A Working Definition of God

oh.Then why do you say things like this when we offer you an honest answer when we say God is love? As others have noted, she plays nasty so amazingly well it is almost scary. Plus, in connecting "God is love" with any roles that Eliza Dushku has played, are you not equating God with a person? Maybe.Or, if you are certain that a person is involved we might ask, "Is it a killer?" If you are sure that natural causes that resulted in the person's death, then we might ask, "Was it simply natural causes?" If you suspect both (and we are not sure which), then we might ask, "Was it a killer or natural causes?"But to answer your question, if you're looking for a raw definition of God, I would probably answer, "God is spirit."This answer, of course, would most likely be pursued with other questions -- which, with further clarification, would most likely mean that it would point to Christ (from a Juedo-Christian perspective).Depending on the nature of the further inquiry, one might even be able to determine if their inquiry was genuine or simply trolling.For example, if the answer "God is spirit." were then retorted with something intergalactically stupid like, "Great. God is a ghost...I knew it." or something else similar like this, I would most likely conclude that their inquiry is actually a sarcasm meant to poke holes in other peoples faith systems. And I wouldn't really waste my time bothering to explain it to them anymore from there.This message has been edited by Magisterium Devolver, 04-19-2005 01:45 PMThis message has been edited by Magisterium Devolver, 04-19-2005 01:46 PM

Let me guess, you were for the war in Iraq? Nice explanation of what God is.Also, the stretchy material inside the T rex bone was not the orignial material that was there mya. It underwent a different kind of mineralization/fossilization.

"Witness Evidence"?I give up.

Because, as I said elsewhere, that's so vague an answer as to be meaningless. Got'cher back on that count, my good fellow. Apparently. Perhaps it's too vague a definition if includes Eliza Dushku? And if I were to respond, "It killed that man" again, wouldn't it become a bit maddening dealing with me? Might you even respond by deciding that I was talking out my ass when I said I knew what killed him? Well what's that? Well, that's considerably more specific. But all I know about Christ is that he's a human who performed super-human feats and spoke a lot about morality. Presumably there's something about God that makes him different from an Israeli Spiderman. So shall we keep refining? Well, I'm terribly sorry about that. But if the definition you offer is vague enough that it could describe a ghost, then that's hardly my fault.

[qs]The psalmist talks of his vengeance and strife. But God strictly says to not even be cruel to a little one (when God speaks), and to not even get angry with your brother or you are in danger of the commandment "do no murder". GOD says this in the flesh. Stop trying to pick out an odd OT psalmist's song when those scriptures are too old to be understood according to this age/society, and are relative to the woes of the person.You know I meant what God says, and not the psalmist's woes.Now also we have the commandment to "do no murder" which is surely what God says!Nothing will cause me to judge God, like you are trying to get me to do. If men do murder - then I trust them not because of the commandments of Christ, but if God does anything himself through supernatural means or literally, then I question him not.Here's the increase for my cause;The Lord says worship him, and have no idols.The world worships the rich and famous. (a perversion and sin against God, who is the only one who should be worshipped)and the vanity of man increases.Here's the increase for my cause;God says don't have idolatry.The world makes God in their own image, and says he should "evidence" himself, and he "should do this, that, and the other" according to how the world thinks God should be.(a perversion, and transgression against the second commandment, and making your own version of what God should be).This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 04-19-2005 02:01 PM

That's a personal attack qnojek. Please don't do that again.Looking past the symbolic language, I think my point remains clear: God is the spiritual substrate upon which all else hinges. Like a wind that moves a sail, God's spirt upholds all creation. This means that God is sepatate from creation but yet can be deeply manifested within it and felt at specific points where he contact his creation. Because of God, all things exist -- without God, nothing would exist.In speaking of an "image" -- your modern definition of it does not capture the early Judeo-Christian defintion of it. It simply means that Christ as Son of God is the very pre-emeninant expresion of the Father's will in his creation.And furthermore, "first born" does not imply created or even born in the sense that we picture it within the biological sciences. Firstborn again reflects a pre-eminence in rank more than to priority in time. This can be shown in passages where the term 'firstborn' is used of the pre-eminent son who was not the eldest, e.g. Psalm 89:27, where David is called 'firstborn' although he was actually the youngest son.This message has been edited by Magisterium Devolver, 04-19-2005 02:09 PM

Crap, we broke Mike again. Someone get a screwdriver.

Okay.......I got that one. I admitt, I laughed, you got my inner-goon. ...*wiz* *pop* *smokes* Do you think I'm some kind of computerized refutation matrix?That's probably your best one-liner yet IMHO.

*tips hat*

Hi Faith,This thread is accumulating messages so fast I'm going to reply to a number of your posts in a single message.From Message 46: Objective evidence is what anyone can see, hear, touch, taste or smell.From Message 47: And from Message 51: No one is accusing you of making up the Christian God. But which is more arrogant? Promoting a God of your own making? That's just chutzpah. But believing you couldn't be wrong, now that's arrogance.From Message 48: But I don't think evolution is the truth, and I said precisely that in the paragraph following what you just responded to. Come on, Faith, get a grip. At least read the whole message before putting your fingers in gear. Just to save you the trouble of clicking on links, here's what I said in Message 30: From Message 53: If by "physical evidence" you mean things that are apparent to the five senses, then you have no meaningful evidence. If you're aware of something but you can't make other people aware of it, then it is useless as evidence and cannot be considered evidence.From Message 58: Pateince, my child. Once you see the light of science these qualities will be yours in abundance.From Message 73: There is no evidence that God is the author of the Bible, and much evidence that men wrote it. There is no evidence for any of the stories you mention, or even of Jews in ancient Egypt.Getting back to the main topic, so far we have God is omniscient and omnipotent, and God is love. Do these definitions really seem adequate to the Christians here?--Percy

