What sort of "God" would you like ?

Why say "him" and not "her"? Women are sentient beings too.

And if God is Divine Love, and Divine Love only exists between sentient beings, then would God exist if we didn't exist?

The reason why I don't use "it" for God, is that it is pretty impersonal. To me, God is first of all, all-wise, all-loving Father, in the sense that he is our creator, and loves us in a way that can be likened to love from a father towards his child. It's easier to think of God as a loving being if one thinks of him as a Heavenly Father rather than as some kind of obscure entity. Therewith of course not said that God is a male.



That is a good, albeit extremely hard question. As we are created, and as God is self-existent, I would have to say yes, but I admit that I cannot logically reconcile Love with one individual alone, other than as a quality without meaning and reality. It is good that there is Faith when the logic fails us.

"Consistency" would be nice.

I believe that many things about this kind of matters only seem like inconsistencies because of our limited knowledge and perspective. God himself could of course not be contradictory. That would be a contradiction.

".....seems like inconsistencies....." If they're not inconsistencies, I guess we can start to believe in Santa.

Is there any particular inconsistency you are referring to?

Just to clear things up for me... this God of yours is different fom bible god?

The one described by Jesus in the Gospels.

That's the one. Quite a barbaric SOB from what I read. What in in the world gives you the opinion that this was a loving god. Terrible nasty he was in the scriptures. Do you have some other source of information that leads you to your opinions?

The god described in the Gospels in the New Testament is not exactly what I would call a "barbaric SOB".

How about a "goddam sob?"

Human sacrifice is barbaric to my way of thinking. The idea that a "loving God" would have his own son tortured and killed in such a fashion as depicted in Mel Gibson's movie as a way to SAVE other human beings no matter what their propensities so long as they BELIEVE ....well let's just say I do not think I could conceive of a bigger crock.

What I see is that the authors of the bible thought the sacrifice of the son of god - as was the ritual in those days to appease their gods - would be accepted by the masses. After 2,000 years, we have become somewhat more sophisticated, and that b.s. no longer sells. The authors of the bible, without the wherewithall to 'scientifically' age the earth made the mistake of making this planet too young by millions of years. Gods (if such a thing existed) would not make that mistake. Those religions that followed the book took the message literally until recent times; because science cannot be refuted as easily as the bible. Therein lies the rub; believe all of what the bible says or none of it. If you wish to believe some of it, you must also accept all the contradictions. That's either between a rock and a hard place or catch 22. Damn if you do, and damn if you don't. I think I'll stick with what seems most logical.

Yes, ci, which is why I always prefer to bring these discussions back to the source documents. I get completely blown away by polls that show 90% of the US population believes in this nonsense.

As I see it, it depends entirely on how one looks on the bible. If one sees it as the infallible, written word of God, then one would have to believe in all what the bible says, or none of it, I suppose. Not that I understand how that could be done, given all the contradictions in it, though.

I see the bible as a collection of writings written by various divinely inspired authors, at different times in history, for different purposes. Some writings are written in the form of historical accounts, while others are written as allegories. I cannot easily believe in something that goes against my reason, like for example the way God is described in the Old Testament, so I stick to that which makes sense to me. In my case that is primarily the four Gospels in the New Testament of the Bible that deal with the life and teachings of Jesus. The god that Jesus describes really makes sense to me, so it was not so hard for me to accept his teachings as genuine.

As for the crucifixion, I don't believe that Jesus died on the cross to appease some kind of wrathful, Old Testament-like god. Nor do I believe that we can sin as much as we like so long as we have faith, without suffering any consequences. Neither of these two viewpoints make any sense to me, so I ascribe these two to human misunderstanding and misinterpretation.

Some would perhaps argue that I'm not a real Christian, because I don't believe in everything in the bible literally. I would disagree, though. I sincerely doubt that there are two persons on this planet who understands everything in the bible exactly the same way. To me a Christian is a person who acknowledges the divinity of Jesus, that God exists and is like Jesus described, and sincerely attempts to live a life in agreement with Jesus' teachings. The essence of Christianity is to love God with all one's heart, all one's soul, and all one's strength, and the neighbour like oneself. That single sentence encompasses almost everything that Christianity is all about.

Derevon,
It appears as though we have more in common than I would have thought.

Most of the Old testament as well as the new testament is hogwash. The four gospels have some good thoughts to serve as inspiration. The crucifixation mumbo jumbo is just that.

Where we part is that you see something divine in that small part of the four gospels. It seems much better for me to just gaze at a night sky and wonder.

What's more frightening is that about half of the US population believe in Bush's religious' fanaticism.

All the more reason to expose it to sunlight ci. Sunlight is the cure for many ills and one thing we have lots of in Arizona is sunshine.

When 90 percent of the populace is already tainted by the same religious fervor, not much we can do in the sunlight - except try not to get burned.

How can you speak with such authority?
I mistrust that authoritative tone....