RE: If I met Him...
January 13, 2021 at 4:41 pm
(This post was last modified: January 13, 2021 at 5:07 pm by John 6IX Breezy.)
(January 13, 2021 at 1:01 pm)Five Wrote: 1. I will not accept a lesser definition of God because of the higher status inherent in "God". If it's not powerful enough to do the omni- stuff(knowing my thoughts, knowing my future, able to heal or undo me at a wave) then it's just a tiger. A tiger with fangs that seem impossible or super powered but still beholden to the same laws of reality that I am. An alien that created Adam in a test tube and dropped his essence here is not a God. A being that can read my mind or see my future but cannot bend reality is not God.
2. There is a personalized element to proving its existence. If I can touch it, it loses the awe it once contained. And the demand of worship while also bowing to my need for proof clashes. It is a submissive gesture to placate me with an illustration. I lose a few notches of respect for something so powerful lowering themselves to entertain my, admitted, fickle needs.
To address two of your points:
1. The label should reflect the object not the other way around. For example, research on categorization shows that when asked to imagine a bird, most people imagine a robin-like animal instead of a penguin. Both are birds, but robins are more typical. We're living in an age of communication where your concept of "god" borrows from every deity you've encountered in literature or religions. The most important step here is to discard this stereotypical "god" and anything inherent to the word, and work from the ground up adding only those qualities presented in Scripture to your definition of the Biblical God. My issue with the omnis, for example, is that they are post-hoc descriptions. They are not found in scripture in such a shorthand state. And to the extent that they do reflect Scripture in any way, they add unnecessary assumptions. So I discard them from my description.
2. There is research on the relationship between awe and our perception of the supernatural. People get a sense that there is something more (Gods or Karma) when they look at scenes of grandeur, such as vast landscapes or space. This is perhaps why many cultures end up worshiping the Sun or other celestial bodies. So I think its important to dissociate the existence of God from your perception of awe. I see no problem with wanting God to cause feelings of awe, but I think its a problem if you want awe to be evidence for God.
I can provide references to both studies if interested.
