A Working Definition of God

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If your scriptures come true, It will pretty much have to be because of a human or natural agency and will be a coincidence.

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Ooooo, dig the DOGMA there.

Don't need another thread.I'd be happy to discuss WHAT God is, only Dan seems to have dropped the ball long ago and meanwhile the usual challenges to the Christian God have moved in.

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You do realize that your entire position is based on the unproven a priori assumption of the existence of "god" and the infallibility of the bible, don't you?

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Sure isn't in my case, I don't know about his. I had to come to recognize God, was very far from an a priori assumption about God. Had to be shown that he exists.God went to great lengths to prove His reality and His character. Miracles, pillars of fire and cloud, parting of the Red Sea, plagues upon Egypt, the passover of the Jewish firstborn, oh so many things God did to prove to us who He is.Nobody can "prove" that anything in particular happened in the past like those miracles. They left no physical evidence. Nobody can "prove" the truth of the Bible. You either have the grace to recognize the truthfulness of the people who reported those things or you don't.This is witness evidence rather than physical evidence. You are perfectly free to discount it altogether, but if it's telling the truth you will never ever get to recognize it as long as you insist on having physical evidence.

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Okay, I can't even think of a sarcastic response to this nonsense. I asked a question. As of yet, no one's given a complete or coherent answer. How that adds up to me dropping the ball, I don't know.
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But don't worry... I'm sure you have mountains of evidence to support the existence of... I dunno, whatever this thing's supposed to be.

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I gave you the barest beginnings of a definition of God according to Christian theology. Whole books are written on "The Attributes of God." But there's no point in contributing more information until you make it clearer what you are after here.You lopped off the parts of my definition that referred to His actions. Well, it's your topic, so if you want to limit it that way, I have no problem with it. But then you said some comic book character fit what was left, as if that were relevant to anything, and then disappeared. What's your point? Are you just looking for an excuse to mock definitions of God or what? You don't need to have a thread for that purpose you know; people do it quite freely around here.You got my definition and you got "I Am" from jar, and you got "God is Love" from somebody. Where do you want to take this?

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You never know who's reading and may get the point in spite of this nutty naturalistic dogma here.

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Hmm, the idea of verifiable, reliable cause and effect in nature that anyone, regardless of religious belief, can also witness and observe and experience, that ha led to cures for disease, space exploration, vaccinations, and computers.

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Yeah, that's pretty nutty.

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Silly, one might say.

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Totally, when it comes to this topic.It's great for cures for disease, space exploration, vaccinations and computers but it's absolutely irrelevant for knowing anything about God or spirit beings or anything else having to do with spiritual life. It's the wrong tool for the job, and insisting on making it the method and the standard where it is unfitted to the task IS pretty nutty.

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So I know EXACTLY what you people consider evidence. Soft dino tissue evidences that it survives millions of years, instead of being a falsification of MOY like it really is ...

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Finally figured out that MOY means "millions of years." Yeah, isn't it amazing how whatever really does falsify the idea of MOY doesn't even get a blink of recognition from them? They just toddle right on MAKING the data fit the theory, denying the contradiction. That's the problem with a theory that can't be falsified, but is all a matter of interpretation -- we can interpret ad infinitim without ever having to touch down to reality. So now it's soft dinosaur parts. It would be hilarious if it weren't just, well, nutty.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-20-2005 12:11 AM

Oops, duplicate postThis message has been edited by Faith, 04-20-2005 12:07 AM

Nope, that one wasn't mine. MtW's though I think. Incomprehensible gobbledygook. The only place I gave a definition of God was my very first post and I certainly didn't mention evidence at that point. It's quite off-topic but nevertheless we did get onto that subject. I don't even remember how evidence got onto this thread as the topic was what God IS, nothing about evidence or anything else. I didn't call anyone here stupid. I don't think MiketW did either. At least not about the main topic, though it did come up in relation to dinosaurs. Not about God though, as you are claiming here. Very very true --as a Comprehensive Explanation for Absolutely Everything -- but a side issue. I was merely whiling away the time while Dan presumably figured out what he wanted to do with this thread - or not. Nobody said any such thing. I believe you are hallucinating. I've simply been wanting to find out what Dan WANTED with this thread. I think he had something in mind for starters but somehow didn't get answers he could work with. I don't know why. It would be nice to know. I'm interested in what he wanted to get at in the first place. That would take us back to page 1 where some of us did attempt to answer his question, some four of us. Then it wandered off in other directions, such as Evidence.You COULD have done us all a favor by being ACCURATE in breaking down the messages on this thread, in order to focus back on the main question. Instead you go off on a totally made-up put-down trip of your own. So much for the highly vaunted claim to factuality on this site. Overall I think you got maybe, oh, 15% of your attributions right in this post of yours. Not a very good score.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-20-2005 02:58 AM

