same time, be possessed of the limitations of gender? can an incomplete thing be greater then all other things? even to attribute to a god, physical form of any kind at all, begs absurdity.
By some Gnostic Trinitarian accounts, God is a nuclear family consisting of Father, Mother and Son. For example, in the Secret Book of John: "I am the Father, I am the mother, I am the Child." And in The Sophia of Jesus Christ, union of masculine and feminine energies created a "first begotten, androgynous son. His male name is called 'First-Begotten Sophia, Mother of the Universe". Some call Her 'Love'. Now the first-begotten is called "Christ'. Greek translations, however, replaced the Hebrew feminine term for Spirit, Ruah, with the Greek neuter term Pneuma, and that was the form adopted at Nicaea.
I mean, religion is just something human nor science can prove nor disprove. It's a matter of faith, not brain. So instead of sounding like you know everything, respect one's belief. Because you might not be right, nor could I, so who is to say who is correct?
There are matriarchal lineages and societies. Many native american cultures are fine examples The story of mans creation is told in two different ways if you want to consider the bible in particular. One thread of creation, speaks things into existence. God says. When god said he created man in our likeness and image it is said to be both male and female, (creative principle,) and of the same kind. And, as in the likeness of god, we create through the symbolic representations of speech. We are justified by our words. Ideas then, are power. In this version, life is open ended, everlasting. The other thread fashions men from material and man becomes two different types, man and wo man. Because this version is about material creation, Property becomes power and the accumulation of property, inheritance, becomes the accumulation of power. In this version possessions can be lost and there is an ultimate cost to be paid.
I see God more as a creative life force , not a phyical being . La mesa = the table , El Dios = God , as a male . desert rat
I don't believe even god but I always thought it is even more childish to depict god as a bearded white man. If anything god would be a formless being.
i don't believe a "the" god, could be a "the" god, without completely transcending ALL physical form all together. not just male/female/herm, but any material physical substance nor the appearance there of, at all. on every world where there are people, which is not a matter of looking like us either, it is possible, that every so often, say about once ever thousand of our years, give or take a few hundred, this totally nonphysical god, picks someone to be channeled by. quite reasonably this might be what christ, moses, mohammid, buddah, krhsna, and all the rest of them may have been. at least one, baha'u'llag, the most recent of them, while using different terminology, he uses the word manifestation, spells out pretty much that this is the case. all of these that we know of their gender have been male, or so it seems, though this may have been largely a matter of the social position of genders at the time of each revelation. i'm not convinced they, or god, or anything, needs to be, or is capable of being, anywhere near infallible. i'm not convinced any of them got it right. though they do all seem to pretty thoroughly agree on all the parts that matter. i also suspect them of talking down to us, with all their names and adimantse of their claimed knowledge of unseen things. talking down to us, and quite possibly doing so in major error. i do believe there are non-physical things that are also non-imaginary. just that they are not under compulsion to have anything to do with what is believed.
