God is...?

i'm curious as to how anyone here visualizes god Him/Her-self.

Do you visualize god as a physical being? Why/why not?

Could you describe for us what you see in your mind's eye?

How did you happen to come to this image?

i think can predict what that the Atheists may say, but i'm seriously interested in how the Believers among us may picture the deity.

Is it the Bearded Old Man as depicted by Michelangelo? Pure White Light? The Dove?

Thanks.
Peace,
-mw.

If a triangle could speak, it would say, that God is eminently triangular,
while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular.
-Baruch Spinoza, philosopher (1632-1677)

"Do you visualize god as a physical being? Why/why not?"

You might need to define 'physical' here. Anything exists has to have some form -- otherwise it doesn't exist, LOL! But it may not be matter in the sense of consisting of protons, neutrons, etc. as these are the building blocks particular to our universe.

"Could you describe for us what you see in your mind's eye?"

A sort of cosmic massmind, an accretion of intelligence from those races of previous universes that managed to preserve theirs. What it would look like, I don't know -- cannot even assume it would be 3-dimensional and therefore "look" like anything.

"How did you happen to come to this image?"

Logical conclusion. Given an eternity of time and infinity of space I think it would simply occur unless it is zero-probability, i.e. literally impossible. Intelligence seems naturally accretive in nature. Note this does not necessarily constitute a standard 'creator-god' that most theologies employ although creating 'universes' like ours probably would not be beyond its capability. This is a more subtle, co-existent god, effectively infinite in age and knowledge but not pre-existent and not prescient except insofar as future probabilities are theoretically calculable. It may not fit some people definition of "god" as it may not be supernatural enough.

This is also subject to change without notice. ;-)

"It has been suggested that life here on earth is the hell that has been spoken of,..."

That's definitely one of those 'the glass is half empty' things!

I picture God as a Spirit, or Personality, non-physical. I think I feel this way from my reading I have done of the Bible, ect. The Bible though, seems to have God symbolized as a glorious man-like figure to help us visualize what he is like in human terms.

Brien

God is….

We have been taught to think of God as an entity that created us but remains separate from us, above us. Therefore we have come to think that, if we are created in God’s image, we are separate from the birds and insects and other mammals, *above* the rest of the world around us. We want to believe that the world was purposely created for us, so we ignore the fact that we are just one more beast that happened to arise and fill an ecological niche. Because of this we think we somehow own it or can control it. We’ve been fighting brutal wars over it ever since.

Over the centuries we have been evolving religions to back us up in the matter. But God does not write books, build churches, require rituals, or observe holy days. Those are human constructs, attempts to describe and relate to an “above us” God. When we say that God will judge us, we are really judging ourselves, and each other.

I was once told that if I wanted to see the creator, I needed to look no further than the creation. God is motion, gravity, all the laws of physics, and time. God is air to the birds, water to the fish, earth to the worms, and the fire in the core. God is in discovering order out of chaos, reason out of the illogical, and the gradual solving of the mysteries that have previously eluded us. God is in the questions we haven’t even thought to ask yet.

Sometimes I think the atheist is closer to God than the believer, because the atheist suspends all that his fellow human beings want him to believe about God. He seeks to understand the mechanisms of the universe by looking directly *at* the world around him and not *above* it. Yet he still marvels at how it all works. God is your relationship with the universe.

God, simply *is*. In the beginning God grew the heavens and the earth. Everything since then has been up to us.

Take good care, all.
Christine

Hi James,

"I like to believe in a kinder gentler God. I just have a hard time believing that a lot of really good people that I know, who are essentially agnostic, are going to burn in hell forever..."

I am assuming here that you are refering to the common concept amongst many christian denominations of an ever burning hell. As has been mentioned on this forum many times, this concept does not come from the bible and is not a christian concept. It came from Plato and his followers.

What the Bible does teach is that those who reject salvation and eternal life will be granted their wish. They will not life forever, but be destroyed by fire.

Cheers,

Maurice