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I gave you the barest beginnings of a definition of God according to Christian theology.

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Well, perhaps I should have made it clear that I was looking for an actual definition, not a partial or incomplete one.

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You don't want anything about his actions, so that automatically limits it.

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But there's no point in contributing more information until you make it clearer what you are after here.

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Read the title of the thread. It should give you a clue.

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You just said you want a complete definition, now you are back to wanting a working definition, but none of the true definitions are acceptable to you.

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But then you said some comic book character fit what was left, as if that were relevant to anything, and then disappeared.

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I've explained multiple times... if your definition describes a comic book character, your definition is too vague.

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There is only one Being in the universe who has no beginning and no end, and some comic book blasphemes that definition of God, and you take the comic book's definition as the standard?

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Are you just looking for an excuse to mock definitions of God or what?

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I like the idea that finally sitting theists down and saying, "What are you telling us is there" is mocking them.

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Where I come from, that's called taking people seriously.

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Where do you come from? Some black hole?

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You got my definition and you got "I Am" from jar, and you got "God is Love" from somebody. Where do you want to take this?

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A definition under which I don't qualify as God?

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I am. I'm love. I'm God!

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You don't bother to find out what is meant by any of that; you just take the first shallow meaning that pops into your head and that's the end of it?I really AM sorry I took you seriously.

What would you recommend I read, Percy?

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we can interpret ad infinitim without ever having to touch down to reality.
And that's your opinion of... science?!

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No, it's my view of evolutionism which is not science.

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If that's not a spot on definition of religion and coming up with a definition of God, I don't know what is.

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No, it's a definition of science when it pretends to be able to pronounce on the nature and reality of things outside its area of applicability.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-20-2005 10:48 AM

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i believe i know my god (in a very superficial and character-based manner). but at least i am humble enough to accept that i could be completely wrong. what gives you the authority and the arrogance to proclaim that you know god. you cannot know him. he is eternal and exists outside of anything you can comprehend.
how dare you?

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I already answered this but there are also other answers I'd like to add. We not only CAN know God, He WANTS us to know Him, but you can never know Him unless you follow HIS rules rather than your own.The Bible invites us to know Him:Job 22:21: Acquaint now yourself with Him and be at peace; thereby good shall come to you."Jeremiah 9:23-24: Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise [man] glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty [man] glory in his might, let not the rich [man] glory in his riches: But let him that glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I [am] the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these [things] I delight, saith the LORD.Phl 3:10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;1John 5:20 And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true...The following is by Arthur Pink, in his Preface to his book The Attributes of God :"The foundation of all true knowledge of God must be a clear mental apprehension of his perfections as revealed in Holy Scripture. An unknown God can neither be trusted, served, nor worshipped..."Something more than a theoretical knowledge of God is needed by us. God is only truly known in the soul as we yield ourselves to Him, submit to His authority, and regulate all the details of our lives by His holy precepts and commandments. 'Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord' (Hosea 6:3). 'If any man will do His will, he shall know' (John 7:17). 'The people who know their God shall be strong.' (Daniel 11:32)."This message has been edited by Faith, 04-20-2005 11:19 AM

We are simply not communicating, so since you seem to be getting something out of what Magisterium is saying, and he's doing a good job, I'm going to drop out of the discussion for now.

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The only way to put the discussion on a solid footing and open up the channels of communication is to agree on what constitutes evidence. I tried to answer your question about evidence at the top of Message 85, but you didn't reply. Evidence is anything you can see, hear, touch, taste or smell.

