Blu

My response:

To answer the question: And when they say God created us in his image, does this have anything to do with his physical appearance? Is he gender specific?

You have to first answer who you really are? A mere biological presense with no meaning or purpose or something more? Perhaps consciousness is energy and this energy was "created" in "God's" or the "Universe's" image. I would say that energy therefore does not have a gender and that gender is an aspect of "animals" human or otherwise. The point is God isn't supposed to be a physical being. God isn't supposed to be confined to this physical world or time and space for that matter.

Why do some believers say God is everywhere? Could it be because "God" is energy and energy is everywhere? Maybe that is how "God" sees everything... not with eyes but by energy association.

These questions are ones which couldn't be answered by people of the christian church I used to be involved with a long time ago. There are too many questions left unanswered or unexplained. Atheists seem to have the most trouble when it comes to the theology of Christianity.

Look beyond that.

Subtract human traits and physical aspects from your idea of "God" and the closer you come to understanding why spiritual beliefs are as strong now (if not stronger) as they were 10,000 years ago.

Forget what it says in spiritual texts. What matters in your life is what you think and what you believe. Everyone else's beliefs, their input cannot be stronger than your own experiences and what you have determined using your own brain or consciousness.

Jayhawker Soule

Thanks, dad.

crocodile deathroll

Or perhaps consciousness could be an algorithm or just mere a complex configuration of matter and energy and not the matter and energy itself. If consciousness was energy alone then a supernova explosion would be far more conscious than we are. If it is only a complex configuration of matter and energy that can conscious and I strongly suspect it is, then what configuration of matter an energy would constitute God?
Then there is more energy in some places than others would this mean God is more present in some places. Is this God strongly present in locations of high energy like the supernova explosion I mentioned earlier. Some people (particularly Christians) even use the metaphor of "love, and love is supposed to be everywhere they claim and so their interpretation God is everywhere " and they would probably disagree with that energy analogy. Personally I just think love is merely animal emotion that may well be explained away with neurotransmitters peptides and hormones
I think one can broaden the definition of God so much that even that he/she can be just merely described as an unconscious abstract principle like the personification of the laws of physics if that denotes "God" then even I would believe in God or even most people who describe themselves as atheists
unless they proclaim the laws of physics is just an illusion.
But I am sure it generally denotes a supreme conscious being who architected the universe. I very strongly refute that idea.

CD

luvluv

Mad Morrigan:

"Was Satan coerced into loving your God by evidence of his mere existance?"

No, as I said earlier I don't think that the presence of God, depending on how he presented himself, would be absolutely determinative. But it would make whatever decision we arrived at less than a totally free will decision.

I never said that the presence of God would make everyone automatically obey him, I said it would interfere with the decision enough to be considered coercive. Some people would indeed hear God and then turn and do their own thing anyway BUT God's constant presence would have an influence on their decision making.

madmax:

"No matter how you slice it luvluv, coercion deals with power and fear of what another person or group of persons might do to you under given circumstances."

I think this is failing in the translation, partly because no earthly analogy I can draw for you will be sufficient to paint a picture in your mind of what it would actually be like to be in the presence of Omnipotence. You might indeed not be afraid of a man, but only of his AK-47... but you would be afraid of the mere presence of Omnipotence. The first thing anyone did when they saw God in the Bible was to drop to their knees in terror. You don't just go about your daily business when you are in the presence of a being who is All-Powerful. Perhaps I am doing you a disservice in trying to draw you an analogy at all, but I am just afraid that a human being would not be able to stand in the presence of Omnipotence and just conduct his affairs as if everything was hunky dory. We define power generally as some tool someone has (a nuclear bomb, a gun) or as the position someone has (president, police officer) but it would be a totally different experience to be in the presence of someone who IS power, who holds that power in Himself. If you think about what God must be if He indeed exists and created the universe and everything in it, to assume you can stand in that presence and talk to Him as you are talking to me now... I think it is ludicrous.

