what is a god?

Ooberman · Post by **Ooberman** » Wed Oct 07, 2009 1:20 pm

I wrote this about Satan and realized it was a larger topic:

Me too, for both.

I agree that joey has it right about what Satan represents, and that Xians were often taught that (and Satan is the personification of joey's list).

Xianity is much like the culture it came from: It took the personification of Gods from the Greeks, and the legal/social aspects from the Jews, and the personal relationship from the mystery religions.

It seems obvious that Satan is no more than a god - in the purely rational sense (the embodiment and anthropomorphization of abstract concepts)

Gods are ways we make sense of concepts. For example, we can make (partial) sense of the formation of the Universe if we treat it as a Creation. We look for a narrative and we can create narratives better with characters.

It is why much of our scientific language is imbued with allusions to things acting with a purpose (especially in the theory of evolution).

This is why it is so hard, IMO, for theists (and myself when I was a theist) to look at the cause of the universe as a cold, unthinking event. We want a narrative and when we tell the story, we try to make it more interesting by adding drama. "The early hot, dense phase is itself referred to as "the Big Bang",[notes 2] and is considered the "birth" of our Universe.")

From wiki: notice they use "birth". Obviously i could find more poetic descriptions, but I wanted to find a dry description of the BB and show that the anthropomorphization was still an important part of telling the story.

So, we use Gods to insert into the story a bunch of unknowns, except we get to talk about them as known because we make our gods similar to us: they must have had a reason to do what they did, but like a dog can't understand why we write a check for a charity, we can't understand why "god" does what "he" does.

So, when a Creationist says "God is the Creator of the Universe", what he is really saying is, "I don't know what happened or how, but in my narrative, I make it a Being who did it out of Love and Loneliness. It's a gap-filler, but it will always work because I only need to personify the unknown parts."

I know this could be fleshed out better, but any comments?

triks · Post by **triks** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 1:40 am

God doesn't hate you. God will always be there for you, you just have to believe in him he'll come through for you.

Miles · Post by **Miles** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 2:06 am

Ooberman wrote:It is why much of our scientific language is imbued with allusions to things acting with a purpose (especially in the theory of evolution).

I'm curious as to what you have in mind here. Just what in the theory of evolution do you see as allusions to things acting with a purpose?

So, when a Creationist says "God is the Creator of the Universe", what he is really saying is, "I don't know what happened or how, but in my narrative, I make it a Being who did it out of Love and Loneliness. It's a gap-filler, but it will always work because I only need to personify the unknown parts."

I disagree. I think just about every creationist truly believes the claim, "God is the Creator of the Universe" is a fact, and in no sense whatsoever is any kind of "gap-filler" or self-deceit, conscious or otherwise.

Coyotero · Post by **Coyotero** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 3:36 am

I think most theists are looking to hard for the wrong thing. Gods will find you if and when you need to be found. So many murmur prayers in the dark, expecting some cosmic creator-deity can hear them. You can speak to someone all you want, but if you don't have their attention, how do you expect to be heard?

People think of Gods as superpowered beings that know and see all, I suppose it's a comforting thought for some.

Post by **otseng** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 6:33 am

triks wrote:God doesn't hate you. God will always be there for you, you just have to believe in him he'll come through for you.

Moderator comment:

This is not relevant to the discussions and would be considered a spam comment.

Jayhawker Soule · Post by **Jayhawker Soule** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 9:17 am

It's an error (and an embarrassingly fundamental one) to conflate "what is god" with "whence our god concept."

Sir Rhetor · Post by **Sir Rhetor** » Sun Jan 03, 2010 10:39 pm

I also think that in Christianity, Satan is a God. So now Christianity has five gods: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Virgin Mary, and Satan. Here I have just defined god as any entity which you can pray to and your prayer to be answered by that entity. I am an atheist because I do not expect anything supernatural to happen when one prays.

Coyotero · Post by **Coyotero** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 1:09 am

Sir Rhetor wrote:I also think that in Christianity, Satan is a God. So now Christianity has five gods: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Virgin Mary, and Satan. Here I have just defined god as any entity which you can pray to and your prayer to be answered by that entity. I am an atheist because I do not expect anything supernatural to happen when one prays.

Let's not forget the huge number of saints and angels as well.

Ooberman · Post by **Ooberman** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:34 pm

Sir Rhetor wrote:I also think that in Christianity, Satan is a God. So now Christianity has five gods: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Virgin Mary, and Satan. Here I have just defined god as any entity which you can pray to and your prayer to be answered by that entity. I am an atheist because I do not expect anything supernatural to happen when one prays.

But those are personifications of aspects of Nature, too.
Mary is the fertility Goddess, Satan is the god of chaos, etc.

To me, God - whether a theist wants to admit it or not - is just the personification; the anthropomorphizing of different aspects of the Universe.

It is not much different than the Greeks and Romans did with their Gods, the Xians just made Super Gods - fewer gods with more attributes.

So instead of claiming one God is in charge of the ocean, and another in charge of Love, they claim it is one God and then try to explain the personal emotions and motiviations such a being would have in acting as it, allegedly, does.