But it won't be her that's believing she can't be wrong. She's believing the bible isn't wrong. That's arrogance! Because everything is evidence of God, which the bible said - well before science.Your problem is that you think science "owns" evidence and "owns" the universe. You have it wrong my friend God got to both first. Actually, there is mention of the Jews in Egypt. I think they found a place of Rameses aswell.But as the link says, what they've found OF Egypt is remnants. see linkHey, I'm off topic but it seems all your side wants to do is refute our God, so fair game. But it's Christians who wrote these definitions in the NT. Didn't you read 1 John 4?This message has been edited by AdminPhat, 04-21-2005 01:38 AM

That's a nice statement of your beliefs, but how are you going to support it without evidence or effective argument? If you're going to persuade anyone, at some point you're going to have to get practical. "Everything is evidence of God" is a meaningless statement. "How do I know there's a God?" asks the atheist. "Well, just look at this here pen," says the evangelist. "God made this here pen, there's your evidence!" Unable to conjure any evidence for your God, you're reduced to non sequiturs like "The evidence for God is all around us" and "God is everywhere and everything" and so forth. You'd think something that really exists would be a bit more apparent.Try to answer this question: How would the world be different if God didn't exist, and explain why in concrete terms.About evidence of Jews in ancient Egypt, I know you'd like to believe such evidence exists, and I know there are many sites around the Internet claiming that such evidence does exist, but it doesn't exist in any form sufficient to convince historians. The Brooklyn Papyrus mentioned by your link is described on the Internet in some places as a list of snake bite remedies and other places as a list of household slaves with semitic names. Given the consistency with which historians cite the lack of evidence for Jews in ancient Egypt, the possibility that it is a list of semitic saves seems unlikely.--Percy

That's nice and all. Are you saying that the above is your opinion or are you saying that it is fact?If you are saying it is only your opinion, fine. Believe what you want.If you are saying it is fact, pony up with some proof.

It's not meaningless to descibe something as being love. Love has a wide variety of meanings and definitions -- it's just that love has so many meanings that further questions need to be asked to refine the concept more.When I speak of love, I'm speaking of a divine love that is willing to sacrifice itself in order that others may live. But I'm not offended if that's what the word love evokes for you in a physical sense. I think she's quite beautiful myself.But the point is: If one continues to request a simple definition of God without reference to people, then others may be confused when the one who requests these simple definitions always by default takes their defintion and proceeds to compare it to actual or fictional people. In addition to this, I would never devalue anyone faith's system. If, for example, you actually did worship Eliza Dushku as some form of divinity just like I worshipped Jesus as God, I wouldn't necessarilly say you were outright wrong. Instead, I'd try to find some common ground for which to engage a dialogue to contrast your beliefs with my beliefs in order to see what we had in common.Even the example of the Shadow King from the X-men wouldn't necessarilly be a bad place to start on a purely philosophical level. St. Paul certainly didn't seem to mind starting from a vaque perception of God when dialoging with others.For example, when he came across a certain inscription in Athens, he stated the follwoing as recorded in Acts: I could certainly see that if you are looking for a solidly material reason for his death. But we have at least establshed two different possibilities to proceed forward into inquiry. Well...I suppose when one looks on the most rational and logical physical level, when one talks about a spirit they are usually refering to a mood or inspiration or even mentality that one operate in.For example, some would see this as the general atmosphere of a place or situation and the effect that it has on people; "the feel of the city excited him"; "a clergyman improved the tone of the meeting"; "it had the smell of treason"Others might see it as a fundamental emotional and activating principle determining one's character.Still others might state that a spirit is an emotional state: the state of a person's emotions (especially with regard to pleasure or dejection); "his emotional state depended on her opinion"; "he was in good spirits"; "his spirit rose". No problem. Coming back to the initial discussion: Yes. But you were the one who asked the question.If I were lost in a city and stopped to ask someone for directions, they might reply, "You need to go that way." or "You need to go North."If I were then to reply with something like, "Great! Now I can find my way to Santa Clause's home and visit his reindeer!" -- then I would probably be deserving their anger.Their anger would be even more deserved if they were in the process of refining these directions more clearly so that I could understand their inital "simple" statement more clearly.They would probably even conclude that they were not really interested in finding any directions in the first place and that they were not really lost at all -- or that they enjoyed being lost and bugging others for directions that they never intended on listening to in the first place.Kind of like a prank phone-call from the Jerky Boys.This message has been edited by Magisterium Devolver, 04-19-2005 05:36 PMThis message has been edited by Magisterium Devolver, 04-19-2005 06:04 PMThis message has been edited by Magisterium Devolver, 04-19-2005 06:06 PM

No. It's what the bible says before science. Not a non sequitur. Your authority is science. My authority is God, the bible God - who has been known of since 4000 odd bc. The bible says that the nature of the Godhead is revealed in the creation. Like it or not, from my perspective, all your logic and science will not remove evidence of God which is apparent in creation. You can define "evidence" on your own terms, but that's just a forced conclusion, from a naturalistic methodo perspective. It would be different because it wouldn't exist.This was my argument from "an argument from design" - that the chance naturalism stance is circular, even by your beloeved logic.For chance to happen - you need a place for it to happen in. Thus you always will = no explanation.The first cause is God because chance doesn't produce anything without a place first. So it's not chance -> place. It's Place [necessity for] -> chance -> occurences. Percy, I know for a fact the Hebrews are mentioned by Egyptian artefact and that they have found the lost city. It was even on discovery channel. Your side just simply ignore evidence when it suits you.I mean, do you want me to believe that you would accept any biblical happenings as true? Pa-lease.