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Thanks for the reminder, I had lost track of it. That was a long detailed post, and I planned to get back to it but I wanted to come up with the very best statement about why evidence includes at least witness testimony first, and then I got distracted. All the evidence of the senses can determine is things that pertain to the senses. If there is a reality beyond the senses, you have ruled out all possible evidence for it a priori. This would no doubt be a VERY long discussion and unfortunately I don't feel equipped for it at the moment.

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I also addressed yours and MTW's concern about rejecting Biblical evidence out of hand in both the aforementioned Message 85 and in Message 113. I believe God created the universe and that he would not lie to us or try to trick us. Man created the Bible, and man is known to be fallible. I see the Bible as a record of a people's striving to make sense of their world, and I interpret it in historical context with other available evidence.

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But that has been argued here already and all I can do is repeat myself to no purpose: You are wrong, the Bible IS God's word. It was written DOWN by men but it did not spring from the mind of men, it came from God Himself. Many of its authors claim specifically to have received their message directly from God; other authors have declared that all scripture is given by God; those who formed the canon formed it on the basis of their determination of each book's having been inspired by God; and that has been the view of it by believers since it was written. You will no doubt go on denying our judgment of it though, so what's the point in repeating it?The universe is in fact pretty much undecipherable as is. The history of science should tell you how hard it was for human beings to even start to get it right. In fact, Christianity had a big role in inspiring empirical science, on the basis of faith that God is rational and that he made the physical world to operate by rational laws that can be discovered. There is nothing in the physical world as-is that would lead to such an idea. Its lawfulness is not apparent to the eye, it must be discovered. This too would no doubt be a long and probably futile discussion.

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If, as you and MTW argue, God is defined by deeds, then that contradicts Magisterium Devolver's definition of God as love, given the evils in the world like war, plague, pestilence and tsanamis.

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No it just makes the discussion more complex than anybody is up to. I believe one reason the universe is NOT clearly lawful and decipherable on first inspection is because of the confusion, suffering, violence and death in it. Nothing explains that except Biblical theology, however, which recognizes that human beings and in fact the entire Creation are Fallen, meaning we are NOT what we were originally made to be. Our first parents were created immortal and in communion with our Creator God. They disobeyed and death entered the world, and both sin and death have accumulated down to the present. Nobody would ever intuit that. Nobody ever has. No manmade religion has come close -- I take that back, Hinduism and Buddhism recognize that we are in "ignorance" but they are wrong about the nature of this ignorance, and they recognize "karma" or the spiritual law that judges us, but they don't understand it. It can only be known by the revelation of God, but everybody here dismisses even the possibility of that. Through all this God is Love and remains Love, Love that forgives as soon as we seek Him in willingness to do things His way, and Love includes also His punishment for sin. But fallen humanity has a problem with a God who punishes sin so they reject the idea that He is Love for that reason.

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When you're source of information for God's deeds is the Bible then you can't chalk all evil up to the devil since the OT contains many incidences of God directing atrocities.

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That is also a long and complex discussion. I just answered part of it above, that evil entered the world when the first humans disobeyed God. Death entered just has He said it would, and death is defined Biblically as "the wages of sin." What you call atrocities by God are God's justice against sin, carefully explained for our sake in His word. If you reject the idea of a spiritual Law that governs the universe and judges us all then you will also misjudge everything that happens in this world.

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The introduction of the devil and a hierarchy of angels and so forth is indicative of developing ad hoc answers to address questions and contradictions,

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Not at all. I certainly haven't used them that way. They are part of the big picture which is given in the Bible. I know they are real, and I know something about their modus operandi, and I only know this because I believe the Bible.

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but the web just grows more and more confused. You say God is good, we then ask what about evil. You say the devil is responsible for evil, we ask how the devil is permitted to do this if God is omnipotent. You say God chooses to allow the devil a place, but that is permitting evil, and we're back where we started, though a debate can go round and round and round on these points forever.

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I've never given these answers. I've never said the devil is responsible for evil, I've said human sin/disobedience of God is. The devil is certainly there to provoke as much of it as possible however, but what is the devil anyway but the FIRST being to rebel/sin against God? ALL the suffering in the universe is due to God's creatures' rebelling against Him. Again a HUGE topic.

