Something that should have been done a LONG time ago...

[INRM]

I propose that we try and create a definition of "God" which we can all agree with.

Also, let's try not to get too silly. After all, Yahzi's "Cheese-Grater God" was humorous, but it can take away from a message-thread.

-INRM

[triadboy]

Originally posted by INRM
I propose that we try and create a definition of "God" which we can all agree with.


Is this a biblical definition of god or a different concept?

[evildave]

Well, good luck! I hope you have better luck than I. Though I could dredge up some of the old God definitions I've got hangin' around here...

GOD of Ignorance (AKA God Of The Gaps)
This god lives wherever knowledge is lacking, and "never had anything to do with" whatever is discovered to be the actual cause of phenomena.

GOD of Insecurity and Vengeance
This one requires "belief" or he/she/it will punish you. If you believe, you get something or other "after you die". In some cases, even if you do unspeakable things. According to who you ask, this god will even "cry" if you do something wrong.

GOD of Evil
Televangelists give a lot of time and attention to this one while insisting they worship some demigod they only occasionally mention compared to the "EVIL" one, except to say he's still tapped for cash. Now according to some other theists, this "evil" one is the pantheistic god, and some "other" god (theirs) is the "real one".

GOD of Only Good
Everything good, this god did. Everything BAD is PEOPLE.

GOD of First Cause
This deistic god gave an "impulse" to energize the universe, and it's given intellect because "nothing just happens".

God of Nothingness (AKA UN-GOD)
Apparently atheists have an "UN-GOD" that certain people claim that "all" atheists worship. Between their busy 24 hour "not" schedule of not collecting stamps, not playing football, not dancing the masochism tango, and not celebrating their birthday on any day of the year but the one that is their birthday, they find time to worship this god. All who fail to believe or disbelieve in it are worshiping it, and therefore believe in it and are not worshiping it.

God Of Vague Definition
Is it a he or a she or an it? Is it big or small? Is it in the sky, in space, or "outside", or "everywhere all at once"? Nobody can say, but they believe, anyway.

God of the Lexicon
"I can say or think 'God', therefore 'God' exists. (I can say 'Santa Claus', too.)

God of Addiction
This is the one that you turn to when you have totally fouled up your life from top to bottom. Be it alcohol, gambling, or other addictions, there's a 12-step program (12 for 12 APOSTLES) ready to embrace you right away and tell you it was your lack of faith that did it, not YOU. A handy initial psychological diversion that will make the rest of the psychological diversions religion delivers that much easier to install.

GOD of WHINERS
"You'll be sorry when my imaginary friend GETS you!" This is the almighty being that smites, smites, smites! Whenever some poor soul find's he's defenseless in a battle of wits, out comes this GOD.

Almighty GOD of Carrots and Sticks
This god belongs to jackasses, for obvious reasons.

GOD of INFINITE RECURSION
This one is believed in by creationists, even though they reject the recursion. The world is just so marvelous and complicated that it must have been created by a perfect being. But if that perfect being is so marvelous, then it must have been created by a perfect being....

GOD Who Forgives Everything.
This god is handy. If you happen to murder a busload of children in cold blood, as long as you believe in him, and ask him to forgive you, you're "forgiven".

GOD Who Takes Things WAY TOO SERIOUSLY (aka: GOD Who REQUIRES Guilt For Everything)
This god is a bit of a nuisance, but popular among the cultish crowd. This one literally needs you to beg forgiveness for having been born.

"Personal" GOD
A VERY popular god. At your beck and call like a puppy. Unquestioningly does your bidding when things are going your way, or is "teaching you something" when things aren't. Only has the same opinions as you, no matter how much rationalizing is required.

God Of Hollywood
This god plays his role and smites on cue. He occasionally makes a producer rich, and at least as often, poor. His pyrotechnics are occasionally better than the original.

GOOD God Of Selective Cognition
People who claim their god is "ALL GOOD", never read that bible they claim contains "ALL TRUTH". At least, not "ALL" of it.

EVIL God Of Selective Cognition
People who claim their god is "ALL VENGEANCE, FIRE AND BRIMSTONE", never read that bible they claim contains "ALL TRUTH". At least, not "ALL" of it.

God Of Fate/Predestination (AKA God The Dimwit)
This one allegedly built a whole universe where there is no free choice. It wants the beings within it to act out their scripts (which this god wrote) while *experiencing* the illusion that they are making decisions. This continues from the beginning of time to the end of it so that it can play out "judging" them and sending them to suffer or be rewarded based on the invariable script it made up at the beginning. No surprises. No learning. Just meting out reward and punishment on others, based on the behavior that it scripted for them to begin with.

