what does agnostic mean to you?

[Wusti]

and where does Kurt Vonnegut fit into all this? Why not an Alpha who is entirely indifferent? Who says deity must be even remotely interested in the doings of personkind?

[ubercacher16]

@Wusti,

Most religions seem to have the idea that the deity is in fact quite involved in the world. Part of the reason is that many of the attributes they proscribe to such a creator mean he must both want to and be able to be involved.

So that's the reason, because most people have always thought it was that way.

[Wusti]

Sigh - I know - but I happen to believe that Kurt's Church of God, The Utterly Indifferent is far more likely

[Jamiet99uk]

What's funny Jamie is that there are multiple verses in the Bible that talk about how God is in fact incomprehensible and totally beyond human conception. That's where the idea of faith comes in, believing in something you can neither fully prove nor fully understand. So you've got something right!

Sounds crazy, I know.

If God is incomprehensible, how am I supposed to understand what "God" is supposed to be?

If I have know way of understanding what God is supposed to be, how could I be expected to believe in him / it?

[Jamiet99uk]

*no way

[Fluminator]

I'd have a harder time believing in a basic old man in the sky deity than an incomprehensible one. The universe is insanely complex.

[Jamiet99uk]

I'd have a harder time believing in a basic old man in the sky deity than an incomprehensible one. The universe is insanely complex.

Please describe "God" to me. What is it?

[ubercacher16]

@Jamie,

That's the question, isn't it?

There are quite a few answers within the Bible. I won't list them here, but I think the multitude of words and phrases used to describe God are why He is so difficult to understand. Incomprehensible is just one word that is assigned to the infinity person of God.

God is everything he is described as in the Bible, which includes "beyond human conception." It's a paradox, but that doesn't matter, or at least it shouldn't.

Your second question is more difficult to answer. I have never come across such a question before.

I guess you can't be expected to believe in something you don't understand, at least by human logic.

I don't know how to prove this to you, but this is what I(and most other Christians) believe. We were created to trust in God and to follow him even when we don't understand why. The Word of God(better known as the Bible) is our guide in doing so. The intention is that you read God's Word to understand who He is, as I mentioned above, "incomprehensible" is one of his characteristics.

[Fluminator]

I'd have a harder time believing in a basic old man in the sky deity than an incomprehensible one. The universe is insanely complex.

Please describe "God" to me. What is it?

I think God and religion in general is an attempt to represent all the unknowable things in the universe into imagery that is easier to understand. God's partly unknowable because God is outside of time. As soon as you remove time from the equation your brain will get bent trying to understand it. It's pretty well agreed that there is something outside of time in existence (some form of matter maybe?) and even if it's not a literal God, it would be like a God relative to something bound by time. The more interesting question is whether this thing outside of time interacts with us in a conscious way. (And we don't even begin to understand the nature of consciousness in the universe either)

Religion (or at least Christianity) recognizes how complicated it would be, and uses music, art, imagery, metaphors, etc. to comprehend it. I don't think religion is wrong for trying to understand the universe in different frameworks (as long as it doesn't contradict itself or science), and is closer to the truth than not believing anything at all. Sometimes a song speaks more to you than a 200 page philosophical treatise.
The Christian tradition believes a part of God entered the timeline to further increase our capabilities to interact and understand God. (And other things but yeah)

[ubercacher16]

Here is a full explanation of what I understand God to be. It's not often that one gets to explain who God is an a forum such as this, so thanks Jamie. Anyway here goes. I won't capitalize He or His in this post because it is going to be long.

Firstly God is definitely a "who." He is a personal God interested in the lives of every single individual. I'm not going to get into trinitarian doctrine, but he is also three-in-one(this is another topic entirely, something I would be glad to discuss, but it would take up much to much space here.

God is omnipotent, he is omniscient, he is omnibenevolent , and he is omnipresent. There is a common argument out there claiming that the Christian God cannot exist because it is impossible to meet all these requirements. These arguments rely on human definitions of benevolence and are therefore invalid.

God created the earth and the universe and everything in them. He said that his creation was good. He created man in his image(I will touch on this more later, remind me if I forget). He loves his creation and has a very specific purpose for each piece of it.