If Omnipotence was in the room with you right now, visible to you in all it's power, you would absolutely not be doing everything just as if it was not there. I can't accept that. You would not even be doing things just as you are if I was there, or any other human being. The presence of omnisciece and omnipotence, if constantly visible to you, would effect every decision you make. As I said before, that does not necessarily mean that you will choose to follow God, but it will certainly cast suspicion on the people who did choose to do what God said... and it would certainly make it harder for those people who did not want to do what God said to live in any kind of peace.

You cannot make totally free decisions in the presence of Omnipotence.

I also don't think that you would have to fear physical punishment for God's presence to be influential. The parents are a good analogy on that point. You aren't afraid that your mother will, at your age, punish you for doing things she dissaproves of. Yet, if your mother was constantly in your presence, you would behave yourself differently, simply because this woman was watching you.

Also, the coercion might not necessarily flow from bad things you thought God might do to you, it might flow from the good He does to you. If you could actually see God working to do those things that we currently attribute to luck, if you saw that you owed your job or your spouse or the health of your children in one incident or another to His direct intervention... then that would make it much harder to not obey him. His presence could be coercive inasmuch as it would be obligating whenever God did something good for us, and Christians believe that God is constantly doing such things. Currently, you have the option of attributing your great good fortune to either your own work or good luck, but if it were revealed to you that many of the things you now enjoy were not the result of either your ability or chance, but God's unseen intervention... you would feel obligated to obey Him. I think God is as unwilling to bribe people into a relationship with Him as He is to intimidate people into a relationship with Him.

"As Turtonm mentioned, Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, the 2-3 million Isrealites that left Egypt, many Egyptians themselves, Saul, David, Lot, Job, Jonah, Solomon, Ezekiel, etc. etc. were all supposedly "coerced" by your definition of the term. All those who witnessed Jesus's cruxifiction supposedly were coerced by the earthquakes, the sky turning dark for six hours, and people rising up out of their graves. It seems like this deity practiced the art of "coercion" for a good long time."

I already conceeded to I believe it was tronvillian, that at some point God would have to reveal himself to a few people in order to communicate His message to us. Obviously, at some point He would have to give us some kind of hint as to who He was and what He wanted of us... and He would have to give some indication to someone that He, Yahweh, was the real God. There has to be two sides for us to have a choice, so obviously at some point God has to present his side. But for the great bulk of humanity, for 99.99999999% of us, we will have to make the decision to obey or disobey Him mostly on Trust.

Note that I did not say that God NEVER reveals himself to people. I said that He does not constantly reveal himself to people, that he is "hiding" as you put it, because if He was all out in the open his power would be coercive to all of the decisions of everyday people. The fact that at some point God had to reveal Himself directly in order to present Himself as a choice in no way interferes with my argument. It's pretty obvious He would have to do so at some point. But it is clear that the main way God reaches out to people now is through witnesses and through His Word, which, again, we have plenty of room either to believe or disbelieve.

(actually in another thread over in the Morals board entitled "Has anyone ever read the Problem of Pain" I actually said that God does deal more directly with people who already have decided to give him a chance. I myself feel as though I have had direct intervention by God into my life... but it does not rise to the level of repeatable, scientific evidence. It is an inner voice that I can choose to obey or disobey, but it is an inner voice I know through faith to be God's.)

"Notice also that for many of the people or groups I mentioned above, according to the story, this coercion of knowing God exists did NOT take away their ability to choose. A great many of them at one time or another supposedly went against the wishes of this deity anyhow. It seems then the bible itself disagrees with your assessment that knowledge of God existence takes away free will."

I didn't say it takes away free will, I said it is coercive. Again, I don't believe it means people will automatically obey God, but it would mean less than the totally freely chosen love that God (and everybody else) desires.

And the fact that many people who knew or believed in God's existence yet and still sinned is not proof of anything. I don't think we could be totally sinless even if God did stare down at us like the moon from 1000 feet up constantly everyday. I never said that. People are currently incapable of sinlessness. I believe, again, that we would certainly still occasionally choose to go against God even if it was very obvious to us that He was watching us. BUT it would still be a factor in our decision making.