What sort of being would set up an eternal repetitive job for Himself, like "judging" people? Who would want to play such a role? Only a Dimwit could possibly look at such a task and consider for even a moment that it will be fulfilling for very long. Especially if it's the 'Predestiny' sort of deity.

"Wow, I programmed you to kill your brother and you killed your brother just like I made you to do. Good job. Go to Hell. ... NEXT! Say, I made you to be a true believer, and you did just like I programmed you to! Go to Heaven. ... NEXT!"

What a lame thing to want to do. "Infinite" powers and wants to play Ultimate Judge over automatons for behaviors that "He" programmed them to act out, and for which they had no choice in the matter at all.

God Of Solipsism
YOU are GOD, it's the world exists in your head. You are a multiple personality disorder times billions, and you have no control over what the billions of entities you're simulating do.

Good God, Bad God
Jesus is here to help. If you don't like it, GOD will punish you.

Everybody's God Is My God
It doesn't matter what you believe in, you're really worshiping MY god. So why not cut out the middle man and use ME as a middle man?

[Roadtoad]

My suspicion, EvilDave, is that you've hit this nail squarely on the head. There is no one definition for God, and those that you've provided are the most common given.

I suspect I could add a few "Saints" in there, as well, such as "Our Brother of Perpetual Penury," or "Our Lady of Optic Challenge," but that would be beating this already dead horse into a bloody pulp.

I've yet to come up with an adequate definition myself. I long ago, however, rejected the fundamentalist vision of God, that of a vengeful, sadistic SOB with a club, smiting anyone who so much as stepped out of line with His narrow view of what was True. If that were the case, most of the fundamentalists would have been smitten and damned a long time ago. (And they damn well deserved it.)

[stamenflicker]

What's wrong the "tri-omni" defintion?

Flick

[ceo_esq]

Originally posted by stamenflicker
What's wrong the "tri-omni" defintion?

Flick
I agree. Let's stick with an essentially philosophical definition of God, rather than a theological one. In fact, it might even be more productive to stick just with omniscience and omnipotence.

"God", in other words, can be usefully defined as an omniscient, omnipotent being who in some manner was responsible for the creation of the physical universe.

[Loki]

ceo_esq,

I agree. Let's stick with an essentially philosophical definition of God, rather than a theological one
Not sure which banner you want to put this under, but it seems to me that any meaningful definition must include a statement about whether he/she/it is "hands on" or "hands off". Isn't the simplest possible difference between deism and theism captured in this distinction?

[Yahzi]

You can't expect people to define god. The minute you provide a concrete description of any kind, you either a) make god disprovable, or b) make god irrelevant.

Only as an undefined concept can god actually exist. As a metaphor for the unseen, like the force of the wind (before we know about molecules). Once removed from the realm of metaphor, god simply becomes an incoherent concept.

[Agammamon]

So, God defined becomes an incoherent concept, while God undefined is an incoherent concept.

[Ossai]

ceo_esq
"God", in other words, can be usefully defined as an omniscient, omnipotent being who in some manner was responsible for the creation of the physical universe.

That definition basically means that god is a sick, sadistic, entity. After all, god made the world the way it is and is responsible for everything (omnipotent) and obviously doesn't want it changed.

Ossai

[Q-Source]

Originally posted by Yahzi
You can't expect people to define god. The minute you provide a concrete description of any kind, you either a) make god disprovable, or b) make god irrelevant.

How convenient is a no definition of God :rolleyes:

This is the classical argument that I usually heard from believers. No matter how much I try to disprove the existence of any God, they always resort to saying that my definition is not the same as theirs.


Only as an undefined concept can god actually exist. As a metaphor for the unseen, like the force of the wind (before we know about molecules). Once removed from the realm of metaphor, god simply becomes an incoherent concept.

Very true. God only can exists if he is an undefined concept.

:mad:

[ceo_esq]

Originally posted by Q-Source
Very true. God only can exists if he is an undefined concept.In order for that claim to be true, then of all the possible definite conceptions of God, there would have to be no possible universe in which any of them could exist.

Clearly, this is not the case.

This ties into your recent difficulties (in another thread) in establishing a deductive proof for the non-existence of God. Depending on which characteristics are attributed to "God", it's possible to disprove the existence of certain specific Gods, but not others. As Bertrand Russell wrote in What Is an Agnostic?, "[i]f I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments."