Back to omnipotence and omniscience. God is all encompassing power, the use of the word "is" here is important. He does not posses power, rather he IS power. It is the same with knowledge, God does not just posses infinite knowledge but he is the source of all true knowledge.

Omnipresence is a weird one. The idea is that God is everywhere and therefore knows everything. It seems redundant, It isn't. Everywhere doesn't just mean in space, it means in time as well. God is omnipresent throughout space and time and is omniscient throughout space and time.

If you haven't noticed already, everything God is is infinite. He is infinitely powerful, infinitely wise, infinitely good, infinitely merciful, and just plain infinite. Few people ever understand how crazy this is. Infinity is a concept so foreign to this earth, with its beginnings and its ends, that we often fail to grasp what it really means.

Let me move on to "what God wants." Jamie referenced being "expected" to do something in one of his posts, I want to clarify what exactly is expected of us.

"God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." - John 3:16(my first and only Bible quote). I'm sure you've heard or seen this before.

I have to go into a little trinitarian stuff here to help explain. God is three parts in one being. The Father(the omni-this and that one). The Son is the "man" Jesus. And the Holy Spirit(or Holy Ghost in old translations) is the spirit of God that resides within human beings. My basic breakdown is: (Father)God who rules over us(or above us), (Son)God with us, and (Spirit)God in us.

Back to John 3:16. The word God here is referencing all three parts of the trinity but more specifically the Father. Usually when the Bible refers to "God" it is talking about the Father. When I use the word "God" above I am taking about the father. The Son is obviously Jesus, the Father sent his Son down to earth to sacrifice himself for humanity thereby allowing us to (through him) receive eternal life.

All of this is quite a lot right now. So feel free to ask as many questions as you need to understand better.

Now about the "believes" part. The Bible is very clear that we are "saved"(the Christian word for "going to heaven"[which is another topic entirely I'm way too tried at this point to talk about, hell I'm using brackets within quotation marks!]) through faith in God and his infinite grace and mercy. God has every reason to let us parish and either vanish from existence or get punished eternally(nobody agrees about that one either) for our sin.

Aside about "sin." Sin is a really big thing. It's not just "being bad," it is being displeasing in the eyes of God. The Bible has several different sections devoted entirely to telling us what things are sinful and what things are the opposite. But the important thing to remember is that everyone sins and that God has forgiven us of our sin through Jesus's sacrifice on the cross.

Basically since Jesus died as a perfect sacrifice we humans get to not die and be eternally damned. Instead if we trust in Jesus as our savior and God as our Lord and protector, we are cool. This is much more then a simple prayer or sentence, this involved a real change in ones heart. This is also really complicated stuff, and off the topic of "who God is."



Now that you have heard all of that, let me tell you the one thing I always go back to whenever I am lost. I tell myself, "God loves me. The fucking Lord of the fucking universe loves ME! Puny, pitiful, sinful me. And all I have to do is trust Him and everything is gonna be OK."

Complicated and yet simple. Impossible and yet possible. False and yet True, always True. God is a God of paradoxes and infinite power. He is inconceivable, and yet I can explain Him to you. If you get anything out of this let it be this, "The God of the fucking universe loves you."

[ubercacher16]

I'll be back to answer questions about all of this later. I can also find links to good sources that explain some of it better than I can.

[ubercacher16]

One more thing about all this.

Because of all of the above God is infinitely deserving of our praise and adoration.

[flash2015]

One more thing about all this.

Because of all of the above God is infinitely deserving of our praise and adoration.

Why does God care about the infinite praise part...especially since God does not even want to provide definitive proof of his/her/its existence?

And is belief and praise of God more or less important than actually living a good life? i.e. Can I be a good person without believing in the "correct" Deity?

[ziran]

God is omnipotent, he is omniscient, he is omnibenevolent , and he is omnipresent. There is a common argument out there claiming that the Christian God cannot exist because it is impossible to meet all these requirements. These arguments rely on human definitions of benevolence and are therefore invalid.

This is the only part I take issue with, other than the bits that are specific to Christianity rather than theism as a whole. Also, of these four descriptors, omni-benevolence is the only one you don't argue a case for. And I think it requires the most arguing.