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Religion, especially institutionalized religion, is prone to such complicating inventions.

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I can see how it seems that way to you but to me the more I know about Biblical truth the more I understand the reality I live in. When I first started to believe, it was as if the world which had been upside down and twisted was untwisting and righting itself and making sense for the first time in my life. This has only increased over time.

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To see the true God you need to simplify. Eliminate the hash of Bible stories with their confused and contradictory variety of perspectives and look at the universe around you, for there lies truth.

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I find it to be exactly the opposite. I find the contradictions to be inherent in the universe, and the resolution of them in God's Word, which He mercifully gave us for the purpose.

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Faith writes:

If there is a reality beyond the senses, you have ruled out all possible evidence for it a priori.

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If there were a reality beyond the senses that were objective and not personal then there wouldn't be so many religions, denominations sects and offshoots. You wouldn't have Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and so forth. Within Christianity you wouldn't have Catholocism and Protestantism. Within Protestantism you wouldn't have Baptists and Presbyterians and Congregationalists and Methodists and Lutherans and on and on. And if even after all that you can still claim with a straight face that they all actually think of God in the same way, let's not forget the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists (Hi, Buzsaw!), the Church of Scientology, Christian Scientists, the Quakers, the Mormons, the Unification Church, not to mention the really wacko sects like Koresh's and Jonestown.

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There is a Biblical understanding of all these confusions although explaining it to you may not get me anywhere as usual. Even when we are saved and restored we are all more or less stuck in our fallen minds until we die, and that means NOBODY ever has complete and perfect knowledge of God. This is why God gave the Bible, His own word, to guide us in our fallenness, our spiritual blindness. We all grasp its message to different degrees, so that even among Bible believers there will always be disputes on some points -- but they won't be points that compromise one's salvation.But some on your list depart so far from the Biblical standard that those who DO follow the Biblical standard have no trouble recognizing it. And here is where the devil DOES enter the picture too, as he and his billions of minions are busily doing their best to confuse the Christian message in an attempt to thwart God's plan (impossible but that doesn't stop them from trying), as well as invent counterfeits to keep the unbelievers from getting anywhere near the truth. The ONLY refuge in this storm is the Biblical word, and anyone who dares to make himself the judge of that word, instead of submitting to it as given, is just cutting off his nose to spite his face as it is the ONLY saving help in all this confusion.

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If everyone who felt they knew God or felt that God spoke to them in their heart was actually hearing the same God then there would be more uniformity and commonality.

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Absolutely wrong because the great majority of such experiences are engineered by the evil one, and his purpose is always to counterfeit God and Christ to mislead. The only protection against this kind of deception is always the Biblical word and always has been. Even believers may be deceived however. The great Christian mystics over the centuries often had direct communications within their spirits but they also had teachers who warned them against trusting such communications as they are often not from God. Again, the standard is always God's word and protection against delusion comes from obedience to its directives. The Bible reveals what nobody would ever figure out on their own, that Satan is the author of all the religions other than Biblical religion. This is insulting on the face of it but ultimately a merciful revelation that can save people. He has his servants same as God does. He inspires false doctrine about God. His servants are able to influence people's minds and feelings, sometimes even possess their souls completely. Some religions SEEK this kind of possession. All shamanistic religion does so. Now we have the New Age version of this, as channelers (they do what mediums have always done) and psychics and card readers and spiritual gurus abound.

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This huge variety of belief stems from the lack of any underlying reality. Those of a relgious bent join the religion whose beliefs they feel most comforable with. Desiring a connection to the spirtual is part of the makeup of human beings.

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It's always amazing to me how people who know nothing about it speak so dogmatically about something they know nothing about.

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I think even very conservative evangelical theologians would think the mission the Christians have set themselves in this thread very weird and misguided. By answering Dan's challenge you concede his unsaid assumption, that defining God has any meaning. God is what we experience in our hearts, and he can't be explained to others. God is a very personal thing, and religions are only groups of people whose personal experience of God is similar and compatible.

