To Believers: God is supernatural by definition (tradition)

[ndf8th]

Are God supernatural by definition of the religious traditions?

I've looked it up in Dictionaries and even looked at atheist texts
and it looks like God is supernatural by definition. That is my best take on it.

So if you know that me get it all wrong
then please help me understand what
is the better way to explain how God is supernatural?

Here is the background. 2013 I live in Sweden and I saw this TV series
"What is religion?" by Erik Sandstrom.

I saw this TV series in Swedish so it would be beyond me
to translate to English. I barely can express myself in English
and to translate somebody else feels very demanding.
I don't want him to get mistranslated and misunderstood.

So the following is my understanding of what he says
and not word for word his own thought so hope you can read
the text with that in mind.

Erik Sandstrom works for Swedish Television but is a freelancer most likely.

He traveled the world in one year and made numerous interviews
and then put together a TVseries about "What is religion" and
from the first episode I try to retell his conclusion from that
one year journey he did.

Background. He was and still is atheist
but he says that he had to rethink his view
on religion. "Religion works every time"

That surprised him and he try to understand why it works.

He says "religion works when the believer put their doubt aside
and decide that what the religion teach is true to them. And that
this is so for all religions. The important thing is that the believer
decide on that it is true and then act on that faith in their religion
then it works for them. Every time. "

Not word for word but my best take on what he really said.

I am a former atheist myself and I am not a theist and not agnostic
I am somewhere in between or past the dichotomy of theism/atheism.

I find his words to be very true. All my experience support his take on it.

Here is my own words trying to summarize this view.
the following words is me trying to get how it works
for a true believer in God. I express my understanding

I don't believe it like that but I think it is how it works if one believe?

As a believer in God I am committed to
the hard to fake counter intuitive faith
that God is supernatural by definition of
religious traditions and as an act of faith
I will cooperate with like minded friends
for to spread that interpretation as the truth.

What I like to ask as many believers as possible.

Can you agree with this part?
"God is supernatural by definition of religious traditions"

Maybe the grammar or logic is false? Can you help me
to get it right?

Now I did try to find out if it is like I say. I did a lot of reading
of what supernatural is supposed to be on atheist sites.

Richard Carrier wrote a whole book about his take on it
and Austin Klein on atheism.about.com also try to explain
and I looked at dictionaries too.

so now I ask you as a true believer in God. Can you agree?

In what other way can God be supernatural
than by faith and definition alone?

An important reason I ask is that I do want to find myself
a decent religion to believe in and to find words for what it is
that one commit to and thus I want to get your view and experience.

[ndf8th]

I don't know how to handle what I see as your huge derail
of the theme of the thread. I address it to "Questions for a Group"

The group I ask for to respond is average believer and
not mystics that have their own very individual non-standard view.

What you share is your personal understanding
while I ask for the common understanding by
the average believer in God. You have to understand
how the average believer relates to God not how you do it.

I think it is obvious from your posts that
you are not a common average believer in God.

That God are supernatural and immaterial is
as far as I know the traditional view on God.

Mysticism is practiced by a tiny minority of believers.

I went to Church each Sunday for some 3.5 years
and not a single person was into the mysticism that
you refer to here. So that is for another thread.

This thread is for to find out what is the most common
views of average believers that are not into deep thinking
like you are.

I urge you to start your own threads.

[ndf8th]

What I try to do is to understand the average believers
faith in God. What can one say as an average believer
about God. Words that are true to the experience of that
average believer.

Here is my latest try to find words for such a faith.

We feels God's love in our heart.

God's existence is beyond our understanding.
We know from personal experience
that nothing we say can explain God.

God can only be known through our heart.

We want to share our love for God by working
together with other like minded believers in God.

[Divine Insight]

The group I ask for to respond is average believer and
not mystics that have their own very individual non-standard view.

What you share is your personal understanding
while I ask for the common understanding by
the average believer in God. You have to understand
how the average believer relates to God not how you do it.

I think it is obvious from your posts that
you are not a common average believer in God.

My views of God aren't really all that different now from when I was a Christian. At least in terms of what a "Supernatural being" must be.

Everything I'm telling you now necessarily applies to the Christian God.

That God are supernatural and immaterial is
as far as I know the traditional view on God.

That's actually a quite naive view. But you're right about the fact that the masses probably don't think about this very deeply.

Even a supernatural being must possess some "properties" if you're going to claim that it "exists" at all.

The God of Christianity certainly exhibits properties. He clearly has wants and desires at least in terms of what he expect from mankind. He also is quite moody because the thing a Christian ultimately needs to be "saved" from is his horrible wrath. Let's not forget that a "Good Christian Man" is a "God Fearing Man".

