Reader Challenge, "Who is God?"

Based on your first four sentences I have to say that one difference we have ;-) is that I am more of the notion that God is the one who is creator. :-)

Yes humans (even animals) "create" preferred circumstances for our living situations, and at least with humans, it can involve abstractions that are complex, causing behavior to be modified.

I had hoped to stimulate you to address the question "Who is God?" in your list of basic beliefs. For instance, if I were to believe that God is that shared, most human, part of ourselves to which we appeal through prayer for assistance and moral centering, then all or almost all of your basic beliefs could still fit. Do you wish to be inclusive of such understandings of God in your beliefs?

To an extent. I will agree that God can be shared. :-) I agree that we can appeal to God through prayer for help. However, I will say that not everyone asks for moral centering or actually ;listens" to how God answers the prayer. I think lots of people have immediate requests of an emergency nature.

However, this can't stop anyone from praying to God that everyone receives assistance from God's great invisible hand. :-) So even if they don't ask for it, they can be the recipient of it. I think most people refer to that as Grace.

I can see your point, and find it humorously ironic, that "God exists" to you, not because you believe God exists, but because so many other people seem to be expressing their faith in ways you sense, i.e. Christmas carols, crosses on jewelry, places of worship, advertisements, and other ways, "constitutional" or not.

Otherwise, you may be relying on readers' preconceptions of God as frameworks for interpreting your beliefs.

I have to laugh! Pray tell, how do you get around this in your daily, secular life? :-)

I'm guessing you see my point, that I think everyone brings pre-conceived notions to the table. I am not trying to say everyone is a know-it-all, jumps to conclusions, and pre-conceives the outcome of every possible situation, but that knowing others come with their own beliefs is not something to be ignored.

To get back to your original question, and subsequent clarification, I think God is "too big" to give an accurate impression with a modern day "sound bite". Actually I will contradict myself a tiny bit, for a laugh, because I am now thinking of the song called "God is Big", which is one accurate way of describing God, but also, I think, God can know the exact description of what is happening, and why, at the atomic, sub atomic, sub sub atomic, sub sub sub atomic, etc... levels. So God can also know small.

Since this is a web site for this kind of analysis I am delving in. And since I am confident of your intellectual curiosity and honesty I write this much.

However, generally, if someone (a stranger) came up to me and started telling me God didn't exist and was just a collective figment of folks' imaginations, I would wonder what that person's real motive was and I would just say, "Ok", not saying anything else, and wait for the person to get to the real point.

I would not feel the need to convince the person otherwise unless that person somehow convinced me of his/her sincerity. If that person is looking to pick a fight, I'd rather just ignore it.

I am not the "convert or I will kill you" type. People accept or don't accept God as real, on their own time table, not mine. It's even implied by Yeshua/Jesus that it's really God who "enables" a person to believe, not other humans. [John 6:65]

Ok, I just thought of something funny. You know how people say, "God is love." How about, "God is like" then leave that as the end. It's a pun on the word "love", but also is used (I forget the English jargon) as an "in between" word to describe what the object is similar to. Ok, maybe not that funny. :-)

So even though I am writing a lot here, maybe too much for your taste :-) I am interested in keeping my list of beliefs about God as simple as possible. I think God is simple enough for kids to understand, it's one way they can learn to think and question.

Isn't it better for them to question the apparent contradictions of God, than your contradictions. :-) It's one way they can learn to question authority with respect. :-)

Did that answer your question?

Originally I didn't even want to write about evil. But I knew I had to address it. For the moment it's 3 points on the list, I thought about consolidating it to 1, but visually I didn't like how long the paragraph was compared to the others, it didn't look "simple".

Hm...I don't mean to sound like I am excluding you, to touch on this statement again...

Otherwise, you may be relying on readers' preconceptions of God as frameworks for interpreting your beliefs.