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I gave a partial defintion of God that is consistent with 2000 years of Christian Confessions, Creeds and Catechisms. I would be very surprised to find even one conservative evangelical theologian in disagreement. Even Magisterium Devolver, who has to be Catholic judging from his name, has said he agrees with most of what I've said, as well as with Mike the Wiz. We all agree on the basics because there IS a basic body of Christian truth that all Christians subscribe to across all kinds of differences, and I'm far from accepting most Catholicism. I have said nothing at all about personal experience as a defining principle, not one word. Your latter statement that birds of a feather flock together is true but the rest is not. As soon as God becomes "a personal thing" I know the devil is calling the shots.

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When you try to define God by his deeds you step onto even less firm ground, because deeds take place in the natural world. Deeds are what everyone can perceive and from which objective impressions can be formed. Deeds are things that actually happen. But when we peer about the natural world we find that if God performs deeds, they are indistinguishable from normal natural phenomena.

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I don't recall what all deeds I listed in that first definition but I don't think there was anything that would be detected by fallen humanity, who simply interprets it all naturalistically if it is noticed at all. But I will have to review my post to be sure.

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The deeds that God performs are not physical deeds, for to seek such deeds is to test the Lord thy God. God performs spirtual deeds. He leads us toward the good and the right, and we experience this internally and personally. We can testify to what God has done for us, but we cannot provide natural world evidence of it. Those who know God will know our testimony is true and recognize God working through ourselves.

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I have certainly agreed that there is no NATURAL WORLD evidence for any of it. There isn't, so the naturalistic definition of evidence does not apply though people are always applying it to deny the reality of God, which it cannot do. What we have however is witness evidence. God performs all kinds of deeds, both physical and spiritual. I recognize the testimony of Mike the Wiz and Buzsaw and Magisterium and Pecos George and a couple others here, but nobody else. There is no such thing as something's being true for one person but not for another, and scientists have not been known to accept such relativist nonsense either. I'm rather surprised to hear it from you as a matter of fact.What ARE you saying? I have so CLEARLY said I do NOT "expect evidence in the natural world!!!" I have referred only to WITNESS evidence, NOT physical evidence. God did the physical evidence once and for all and now expects us to believe or not believe and that isw that. And NONE OF THIS is "testing God" in any case. I have no idea what that could possibly mean. Testing God is expecting him to save you from dangers you've purposely put yourself in the way of.

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Many of its authors claim specifically to have received their message directly from God; other authors have declared that all scripture is given by God; those who formed the canon formed it on the basis of their determination of each book's having been inspired by God; and that has been the view of it by believers since it was written.

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You are again trying to give objective reality to a spirtual belief.

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It IS objective. God is an absolutely objective reality and His communications to His prophets are objectively real and objectively factual and objectively true and believers know this. That's the whole point. None of this is dependent on physical proof, but the writers of the Bible are telling objective truths.I do not accept your definition of objectivity as being synonymous with what is learnable from the senses at all. Objectivity simply refers to a reality outside oneself and being an accurate witness.

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Even if you know in your heart that this is true, it is not part of the natural world, and you can't expect other people, especially adherents to other religions, to accept that your book contains the Word of God and theirs do not.

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God RUNS the natural world, which is why naturalistic premises which relegate him to some other realm can never discover him. I don't EXPECT anything about convincing people, I merely hope and pray, as ONLY the Bible is the truth. And yes, I KNOW that.

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You're trying to convince people's minds when you should be trying to convince their hearts.

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Absolutely not. Jeremiah said: "The heart is deceitful above all things, who can know it?" The heart is absolutely NOT trustworthy, NOT the way to know anything about God. God is an objective reality who should inspire the deepest love in the heart, but we cannot know anything with the heart otherwise. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy MIND... Many of the problems of today's churches have come in with the idea that this is not about the mind. It has led to a terrible anti-intellectualism. But Christianity was once the inspirer of all the deepest thought, of all the academic disciplines, and referred freely to God Himself in all of it.

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Accepting God as a real presence in your life comes from the inside through the heart, not from the outside through the senses.

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I never said it did, Percy. There is some kind of strange miscommunication going on here. We learn all this in the spirit, yes, but it is ABOUT everything in the world.

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The universe is in fact pretty much undecipherable as is.

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Someone of your abilities must respect them by considering your words more carefully. The reason your posts attract so much attention is because of your proclivity for casually throwing off howlers like this one, and it's beneath you. The complex electronic instrument you're using now represents so many resolved scientific problems that all by itself without considering any other evidence we know the universe is decipherable.

