A question for Christians: what IS God?

[Dionysus]

... and by this, I don't want your typical platitudes.

I require, in specifics, exactly what God is. I find the phrase 'God is Love', for instance, to be highly suspect: it refers to an unstable, nebulous inner passion as if it were a Platonic Form. So instead I'd like something a bit more concrete - what is the ontological nature of God? Is it a being or Being? Does it live as we do? Is it sentient in any intelligible sense? Is it static or permeable? What, if any, is its purpose? And, most importantly, what does it feel like to the believer, who supposes himself to have direct contact with it through the mediation of the Holy Spirit?

Please, no romantic semantics (lulz, rhyme). 'God is Love', 'God is Triune', and so forth will not do. In short, I want a daseinalysis of God. What is its Being?

[Fallibleone]

Don't be too hard on him. At least he managed to post a reply on this thread. Don't forget Hope for the Hopeless, Biker.

[Flail]

God is whatever you have been indoctrinated to believe or have chosen to believe or not to believe. God can't be proven or disproven. It is a name we have given to our source, whatever that may be.

The danger lies with drawing lines in the sand and placing ourselves and God on one side and everyone of differing indoctrinations on the other, supported only by ethnicity,inculturation,holy books and rituals. In such nonsense, we give rise to the evil of self righteousness and judgment. Religion is the absolute worst invention in the history of man kind. Such superstitions will be with us as long as we allow ourselves to be indoctrinated and led around by the nose.

[Biker]

... and by this, I don't want your typical platitudes.

I require, in specifics, exactly what God is. I find the phrase 'God is Love', for instance, to be highly suspect: it refers to an unstable, nebulous inner passion as if it were a Platonic Form. So instead I'd like something a bit more concrete - what is the ontological nature of God? Is it a being or Being? Does it live as we do? Is it sentient in any intelligible sense? Is it static or permeable? What, if any, is its purpose? And, most importantly, what does it feel like to the believer, who supposes himself to have direct contact with it through the mediation of the Holy Spirit?

Please, no romantic semantics (lulz, rhyme). 'God is Love', 'God is Triune', and so forth will not do. In short, I want a daseinalysis of God. What is its Being?

I require in specifics, exactly what God is.

The than which no greater can be thought.

Biker

Post 15 again which got largely ignored.

Biker

[JoelWildtree]

The than which no greater can be thought.

Biker

Care to expand on this thought a bit? It interests me because I think it's a completely useless concept and not much more than a play on words. Define for me what the greatest thing that can be thought is, and then I'll think of something even greater and prove your God a fake.

[earl]

Joelwildtree,Hello.
I am interested in your statement that you say ,"Ill think of something greater and prove your God a fake".
Would you care to proceed ?
Thanks,

[JoelWildtree]

Joelwildtree,Hello.
I am interested in your statement that you say ,"Ill think of something greater and prove your God a fake".
Would you care to proceed ?
Thanks,

Actually, I issued the challenge. I asked for Biker to think of the greatest thing he can, and explain in detail what that greatest thing is, and why it is so great. Otherwise he hasn't defined what God is, just made a meaningless statement.

[earl]

JoelWilder,hello again.
I have read your reply.
Is your statement true in that you can think of something greater and prove God a fake?
Is your statement a meaningless statement ?
Thanks for the reply.

[LittlePig]

The than which no greater can be thought.

Biker

Care to expand on this thought a bit? It interests me because I think it's a completely useless concept and not much more than a play on words. Define for me what the greatest thing that can be thought is, and then I'll think of something even greater and prove your God a fake.

Biker doesn't have a definition of God. Earlier in the thread I asked him to be a bit more specific on his 'greatest than,' but he told me the request was 'off topic' which seemed an incredibly odd thing to say in a thread about "what IS God." That seems the norm for Biker's insightful comments.

[Biker]

Biker

Of course this is a theory with no empirical.

Actually, it is empirical. It's just not conclusive, yet.

McCulloch

A common but mistaken idea that many people have about the Big Bang is that it is the idea that the universe expanded from a very small compact bit into the space that existed around it. But the theory is quite different. Space and time are equivalent. Spacetime itself has been expanding from nothing since the Big Bang. There was no before the Big Bang, because that is when time started.