But in a larger sense, I think we need to consider the intended purpose of our definition of God. The agreed definition of God required in order to discuss the Problem of Evil is different than (though not necessarily exclusive of) the agreed definition of God required in order to discuss, say, the coherence of a certain point of Islamic theology. A one-size-fits-all definition is not going to facilitate many debates.

[neutrino_cannon]

Originally posted by evildave
GOD of First Cause
This deistic god gave an "impulse" to energize the universe, and it's given intellect because "nothing just happens".



Almost reminiscent of Bidlack's deity, except for the part about intellect and "nothing just happens".

[stamenflicker]

Once removed from the realm of metaphor, god simply becomes an incoherent concept.

So if our "god" is truly "God," then what does human coherence have to do with any of it? It's an arrogant assumption.

Flick

[Dancing David]

I prefer my gods to be female...

Peace

[Marvel Frozen]

I prefer my gods to be female

I concur

[triadboy]

My God looks like Burl Ives

[triadboy]

Originally posted by INRM
After all, Yahzi's "Cheese-Grater God" was humorous, but it can take away from a message-thread.

Even though the CheeseGod was humorous, I've often thought that a broomstick could provide as many miracles and healings as anything else as long as the people believed in its power. Eventually something good will happen and it will be because of the broomstick. So although you blew off the CheeseGod, that actually gets to the crux of the matter - the power of the mind.

[evildave]

It doesn't necessarily follow that if some *entity* decided to create this universe (presumable from within an external universe) that it needed "infinite" power, "infinite" knowledge or "infinite" sight/foresight.

Only adequate supplies of all of the above are required.

After all, the universe may be a in what could be described as a jar, but not a jar, in a place where all beings have "power" vastly beyond that of the whole universe combined. A tempest in a teacup, metaphorically speaking.

Does that make such beings "god", or merely kids with sparkly science experiments?

If, as an example, the being who "made" this universe (leaving it a "being" rather than chance for sake of argument), yet within its macro-scale light and other information still travels at the same speeds, the universe could have developed to the state it is today and the being that caused it wouldn't have noticed a flash, yet. A bit like lighting a firecracker and the entire life of the universe exists within it going "pop".

Why should we ascribe positive merits and super-powers to what may be only an average being of its kind, who may be utterly unaware of what had happened within its creation, which was made for a completely different purpose than to support haughty, nanoscopic us? Perhaps if it happened to notice us, it might seek to correct the abnormality in its sterile little plaything.

Just some (of the BIGNUM, if not limitless) possibilities.

[justsaygnosis]

Originally posted by evildave
God of Addiction
This is the one that you turn to when you have totally fouled up your life from top to bottom. Be it alcohol, gambling, or other addictions, there's a 12-step program (12 for 12 APOSTLES) ready to embrace you right away and tell you it was your lack of faith that did it, not YOU. A handy initial psychological diversion that will make the rest of the psychological diversions religion delivers that much easier to install.



Actually in AA there is no prerequisite for a fatih. Higher Power is an optional element of recovery.
The perceived cause of the extreme problem would be psychological, emotional and physical disorder not a religious issue.

[DrChinese]

Evil Dave: I definitely think you deserve an award for the best definitions of God to date. Or at least the most definitions. My puny definitions are in awe... But nonetheless, I might suggest one additional definition that I didn't see in your list. For your consideration:

Curse God: When I hit a hammer on my finger when trying to put up a picture, this is the god I appeal to. His last name is "damn it". Actually, there are quite a few things I do which involve me invoking this special god.

[Tricky]

Okay, I hope I get the award for the most concise definition. This came up many times in my discussions with Franko. I think this simple definition can accomodate everything from Deism to Fundamentilsm.

God is defined as the creator of the universe.

Feel free to argue about his/her/its other characteristics, but I think all religions believe the above.

[evildave]

Well, you could look at the Hindu (http://www.religioustolerance.org/hinduism.htm) religion again. They have one who made this universe and left to make others, one who manages/preserves this one, and one who wrecks 'em.


As for the new definition, I think I'll add it to my collection (along with the "JESUS #*&@ CHRIST!" of consternation).

Goddammit! (aka Jesus @^#& Christ! or God of Cuss)
Prayed to frequently wherever hammers and fingers are combined.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by Marvel Frozen


I concur

So would I, if Franko hadn't ruined it for me. Now every time I think of a female God "Logical Goddess" comes to mind and TLOP makes me beat my head against the wall in frustration...