If these terms don't have definitions that are knowable to humans, they are effectively meaningless. They may have divine meaning, but what does it matter here on earth? But these words do have definitions knowable to humans. If god is something else, it should be called something else.

[Fluminator]

One more thing about all this.

Because of all of the above God is infinitely deserving of our praise and adoration.

Why does God care about the infinite praise part...especially since God does not even want to provide definitive proof of his/her/its existence?

And is belief and praise of God more or less important than actually living a good life? i.e. Can I be a good person without believing in the "correct" Deity?

What would you consider a good life? How many people in the world would you say fits this standard?
The Christian view is that humans suck, and that none of us can live a good life without outside help. (And looking at the state of the world and myself, I can buy that)
Belief and praise of a perfect ideal is pretty good thing for society to do. As long as they get the perfect ideal right lmao.

Although more to your point, the notion of "infinite praise" is broad enough that it means more than literal bowing down and worshiping. It could just mean (like you said) living a good productive meaningful life.

[Fluminator]

God is omnipotent, he is omniscient, he is omnibenevolent , and he is omnipresent. There is a common argument out there claiming that the Christian God cannot exist because it is impossible to meet all these requirements. These arguments rely on human definitions of benevolence and are therefore invalid.

This is the only part I take issue with, other than the bits that are specific to Christianity rather than theism as a whole. Also, of these four descriptors, omni-benevolence is the only one you don't argue a case for. And I think it requires the most arguing.

If these terms don't have definitions that are knowable to humans, they are effectively meaningless. They may have divine meaning, but what does it matter here on earth? But these words do have definitions knowable to humans. If god is something else, it should be called something else.

So basically, how do you deal with the problem of suffering if there's an omnibenevolent/omnipotent/omniwhatever God?

That's.... always the tough one imo.

[Carl Tuckerson]

Suffering is what gives meaning to our efforts. We craft solutions in response to problems... when there are no problems we stagnate, we don't grow and improve. We are a reactive species.
This is communicated in the parable of the Tree of Knowledge. We never suffered until we became sentient. To be sentient is to suffer.
Evil is what gives meaning to good.

None of this is to say that, as far as we can tell, things couldn't be better. Evil may be necessary for good to mean anything, but it's difficult for me to see why any individual evil act is necessary.

The main issue I see is not the idea of evil and suffering existing alongside an all-good God, but the narrative of a final victory over evil and suffering. In my view this can only occur in an End of Everything. You would strip any meaning to existence if you eliminated all evil and suffering.

[flash2015]

One more thing about all this.

Because of all of the above God is infinitely deserving of our praise and adoration.

Why does God care about the infinite praise part...especially since God does not even want to provide definitive proof of his/her/its existence?

And is belief and praise of God more or less important than actually living a good life? i.e. Can I be a good person without believing in the "correct" Deity?

What would you consider a good life? How many people in the world would you say fits this standard?
The Christian view is that humans suck, and that none of us can live a good life without outside help. (And looking at the state of the world and myself, I can buy that)
Belief and praise of a perfect ideal is pretty good thing for society to do. As long as they get the perfect ideal right lmao.

Although more to your point, the notion of "infinite praise" is broad enough that it means more than literal bowing down and worshiping. It could just mean (like you said) living a good productive meaningful life.

That is a good question, isn't it? It could mean that you don't do anything major "wrong", get married and have kids and if you are Christian go to Church each Sunday. What is "wrong" is very subjective and can vary widely between person to person even of they follow the same religion. Some people will believe being greedy and having excessive wealth is wrong (this is closer to the Christianity I grew up in) while others will believe it is fine but make sure that you don't succumb to "sins of the flesh" or things like abortion (which appears to be the message I get from mainstream US churches)...or they may even go further and say that being wealthy is a gift from God and by being wealthy it means you must be a good person (the Christian prosperity churches).

There is also the definition of good person which goes above and beyond that, to live a life of complete selflessness, either without any material possessions and/or a life which revolves around being in the service of others. If this is the standard of course then only a very, very small percentage of people would live up to this. I certainly do not live up to these ideals.

