I can't take you seriously at all. — uncanni
God is a state of mind. God is praxis. God is not institutional — uncanni
Rejection of God = human violence/sadism. Absence of God = complete self-engrossment, psychopathic narcissism. Instant gratification at any cost. Because the strongest and most aggressive can. — uncanni
I'm in the process of coming up with a post-patriarchal, post-gendered, kabbalistic/buddhist/pagan/derridian feeling of the oneness, the echad. — uncanni
My favorite French Psychoanalytic Feminist Philosopher Luce Irigaray wrote that women's language must disrupt and confound until men are able to tune into a different frequency and understand. — uncanni
Let us praise the creative potential of the Eternal, if that still does something for us, or at least be awed. — PoeticUniverse
Compounding the above, what is eternal has no input, making its outputs to be random, as we note in Quantum Mechanics, but which we can still presume as everything possible happening from it, this granting creatorship and the resultant transitions by laws that get formed at higher and higher levels. — PoeticUniverse
But then you are just not using the word God in its normal sense. Someone who refers to their teapot as God and insists that on their definition the teapot qualifies is simply using a common term with a well understood meaning in a misleading way. — Bartricks
I will drink and vape to that. Essentially, infinitely and eternally, God is quantum mechanics and so much more. — uncanni
To some peoples it is as you have variously described and to others "god" is a quite small bit player. The elements Zhoubotong lists only refer to a subset of candidates for "God" even with a capital G. — Fine Doubter
Can we come to an agreed description of God, or is that just a pipe dream? — Pattern-chaser
We didn't arrive at 'infinite' though, at least not yet. — PoeticUniverse
perniciousness — fresco
I think there's probably infinite variation. — uncanni
I don't seek consensus--especially not about God. I explain my terms as best I can and will be glad to expand and clarify. — uncanni
One needs to establish a sound ground first, such as the necessity of eternal existence, and build on it from there, which informed us that there can be no information coming into what had no beginning and was never made. — PoeticUniverse
Perhaps belief just spreads too far to accommodate in one description? :chin: — Pattern-chaser
I think a place to start is can we say that God can be a metaphor for "what is" (aka metaphysics)? — schopenhauer1
Does God have to have a telos (a universal end or goal)? — schopenhauer1
Does God have to involve some sort of mystical understanding? — schopenhauer1
If God is simply a metaphor for "what is", then I think that is a starting place. From here we can perhaps examine things like point of view. What is the world without the point of view of a self? In other words, what is the view from anywhere, everywhere, and nowhere? So far we can only imagine views from a subjective self, but not anywhere, everywhere, and nowhere. — schopenhauer1
First, I am interested in all this, but I want to get right to the point. Feel free to call me stupid, but please don't get offended and stop arguing — ZhouBoTong
Ok, but if 'god' is a metaphor then it doesn't actually impact our reality (at least not any more than any other fictional being that one might believe is real), right? — ZhouBoTong
Not sure. Can you give me an example of mystical understanding? I am probably making it far more complicated than it needs to be — ZhouBoTong
Correct me where I am wrong...doesn't this line of thought start with admitting there is no god? If it is JUST a metaphor for 'what is' then it is ONLY a metaphor....? I am fine with this, but I doubt many of the theists will be? — ZhouBoTong
I wasn't arguing, at least in this thread or yet rather :) — schopenhauer1
Well, I should say a "stand in", a synonym maybe for "what is the case". As for being not real, it depends on how we want to limit the concept. For example, Plato had a concept of "The Good" but Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Dionysus, Pan, and all the other Greek deities and demigods were floating around too. Plato's The Good seems more like a metaphysical statement and the Greek deities (pre-Socratic at least) seemed more like traditional gods of some transcendental kind that looks after human affairs and creates the universe and all that. So are we rejecting things like metaphysical statements and keeping deities, or is the field relatively open? — schopenhauer1
Oh prophetic visions, some divine communion sensation, otherworldly beings, otherwordly trances, otherwordly visions, revelations, feelings of oneness, out-of-body experiences, things like that. — schopenhauer1
Right, theists generally believe there to be an aspect of a transcendent being usually to be considered "God". But if we are in the realm of something like Plato's The Good, or Spinoza's God, Schopenhauer's Will, Whitehead's process theology, and other metaphysical foundational ideas, then the field is opened up to more than just "some transcendent being that creates and cares what humans do". — schopenhauer1
So you are saying one necessary description of 'god' is that it must be eternal? And "complete' throughout all of eternity? — ZhouBoTong
Yes, as not a smart evolved alien but as Fundamental and First, intact and complete, with no beginning and no end, as eternal, since something exists, obviously, and that Existence has no alternative that can be. Even if we were only philosophically discussing what 'IS', not 'God', those attributes would still apply, and so it's a good starting point. It's like Parmenides’ unity in multiplicity idea sort of. — PoeticUniverse
How do we know that all that 'is' is eternal? — ZhouBoTong
And because by your definition 'god' is 'all that is' then after the big bang, all of that is still 'god'? — ZhouBoTong
Couldn't the lower case 'existence' capture everything you are saying in simple everyday language? — ZhouBoTong
I think this sounds rather interesting and I have never considered looking at 'god' from this perspective. But rather than referring to it/them as god, couldn't we just say "metaphysical foundational ideas" and our communication would be more clear?
I like it, but I really don't see any theists (or even many agnostics) agreeing to this description of god? — ZhouBoTong
Hmmm, based on the thread title, I thought "consensus" was the whole point of this thread. — ZhouBoTong
Hmmm, based on the thread title, I thought "consensus" was the whole point of this thread. After Pattern-chaser's responses, I had to re-read and I am now aware I read the whole thing wrong (not sure why he went with that title), but anyway... — ZhouBoTong
The whole thing just seems designed to make fun of atheists who are interested in the concept of god. How dare they. You certainly got me :smile: — ZhouBoTong
I thought consensus, or something close, was the idea too. I called it what I called it because that's what I was looking for, if it was/is there to be found? — Pattern-chaser
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