What is gods fundamental nature?

[Zen Badger]

God is infinite and eternal. Since our only experiece is with things that are finite and temporal we don't have any categories which can adequately describe God.

So on the one hand you claim we can't know what god is because we don't have the ability to describe it yet christianty claims to know what it wants.

A clear contradiction if ever I saw one.

[KichigaiNeko]

There is no god peeps...get over it.

BUT...if there was ...what on this planet makes you think it cares about YOU??

[theophilus]

You have failed to address my point if a being exists outside of time he is by definition in stasis and cannot act. If a being is in time and can act he is in the universe and not infinite and not god. Which is it?

Since we have no experience of existing outside of time then we can't know what is possible or impossible in that state.

So on the one hand you claim we can't know what god is because we don't have the ability to describe it yet christianty claims to know what it wants.
A clear contradiction if ever I saw one.

We can know what God wants because he has revealed it to us. All we can know for certain about God is what he chooses to tell us. We can never understand him by our own efforts.

[Captain Scarlet]

You have failed to address my point if a being exists outside of time he is by definition in stasis and cannot act. If a being is in time and can act he is in the universe and not infinite and not god. Which is it?

Since we have no experience of existing outside of time then we can't know what is possible or impossible in that state.

So we could take 2 approaches. On the one hand we could say that whilst we cannot know we can draw the conclusion that god is in stasis and therefore cannot act. All our inferences based on analogies would get us to that position. Or we can say, as you have done, that we cannot hope to draw analogies as this is mysterious to us. The problem with the second approach is that it undermines classical arguments for god like the cosmological argument and arguments from design which do exactly what you say we can't do and infer god from analogies in our universe eg: things that begin to exist have a cause and that apparent design in the universe is evidence for god much like analogies with human design on earth (there are of course more complicated versions). The problem for the theistic view is that both approaches weaken your case.

[Zen Badger]

We can know what God wants because he has revealed it to us. All we can know for certain about God is what he chooses to tell us. We can never understand him by our own efforts.

[/quote]

Revealed where? In the bible?

Sorry buddy, but the bible has already been shown(repeatedly) to be just the words of men.

Not god.

You will have to do much,much better than that.

[Minimalist]

He can't.

[theophilus]

So on the one hand you claim we can't know what god is because we don't have the ability to describe it yet christianty claims to know what it wants.
A clear contradiction if ever I saw one.

We can't know God in the sense of understanding him completely but we can know some things about him.

The existence of life is evidence that there is a God. All the natural processes we see show us that there is a natural tendency for all thing to break down and to becomse less complex. The development of life would require just the opposite so it couldn't have happened unless there was a creator outside of nature. I don't believe that evolution is true but even if it were proven that wouldn't disprove the existence of God. Before evolution can occur there must first be some life to evolve.

Everyone has an innate sense of right and wrong which has been given by God. If you compare the different religions and philosophies you will see that they are generally in agreement on matters of rilght and wrong. There are some differences in the details of their beliefs. For example some groups believe that their moral standards apply only in their dealings within their own group and not to their treatment of outsiders. This explains such phenomena as why Muslim extremists feel it is good to kill infidels. They don't reject God's standards of right and wrong, they simply feel they don't apply here.

Finally God has revealed himself to us through the Bible. In another post I have pointed out that Biblical prophesy is being fulfilled today and this is evidence of the Bible's truth:
http://atheistforums.org/thread-3988.html

Perhaps our relationship with God could be compared to the relationship of a pet with its owner. The pet is aware of its owner's existence and can be taught what the owner wants it to do but it can never fully understand how the owner thinks or the reasons for what it does.

[Captain Scarlet]

@theophilus. Wrong, wrong and er wrong.

The law of entropy states that things tend to disorder. But the 2 caveats to this are in an open system where there is an external energy source (the sun), then new energy into that system can reverse this. As our universe inflates as it continues to do at an ever expanding rate the potential entropy and actual entropy do not grow at equal rates meaning the observable universe will appear more orderly.

Objective moral values are far from an established fact, but working with them for a second they do not imply an objective independent source. Infact most ethicists and philosphers of morality do not invoke god. A common alternative theory is contractarianism. Pls look it up. Mans inhumanity to man commonly comes about from firstly dehumanizing a group then whipping up fear and loathing then setting abou them. This process is observed in primate groups not just humans and is the process of ingrouping and outgrouping.

Nostradamus made better prophecies than you are pointing out. You have displyed confirmation bias. You wait for an event or pick a past event and thumb through a text looking for something vaguely similar. Tell me one thing from the bible that hasn't happen yet and that the bible predicts and we'll wait for it to happen. Some detail will be good time place event etc. I'm afraid it's snake oil.

[Edwardo Piet]

God's fundamental nature is that he's special. Real special.





...oh, sorry if I'm being vague here. Yeah, special in what way? NEEDS.

[Peter44]

I wont quote anyone here or continue any line of discussion. I will just give my opinion.
I think its based on the evidence.

The evidence to me suggests two things about God.

1., There is no God. That's the best scenario for anyone.

2. God exists he is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient.

Therefore he is also a sadist.

Its in all our interests that God doesn't exist the idea of an all powerful being that could allow such suffering is unacceptable to me.

I am not impressed by faith becaue its blind it has no evidence.. Blind faith is ignorance and ignorance isn't acceptable.
Indoctrination is the suppression of intelligence because of cultural and religious pressures. Religious teaching is a form of child abuse.

The world will die screaming because of blind faith.