Can You define God?

OK...so I have two questions for you, tangle.
1) Hypothetically, would you want a God to exist? If so, what attributes would He/She/It have?2) If you did not want or need a God to exist,but it were revealed that one or more did, what academic interest would you have in discovering/describing/interacting with He/She/It/Them?

Can I ask you a question Phat?Assuming that God does exist are you happy with the god you've got? Or would you hope for something better from a supreme being?

quote:

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Assuming that God does exist are you happy with the god you've got? Or would you hope for something better from a supreme being?

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I always hope for better. More precisely, i believe that what I have got in terms of character is as good as it gets, but what I hope for in blessing can always improve.

Thats why God became man. He did the downsizing for us so that we could conceive of Him being close to us. Why is that concept so hard to grasp? Although to be fair, I would not limit God to Jesus the man. I just feel that now I have an envoy.

Jesus was an example of what man can be, not a definition of God.Edited by ringo, : Fixed quote.

And yet Jesus was unafraid of idolatry when He simply called God His Father. He knew all of the rules. So why was He so intimate with this vast all powerful Deity? And why was He unafraid of committing idolatry? He apparently knew God quite well.....

Idolatry?Huh?Remember how YOU are told to pray?"Our Father..."

This was the conundrum the early church fathers had to deal with. The result was the Trinity which I think was as good a human understanding that they could possibly arrive at, even though there remains considerable ambiguity. Jesus was in their understanding wholly god and wholly man.Obviously from the NT, Jesus the man was not completely synonymous with the one He called Father. I mean, praying to yourself does sound just a tad narcissistic.However at the same time the Jews had the understanding that they could be made right with God through the Temple which was representative of God’s dwelling place on Earth. They could bring sacrifices to the altar and find forgiveness.Jesus however was seen to go around saying that He desired mercy not sacrifice and from a Pharisaic POV committed the blasphemy of forgiving sins. In other words Jesus was acting as a Temple replacement, or the dwelling place of God. (Incarnation)Of course this all sound more than just a little egocentric and on that basis there is no reason to give any credence to what He had to say, particularly considering that His message was very unpopular in most quarters anyway.However, if the early Christians were correct when they claimed that Jesus was resurrected in a renewed bodily form, then it is safe to assume that the Father that Jesus served had vindicated the message and the actions of Jesus. IMHO there is no other credible reason for the early Christian movement to get off the ground. This being the case then, what Jesus said is of tremendous importance.I like the way you phrased your statement that I quoted. I agree that Jesus as man is the example of what man can aspire to be, and I agree that Jesus is not a definition of God, but in another sense I believe that Jesus defined the true nature of God.

You could ask the same question of anybody who claims to have "communion" with God.

My point is that if it was good enough for Jesus...we shouldn't worry about following His example, unless you are prepared to make the assertion that Christ Himself was a bit crazy.To place God on some pedestal as totally unapproachable and forever mysterious and unconfirmed only leaves humans with no Deity at all.

I think we should follow Jesus' example - whether we believe he was the son of God or not - because it was a good example. Thinking he was the son of God might have been a bit crazy but he can still be a good example to us. And if you make Him ungodlike, that also leaves you with no deity at all.

Yeah but what good is a religion with no power and no Deity? All we have left is boy scout merit badges...hardly the stuff to follow devoutly.

Why would you need more?

Ah, but why should there even be merit badges?That is actually what Jesus taught.But heading back towards the topic, of course man can define god and has done a bang up job over time. Some of them were even pretty neat like Coyote and Nun and Thor and Ganesha.Edited by jar, : left out "be"

So what attributes do all of these conceptual entities share such that they are recognisably godly?Taking the numerous definitions of god mankind has conceived and finding the common factors would seem as good a way as working out what we mean by "god" as any other.On this basis the term god refers to a supernatural conscious being that is responsible for the creation or overseeing of some aspect of reality. Something like the following dictionary definition:1. (Christianity / Ecclesiastical Terms) a supernatural being, who is worshipped as the controller of some part of the universe or some aspect of life in the world or is the personification of some force Related adj divineThus things like Thor and Apollo readily qualify as gods. As does the more deistic and ambiguous notion of a supernatural "creator of all that is seen and unseen".The only real difference between the largely abandoned gods and those that more sophisticated theists advocate these days is the degree of ambiguity attached to the concept in question.