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I appreciate the compliment but you missed my context. I kept saying "AS IS" and I appreciate that I no doubt needed to explain better, but I have to say that I it is very hard to guess where I'm going to be misunderstood. I also pointed to the HISTORY OF SCIENCE as evidence for its undecipherability, the strange ideas people started out with about it. Rendering it decipherable took centuries, because IN ITSELF IT IS NOT DECIPHERABLE. That is what I was trying to say. There is too much apparent UNlawfulness in it to make its lawfulness obvious to the natural man. It only appears lawful NOW after centuries of acquired knowledge that took prodigious thought and trial and error and experiment and doubt -- that's how NONobvious the lawfulness of the universe is. And I also believe that without the inspiration of Biblical Christianity NONE of modern day science would ever have come about because the natural man simply cannot decipher this only-sometimes-predictable universe.

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In fact, Christianity had a big role in inspiring empirical science, on the basis of faith that God is rational and that he made the physical world to operate by rational laws that can be discovered. There is nothing in the physical world as-is that would lead to such an idea.

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On the contrary, the very regularity of the universe speaks of rationality. The sun rises and sets every day, cooked food tastes better, clay dries into useful containers, small-stone-small-splash, big-stone-big-splash, and so on. The confusion derives not from any lack of rationality, but from the mixture of rationality and randomness.

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Good points and they help clarify what I was trying to say. Yes that was my point, and better put. The confusion is because of this apparent conflict, only I proposed the fact of suffering and strife and death as the biggest confuser of the idea of lawfulness.

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The days are regular, but one day brings sun and another brings storms. The seasons are regular, but one spring brings rains and plenty, another spring brings floods and doom.

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Yes, that is one of the ways the universe appears not to be lawful but incomprehensible, as every apparently regular thing is subject to unpredictable disruption. That was said very clearly and it is what I was trying to say.

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Nothing explains that except Biblical theology, however, which recognizes that human beings and in fact the entire Creation are Fallen, meaning we are NOT what we were originally made to be. Our first parents were created immortal and in communion with our Creator God. They disobeyed and death entered the world, and both sin and death have accumulated down to the present.

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It is fine to believe this, but do not forget that this is a matter of faith, not fact.

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I disagree. It is completely a matter of fact. Just because I cannot prove it with naturalistic evidence, or prove it to your satisfaction by any means whatever, does not mean it is not fact. YOu want evidence but the only evidence is the Bible witness in this case, and, I would add, how this view explains so much that is otherwise unexplainable. What true faith in the true God teaches IS what is really real. You have a false idea of faith.

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You cannot objectify the spirtual reality of God. The more you explain the contradictions the more obviously contradictory they become to the rational mind. You accepted these stories not because they appealed to your intellect but because they brought joy to your heart. Speak with your heart to other people's hearts and not to their minds, for such is the way of the Lord.

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Absolutely false. They appealed to my intellect first. They made sense to my mind first. The most satisfying point of my original spiritual explorations was when I understood Original Sin. That was the concept that made everything in this nutty universe make sense -- that we are FALLEN, and are not what we were meant to be. That explains all the misery in this world, all the stupidity, all the confusion, all the clashing opinions, all the harm people do to one another. All that is absolutely inexplicable without understanding our Fall in Eden. Discovering that was a decidedly INTELLECTUAL joy, and the intellectual joys have only multipled since then.

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I find it to be exactly the opposite. I find the contradictions to be inherent in the universe, and the resolution of them in God's Word, which He mercifully gave us for the purpose.

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But the contradictions are not in the universe but are of your own making. You read your Bible which speaks of a great flood, and you look to the evidence which is silent about a flood, and this must be very confusing. Dealing with all the contradictions you yourself create is why you keep abandoning discussions and saying things like "I don't feel equipped for it at the moment," and "This too would no doubt be a long and probably futile discussion," and so forth. God speaks to you from the wonders of the universe, not from the pages of a book, but you have closed your heart to him.

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This is really a very insulting ad hominem you have written here. All I will say is how very very wrong you are about my motivations, my thoughts, my feelings, my reasons for my actions.