What is a gawd even?

[Silver]

God is our creator, first and foremost, according to them.

Other than that, they have no fucking clue because god is supposedly beyond human understanding.

If he is beyond human understanding, how did he even convey to anyone that he was god? It makes no sense and the paradoxes continue to build in the theistic world to the point where one realizes it is all made-up bullshit.

[robvalue]

It's usually an imaginary idealised version of yourself.

I made a thread ages ago asking for coherent definitions. Turns out most theists have no idea what it is they are worshipping I got squat.

Darkmatter 2525 gave an argument saying that god is basically them. It's all the parts of the bible that they like, so when people start talking bad about god, they see it as an attack on themself. It goes back to what I said about control. The priest isn't just a guy who want you to do what he wants. He's telling you what god wants you to do. Don't kill the messenger.

Exactly! That is the video that got me onto that line of thinking. Since then it has seemed more and more apt. It explains pretty much everything.

[Spooky]

A psychological crutch.

[Longhorn]

God is a nasty brain virus, eating away at the victim's frontal lobe while pretending to be a safety blanket

nasty

[bennyboy]

Why is this philosophy?

[Excited Penguin]

bennyboy, actually, religion and god are topics often touched by philosophy. But anyway, suppose that wasn't so, why wouldn't it be philosophy? It's bad philosophy, sure, but not for you apparently, since you're undecided about it.

[Pizza]

Why is this philosophy?

Never heard of philosophy of religion?

[bennyboy]

Why is this philosophy?

Never heard of philosophy of religion?

lol I don't mean your OP question, although the "gawd" spelling makes it right away look more like an anti-theist meme party thread than a serious question.  I meant the general flow of the thread up to this point.

I'd actually like to put forward an answer of sorts: I think the God idea as a philosophical idea amounts to this: "God is whatever device, entity or quantity that allows the resolution of paradox."  In other words, it represents something that cannot be represented physically, but is crucial to the underpinnings of existence (like the square root of -1).  And we've seen theists use it often in this way: "Everything must be caused, but infinite regression cannot be true in a time-limited universe, therefore something must exist outside of time." And instead of spinning off into "Yeah, but how/why does it exist?" the train is stopped there: it just IS. . . because the inverse of a paradox is itself still unexplainable.

Of course, this gives way immediately to accusations of special pleading, but I don't think that needs to be.  In a philosophically honest application of this particular definition of God, we might discover that something about this universe is God, or that time is an illusion and that this God is therefore not needed.  We might one day discover what it is about the universe that allows it to exist despite the apparent infinite regression the existence of finite things in infinite spacetime. In other words, we might actually be able to use science to learn about God. Who knows? We might find through QM that there is something intrinsically related to sentience about the universe that is required for it to exist at all, in which case "All is one and all is God" might be found to represent scientific truth so long as the God idea has been divorced from every flavor of cultural mythology. I like the idea that mind is what makes the universe possible and vice versa, though obviously it's just hippie speculation at this point.

Now, I'm not a theist, but it seems to me a definition like this could be usable by theists and atheists alike: by the first as a description of the most essential feature of God, by the second as a definition of an otherwise unusable word that can be taken seriously in philosophical discussions-- i.e. that isn't conflated with ideas about Sky Daddy watching teens masturbate all the time.

[uniquepegasister]

Religion wise a god is a creator human based or non that plays the role of making all that is and will be. In paganism there are many gods that take on aspects in nature in monotheism there is one god that controls all aspects of nature. Some believe in metaphoric gods i.e. money power one's self. Perhaps a god is in the eye of the beholder just how everyone perceives reality differently.

[Mudhammam]

In other words, we might actually be able to use science to learn about God.