[Serious] If I met Him...

[The Grand Nudger]

All theistic gods are person-alike, John. That's what the term refers to. Christ is no more or less personlike and the story of christ has no more or less person-alikeness value than any other except in some subjective sense where christ is more like the kind of person you would like than some other. Obviously that doesn't hold in my case or the case of many other theists and atheists. I think that the character of jesus is a lesson in how to be a shitty person with shitty ideas. If gods exist, they may be person-alike..and even if they aren't they may have reason to act as much...but if they're like that person and act like that person...well...

The most striking disagreement is between those who regard the divine reality as personal and those who do not. Theists believe that even though the object of their ultimate concern transcends all finite realities it is more like a person than anything else with which we are ordinarily familiar, and typically conceptualize it as a maximally perfect person.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concepts-god/

[John 6IX Breezy]

You are conflating what God is like with what we can understand about him. There is no way to describe God in language that is not familiar or personlike. We give faces to clouds and feelings to dogs for a reason. To then conclude God is confined to these terms, outside of Christ, is a misunderstanding. Clouds are not faces; God is not a person.

[Rhizomorph13]

Theists seem to spend an awful lot of time explaining what God is not.

[The Grand Nudger]

You are conflating what God is like with what we can understand about him. There is no way to describe God in language that is not familiar or personlike. We give faces to clouds and feelings to dogs for a reason. To then conclude God is confined to these terms, outside of Christ, is a misunderstanding. Clouds are not faces; God is not a person.

That's not my conclusion, John, that's the position of theism.  That god is personal.  If that's a constraint, so be it, but it's not one that I would impose or believe is even remotely true.

There are plenty of ways to describe the divine which are in no sense personal or person-alike - that's just not how christianity asserts or describes it's god. It's in the class with all the other theistic beliefs. The heras and the thors and the lughs.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. Faces in clouds are not faces, and gods are not people. It's difficult to understand why you even levied that one, though, the quoted text explicitly speaks to it.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Personal and personlike have very different meanings. Regardless, you said you agreed so I'll leave it at that.

[The Grand Nudger]

The most striking disagreement is between those who regard the divine reality as personal and those who do not. Theists believe that even though the object of their ultimate concern transcends all finite realities it is more like a person than anything else with which we are ordinarily familiar, and typically conceptualize it as a maximally perfect person.

 b-mine

They do not, that is exactly what is being asserted and what personal is meant in that statement. I have often found it to be the case that theists read that and believe that it is referring, in some sense, to it being their god, who does things for them, and has a relationship with them. This is also what christians believe, that their personal god is intercessory - but this is not what it means to believe in a personal god. There are people who believe in the one, and not the other. Deists.

There are also a wide range of positions, just as theism proposes that gods are person-alike, where it's asserted that the divine is god-alike, but not person-alike. That it does the divine things but doesn't have the personal qualities.

I want to make sure I understand this right. You are arguing that theism is false, correct? That gods are not people?

[John 6IX Breezy]

In what language does personal and personlike mean the same thing?

[The Grand Nudger]

In the technical language of an accurate description of peoples beliefs about the divine, John.

Do you disagree in any way with the bolded content of the quoted statement? Is your god -not- more like a person than anything else that we are normally familiar with? Is it just describing itself that way, lying to us, not unlike my alien squid?

[John 6IX Breezy]

In the technical language of an accurate description of peoples beliefs about the divine, John.

Doesn't sound very technical if it conflates terms rather than differentiate them.

[The Grand Nudger]

But of course it differentiates them? A theist god is personal and intercessory, a deist god is personal and not intercessory. A god-alike divine is intercessory, but not personal.

The terms are very specific, but, lay this aside, is this an argument over word construction or word content? Do you disagree with the bolded text of the quote in any way? Do you think that god -is not- more like a person than anything else with which we are normally familiar? That would be informative, that would be instructive, that would be a novel understanding of christianity and theism and I would be very interested in hearing about that.

If that statement is wrong with respect to the divine as you see it as a christian based on the biblical account, how so?

(if it helps, I have absolutely no intention of arguing that whatever it is you disagree with is wrong, I would just very much like to see how a christian who sees value in christ being or becoming person-alike could disagree with the statement)