theIPU

AND I SEE A UNIVERSE MADE OF JELLYBEANS AND FLYING POPSICLES!!!!

Jobar

Albert and Darkblade, I've moved your discussion of Jefferson to Politics; the thread is 'Jefferson and slavery'.

As to the subject of this thread- I want to hear some answers to Shinobi's questions:
Why is God love? Is God hate? or envy or ambivelance?
Another thing: Atheism is love, Zeus is love and so is IPU. Are there statements true? Why or why not?

Saying 'God is Love' is language abuse, IMO.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Jobar,
You assert and I agree that: It abuses the predicate function of the sentence. The active form of the verb is grammatically what the sentence in question calls for, as in: God is loving, or simply, God loves.

This species of language abuse is analogous to the currently popular buzz about companies needing “to grow revenues.” Revenues may grow, or be grown, but the word police should arrest anyone who claims to grow them.

However, there’s intellectual justification for using a noun as a verb in the theologically correct assertion that God is love. It is a way of stressing the fact that any nominative word ascribed to God must also be active, is actualizing, and not at all static. By making the predicate of the sentence both a noun and a verb, we get two, two, two meanings in one.

Nouns, by their nature, are the grammatical equivalent of a static thing. God, by His Triune nature, is the antithesis of a static thing, but rather, the embodiment of act. See, I myself have just abused language as appropriately as did St. John. God does not act so much as he is act; He cannot be conceived of as the embodiment of action as much as He is act itself. That is, any quality of His being (noun) is synonymous with the active expression of that quality (verb). Were God to act as we conceive of acting, that is, as a subject who acts upon an object, such an action would foist upon the Godhead an unacceptable defect of division.

This is why I’ve always hated all those flat-footed “omnis” ascribed to God. He is said to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. Only a Poindexter theologian could have come up with so pedestrian an approach to describing God. St. John was far more theologically accurate, tho grammatically inaccurate, when he put it as that God is love. And by extrapolation, God is knowing, God is power, God is being here. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Jobar

Albert, I am not talking only about the incorrect form of the sentence- I mean that no useful information is conveyed by the statement. It's nonsense, jaberwocky, gobbletygook. It tells us nothing about God, about being, or about love. It's warm and fuzzy, but you can't cuddle it because the fuzz is all there is.

I'm going to start another topic which this one has inspired.

Tristan Scott

Warm and fuzzy or not, while I don't contend they are one in the same, I still believe their are many similariries, at least philosophically.

miss djax

im partial to plato's 'on rhetorica'....its 2300 years old and has also stood the test of time...but since plato's older he trumps jebus

Tristan Scott

Plato saw the similarity between love and God, in fact he made Love a god. He had Diotima explain how the god Love was concieved by the gods Plenty and Poverty .

miss djax

sure, but plato said alot of things

my primary point was that just because the bible was 2000 years old doesn't necessarily give it validity. plato, and for that matter socrates and aristotle, wrote before that. so if longevitiy is the sole criteria for longevity then plato 'wins'

the ole tongue and cheek loses something in typed translation

Fred

Hello.
I am not sure if I should respond in this thread, being an atheist.

I always thought the character whom the Christians follow, was a rather strange and immature god. Mind you many of the Gods acted strangely. I feel that the Christian God is mostly spiteful , jealous and hateful. Why would an all powerful being be jealous ?

My parents sent me to a Catholic school and when I was about 7 I decided I wanted nothing to do with him. I never really believed in gods anyway, I believed that as long as life continues we all remain alive in some way. This occured to me at my grand fathers funeral. I thought "How can Pa be dead if I can still see ?". Yeah, I know, but I was only 7.

Can somebody let me know if this post doesn't belong ?
Thanks.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Fred,
You ask, He wouldn’t be, it’s called an expression of speech. A seven-year-old could be excused for taking that anthropomorphism literally, but not you. Shame on you for wasting your parent’s money in providing you with a Catholic education. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic