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 KungFu_Shaman
naive and lovingit
Registered: 02/23/05
Posts: 191
Loc: noitacaol cihpargoeg
Last seen: 5 years, 2 months
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 Survey on God? 
#4771071 - 10/07/05 11:47 PM (7 years, 8 months ago) |
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What is God? I'm just curious, on a personal level. I'd like to hear a short concise an answer of less than three sentances.
Answer in a Zen koan
Answer with theology or...
Answer from a scientific viewpoint
I'm just curious...
Thanks guys 
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Feel the wrath of Skeletor's breakfast burrito!
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 Silversoul
Rhizome
 
Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 22,569
Loc: The Barricades
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An excuse used by people too weak to take responsibility for their own life or too uncomfortable with uncertainty.
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Deviate
newbie
Registered: 04/20/03
Posts: 2,149
Last seen: 9 hours, 30 minutes
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God is consciousness. God in its highest form is a state of pure awareness. God is the Self and all that exists. God is I AM.
Quote:
Paradigm said:
An excuse used by people too weak to take responsibility for their own life or too uncomfortable with uncertainty.
what does God have to do with responsibility and uncertainly? it's much easier to be irresponsible if you don't believe in God and since God is the greatest mystery of them all i don't see what it has to do with uncertainty. we're not talking about religion here. if you've never experienced God realization i guess it's not fair to expect you to believe but understand that if i could show you a certain state of consciousness i could show you God there are people who live in this awareness.
also: from a certain point of view God does not exist because since there is nothing in existance that is other than God, the concept of God is meaningless. it is merely a human concept.
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hot48yearolds
Dharmakaya
Registered: 09/21/04
Posts: 705
Loc: lazy river road
Last seen: 3 years, 10 months
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Re: Survey on God? [Re: Deviate]
#4771308 - 10/08/05 12:59 AM (7 years, 8 months ago) |
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I basically believe the same way that Deviate believes. God is all. God is IT, not He. IT is the energy that flows through everything.
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"Truth is more in the process than in the result."
- J. Krishnamurti
"We ourselves are not an illusory part of Reality; rather are we Reality itself illusorily conceived." Wei Wu Wei
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Silversoul
Rhizome
Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 22,569
Loc: The Barricades
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Quote:
hot48yearolds said:
I basically believe the same way that Deviate believes. God is all. God is IT, not He. IT is the energy that flows through everything.
No religion that I know of conceptualizes God in such a way. If that is how you define God then you are redefining it to mean something very different from its traditional meaning(and yes, this is true for eastern religions as well as western ones). This concept you refer to(which is also similar to my own beliefs) is closer to the idea of chi or the Tao than to any deity.
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Deviate
newbie
Registered: 04/20/03
Posts: 2,149
Last seen: 9 hours, 30 minutes
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explain. i read the gospels after my experience of God conscioussness and was able to understand almost everything jesus said (while before my experiences religion made no sense to me and i was a complete athiest). post any quotes by jesus (although i'm most famaliar with the gospel of thomas) and i will try and interpret them for you within my framework of understanding. also explain how it doesn't fit with eastern religions. in buddhism nirvana is described as pure awareness, similarly in hinduism all is understood to be brahman.
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crunchytoast
oppositional
Registered: 04/07/05
Posts: 1,133
Loc: aporia
Last seen: 6 years, 2 months
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the gospels say "god is love." only a catholic can argue that the catholic church has a monopoly on the interpretation of that.
and pantheism has an old history and is hardly a new definition, spinoza being the first example that occurs to me.
god is all around us, god is everything..
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"consensus on the nature of equilibrium is usually established by periodic conflict." -henry kissinger
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Silversoul
Rhizome
Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 22,569
Loc: The Barricades
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Though I once considered myself a pantheist, it now strikes me as a rather empty concept. If God is the universe, then just call it the universe. Sure you can say that everything is holy, but that doesn't mean everything is a supreme being. All religious conceptualizations of God, including ideas like Brahman in Hinduism, have taught God to be sentient, having its own will or it's own consciousness. While some religions teach a sort of oneness with God, they all talk of God as a Being, not simply a force or energy.
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Deviate
newbie
Registered: 04/20/03
Posts: 2,149
Last seen: 9 hours, 30 minutes
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God does have his own will, this is why jesus said "i of my own self can do nothing" and "i speaketh these things as my father taught me" meaning his ego or lower self could do nothing and he simply spoke the words God gave him or his higher self gave him. remember God is synonymous with the Self. the lack of awareness of this or the sense of seperateness from God is what leads people to "sin" or oppose their own higher will (God's will)
just calling it the universe represents an incomplete teaching because it doesn't shed any light on the different states of awareness available to humans. people have experiences of consciousness outside of what is considered the confines of the universe and yet these experience still make sense when it is understood that all is brahman. the point of belieiving in God is to take the focus off the lower self and the ego and focus on God (or the higher self) which eventually leads to you realizing your oneness with God and you cease identifying with the ego. because all that exists is brahman, brahman is a being and is the supreme being.
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BlueCoyote
Beyond
Registered: 05/07/04
Posts: 5,447
Loc: Between
Last seen: 2 days, 9 hours
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G*d still has so many paradox viewpoints for us humans. We have to go for them to find him. That's why Jews say:'don't make a picture of him' or 'if you will see him, you will go crazy for almost sure'.
The paradoxes fro me: inside and outside of oneself, visible and invisible, real and spiritual, everything and nothing, timeless, beautiful and horrible, conscious and insentient, forgiving and punishing, uncertain and explict, again real and fake 
For me, the many good aspects of g*d I can find and experience in nature. The bad aspects show for me, in the mind of the modern western civilized man...