I sort of ask these sort of questions...as I asked these same questions when I grew up. The answer was essentially that you can't be a good person without being a Christian. Which makes logical sense because why would converting people to Christianity important if this were not true? i.e. if you don't need to believe in God to have a good afterlife then following the religion is unnecessary.

I grew up a Christian so I somewhat know what it is like. I felt the guilt...and the fear. In the Bible, the rich person came to Jesus and said he does everything right...and he essentially asks Jesus "I am saved, right"? Jesus essentially tells him you can never do enough. That is the message I got from the religious teaching.

My question about the praise part is all about priorities. I practice meditation and I have gone to courses run by the Goenka foundation...which I know some people don't like (atheists argue vehemently that you can't separate the Buddhist mysticism from the meditation instruction - I would argue you can). Anyway one of the stories Goenka tells is about the followers of Rama, how many would day after day be chanting Rama or covering there clothes with Rama's name...to show their adulation to Rama. Goenka says, quite rightly, that they are missing the point. You aren't supposed to idolize Rama, Rama is supposed to be a guide to how to live a good life. I think the same thing applies for Jesus, Buddha etc.

I know the Christian idea of Jesus too. Many of my childhood friends would have the "footsteps in the sand" story on their walls (not from the Bible)...the idea being that Jesus always walking beside you. When the person asks "why are there only one set of footprints here?" which Jesus says "This is where I carried you". So when do I end...and Jesus start? Where is my free will in all this? This doesn't make sense to me...at least not anymore

Going off on a tangent here - At least from a Theravada Buddhist perspective, to my understanding, there is no third party saving you. You are essentially responsible for your own salvation...Buddha is just a teacher to help you get there. Bad things happen when you let your cravings/aversions control how you act. Meditation is supposed to help give you freedom from these cravings/aversions so you can be content whatever your situation. There is a concern of course that this could potentially make you too passive...but the idea of being in charge of your own salvation and happiness irrespective of external input makes a lot more sense, at least to me.

[bo_sox48]

To suffer is good to those who don't.

You have food. You have a bed. You may have some money. You have a society and a support system around you that gives you opportunity. Every single person on this website has it to some degree, and dare I say most of us on this forum have the privilege of not suffering in our daily lives.

Ask the kid who had his arms sawed off by soldiers in East Africa for running away after they killed his parents in front of him how suffering feels. Ask the girl in a labor camp that hasn't eaten more than a stale slice of bread in the last week how suffering feels. If you live in the United States, maybe visit the parts of this country you unintentionally avoid where the "socioeconomically disadvantaged" are segregated and robbed of the freedom of opportunity to elevate themselves in our society because of the conditions that surround them and the decisions they are forced to make in order to survive. If you live in Europe, visit the Mediterranean coast where migrants arrive on boats unfit for your neighborhood swimming pool malnourished and dying of exposure in order to escape the suffering that they have dealt with for their whole lives. If you're familiar with these circumstances, or aware of others that imply that someone is truly suffering, then you would never suggest that suffering is just an unfortunate tenet of human nature.

The death of Jesus was an act of authority on the part of Rome. He did not die for your sins. He died because he dared to preach that suffering was not a necessary component of society, and if you care about the words he preached you should do your due diligence to end suffering in the world because that's what he actually wanted.

[Octavious]

I grew up a Christian so I somewhat know what it is like. I felt the guilt...and the fear. In the Bible, the rich person came to Jesus and said he does everything right...and he essentially asks Jesus "I am saved, right"? Jesus essentially tells him you can never do enough. That is the message I got from the religious teaching.

It is remarkable how different people can be raised as Christians and yet have completely different understandings of it. I have never felt any guilt, have never felt any fear. The whole notion of a "God fearing Christian" was a weird and alien one only ever encountered in old literature and American films. Christianity was first and foremost about love, about trying to live a good life, and about being forgiven when you come up short. Jesus is our example, an ideal to aim for, with difficult lessons in humility, loving your enemy, charity. God is always there, every ready to listen to our worries, our failings, to forgive and to lend strength to make things right.

Guilt and fear? Remarkable....