What is a 'god'? A poll for anyone with an opinion about what all the fuss is about.

[Whateverist]

Okay so I'm curious to know what people think 'God' really is exactly. People have believed in gods in one form or another for as long as we have evidence of how people lived. If you don't think gods are what they are claimed, what do you think accounts for those claims? If you think a god is real, how do you imagine it fits in with everything we all agree is real? Please check all that apply or if none of my suggestions work for you please say what you think the 'god' phenomenon is all about.

Choose as many as you think apply of these choices and/or elaborate others which you think are more important:

1) God is a being with awareness of others and of everything in the physical world which he himself brought into being. Literally.

2) The God which people experience is something that comes from themselves. There is a propensity for people to attribute to God what is beyond their limited conscious mind, which lies hidden from them in the deeper levels of the unconscious mind.

3) God is an artifact of early man's attempt to understand the world around him. Essentially God is a mistake in understanding and that is all.

4) God is a kind of shared social hallucination. It is a form of insanity albeit a common one.

5) Belief in gods is a social practice. The perception of a god is the result of a kind of group hypnosis. Who knows how social practices come into being or why, but once established they are self perpetuating.

6) Other, please elaborate.

[Rahul]

Number 3. Nothing but Anthropomorphism.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Generally speaking, the God/Lord character of the Old Testament is the series of Assyrian/Babylonian Emperors who ruled the Middle East for centuries. The God character ceased to exist when the Babylonian Empire collapsed and the last Babylonian Emperor died.

There are just a few references to the celestial and desert mountain dwelling deities also referred to by various names. The vast majority of references to the God/Lord character refer to men who had absolute power over the slobs who lived in their empires. That's one reason who those God/Lord characters were so talkative and always making threats.

[max-greece]

Between 3 and 4. I went for the insanity option simply because there are so many people that claim to be in contract - with a myth.

[Alex K]

All of the above, depending on person, day, mood, and who's asking and whether someone is asking.

[Ryantology]

To say that God was an attempt to learn about the world is giving too much credit, I think. God is an excuse not to learn about the world. God is the made-up answer to questions that can't be answered. Rather than a tool to aid in learning, it is a substitute for learning. When has the mythology of any god ever directly contributed to any actual knowledge, compared to the appalling number of times the mythology of gods has directly prevented or suppressed the acquisition of actual knowledge?

[Mr. Moncrieff]

What an intriguing and well considered poll. Very challenging too, when all is considered.

[fr0d0]

None apply. God is realised through conceptual thinking. I'd have to adjust #1 to include belief to be correct.

He also acts as well as observes.

[Whateverist]

None apply. God is realised through conceptual thinking. I'd have to adjust #1 to include belief to be correct.

He also acts as well as observes.

Thanks for the clarification.

Hmm .. so I should have included a "God is a theory" or perhaps "God is an inescapable result of logic correctly applied"? Is that what you have in mind?

I considered specifying the capacity to act with His creation and/or His ongoing concern for His creation, but decided to avoid the theism/deism divide. I figured his stature as a being with some sort of consciousness, intentions and so on would catch both.

[downbeatplumb]

I think god is a mixture of most of the above definitions in different mixes from person to person but I would add that god is also the anthropomorphism of abstract concepts like justice, morality and love.