Freethought & Rationalism Archive

doodad · 12-03-2002, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Answerer:
<strong>

Well, Kenny, you, christians have lots of different and funny interpretations ranging from spiritual to fundamental. The christians around me always proudly proclaimed that their God is a He, not a She/He which is what you love to think. Since there is no major general agreements on the intepretation of the bible among christians, how do you expect us to have an 'accurate view' of the christian theology?</strong>

I think it's generally accepted by Christians that God is a "he". It works for me. It's good enough for government work.

bluefugue · 12-03-2002, 01:43 PM

I can't believe that the omnipotent creator of the universe would in any way be limited by something like sex.

If I believed in an omnimax God, I would assume that "it" possessed characteristics encompassing all of masculinity and femininity, and far more besides. Ergo calling God "he" would simply be a matter of linguistic convenience, borne of the fact that English has no personal generic third-person pronoun.

However, I'm not sure if that's what the Hebrews intended. Yahweh seems to be a patriarchal figure. A vengeful God-King. Polytheistic religions, of course, have Gods with specifically assigned sexes (Zeus vs. Athena, Shiva vs. Brahma, etc.). Modern interpretations of monotheistic religions tend to be more abstracted. But "maleness" remains so deeply intertwined with our linguistic understanding of the J/C God (Our Father, King of Kings, etc.), that I wonder how many people really conceive of their Christian God as being a truly abstract entity that does not have a sex. But what is the alternative to such abstraction? Does God have a penis, but not a vagina? Doesn't this limit him, and boil him down to brute physical characteristics?

Fiddlesticks, I say. To assign a sex to a God is absurd. It'd be like asking how many legs God has, or how good his eyesight is, or which chromosomes are in his genome.

Oxymoron · 12-03-2002, 01:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by bluefugue:
<strong>Fiddlesticks, I say. To assign a sex to a God is absurd. It'd be like asking how many legs God has, or how good his eyesight is, or which chromosomes are in his genome.</strong>

I agree, bluefugue. It is interesting, though, to explore exactly how xians etc reckon we are "made in God's image".

A3 · 12-03-2002, 06:35 PM

Hello Mageth

Quote:

I noticed that you're a Swedenborgian. I watched an interesting biography of Emmanuel Swedenborg on PBS a few weeks ago. A fascinating, brilliant, yet little known (at least in my circles) historical figure.

"Perhaps you might consider opening a thread in General Religious Discussions on Swedenborgianism to fill us in on its beliefs."
Very nice of you to say so. That might be a great eye-opener, although with the internet and all...
But I'll have a look at it
Thanks very much.
Adriaan

Fiach · 12-03-2002, 06:36 PM

In older Judaism, there were apparently male and female gods. Moses consolidated them all into one God, JHWH. But the Elohim are sill remembered in the older scriptures.

Since I consider God to be imaginary the discussions are somewhat silly. But assuming that God is a father and has a son, Jesus, that implies that he "fathered" Jesus in some way. Either Jesus budded off the Father like a fungus or a hydra, or the Father shagged a Goddess to make little Jesus. And who the feck is the Holy Spirit? Is the Holy Spirit a female? Is she Jehovah's wife and Jesus' real mother, his goddess mother?

Calling God "he" imlies the following: a penis, prostate gland, testicles, and epididymus tubes. If he has these there must be a goddess who has the opposite parts, eh? Admittedly this is a silly argument, but so is the idea of the Christian Trinity God.

As to creating Adam as a lone male then stumbling on to the realisation that Adam would not mate with a cow or a pig, God made Eve, is also silly.

Whether we give the creation date of mankind as 60 centuries ago or 200,000 for modern man, or 3 million years for Hominid bipeds, one thing is clear. Since about 300 to 500 million years ago animals and plants have had male and female partners mating in various ways to produce genetically mixed offspring.

So prosimians, proto-apes, apes, ape-hominids, Hominids, and our cousins the anthropoid apes of today, all have males and females. For one hominid species to be unisexual would be idiotic.

If there were a God, who decided to convert one of the advancing hominids into mankind, he would have likely continued the established male-female reproductive cycle. It still exists in humans and all higher animals today.

The controversy over primitive Biblical myths interpreting the beginning of mankind is due to the fact that the tellers of the story were primitive savages. The idea of a 60 century old Earth has long been debunked. We have 300 million year old rock layers here in Scotland and in Nova Scotia. We also know by DNA and fossil evidence that mankind descended from more primitive organisms male and female that lived in the Cambrian era. This issue while hotly debated in America is a long settled scientific fact in Europe. My friends look at me with astounded expressions of incredulity when I tell them that half of Americans still believe in literal Biblical Genesis 1 or 2.

