Is God great?

[marco]

WE often hear, usually after an atrocity, how great God is. People sing:


O LORD my God! When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works Thy hand hath made;
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
Thy pow'r throughout the universe displayed:


Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art! How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art! How great Thou art!


The tune is powerful but the words breathe superstition and silliness. This is an example of taking random bits and attributing their creation to some gigantic being. The invention is then adored and heartily sung about.

In what ways do we detect the greatness of God?
In what ways do we see God is NOT great?
Can we deduce anything about God being merciful, kind or loving?

[SallyF]

I remember singing this in church and hearing George Beverly Shea belt it out.
You're right Marco, of course it's superstition and silliness. The whole God thing is just superstition and silliness from primitive people who didn't know any better. I've never detected God at all: greatness or no greatness.

[marco]

[Replying to post 1 by marco]

There are many ways of making God great. We could build a colossal statue to him, like the one made for Zeus. The physical bigness of the monument attests the bigness of God.


Or we could shout five times a day: "You're great!"

Or when we lose a dear friend or relative we can lift our hymn book and thank God for giving us grief and pain and loss, and chant how great he is.


If God is indeed the author of planet Mercury, and brilliant Venus and naughty old Earth we can take these as his divine signature. "I did this: watch out! "


In the end greatness rises out of our ignorance and our superstitions. We can see no way to explain things other than that a vast being laboured lovingly to give us stars and moonshine and the sun's warmth. Then when our souls consider earthquakes and tectonic faults and space debris we may deduce the Giant didn't finish the job properly, so should he be paid in praise for what he did? Do we praise him in case he hurts us?

[marco]

I remember singing this in church and hearing George Beverly Shea belt it out.
You're right Marco, of course it's superstition and silliness. The whole God thing is just superstition and silliness from primitive people who didn't know any better. I've never detected God at all: greatness or no greatness.

That is my observation too but at the same time it is nice that humans compose such canticles and sing them so earnestly. But I suppose when one considers they also earnestly sing about holly and ivy or their Favourite Things, t's all about believing what makes you feel happy. God is the god Voltaire said we must invent. He's needed, though he does nothing. He is the vast bin into which we throw our prayers, our requests and much of our grief.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by marco]



The song is very beautiful and I remember my own mother singing this song with tears in her eyes,; the words bought her strength aand comfort so I would say that far from being "silly" I find the hymn inspiring.




IS GOD GREAT?

O Yes, I know He is!

"Jehovah is great and most worthy of praise; His greatness is unsearchable." - Psalms 145:3, 4

"When I see your heavens, the works of your fingers, The moon and the stars that you have prepared, What is mortal man that you keep him in mind, And a son of man that you take care of him?" - Psalms 8:3, 4

JW

[marco]

[Replying to post 1 by marco]



The song is very beautiful and I remember my own mother singing this song with tears in her eyes,; the words bought her strength aand comfort so I would say that far from being "silly" I find the hymn inspiring.

Music has the power to move people, JW. There is no doubting that. The charged atmosphere of a funeral and the solemnity of the song strike deeply into human grief. I was making a comment on the lyrics: "then sings my soul, my Saviour God to thee: How great Thou art!" But they seem to be a translation of a translation of a translation.


From Deuteronomy we learn: "There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky. " Man maketh and man taketh away; we invent the Titan who made all things and we reduce him to an athlete jogging among the clouds. If this is greatness, so be it.

[William]

[Replying to post 1 by marco]

This is an example of taking random bits and attributing their creation to some gigantic being. The invention is then adored and heartily sung about.

This is the general impression one can get from religious folk who adore their ideas of GOD and sing about it together.

It is understandable in the context of their beliefs as an outward 'pouring' of emotional release of adoration, which is also evidence in many of the structure built for that purpose.

I myself believe in a gigantic being as "GOD", only in more practical terms than the idea of a huge being of human form sitting upon a throne directing souls hither and tither.

In that, I myself have written songs of adoration for this being. It is a natural enough response of a poet and musician, to the idea.

Q: In what ways do we detect the greatness of God?

In the circumstance we find ourselves sharing. Within the creation itself. The Universe, and more specifically, the Earth.

Q: In what ways do we see God is NOT great?

Speaking for myself, I do not see that GOD is not great. I see that America is not great, but GOD is great.

Q: Can we deduce anything about God being merciful, kind or loving?

Can we accept our circumstance without deducing a merciless, unkind and unloving GOD? Some who believe in 'the problem of evil', apparently think 'no'.

[ttruscott]

In what ways do we detect the greatness of God?

It is written that we all clearly saw the greatness of GOD, ie, HIS power and divinity, Rom 1:20, when we saw the creation of the physical universe at which every person created in HIS image, good and evil, sang HIS praises, Job 38:7.

If you recognize something as so cool that you SING it praise, is that not an ordinary sign it was great? ! But then what happened? The memory of seeing HIS greatness had no appreciable effect upon sinners who saw it since they repressed these memories from their consciousness because they loved sin more than the truth, one of the more terrible natural effects of becoming addicted to evil.

So if people do not see the natural expression of GOD's greatness in this creation then what is left? How are Christians supposed to heal their memories?

[marco]

It is written that we all clearly saw the greatness of GOD,

Yes, Paul has mistakenly written this in his 1st century reflections. Cicero wrote some influential stuff on the nature of the gods, much praised by Voltaire. I think more of Cicero than Paul. But I don't consider Jupiter as actually great - a great invention maybe, just as Yahweh was a poor invention.

If you recognize something as so cool that you SING it praise, is that not an ordinary sign it was great

No it means somebody thinks it is great. Songs have been written about pop stars and film stars by people who think they are great. In Cicero's treatise thunder was mentioned as evidence of the gods. I wonder in what way an earthquake indicates God's greatness.

[ytrewq]

[Replying to post 1 by marco]

Is God great?

One can answer this question in two ways.

The Christian answer is in respect of unevidenced claims made of God. The claims made are indeed very great indeed, from making the world and the stars and the universe, to creating life and being in control of everything from natural disasters to when my cat Tommy died, to knowing what every one of us is thinking. Oh yes, the claims are grand and great indeed, almost beyond comprehension.

But that's not what the OP asked. The OP asked whether God is great, not whether we (and only some of us at that) believe he is great. That is a different question entirely, and must be answered on the basis of what God can be shown to have actually done, based on actual evidence. Alas, evidence speaks louder than words, and I am not aware of a single event that can definitively be traced to a God. Not even one, which is hardly surprising, given that science would be set on fire if even one event or bending of the natural Laws could be definitively shown to be the work of a God.

So on the available evidence, God is impotent to the point that it would literally make no difference whether he/she existed or not. A demonstrated potency and greatness of precisely zero. And that's a fact.

The demonstrable "greatness" of an average human being is vastly more. The average human can actually do things, and do them on request from others. Ask me to move that 10 kg rock over there and, unlike if a request is made to a God, I will actually do it. You, and I are all vastly (arguably infinitely) more demonstrably great and powerful than any God.

Question answered.