What is "God" to you?

A being that "thinks"?

You must "think" to reason the being.

Why objectify "transcendental being" as if it's something material and literal. That's the first mistake of religion and atheism. Transcendental being is subjective and a state of consciousness, and "being" should be taken as a verb and not a noun. It is experience; belief, thought, or imagination has nothing to do with it.

Intelligence is inherent in nature, and there is no need for some imaginary grand intelligent boogeyman making the world out of clay and pulling the strings or sitting back watching his creation, except in our immature minds.

I'm always astounded at how metaphors become transformed to material form when they're taken literally. "Spirit" somehow becomes a ghostly ethereal prescencee rather than a feeling. The catholic church used to refer to the "holy ghost." In that sense, I suppose the "spirit" of a high school football team hangs out in a locker room and then permeates the field during a game like a ghostly fog.

I always liked the Quaker approach of finding that of god in every man.

It sounds like a sensible approach to religion, plainoldme.

And on that note, I'll tell you a little story of mine:


...................... .........THE STORY OF GOLD..........................

................................................... - from The Book Of the Boo

....Way back at the beginnning of time, there was only one thing in existence; Gold!
....So Gold decides to make a universe;a universe that would consist of planets stars, poeple, plants animlmals, etc., etc,.etc..
.....Now if you're going to make something you need materials, right? So, Gold being the only thing in existence, there was no Sears, or Home Depot where the materials could be obtained.
....So, the only source of maaterial was Gold itself. and Gold proceeded to build this universe. And of course any human being in this universe having the power of thought and reason, could truthfully say: I am Gold! :wink:

Booman - Was reading a magazine I subscribe to and found these pieces (poetry and prose) that I found meaningful and coincidentally strangely apt given your story of Gold:

Jump-Rope Rhyme (Tom Hansen)
Tat tvam asi:
thou art that-
that leaf, that tree,
that cow, that cat,
that cloud, that sky,
that moon, that sun,
that you, that I-
for all are one.
So here you are
and there you go
and who you were
you hardly know.

I think this I
is only me:
a drip, a drop,
but not the sea.
Yet when I wake
from all these dreams,
then like the snake,
I'll shed what seems:
this mask, this skin,
this ball and chain.
I will begin
to fall like rain.

Our heart's last home:
the wind-whipped foam,
the sweet, deep sea.
Tat tvam asi.

In reference to your signature:
"The world is full of divinity and strangeness. The scientist stops, where all men do, at the doors of birth and death. He knows no more than you and I why a seed remembers the oak of 20 million years ago, why dust acquires the form of a woman, why we behold the earth in space and time. He hasn't yet solved the secret of a single name upon the earth. We may pluck the nymph from the river, but we won't pluck the river from ourselves: this coiled divinity is still all murmurous and strange. There are sacred places everywhere. The world is still man's druid grove, where he wanders hunting for the Tree of Life." Ross Lockridge

And one that I thought was funny - because it reminds me of me - someone who was raised in organized religion, but has found a "brand" of spirituatlity more "comfortable" for myself:
"I dreamt that instead of worshiping one God, I was free to worship as many gods as I wanted. But I wasn't satisfied with the new gods I chose. I missed my old God, his self-assurance and occasional flashes of temper. My new gods seemed so eager to please. They spoke too slowly, too loudly, as if I were a foreigner asking for directions - not like my old God, who would have said, Read the f***ing map." (Sy Safransky)

"God" is the simple answer to the question "who created all this?"

The truth is beyond me. However, I do not believe that an "omnipotent being" created all things that exist. There is no proof of that. It could be that all things that exist have never actually been created, as they always WERE. Existence does not have to come from non-existence.

Yup, atheist here.

Hmmm....... and Hmmm......

No real arguments here. If you can speak your piece, without actually disagreeing with me, you must indeed be wise people. :wink:

god = a concept - sometimes helpful - man's greatest creation/child

Religion=dogma-rarely helpful-man's worst & bloodiest creation.

To me GOD is a word symbolising ALL things.

God to me is that human creation that provides many on this planet with a sense of security. It gives people hope beyond this life. When people have troubles, they pray to their god to improve whatever ails them. They pray to him for another's birth and death. They pray for the sick and dying. They pray for the homeless, our soldiers, and their family members and friends. They pray for a better life. They spend an enormous amount of time praying to their god. Some claim it works.

If I were to use the word, God, it might be in the same sense of RK's "all things." In fact, in that sense THERE IS NOTHING BUT GOD, and God is therefore neither good nor evil; God is everything. Now, why would I want to call it God? First, I must note that this notion of God, is not intended to denote divnity or goodness; it's just that since God is all there is, it is an absolute concept. It is not relative to anything else since there is nothing else. On the other hand, the concept is my creation. Therefore it is relative to me, my mind, or thinking process. It is this all-inclusiveness or absoluteness that might warrant the term--or name--God. I consider this notion to be a secular one. I would not worship this God; I would, and do, merely appreciate it in every ordinary thing.

Sounds like you're having an absolutist relapse there JL.

Eorl, it would seem so, except for the autobiographical fact that I've always held that the Cosmos (a mere concept, I know), being a term for the totality, is by definition "non-relative". I contains all the diversity imaginable, and that diversity with its interdependence (e.g., co-orgination) exists as a relativistic system. Everything I say about the world of things, events, attributes, processes, etc. must be in relativistic terms. I am, therefore, with regard to my intellectual life a relativist. BUT, the Cosmos, Brahman, God, Ultimate Reality, X, ?, whatever we call it, is absolute by virtue of its all-inclusiveness. Now if the New Physics demonstrates that there is more than one universe, and that they exist as they do by virtue of their interdepencies, I would simply conclude that God consists of the sum of all those universes and their interconnections (and we could continue to maintain there is only God). But if it should turn out that the various universes are totally independent of one another, if, as absolutes (in the sense of the term expressed here: not interdependent), I will--if I insist on using the term, God--have to endorse some kind of polytheism.

To me:

"He is God (Allah), the One and Only;

God (Allah), the Eternal, Absolute;

He begetteth not, nor is He begotten;

And there is none like unto Him."

[Holy Qur'an, Chapter 112]

That is pretty much what I said, except I do not personalize "God" with terms like "He."

I think god is the giant rattler of dice.

I like the "there is nothing but god definition," but it's useless without personal experience transcending the illusion of ego.
I think the term "god" still has a use because of a lack of a better term for the subjective personal experience of "not ego." If our identity is limited to what is within our skin, then we're all in trouble. The problem with the fundamentalist definition of god is that it doesn't give another alternative identity; egocentrism and fundamentalism go hand in hand, and that's not spirituality to me. "Every man for himself", and "we've got god on our side," is the old identity that projects a material god with an objective reality, the god of children, George Bush, and Osama Bin Laden.