This is why I generally try to find common ground with folks as I get to know them, tending to save the differences for later. I think we all have pre-concieved notions, some folks have more than others. (I think even children have inherent notions and pre-concieved notions, more like feelings than articulated thoughts.)

My simple beliefs about God was born out of an attempt to unite believers and start with as simple precepts as possible. I think there are lots of people who should be a lot friendlier to others than they are, and I'm NOT talking about superficial friendliness. And I am not focusing on a particular place on the planet or religion.

Hmm...another closing comment, which kind of brings things around to my opening lines; even though I am clear that I think God is the creator, and the Universe (which includes us) is the created, I DO NOT DOUBT there could be some kind of collective human "thing", Freud, I think, called it "consciousness". However, you can see I kind of disagree with the part about us being all that conscious. :-)

So maybe it could be called the "collective human semi-consciousness". I have read (not sure if it's true) that researchers studied animals on one island, then noticed that animals on another island, learned the same complex behavior "on their own" without seeing the animals on the first island.

Then someone concocted a theory that they somehow shared this knowledge via their ethereal "collective" mind, I think they gave it a name like "100th Monkey" or some such. Maybe it could explain when inventors make a discovery within a short time of each other, or inventors submit similar ideas to be patented. Anyway, I won't go off on this tangent unless you want me to, and have specific questions. As hard as it is to believe, I don't like to ramble on and on. :-)

[Update 2007-08-19]
A few interesting things happened at once. My mother sent me an article that referenced this study (not by name), and had updated information.

The book I read that mentioned the study is, "The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life Volume 1", Drunvalo Melchizedek, Light Technology Publishing, copyright 1990. On page 106 under the heading "The Hundredth-Monkey Concept" he cites the book, "The Hundredth Monkey" by Ken Keyes Jr. and the book, "Lifetide: The Biology of the Unconscious", by Lyall Watson.

However, Parade Magazine, on July 29, 2007, excerpted from Eugene Linden's books, "Apes, Men, and Language" and "The Octopus and the Orangutan", had this to say:

The use of tools—and weapons—is considered a mark of higher intelligence. In the 1960's, the idea that animals might fashion weapons was the stuff of science-fiction films. Then in 1999, a team led by Richard Wrangham of Harvard observed chimps using sticks to beat other chimps. Even more stunning were reports published this spring by Jill Pruetz of Iowa State University about chimps in the savannas of Senegal fashioning sticks in to spears, which they used to hunt small primates called bush babies.

These chimps may have been hunting for a very long time—there's evidence that they pass on such expertise from generation to generation. The primatologist Christophe Boesch has observed chimps using granite stones to crack panda nuts in the Ivory Coast's Tai Forest since the 1980's. But this year, Boesch and Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary unconvered nut-cracking stones in that same forest dating back 4,300 years—even before early Africans started using agriculture. This means that, unknown to science, the chimps have been doing something in close proximity to humans for thousands of years.

While their findings don't invalidate the notion of a shared consciousness, they do cast doubt on the study quoted in "The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life."

Pleasant wishes plantpuppy,
A tiny update occurred to me out of the blue.. :-)

You can ask Who is God? But one could also ask What kind of metal is God made from?

I don't mean to be insultiing, but what I am trying to convey is, God is more than just being a "who".*

For example, What is God? Why is God?

I am not trying to say "asking Who is God? is a bad thing". I guess I am trying to clarify why I may seemed to have squirmed and seemingly evaded answering your question.** :-) I do think God has what some would call, "personality traits", however, I would suggest that folks trying to create a list, consider it a work-in-progress as your own understanding of God evolves. And certainly, I do not advise fashioning a list as a weapon.

___
* (No pun intended with regard to Dr. Seuss', How the Grinch Stole Christmas. :-)

** Not long after our web-based conversation here, another conversation revealed the deeper thoughts behind your question. I started a piece, but... all I can say for now is, I promise to publish it. It's mostly finished, but needs editing. It will be a new post, not an additional comment on this page.