If you want a dauny discussion, why not ask if God has a moustache or big tits?

Fiach

Priapus · 12-04-2002, 06:15 AM

Fiach: Yes, but I don't think that is where this debate is coming from. I think we are discussing this from the standpoint of: 'Supposing you believed in the Judeo-Christian god, would you see it as a male or female?' I don't think this is an illogical discussion because god is definately an anthropomorphized being with human emotions (jealousy, anger, love, etc.).

I think the god discussed within the Bible and Koran is without a doubt a male. Even when you set aside all the blatant misogyny in the scriptures you are still left with a deity who is external to the creation process. If it were a mother goddess it would be just as easy to speak of the universe being contained within god (a much healthier viewpoint if you ask me, as it creates the possibility of everything being sacred), in fact I think this would be the rational way to view a "mommy god".

-As an aside-
I also realized a long time ago that assuming the universe has a container is every bit as rational as assuming that there is an ultimate creator. Just try it next time a creationist tries to use an illustration on you. 'The universe is like a house'-what foundation does it have? 'The universe is like a computer program'-what computer is it being run in? Ultimately its all just a way to give our brains which evolved according to referential logic some sort of logical cause so we can get our minds around exsistence.

Fiach · 12-04-2002, 03:48 PM

Right. Joe Hovah was invented by the Hebrews in the context of a patriarchial and violent tribal society. These were warlike babarians who raided from the desert against more civilised village culture "kingdoms" where the desert barbarians slaughtered men, women, children, and babies without a single pinge of conscience.

So when the were evolving the nature of the god they invented, they gave Joe all of their own faults (jealousy, rage, homicidal temper tantrums, indifference to the killing of babies, capriciousness, and total lack of mercy toward the suffering.) JHWH or Joe Hovah (I prefer that more human name) is a big human man, with all man's faults amplified to titanic proportions. God could kill everyone on Earth except for Noah's Family, even all but two animals of all animal species. Even Adolf Hitler could never hope to match God's homicidal records.

Fiach
(PS. I really don't accuse Joe Hovah of those crimes. Israelites were the killers. Joe Hovah, poor chap, didn't even exist.

Psycho Economist · 12-04-2002, 03:59 PM

I thought I'd throw another bit into the mix. I've slowly been reading The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein, an archaeologist committed to explaining biblical texts in terms of archaeological finds and not vice versa.

One of his observations is that before the Hebrew Bible was writ down, (and contrary to what it says up through the books of Kings) many Judahites and Israelites believed that YHWH had taken the Cannanite goddess Asherah as a wife or consort.

Answerer · 12-05-2002, 05:52 AM

I believe that the word 'Elohim' that could be found in some of the translated bibles is one of the best evidence of the plural nature of the christian God.

A3 · 12-05-2002, 07:46 AM

Hi Answerer,

Quote:

I believe that the word 'Elohim' that could be found in some of the translated bibles is one of the best evidence of the plural nature of the christian God.

Plural nature, Yes; plural personalities, persons etc. No

Regards
Adriaan

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12-03-2002, 01:43 PM	#42
bluefugue Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 1,427	I can't believe that the omnipotent creator of the universe would in any way be limited by something like sex. If I believed in an omnimax God, I would assume that "it" possessed characteristics encompassing all of masculinity and femininity, and far more besides. Ergo calling God "he" would simply be a matter of linguistic convenience, borne of the fact that English has no personal generic third-person pronoun. However, I'm not sure if that's what the Hebrews intended. Yahweh seems to be a patriarchal figure. A vengeful God-King. Polytheistic religions, of course, have Gods with specifically assigned sexes (Zeus vs. Athena, Shiva vs. Brahma, etc.). Modern interpretations of monotheistic religions tend to be more abstracted. But "maleness" remains so deeply intertwined with our linguistic understanding of the J/C God (Our Father, King of Kings, etc.), that I wonder how many people really conceive of their Christian God as being a truly abstract entity that does not have a sex. But what is the alternative to such abstraction? Does God have a penis, but not a vagina? Doesn't this limit him, and boil him down to brute physical characteristics? Fiddlesticks, I say. To assign a sex to a God is absurd. It'd be like asking how many legs God has, or how good his eyesight is, or which chromosomes are in his genome.