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redgreenvines
irregular verb
Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 15,170
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all this
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crunchytoast
oppositional
Registered: 04/07/05
Posts: 1,133
Loc: aporia
Last seen: 6 years, 2 months
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Quote:
Though I once considered myself a pantheist, it now strikes me as a rather empty concept. If God is the universe, then just call it the universe. Sure you can say that everything is holy, but that doesn't mean everything is a supreme being.
a person would state that god is the universe if they thought the universe was holy, so it's not an empty concept. if everything is holy then it's not a big leap to conclude that the universe is the supreme being. i suppose if you believe in a bearded dude in the sky then it makes sense the attribute the holiness to the bearded dude instead of the universe. i don't believe in the bearded one, so it makes more sense to me to attribute the holiness to the universe itself.
secondly, you seem to be arguing that holiness as a concept derives from god (as a hindu, moslem, christian, jew, or buddhist). but isn't it through the holiness around us that we know god? it's by experiencing the holiness of the universe that people come to their understandings about god, not through an innate knowledge of god (whatever that would be) that people understand holiness.
Quote:
All religious conceptualizations of God, including ideas like Brahman in Hinduism, have taught God to be sentient, having its own will or it's own consciousness. While some religions teach a sort of oneness with God, they all talk of God as a Being, not simply a force or energy.
conventional religions don't have a monopoly on god. conventional religions don't encompass all religions. god is a real thing (the universe), regardless of any individual's or group of individuals' understanding of it.
anyway, all the beings in the universe contribute to the sentience of god. if god is the universe than awareness of the universe, of one part by another, is necessarily god's sentience. whenever a human says 'the universe exists' that's god saying 'cogito ergo sum.'
it's hardly a normal consciousness, but why would you expect that of the supreme being? god would be mad if its mind were ever judged by human standards.
Quote:
'if you will see him, you will go crazy for almost sure'.
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"consensus on the nature of equilibrium is usually established by periodic conflict." -henry kissinger
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Deviate
newbie
Registered: 04/20/03
Posts: 2,149
Last seen: 9 hours, 30 minutes
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good post crunchytoast except my main objection to the idea of God being the universe is that it makes it sound like God is just this physical universe. yes, God is the universe but it is also more than that. if i smoke a few bowls of 10x salvia extract i can travel to another universe inside my head. God is also that universe. if i have a transcendent experience outside the space time limitations of this universe, God is that also. God can be formless and God can take on form.
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psyka
Praetorian
Registered: 06/09/03
Posts: 1,652
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Re: Survey on God? [Re: Deviate]
#4772544 - 10/08/05 12:52 PM (7 years, 8 months ago) |
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God is beauty.
Behold, the sons of God.
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As the life of a candle,
my wick will burn out.
But, the fire of my mind
shall beam into infinite.
 
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BlueCoyote
Beyond
Registered: 05/07/04
Posts: 5,447
Loc: Between
Last seen: 2 days, 9 hours
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Re: Survey on God? [Re: psyka]
#4772700 - 10/08/05 01:44 PM (7 years, 8 months ago) |
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I should dare to remind for the paradox, that god is everything, but there are places or realms or conditions, where god is not ... (or is it an 'almost' not ?!)
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Az0th
quantum transfiguration
Registered: 02/13/00
Posts: 53,741
Loc: The Void 
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God is light. God is All-That-Is.
God is nature. God is love.
God is the people, unified.
Sleeping God, awaken.
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~Thought Creates Reality~
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Buddha1
journeyman
Registered: 05/22/02
Posts: 73
Last seen: 7 years, 7 months
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Re: Survey on God? [Re: Az0th]
#4772988 - 10/08/05 03:25 PM (7 years, 8 months ago) |
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God is love. God is hate. God is light. God is dark. God is everything. God is nothing. God is infinite. God is finite. God is real. God is an illusion. God is nondual. God is duality.
God cannot be expressed in words.
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Krishna
कृष्ण,LOL
Registered: 05/08/03
Posts: 23,280
Loc: oakland
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that thou art
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dr0mni
My Own Messiah
Registered: 08/21/04
Posts: 2,921
Loc: USF Tampa, Fl
Last seen: 6 years, 7 days
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Re: Survey on God? [Re: Krishna]
#4773544 - 10/08/05 06:20 PM (7 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
No religion that I know of conceptualizes God in such a way. If that is how you define God then you are redefining it to mean something very different from its traditional meaning(and yes, this is true for eastern religions as well as western ones). This concept you refer to(which is also similar to my own beliefs) is closer to the idea of chi or the Tao than to any deity.
Tao is just an ancient asian word for God. It's all the same thing, just different interpretations.
If God is the universe, and we are part of the universe, then we are Gods' sentience. No separation.
My answer to the original question... well I've got two:
1) GOD IS [the phenomenon of] ENERGY [being] ORGANIZED INTO FRACTALS.
2) What is God not?
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crunchytoast
oppositional
Registered: 04/07/05
Posts: 1,133
Loc: aporia
Last seen: 6 years, 2 months
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Re: Survey on God? [Re: Deviate]
#4774931 - 10/09/05 12:48 AM (7 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
yes, God is the universe but it is also more than that. if i smoke a few bowls of 10x salvia extract i can travel to another universe inside my head. God is also that universe. if i have a transcendent experience outside the space time limitations of this universe, God is that also. God can be formless and God can take on form.
you have a very good point, yes it does seem "the universe" is too limited a concept to encompass god 
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"consensus on the nature of equilibrium is usually established by periodic conflict." -henry kissinger
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