You, for example, are free to have the argument that you currently have, i.e. you are now free to believe that God does not exist. You are free to be an atheist, and all that that entails. If God were to reveal Himself to you, you would no longer have that option. To that extent, God's presence in your life would be coercive. You would not have the option of having your belief system (or lack thereof) anymore. Subjectivism would no longer be an option for you. Everytime you did something God told you not to do, you would know that you were actually doing something wrong. Everytime you had sex with a woman you were not married to, for example, you would know that you were being watched by a real God who considered what you were doing to be wrong. You would no longer have the option of not knowing that, and I wager that would have some effect on your decision making.

Also, to whatever extent the people in the Bible disobeyed God, they knew that they were actually in rebellion against the real ruler of the universe, and that knowledge had it's impact on their actions.

The knowledge of the existence of God did have tremendous impact on their decisions for the rest of their lives, and that is all I am arguing. There are sometimes when I do indeed believe that the disciples and Paul had an unfair advantage over the rest of us, but again for God to be able to communicate to us somebody at some point would have had to have an unfair advantage.

Blu

Crocodile Deathroll writes:

"Then there is more energy in some places than others would this mean God is more present in some places. Is this God strongly present in locations of high energy like the supernova explosion I mentioned earlier. Some people (particularly Christians) even use the metaphor of "love, and love is supposed to be everywhere they claim and so their interpretation God is everywhere " and they would probably disagree with that energy analogy. Personally I just think love is merely animal emotion that may well be explained away with neurotransmitters peptides and hormones."


My response:

This is a very interesting. Regarding the comment "Is this God strongly present in locations
of high energy like a supernova....?

This is where it becomes confusing. I personally believe the Universe-God is not more present anywhere. To explain this, I would have to explain systems..... Universe-God would be the all encompassing system. Like your body, is a macro-system of subsystems. Our world would be Infinitesimal system compared to the Universe macrososm.

To further complicate things, imagine what is beyond time and space... Hard isn't it? I believe the one thing that gets in the way of understanding the concept of "God" is the Human mind. We have to associate something with God that is in our reality. Energy is in our reality. I think of quantum mechanics. I would say "energy" doesn't even come close to describing God but alas, I am confined to human reality so I have a limited choice of words, concepts, metaphors to contend with when I try to explain what I believe about the Universe-God.

But saying "energy" is more true for me when I describe God, then describing God as some sort of Manly figure with a booming voice in heaven, looking down on a bunch of humanity.

As for love, I believe there is a deference between "divine or spiritual love" and "human love." It is easy to imagine for me but hard to explain. If you have ever felt real love, imagine what it felt like. You felt energized perhaps, elated? Feelings are more accurate in describing a spiritual experience or that so called, connection with all things people sometimes feel just by meditating or thinking about it.

Can people accurately describe "God" by associating human emotions? That is a bit sketchy to me. Any type of spiritual experience someone has to go through the brain (consciousness and mind)...perhaps whatever is going on spiritually has a biological effect and is translated by the mind as being "love." So the association between love and "God" is made. Does that mean "God" is actually love?

What is love anyway, positive energy? Positive meaning present. Negative energy would be something that takes away energy. When you are around a negative person, you feel emotionally worn out. Feeling love is positive, you feel energized by someone who is happy and motivated. Do you see where I am going with this? When someone says, "God is love" I translate it as "God is positive energy," "Light"........ Doesn't it have similar "ideas"? Positive energy = love, compassion translated through the human brain? Through positive emotions?

I think the focus then should be on positive and negative energies. Again, people get caught up on different ideas they have about what is positive and negative... We think God must be negative if "He" allows suffering on Earth. And then we go in a round about discussion on whos to blame, it becomes a giant messy discussion. But if you detach yourself from the ideas of God translated through the human brain, cause and effect, and just be a little more simplistic yet complicated, if you forget everything you have been told regarding "God", if you think objectively and without "negativity," if you think about the concept of systems within systems, if you disassociate all human aspects from your ideas of "God" (take a big breath) If you go further and think about all these things with a constant open mind never really coming to a consclusion because coming to conclusions is the same as closing a book and throwing it in the trash.... then you begin to see a little more clearly regarding "God" and spirituality. A made-up mind is one that never makes discoveries. When you look with scientific eyes at something of this earth, you need a certain amount of humility knowing your theories may be proven wrong by research. When looking at anything regarding spirituality, it helps to have a certain amount of humility as well.

