How strict is God?

First, one has to acknowledge that there IS a God, which many don't. IMO, each group (religion) set out different rules and regulations, according to their own particular needs.

Wonder where Frank is? He's usually not late to these kinds of affairs . . . oh well, i'll fill in as best i can:

Do you believe there is a God?

How do you know?

If you can't know for certain there is a God, how can you be certain of those rules and regulations?

Hope that's enough . . .

Yeah, where is Frank? I could participate here, but I don't think I'd do the topic justice. We need Frank!

First you might begin by stating which god you have in mind, there are dozens of them worshiped at present.

There is Love. Love is God. And hence God exists.

God isn't strict at all; only people who think god is strict. It's sort'a like saying, "Santa is strict."

Hi seeker

God has rules. The goodness and longsuffering of God leads to repentence. A person who is a faithful believer in the messiah of the Bible, who receives the Holy Spirit will not fail to make changes in their life. The spiritual gifts of God are love, peace, longsuffering, patience, kindness, joy, faith, gentleness, goodness, holy, humbleness of mind, forebearing one another in love and righteousness. There is a lot to think about. But it would be impossible to have the spirit of god within and not make changes.
It is easy to overlook the 10 commandments and the first five are about worshipping God.
Have no other Gods before me, remember the sabbath, dont make graven images to worship, do not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, honor thy father and mother that thy days may be long. And the last five are about our relationships with other people. Don't kill, don't commit adultry, don't steal, don't bear false witness, do not covet, We should not overlook them because they produce a healthy mind and heart and peace and they are spoken of in the Bible many times.

Every god has different rules, and they reflect the beliefs and needs of the culture and priests who "interpreted" the wishes of their deity.

Thanx!
Hey, thanks for the great response everyone! Of course, we have to assume their is a God for this - and really I'm asking how you percieve God, any God. Within religions people see God so many different ways, two people of different religions might have more in common than two of the same.
I think that God wants us to have a happy life, and the 'rules' are guide lines to make sure that we all do our level best to help others have a happy life. The kind of rule that does nothing but stop you enjoy yourself - where's the sense in that?

Jeez, I stop to eat a Christmas dinner -- and the whole world falls on me!

Hi Everyone!

Well -- seems like the "I don't even know if there is a God -- let alone what a God would be like"question has been pretty much covered.

My thanks to Setanta for getting that out of the way early on.

I often mention that a significant element of my agnosticism goes beyond acknowledging that I do not know if there is a God -- in that I also assert that I do not have enough unambiguous evidence upon which to base a reasonable guess about whether there is one or not.

I don't have that trouble when assessing the existence of the god of the Bible, for instance.

Obviously, I cannot know if that god exists -- but I think there is plenty of unambiguous evidence that allows for a reasonable guess to be made.

All of which is my round-about way of giving my response to Seekers question.

How strict is God?

Well...my guess is that if there is a God -- the God is not even remotely strict in the sense of the god of the Bible being "strict."

I could get into that in detail, but today is Christmas -- and...well, you know!


Hope all of you are having a wonderful day.

I am.

I feel very close to all you cyber-friends at the moment -- and I honestly don't think that has anything to do with the few drinks I've had. :wink: :wink:

God is whatever you want him to be.

God has no rules. He simply is,
in the same way that the universe simply is.

The universe also has no rules. We recognize patterns and create the idea of "natural laws" that we find useful,
but that is our doing and our conceptualizing the things that we see, in our limitted experience of the universe.
The universe itself doesn't care -- and certainly would have nothing to do with following OUR self-centric rules. The universe simply is.

Therefore God is neither strict nor careless. There is nothing to follow, nothing to adhere to, because the substance and action of the universe actually forms God, not the other way around.

God is everywhere and everything, all physical and spiritual things taken together. But that's all it is, nothing more and nothing less. Imposing human judgement (the idea of a "rule") on it won't make it start being "strict".

GeorgeT, Well put: it simply is. Human values on natural phenomenon may help us understand some things of nature, but trying to attach a god to them is simply our way of admitting we know very little.

cicerone; as Bill Wulf put it.... " there is only one nature- the devision into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the devision is a human failure, it refllects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole "

And then again, maybe you are wrong about this and the fundamentalist Christians or Islam or the Mormons are correct.

We really do not know!

If "The universe also has no rules", then existence is truly absurd. Imagine a world where the correct solution to an equation never came out twice the same. All would be chaos if atomic structures shifted and changed on a random basis. The child throws his ball into the air, and sometimes it vanishes, other times it never comes down, and once the child instead of the ball bounced along the greensward. How difficult would any life be if temperatures and chemical transformations varied by the second, and for no discernable reason.

Indeed, one of the popular "proofs" for God's existence is that the world we observe IS structured and predictable. To my mind, a structured universe is also not, a good proof for the existence of God. However, it is seems much better than arguing that there is no natural law operating in the perceptual universe.

I believe in natural laws, but in the context as an atheist.

I agree with asherman. He seems to have just the right way of stating the obvious. And his obvious included creation with science and the mind of man. hip hip old man. Thanx...just kidding. forgive me please. But to me your answer is the crux of combining all things and then saying it.

A lot of religions have rules that many people don't follow any more. I don't really know any holy books except for the Christian Bible, but I'd like to use that as an example with some qs for Christians.
According to all four (accepted) gospels, Jesus tells the rich man that to be perfect he must sell everything for the poor and follow him. Ordained people have no possessions, but apart from that this seems to be ignored - most Christians have many 'luxuries' and think nothing of it. Is there a deeper meaning to all this or are we just ignoring it because we don't like it?