You should check out this article:
"Cosmic forgetfulness" shrouds time before the Big Bang (http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/30416)

Actually it is empirical. It's just not conclusive, yet.

What?
I'll tell you what, when it is conclusive, get back to me.

There was no before the Big Bang

In what sense? In your present atheist view of existence which is just space-time?
Your bias is showing, and your so far unsupported.
May I be so bold to suggest to you that it is possible of a being's existence not defined nor constrained by just space-time, but in fact outside of space-time.

Here are some purposeful bias that are particularly troubling to me.

"Down with the Big Bang."

A few years ago well known science writer Maddox published this article in Nature.
This is queer language for a scientist. The Big Bang happened. Maddox wishes it hadn't. Maddox is not the only one. "Down With the Big Bang," Nature 340 (1989), 425.

Many scientists were extremely upset by the concept of the Big Bang. Robert Jastrow in his book God and the Astronomers lists some examples. God and the Astronomers (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 104-5.

About the Big Bang

"preposterous...incredible...repugnant."

"Repugnant?" Eddington confessed his desire to find "a genuine loophole" so to "allow evolution an infinite time to get started." I guess one reason for resisting the Big Bang is to make room for the theory of evolution? So the secular/humanism rumor mill (school system) can crank up and make the necessary converts.

of MIT said, "I find it hard to accept the big bang theory. I would like to reject it."

Nice "scientific" attitude?

of Carnegie Laboratories said the idea was "such a strange conclusion" that "it cannot really be true."

Wishful thinking?

Hawking explains why many scientists were attracted to the steady state theory of the origin of the universe:

"There were therefore a number of attempts to avoid the conclusion that there had been a big bang.... Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention."

A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1996), 49.

Some cosmologists endorse theories because they "nicely avoid the problem of Genesis."

The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe ( New York: Basic Books, 1993), 154.

if the universe started at a point in time, this "leaves the door open for a return of religion."
This has Smolin appalled.
"Most all of our scientific understanding of the world really came down to a mythological story in which nothing exists...save some disembodied intelligence, who, desiring to start a world, chooses the initial conditions and then wills matter into being?"
Smolin goes on,
"It seems to me that the theory is to be criticized as being unlikely on these grounds."

The Life of the Cosmos (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997),183,264.

Hmmm, we seem to have scientists not acting like scientists.
Why would it be necessary to object to findings in modern physics in order to "give evolution time to get going"?
Why avoid the "problem of Genesis"?
Why avoid any theory that suggests a divine hand in the universe?
If scientific evidence leads in the direction of a creator, why not go?

Erwin a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution, gives part of the answer

One of the rules of science is, no miracles allowed," he told the New York Times.
"Thats a fundamental presumption of what we do."

"Presumptive rules" atheist presumptive rules.

"The supernatural" he writes, "is automatically off-limits as an explanation of the natural world."

Why are miracles and the supernatural ruled out of bounds at the outset and not even allowed consideration? Why?
What is science afraid of?
Is science afraid of finding God?

Sagans boast is typical:

"At the heart of science is ....an openess to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive."

The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), 304.
I guess as long as its bizarre in defence of atheism, but not evidence that leads to Gods existence, keeping in mind that presuppositional bias, and atheism dogma.

Biker

[LittlePig]

Biker, you said in reference to the Big Bang ....

Of course this is a theory with no empirical.
So your statement is actually a faith statement.
Here is my version: "God said light be, and light was."

so I said....

Actually, it is empirical. It's just not conclusive, yet.

to which you replied...

What?
I'll tell you what, when it is conclusive, get back to me.

So let me explain. The Big Bang theory is supported by physical, empirical evidence. But it has not been proven. Another theory could come along and better explain the same physical evidence. Therefore it is not conclusive.

Your claim about 'Let there be light' would only qualify as a theory in the loosest sense of the word (speculation).

See my post in 'A question for Christians: what IS God?' for the rest of your repeated non-sense.