And besides, the Gospels of Christianity clearly show that this God lives in a physical world. His heaven is necessarily physical.

Why do I say this?

Well, just look at the story of Jesus. What happened after he died? Did he come back as a ghost? No. Supposedly he rose from the dead complete with his physical body. In fact, his physical body even retained his wounds, because the doubting Thomas refuses to be convince that this was really Jesus unless he could poke his finger into Jesus' wounds.

Also, how did Jesus finally go to heaven? Did his resurrected physical body finally die and his non-material spirit just slip away into the non-physical spiritual world?

No, according to the Bible Jesus ascended to heaven taking his physical body with him. So evidently the Christian heaven must be a physical place where a person needs to retain their physical body. Otherwise why would Jesus be dragging this crucified body up to heaven with him?

So the story of Jesus pretty much demands that the spiritual world must be physical and required that you take your physical body with you when you go there.

Also, Jesus wasn't the only one to resurrect from the grave. According to Matthew a multitude of saints were physically jostled from their graves due to a quaking earth that selectively only opened the graves of saints. The saints climbed out of these selectively opened graves and went into the Holy City to show themselves to the people there. We don't know what ultimately happened to these saints, but if Jesus ascended to heaven taking his physical body with him, it's a safe bet to presume that these saints ultimately did the same thing.

So why should Christians even think that the spiritual world should be non-physical? And if it is non-physical then why was Jesus dragging his physically crucified body up to heaven with him? Why didn't he just leave it here to turn back to dust again?

Mysticism is practiced by a tiny minority of believers.

Christianity is a mysticism actually. Mysticism simply means "Mystery", or the unexplained. Clearly Christianity has no explanation for God. In Christianity God is a mystery. Therefore Christianity itself is a mystical religion. It just also happens to be firmly attached to the Hebrew mythological stories. So Christianity is a combination of mysticism and a very specific Dogma, not at all unlike Greek Mythology was.

I went to Church each Sunday for some 3.5 years
and not a single person was into the mysticism that
you refer to here. So that is for another thread.

All Christians believe in mysticism whether they realize it or not. They just believe in mysticism coupled to a very specific folklore from a very specific ancient society, namely the ancient Hebrews.

This thread is for to find out what is the most common
views of average believers that are not into deep thinking
like you are.

I seriously question that such a thing exists. I think everyone imagine "God" to be something different. There is no single orthodox view of how a person must imagine God to be.

In fact, if such an rigid orthodox view existed shouldn't you just be able to look it up? Shouldn't it be written down somewhere?

Can you find in the Bible where it defines the nature of God?

And if you find a place in the Bible where it states that God is pure non-physical spirit, then how do you explain that Jesus needed to drag his crucified body off to heaven with him?

If heaven is a purely spiritual non-physical place wouldn't that automatically mean that the rumors about Jesus must necessarily be false because Jesus clearly took his physical body with him when he ascended to heaven.

I urge you to start your own threads.

I disagree with you that I'm not on topic.

You're the one who is claiming what "average believers" supposedly believe.

I was a Christian at one time in my life, and even back then I would argue that God must possess properties. And thus it makes no sense to say that God has no material existence at all. I would also point out as I did above that Jesus resurrected physically and took his physical body with him to heaven thus proving beyond a shadow of a doubt in Christianity that you will need your physical body when you go to heaven.

Therefore heaven must be a physical place.

At least if you believe in Christianity.

As a Christian (when I was a Christian) I expected that I when I did I would go to heaven and have the same body I have now and meet my friend and family there who would also have their same bodies.

I confess that this was an extremely naive view, but it's how I imagined heaven to be when I was a Christian. And as far as I'm aware, that's how most Christians imagine heaven to be like. It's a place where you will meet your loved ones and be able to recognize them. I'm pretty sure that's precisely how the average Christian thinks.

If you went to a completely non-physical world you'd have no existence at all. For if you had no structure what would define you?

There would be nothing to see, touch, smell, hear, or taste in a totally non-physical world. How would you even know that you were there?

Without physicality there can be nothing to experience.

In fact, what would it even meant to be "resurrected" unless you are indeed "resurrected" into a physical form once again.

That's supposedly what God does. He "resurrects" you back into a physical form again after you have died.

That's what the "resurrection" of Jesus was all about.

That's why the saints had to be jostled from their graves and also physically "resurrected".

The whole Christian religion is all about being "resurrected" after you die.

And that requires physicality.

So "supernatural" does not require God to be non-physical.