I find the question "What is God?" to be a little specious. I am an atheist, and I do think one of Ayn Rand's only redeeming qualities was her idea that anyone who held anything else in higher esteem than one's own possibilities is a mouth-breather. According, at least to the Muslim/Jewish/Christian hierarchy of faith, expecting anyone living on this planet to answer the question of "What is God?" is analogous to asking a laboratory mouse "What are humans like?" That is, the mice are responsible to humans for their lives but humans did not give birth to them, and the humans interfere in their lives only rarely but these interferences are highly significant to the mouse (taken away from parents, stressful injections, death by CO2 - at least in the case of my research). Similarly, we are supposedly responsible to God for our lives, and God's (supposedly) known interferences have been rare but significant. Anything that dwells beyond our 'cages' (universe), we really cannot be expected to know.
And, BTW, the mice might actually call us Gods under these specific circumstances. We provide food, life, water, shelter but also cause pain and death. Just we supposedly have no idea of God's intention, the mice presumably have no idea of their Gods' intentions (does isolation of vascular endothelial cadherin-expressing cells from splenic pulp - something I did today - mean anything to the mouse from which I got the splenic pulp?).
Edit - Sorry about all the mouse stuff. I've been feeling a little guilty about my job lately.
This message has been edited by zyncod, 06-09-2005 02:29 AM
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