[ceo_esq]

Originally posted by Tricky
Okay, I hope I get the award for the most concise definition. This came up many times in my discussions with Franko. I think this simple definition can accomodate everything from Deism to Fundamentilsm.

God is defined as the creator of the universe.

Feel free to argue about his/her/its other characteristics, but I think all religions believe the above.
Some polytheistic religions don't.

[Loki]

Tricky,

God is defined as the creator of the universe.

Feel free to argue about his/her/its other characteristics, but I think all religions believe the above.
Not quite. From here : (http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~cherryne/myth.cgi/Creation.html)
In the beginning there was the void. And the void was called Ginnungagap.
...
Along with the void existed Niflheim the land of fog and ice in the north and Muspelheim the land of fire in the south.
...
In Niflheim was a spring called Hvergelmir from which the Elivagar ... flowed. The Elivargar froze layer upon layer until it filled in the northerly portion of the gap. Concurrently the southern portion was being filled by sparks and molten material from Muspelheim.

The mix of fire and ice caused part of the Elivagar to melt forming the figures Ymir the primeval giant and the cow Audhumla. The cow's milk was Ymir's food. While Ymir slept his under arm sweat begat two frost giants, one male one female, while his two legs begat another male.

While Ymir was busy procreating Audhumla was busy eating. Her nourishment came from licking the salty ice. Her incessant licking formed the god Buri. He had a son named Bor who was the father of Odin, Vili, and Ve.

For some reason the sons of Bor decided to kill poor Ymir. His blood caused a flood which killed all of the frost giants except for two, Bergelmir and his wife, who escaped the deluge in their boat.

Odin, Vili, and Ve put Ymir's corpse into the middle of ginnungagap and created the earth and sky from it. They also created the stars, sun, and moon from sparks coming out of Muspelheim.
The 'interaction' of the two lands (Ice and Fire) gave birth to the gods. The gods created the earth and sun.

[Tricky]

Originally posted by Loki
Tricky,


Not quite. From here : (http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~cherryne/myth.cgi/Creation.html)

The 'interaction' of the two lands (Ice and Fire) gave birth to the gods. The gods created the earth and sun.
Well, dagnabbit! I'm wrong then. However, the religions that don't call their god(s) creator(s) of the universe are not making their god(s) the ultimate power either.

But any way you look at it, I am wrong. I would say that most monotheistic religions identify their god as the creator of the universe. But I might be wrong (again).

[Loki]

Tricky,

Well, dagnabbit! I'm wrong then
Whether you're wrong about the Norse mythology is, I guess, a matter of interpretation (gosh - an unclear religion! What were those beserkers thinking!).

You could mount an argument that the void, and lands of Fire and Ice are the equivalents of christian "heaven" and "hell", and therefore exist "outside" this universe. It would then follow that the gods arose "ouside" the universe as we know it, and therefore *did* create the universe we inhabit. If you follow this line of thinking then the Norse are actually one up on the christians, because they not only explain the creation of the universe (the gods did it), but also the creation of the gods!

Or perhaps this is taking this entire subject just a little too seriously?

[CWL]

Originally posted by Loki
Whether you're wrong about the Norse mythology is, I guess, a matter of interpretation

Agreed. Tricky's position could very well be defended based on the fact that Odin (Vili and Ve were not, as far as is known today, worshipped as gods - although they were undoubtedly gods, being the brothers of Odin) was considered (at least co-) creator of the Earth and sky. I think it is safe to say that people in those days would look upon the Earth and the sky as being the "Universe" - at least as far as they were concerned.

On the other hand, the other gods in the Norse pantheon (including those who were worshipped and revered as important deities with their very own cults) were not considered "creators of the Universe". I belive this is the case with most pantheistic religions.

But hey - again, we're talking about different religions. Why should we expect any consistency among them?

[jimlintott]

Whenever a believer wants (demands) to know why I don't believe in god I ask for a definition of what it is I'm supposed to believe in. Many can offer no definition at all the rest vary quite a bit. I figure if the believers can't come up with a workable definition then why should I?

The definitions I run into vary between a concept that exists in the hearts and minds of his belivers to an actual physical being who created all of reality and is responsible for micro-managing the entire universe.

[billydkid]

Originally posted by Dancing David
I prefer my gods to be female...

Peace

Yes!!! And with really nice, firm breasts!!!!