On 13 Jan 2013, at 02:41, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/12/2013 3:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 12 Jan 2013, at 07:00, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 5:17 PM, Jason Resch
<[email protected]> wrote:
> He [me] would rather avoid those topics altogether and take
solace in denying specific instances of inconsistent or silly
definitions of God.
All I ask is a definition of God that has 2 attributes:
1) It is not silly or inconsistent.
You ask already a lot.
2) There is no other word except G-O-D that works as well.
And when 99.9% of the religious use the word "God" they mean a
omnipotent omniscient being who created the universe,
I am not sure of that. Even restricting ourself to Abramanic
religion. The beliefs are quite variate on this.
Here's the statement of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest
protestant sect in the U.S.
-------------
There is one and only one living and true God.
We agree. By "we" I mean "me" and the classical computationalist
Löbian Universal Machine. There is only ONE truth. I take "living" as
a metaphor.
He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator,
Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe.
Hmm.... Up to know the (physical) "universe" might be a failed attempt
by God to solve a degree 4 Diophantine equation.
Again "ruler" can be a (misleading) occidental metaphor only.
God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections.
Of course this is too much imprecise. How do we measure or scale
holiness? What is holiness? What are perfections? This is akin to St
Anselme definition of God, the one use by Gödel to "prove" the
existence of God, by using the S5 modal logic. But I don't believe in
S5.
God is all powerful and all knowing; and His perfect knowledge
extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the
future decisions of His free creatures.
I don't know.
To Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience.
I doubt this.
The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division
of nature, essence, or being.
This might be a simplification of a doctrine by St Augustin, itself a
simplification of Plotinus three primary hypostases: the ONE
(sometimes called "father" by Plotinus, and I think this was a way to
attract some Christians), the Noùs (the intelligible reality that you
can describe with words, but not necessarily prove), the Universal Soul.
To make this closer to some more primitive religion, and to comp, I
like also, sometimes described this by the Mother, the Creation, and
the (lost) Son.
God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His
creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to
the purposes of His grace.
Who know?
He is all powerful, all knowing, all loving, and all wise. God is
Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in
Jesus Christ. He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.
With comp, and the "definition" of God I suggest, there is a tradeoff
between power and knowledge. The more powerful he can be, the less
knowledge he can access, and vice versa. Jesus might be a sort of
shaman, but no human can be designate as having some special
relationship to God. Either Jesus was metaphorical, or he was a con,
all this assuming comp, and accepting the idea that God =
(arithmetical) Truth, the 0-person point of view.
The baptists are not so bad (with respect to comp), but probably too
much naïve, literal, and they still encourage the belief in
authoritative arguments, which separate theology from science, and
that is problematic (with or without comp, imo).
Bruno
---------------
Or see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attributes_of_God_in_Christianity
and
http://preceptaustin.org/notes_for_attributes_of_god_%28ii%29.htm
Brent
"Those who object to the punishment of heresy are like dogs
and swine,"
--- John Calvin
Bruno
and when non-religious people say they believe in God they mean
they believe in the word G-O-D and that's it.
John K Clark
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