How Do You Conceive of God?

Ren said:
I see, so you identify as somewhat of a pantheist :) I feel quite close to Spinoza's vision, also.

Interestingly, he was (most likely) INFJ. I think Ni-doms are drawn to the oneness. Just curious: have you seen the film The Tree of Life?
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Yes, and Terrence Malick is my favorite director. :-)
 
I am an Orthodox Christian. I think God is unknowable until after death. I expect that God is good because, if I am this loving, God is better. Jesus was given to me during my life as a means to join my imperfect self to God through forgiveness. Without that, I would be afraid of death, that I would not survive due to my unworthiness. No way can a person live in this world and stay perfect. I see God as being huge and all around us and simultaneously small and everywhere inside us. I see God as unbound by time and space. Life is a miracle. God is life.
 
Pantheistic Godness that fills the panpsychistic display of life like the oil fills all the layers of a seed from the innermost core the outermost shell.
Godness itself is not static but a living experience, that which ables every sentient being to feel the sense of beingness.
This nature is seeingness itself, penetrating all with awareness, hidden beneath as the oil of a seed or the fat of milk.
That awareness is the true sense of I, behind your thinking and imagining mind.
 
To conveive of God is futile - to try and fit all the seas of the world into a pint jar is less absurd.

The first chapter of the Tao Te Ching says this:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.
​
Intuition is a divine faculty because with it I can 'see' God even though I can't conceive of ..... what ..... Her, Him, the sand runs out of the pronouns and language fails.

I don't believe in God - I am aware. It is a relationship. God is the only thing other than myself that I am sure exists - all the rest is faith. It's not a useful word 'God' - there is me and there is You and there is the most incredible love imaginable between us:hearteyes:, but I'm not always true to it because it isn't an equal relationship and I'm not all that good at it :sob: It's only through this that I know that I'm not utterly alone, and so I can have genuine faith that there is an external reality.

There are no words to truly express this relationship - I can read the way others have described it and they shine in my intuition as the same experience so I know this isn't just something that I have imagined, though the sheer intensity of the experience takes me there anyway quite honestly. But these same words mean little to those that haven't already been there, or are at least drawn in that direction. What can I say - that the way to God is not through words and analysis but to seek an encounter with a person. All I can do is point and suggest trying to walk that way, but in the end it has to be walked by each of us, alone - I don't know why.
 
AussieLachlan said:
I haven't done any research on this so sorry if this sounds 'philosophically shallow' lol, but what if god is the mind and it creates the world we perceive along the axis of time. Not sure if there's already a term for this belief, but it's something I think about from time to time.
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Yes, God as "the mind" is definitely an existing conception! There are different approaches to this idea, I think, but it must date back to the Aristotelian concept of the agent intellect (or active intellect) or even earlier, perhaps.

charlatan said:
The BIG difference between them is the presence of the goodness/power -- that is, not only that there's an explanation of things, which covers the 'is' side of the picture, but also the 'ought' side attains complete foundations (both in terms of providing a foundation for determining what is good + in terms of ensuring things go as they ought)

I don't necessarily favor the traditional concept in terms of it being a better metaphysical foundation for reality -- after all, a rational explanation for everything seems like all you could ask. However, what I meant is when I think of 'God,' I think the closest to it is the traditional one -- it suggests that the ultimate grounds for all is a subject of some sort, and suggests morality (not just explanation of what is there but also what there ought to be in nature) would be incorporated in the foundations of the universe.

I think though that ultimately, it seems like if God were a necessary being who is all-good and all-powerful, it has the counter-intuitive consequence that only good things are possible (I personally do not think the problem of evil has good answers)....which is why I tend to think the more barebones 'just rational explanation' thing is more likely to be true. In a way I think that fits in with what you're saying about simplicity -- I think the restriction of all-good doesn't sound a natural restriction on reality.
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I understand your attraction to the idea of God not only as a principle of order in the cosmos, but also as a kind of "perfect moral subject". But beyond the counter-intuitive consequence which you mention, would it not be strange that if there really were an ultimate godlike source of moral valuation, we would fall short of having unrestricted objective access to it? I could imagine a kind of compatibilist scenario in which God basically gives humans free will and the possibility to do evil, thereby also ascribing meaning to the good, but also gives them perfect objective knowledge of the moral law. But we don't even have that.
 
Ren said:
So many pantheists in this thread!
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Ren said:
But beyond the counter-intuitive consequence which you mention, would it not be strange that if there really were an ultimate godlike source of moral valuation, we would fall short of having unrestricted objective access to it?
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Yeah, totally, I'd expect we should have such access to it, should it at all be possible -- I think I might subsume this in the 'evil is impossible' being counterintuitive view, just because I think creating beings with free will without access to the moral truths in the unrestricted sense you mention might as well be included as an evil. It certainly seems like, were you and I to design the world for the future, we'd try to give everyone as clear access to moral goodness, truths, etc as we could.

I have toyed with the idea that, if there were a necessary being which exists and is the source of goodness and with all powers compatible with doing good, were that to make sense, probably there should be the *possibility* (not necessity) at least of a being who is the evil counterpart -- who can do any evil thing.
To preserve the intuition that evil is possible, at least.

Note that this would mean *everything* does not happen by God's will (which is against some concepts but incidentally not against the traditional Christian concept -- the idea of giving us free will is that it seems some things can happen which God does not intend). He has all good abilities, but it doesn't mean he can make the logically possible into the logically impossible -- if evil is logically possible, he can't change that, presumably. (this is the same reply most theologians give to paradoxes about can-God-make-a-stone-he-can't-lift suggesting it's not a power God has to have, as he can do the logically possible only.)

I'm not even sure if this is incompatible with the truth of the ontological argument, were that to even work... it would just mean this perfect being sadly does not have the ability to rule out evil, only to do any good thing that is logically possible.
 
Ren said:
bedtimeparadox.jpg
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Fall asleep and pay attention where the dreams emerge, who or what is witnessing them and with what and where.

Once you recognize your true faceless face, that inner eye which sees but cannot be seen, that which is and yet is not, your journey inwards will finally begin.

Godspeed and Good Night!
 
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