I simply go by experience. Long long hours alone with books, alone with your mind, just simply thinking endlessly about the subject... it can be facinating and you learn a lot about yourself in the process. People who are caught up in hatred, and other negative emotions such as judgement and ridicule have an even larger mind barrier to get past when thinking about things that are spiritual. The idea is to never stop learning because you felt that you needed to take a side.

I don't remember what famous scientist said this and I am paraphrasing: In order to continue learning and making discoveries, you must look upon the world as a child looks upon the world."

Translate that statement as you like.

madmax2976

<strong> Huh? I thought one of this God's main goals was to "influence" people's decision making?? If this is not a goal, then I fail to see why it would ever do anything at all.

Don't you believe God exists? If so, doesn't this have a coercive affect upon your thoughts and actions? History shows us that beliefs often have very coercive affects on people.

Thus I would conclude that disbelief in any deity would be far more appropriate. This way, your decisions could be as free as they could possibly be.

<strong> Lets see if I can get it straight...

Assuming it exists, either this deity wants us to think and act a certain way or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then it wouldn't do anything at all. But if it does, one would think it would attempt to influence us a great deal in order to get us to think and act those certain ways.

But if its concerned that we would be "coerced" into making a decision if its existence and desires are known to be true, then for all intents and purposes it might as well not exist at all. Its desires are at cross purposes with each other.

Of course this would all seem to flatly contradict the entire bible in which the deity is continually attempting to influence people to do one thing or another.

Clarice

So, was it "unavoidable" for God to deliberately reach out and "harden" Pharoah's heart?

Mmmm . . . flame-broiled steaks.

Seriously, I submit that in general, people don't even have the capacity to choose what they believe in or what they love.

Believe in the IPU for five minutes.

Stop loving your parents/spouse/whoever you currently do love for five minutes.

Hence, the issue of coercion is irrelevant. Either the Christian God does not exist, or He's playing petty head-games with humanity.

Blu

My response:

Or rather - the Christian God was defined and its definition written down by ancient people who had contributed a lot of Characteristics to God that where mere cultural beliefs. They used metaphor and real cultural experiences to explain certain spiritual "Ideas" about God etc.

And/or

They got it only partially right. They let their "humanity" shape their "ideas" of God like many people do today. GOD IS NOT A GENDER, A HUMAN, CAPABLE OF FEELING (human attributes), DOES NOT HAVE A WILL OR A MIND (human attributes) DOES NOT BANISH ENTITIES TO HELL OR ELSEWHERE. DOES NOT JUDGE (human attribute).

Directed toward luvluv or anyone who believe God does have human attributes:

If God is God why would this all powerful entity want to limit itself with any human attributes such as emotion, a mind, a body, a will, judgement, etc?

God is not a physical being but in the Bible it says that Jesus is the physical manifestation of God, Jesus is also the Son of God. But also in the Bible it says that we (human beings) are all God's children so doesn't that make us all Sons and Daughters of God? And maybe if we become enlightened to Truth (however you define "truth") we could then define ourselves as "Jesuses." Isn't one of the goals in Christianity to be more "Christ-like"?

In Buddhism, the goal is to achieve "Buddhahood."

Maybe the message (Jesus) instead of the messenger(Jesus) should get a little more credit and attention. Maybe people should reclaim their destiny instead of blaiming Satan ... or waiting around for a "Savior" to come along.

crocodile deathroll

I think most people would stop and wonder about this omnipotence in the light of the recent earthquake that struck the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan, killing thousands. If that is God coming out of hiding then he has a very strange way of demonstrating a point to prove his/her existence.
Or perhaps some typical American fundies would site this an example of divine Judgement for the attack of September 11th (sic)

cd

Free Thinkr

luvluv: How does the existence of the bible and the fact that it mentions hell and god's wrath fail to meet your definition of coersion? You see, as it stands now, people are being coerced by threats in the bible. If god revealed himself, you claim people would be coerced by the very knowledge that he existed for a fact. What's the difference? Why not just remove the threat of hell and reveal himself?