An imagined anthropomorphic entity that created this universe. Depending on the religion or belief system such a god might reward or punish people for their actions while alive.
A philosophical question .... what does the word God mean to you personally ?
by Finkelstein 49 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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rebelfighter
Never a JW, raised Lutheran but walked away from religion completely when I was 50. I believe in God and I am very spiritual. I worship my way normally four hours per week and feel I have a very close connection with God. We have walked many rocky and smooth roads together, and the knowledge that he is there to lean on has gotten me through some very tough times. He listens long into the night at times.
When bad things happen I do not blame God. A lot of times we as a society have created the elements that cause these bad things to happen yet we are very quick to blame God.
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Alive!
I was agnostic for many, many years, before I really started delving into the question of what's it all about Alfie.
Something in me, really vibrates or resonates to the call towards 'God'.
Rather than think of the concept of 'God' as mere superstition leftover from primitive beliefs, I find myself asking, how did we come to conceive of such heights of beauty, nobleness and exquisite desire for something outside of ourselves and yet in ourselves.
Although we drift towards chaos and decay, through thousands of years we have the written legacies of beautiful minds and hearts yearning for something utterly glorious.
I remember when I first really thought about 'Paridise Lost' - a theme that is found throughout different cultures, times, religions and histories.
I'm not here to lay out my own search and current resting place on that one in order to preach, just to answer the OP - rather than view the whole picture as mere superstition, I see it as a 'clue' to a universal story....which is tied up with God.
A story of good versus evil, a messiah, saviour - and hope, a restored and glorified creation where time is finally experienced in its fullness.
And finally, if we really are made in God's image - complete annihilation or eternal torment for such a creature seems would be obscene, if Father God truly exists.
And that the life of a poor Jewish carpenter should have caused such an uproar on this planet for the past 2000 years ( in wonderful ways and terrible ways) harmonises with his original story and words...
For a species who have no business doing anything but reproducing, eating, surviving - mankind certainly has lived, thought and projected hopes in ways that beg questions.
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OnTheWayOut
"God" is a mythical fiction of man's invention, who can be described in various ways depending on the myth system of the person describing said God. -
Mandrake
I Don't believe the bible is the word of God, I truly believe that the bible is the collection of human tradition from a very narrow spectrum of human history... -
ttdtt
Superstition, myth, legend - and its all harmful to humanity. -
prologos
The word "god" for me falls short of doing justice to the grandeur invested in existence, the cosmos. so does any personal [first] name. -
Finkelstein
Perhaps then god should correctly held in intellectually honesty as a conceptual idea, yet to be discovered ?
To date the only gods that mankind has discovered are ones created through self inspired human imagination and embellished story telling.
Of course the men that have proclaimed themselves that they are directly connected to these select gods would never admit to such a statement, for in doing so would mean for them to relinquish their own acquired power and control.
( no names mentioned )
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Anders Andersen
The word God carries the same meaning to me as god and gods.
It describes a concept that I have no emotional attachment to or aversion against.
Even the notion true god or false god has lost the meaning it once had to me.
I used to think that the difference between true and false gods is that the true god (God) exists and should be loved, and false gods do not really exist and should be hated.
But...would I (or you) ever worship a god of which you thought it doesn't exist? I would never. And so wouldn't the Israelites.
Whenever they worshipped false gods, they worshipped gods other than JHWH, but they did believe these gods to be real.
If they didn't think they were real, they wouldn't worship them, right?
So to the Israelites the difference between the true god and a false god was that the true god was much stronger, and he is the only one that deserves to be worshipped. But both of them were real to them.
To me this was quite surprising to realise.
Because if they thought the (to me non existing) false gods really existed, how trustworthy are they when it comes to teaching us about any gods or God.
If they had enough evidence to think false gods were real, that speaks volumes about the level of evidence they needed to think a god existed.
They had just as much evidence to believe JHWH existed as they had for all the false gods.
And so do I. To me there is just as much evidence to support JHWH's existence as there is to support all those false gods' existences.
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Finkelstein
All the gods ever imagined throughout human history were both true gods and false gods !