Who is your God? (or not)

[chazzysaw]

Everyone has their own opinion about who their God is or isn't. There are those who are confused and don't know whether to believe or not. They may feel it is safer to believe than not to because God may punish them. Some believe there is no God. They believe this whole thing called exsistance is an accident. Life is just a hollow shell. No substance, no driving force, nothing. It just is.

Believers on the other hand say there is something. They say that their God is responsible for this whole thing called exsistence. I would like a description, explain,or express, this thing called God? What is it, he, she, we, they. What do you feel? God seems to come in many forms, shapes and sizes. How is your God or how not or maybe?

[harmonygirl]

Interesting question. I have felt divine presence in the strangest places. My family has many different branches, each with a different religion, so I started questioning this sort of thing at a very early age. I think in terms of the Goddess but only to address the almost exclusive male characteristics ascribed to her. I am sure the Creator would not limit him/her/it/themselves to any specific gender. My Goddess has a sense of humour and a strong harmonic appreciation. She is personally discoverable. I have also considered that there may be no Goddess, but this doesn't make emotional sense to me. Maybe we are a happy accident, but my belief is not "fire insurance", it's more an acknowlegement of some truly miraculous times I have had.

[zeroca]

For me God is absolute nothingness. The main predicative, or rather main characteristic feature of its "eternal existence" is nonexistence. But at the same time it presents the main regularity of the universe, as the latter itself presents the sum of equal opposite phenomena. (I repeat, it’s for me). I’ll give an example again the first part of poetry of great Persian poet Jalal ad-din rumi – don’t trust in heaven…, which is metaphorical "speech" of God about himself/itself. The whole poetry you can find at my home page hosted by TOE quest:

Do trust in heaven? Eh my friend kind,
Who am I? Please solve confusing mine…
I’m not Muslim with heart my trusting,
Nor on Christians’ trip I’m residing,
I am not eastern, I do remember,
And I’m not Western, heaven me sain!
Nor marine navel is my origin,
Nor this dry land - hilly terrain,
Nor live in water, nor based on soil,
Nor sparkle in fire, nor sound in gale,
In whatever thing of any forming,
Of whatever sort, whatever kind,
I did not come from Indians’ mountains,
And never passed the bolghars’ valley,
I’m not Chinese, nor from Chorasan,
And I’m not dweller Iraqi’s sidings,
Nor of that Eden’s hope is feeding me,
Nor of the Hades’ ringing scaring,
I am not Adam, and I’m not Eva,
Nor their heaven for me is charming.
Abode of mine? It is nowhere,
And everywhere my empire is,
Nor simple sign is portraying me,
But eternity for me shining…

[subversion]

I kind of like what you said harmonygirl in another thread about the original hebrew word for God being genderless. This makes sense to me, so let's put it another way. What I believe in is Mother Nature and Father Time. Is that well balanced?

[Guille]

I kind of like what you said harmonygirl in another thread about the original hebrew word for God being genderless. This makes sense to me, but let's put it another way. What I believe in is Mother Nature and Father Time. Is that a fair sharing?

If there was indeed a god (and this is a completely hypothetic thought universe, nothing near from reality) such as what the concept means, it would be independent of religion, of humans, of language and any other thing that is not universal.

[harmonygirl]

If we choose to believe in the Great Spirit (or the Creator, etc), then I think that such artificial restraints as gender are ludicrous, when you consider you are describing the entity(s) that created gender in the first place. While I do to some extent ascribe to the Gaia theory, I don't know about attaching a gender to time. I think as long as your consider your approach balanced, as Guille pointed out this is all belief, not provable, so it's kind of hard to argue against (or for). Unfortunately I think a lot of organized religions have derogated from their main duty (which I think is to assist with personal realization of the Goddess) and gone on to striving for political power, which is generally the antithesis of spirituality. Defining the Goddess as "he" or "she" falls into this for me (because it lays the foundation for assertion of superiority of one gender over another). Politically, we created the Goddess, spiritually the reverse. I haven't been able to reconcile the two.

[subversion]

mother nature will always be female because females give the gift of life. But if it is a man that discovers the TOE....

[harmonygirl]

...but nature is not only female (although this is possible too now). In order to reproduce both elements are necessary, so for me (and I stress this) although Gaia is womban (my word), this is only one aspect of her. If you could create the wondrousness of our environment, would you limit yourself to one gender,especially if there is no other force with the opposite gender? This doesn't make sense for me.
I think that we all will have a different version of TOE, likely because we all have a different idea of what "everything" is, so I don't know if The TOE is discoverable by one person for everyone. Mine involves harmony and is not communicable through language.

[Guille]

1. Either god exists, or not.
2. Either I believe that god exist, believe that god doesn't exist, or that we can't determine if god exists or not.
3. My beliefs must be for me parts of nature.
4. I can explain nature without the need of the idea of god.
__________________________________________________ _________________
Therefore:
5. I don't need to belief in god to explain the universe.
6. If I belief we cannot determine whether god exists or not, then I'm always wrong, for god either exists or not (independent of whether we can determine if god exists or not).
__________________________________________________ _________________
Therefore: Agnosticism is wrong and leads to atheism.

[beyond_ur_imagination]

1. Either god exists, or not.
2. Either I believe that god exists, believe that god doesn't exist, or that we can't determine if god exists or not.
3. My beliefs must be for me parts of nature.
4. I can explain nature without the need of the idea of god.
__________________________________________________ _________________
Therefore:
5. I don't need to believe in god to explain the universe.
6. If I believe we cannot determine whether god exists or not, then I'm always wrong, for god either exists or not (independent of whether we can determine if god exists or not).
__________________________________________________ _________________
Therefore: Agnosticism is wrong and leads to atheism.

This was really a beautiful way of clarifying the actual problem and I would like to congratulate you for this.

What I feel God is all that part of the universe that we do not know yet but which still actively participate in determining the states of various systems ( the systems that we like to study ... it might be our life as well) Now what the problem is we know something about the rules and working of the universe and by that knwledge we can predict its behavior, but, we do not know everything about it. This ignorance "adds" degree of freedom to our system and makes it a little unpredictable and also lets it have a set of causally connected states even if the system is let free. we put all these uncertainties and ignorance in a single word "GOD".