12-03-2002, 06:36 PM	#45
Fiach Banned Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Scotland, UK Posts: 602	In older Judaism, there were apparently male and female gods. Moses consolidated them all into one God, JHWH. But the Elohim are sill remembered in the older scriptures. Since I consider God to be imaginary the discussions are somewhat silly. But assuming that God is a father and has a son, Jesus, that implies that he "fathered" Jesus in some way. Either Jesus budded off the Father like a fungus or a hydra, or the Father shagged a Goddess to make little Jesus. And who the feck is the Holy Spirit? Is the Holy Spirit a female? Is she Jehovah's wife and Jesus' real mother, his goddess mother? Calling God "he" imlies the following: a penis, prostate gland, testicles, and epididymus tubes. If he has these there must be a goddess who has the opposite parts, eh? Admittedly this is a silly argument, but so is the idea of the Christian Trinity God. As to creating Adam as a lone male then stumbling on to the realisation that Adam would not mate with a cow or a pig, God made Eve, is also silly. Whether we give the creation date of mankind as 60 centuries ago or 200,000 for modern man, or 3 million years for Hominid bipeds, one thing is clear. Since about 300 to 500 million years ago animals and plants have had male and female partners mating in various ways to produce genetically mixed offspring. So prosimians, proto-apes, apes, ape-hominids, Hominids, and our cousins the anthropoid apes of today, all have males and females. For one hominid species to be unisexual would be idiotic. If there were a God, who decided to convert one of the advancing hominids into mankind, he would have likely continued the established male-female reproductive cycle. It still exists in humans and all higher animals today. The controversy over primitive Biblical myths interpreting the beginning of mankind is due to the fact that the tellers of the story were primitive savages. The idea of a 60 century old Earth has long been debunked. We have 300 million year old rock layers here in Scotland and in Nova Scotia. We also know by DNA and fossil evidence that mankind descended from more primitive organisms male and female that lived in the Cambrian era. This issue while hotly debated in America is a long settled scientific fact in Europe. My friends look at me with astounded expressions of incredulity when I tell them that half of Americans still believe in literal Biblical Genesis 1 or 2. If you want a dauny discussion, why not ask if God has a moustache or big tits? Fiach

12-04-2002, 06:15 AM	#46
Priapus Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Springfield MO Posts: 25	Fiach: Yes, but I don't think that is where this debate is coming from. I think we are discussing this from the standpoint of: 'Supposing you believed in the Judeo-Christian god, would you see it as a male or female?' I don't think this is an illogical discussion because god is definately an anthropomorphized being with human emotions (jealousy, anger, love, etc.). I think the god discussed within the Bible and Koran is without a doubt a male. Even when you set aside all the blatant misogyny in the scriptures you are still left with a deity who is external to the creation process. If it were a mother goddess it would be just as easy to speak of the universe being contained within god (a much healthier viewpoint if you ask me, as it creates the possibility of everything being sacred), in fact I think this would be the rational way to view a "mommy god". -As an aside- I also realized a long time ago that assuming the universe has a container is every bit as rational as assuming that there is an ultimate creator. Just try it next time a creationist tries to use an illustration on you. 'The universe is like a house'-what foundation does it have? 'The universe is like a computer program'-what computer is it being run in? Ultimately its all just a way to give our brains which evolved according to referential logic some sort of logical cause so we can get our minds around exsistence.

12-04-2002, 03:48 PM	#47
Fiach Banned Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Scotland, UK Posts: 602	Right. Joe Hovah was invented by the Hebrews in the context of a patriarchial and violent tribal society. These were warlike babarians who raided from the desert against more civilised village culture "kingdoms" where the desert barbarians slaughtered men, women, children, and babies without a single pinge of conscience. So when the were evolving the nature of the god they invented, they gave Joe all of their own faults (jealousy, rage, homicidal temper tantrums, indifference to the killing of babies, capriciousness, and total lack of mercy toward the suffering.) JHWH or Joe Hovah (I prefer that more human name) is a big human man, with all man's faults amplified to titanic proportions. God could kill everyone on Earth except for Noah's Family, even all but two animals of all animal species. Even Adolf Hitler could never hope to match God's homicidal records. Fiach (PS. I really don't accuse Joe Hovah of those crimes. Israelites were the killers. Joe Hovah, poor chap, didn't even exist.

12-04-2002, 03:59 PM	#48
Psycho Economist Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Peoria, IL Posts: 854	I thought I'd throw another bit into the mix. I've slowly been reading The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein, an archaeologist committed to explaining biblical texts in terms of archaeological finds and not vice versa. One of his observations is that before the Hebrew Bible was writ down, (and contrary to what it says up through the books of Kings) many Judahites and Israelites believed that YHWH had taken the Cannanite goddess Asherah as a wife or consort.

12-05-2002, 05:52 AM	#49
Answerer Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Singapore Posts: 3,956	I believe that the word 'Elohim' that could be found in some of the translated bibles is one of the best evidence of the plural nature of the christian God.

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