Who is God to you?

as a child i imagined god as an upright walking chipmunk wearing a robe and headband.

 

vibration is god to me

 

Actually, you did not answer the thread question. You answered what God is not to you but you did not answer what God is to you.

 

Au contraire, mon ami! Did you not read the part about "the protagonist in a number of 2000+ year old fictional tales"? He is Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Holden Caulfield, Batman, insert your favorite fictional character. He is make believe, fantasy, a crutch, a salve. However, he's not for everyone.

I couldn't be more clear.

 

Who or what is god to me?

So many possible answers. I am agnostic, but open to several beliefs.

Sometimes, I'm fairly certain that I am god. Solitary and alone, with you all as figments of my imagination.
Sometimes, I think of God as a proto-mother. A greatly powerful but ultimately fallible being who created us, loves us and wants the best for us, but is limited in what she can offer. Despite being vastly more powerful then us, even She has limits.
Sometimes I believe in the 'We are all God' principle espoused by some here.
Sometimes I think I am alone in this universe except for one other being. That entity being wholly separate and distinct from me. It is Everything, in fact, that is not me. It creates my entire experience through it's thoughts and actions. To me it is God. But in turn, I create all of it's experiences through my thoughts and actions, and so to it, I am God.

Two very popular beliefs I find unconvincing. The first is the notion of pure chance, that all this is simply emergent behavior, and that consciousness itself is simply a rogue artifact of a complex system. The big bang lacks an explanation of what set it off, where it, itself, came from. The other concept I find unconvincing is that of the Watchmaker. The omnipotent all-loving all-knowing creator man in the sky mythos. Epicurus stated my issues with that idea quite well:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”

 

My sentiments exactly. These stories are quite anthropomorphic (centered on a quasi-human identity, usually a male judge resembling a medieval king in most respects). They make sense to an illiterate country person living in the early Iron Age, circa 1000 BC. That these stories survive and prosper today is beyond my understanding.

Furthermore this male judge/ God figure supposedly takes an extreme interest in human affairs, down to sorting out the outcomes of wars, the details of our love lives, and our personal battles with disease and mortality. Not only that, He's benevolent, if you've been good.

Don't count on it.

 

If I threw a rock at you, would you duck?

 

Of course. All part of the game.

Actually that's the one of my many ideas that I find least convincing. Due to the fact that there does seem to appear to be at least -something- here that isn't me. Because some things happen that I apparently do not will. Hell, even the little voice in my head that I have arguments with seems to have a separate and independent existence from me. So although it -could- from a certain perspective all be me, it's been divided out from the conscious me enough that it acts effectively as at least one separate entity. Hence the last of my possibilities.

Edit: Though that last also arises out of a -very- interesting experience involving Datura and LSD. I met God, kinda, and it was my God and I was it's God and it really wanted to have a nice talk about our relationship. Communication is key in relationships, right? Especially when they're -literally- until death do you part...

 

Okay, let's see:

Interestingly, you don't speak of what God is to you, you speak of what Yahweh, the God of the Bible is to you. Since you don't seem to believe that Yahweh, the God of the Bible is God, you have not said what God is to you.

 

a band-aid some apply to uncertainties

 

A real knee slapper this.

 

Glad you enjoyed it.

 

So, it's a circular argument you seek. That's no fun.

I told you what god is to me, why are you being obtuse?

 

No, you picked one God, the christo-judaic God and said what you think of it. You did not say what God is to you in general. If you want to think you said what God is to you fine but you just didn't.

 

To me, The Divine is The source of everything. All life, all death, all good, and all evil are all manifestations of it. People get so caught up in finding ways to credit The Divine with all the good things in world and blaming some other force like Satan for the evil, when they all come from the same source. Good and evil are opposite sides of the same coin, and that coin is God.

 

The universe.

Mother nature more or so. The voice inside of us that helps us make decisions, and the air we talk to when we are in need....

 

I like the coin deffinition

 

Interesting. You might enjoy my short story "Mushroom". Link is http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=298746&f=26

 

Here's an experiment.

Have faith in god, have faith that god will appear so you can see it with your eyes.
Have faith in knowing that god can do this!

Now LOOK

Perhaps you may have the same result as me.

you see no god
you hear no god
smell no god
taste no god

So what do you do?

Do you clamour about in your imagination for rationalisations?

Or do you pay close attention to reality.


Another thought

Let's imagine* God punishes the wicked in hell. (alot of people believe this, presumably)

You go to heaven

There you are in heaven, and you remember about all those people, and the devil, suffering in endless torment, in hell.

How do you achieve bliss, with the knowledge of these people in hell experiencing endless pain? How are you at peace with the fact that some people just didn't make it and now know nothing but torment

Are you just OK with that? Do you just shrug and say 'oh well'?
You have to be uncaring, unempathetic, uncompassionate, morally iresponsible, and just plain EVIL to consider some of this biblical stuff a possible reality...

If you were truly compassionate, heaven is impossible unless everyone is there...

*-keyword 'Imagine'
it appears to me, that god is quite well entrenched in the imagination, so I don't mean to be blasphemous here, im just being honest and telling y'all what I'm pondering.

 

:iagree: