by Karen Armstrong and the God she describes is very different from the God I believed in as a child. As a Mormon, I believed in a God who was human in form, our Heavenly Father, literally the father of our spirits. Mormons believe that God was once a man and that as his offspring, we have the potential to attain exaltation and become like him ourselves. (See this chapter of one of the Church's lesson manuals for more on this.)Armstrong describes God as more of a complex and ambiguous concept in the human psyche, rather than a concretely definable being. I could get on board with that. I like complexity and ambiguity, open possibilities for interpretations and speculation. I have to say, I'm enthralled with the book so far, can't wait to read more.
For those of you who did or do believe in God, what was or is your understanding of the nature of God?
I originally grew up Lutheran, mostly in name only. My parents had me go to Sunday School, but I didn't have to go to church (so I didn't go very often).
ReplyDeleteEven in such a non-strict environment I thought God was an actual being. I wasn't sure to what extent he was like us, but I believed that there was an entity that listened to my prayers.
I guess I didn't have much need to question the existence of God until my mid 20's, so I my understanding of God didn't much change up to that point. Well, I did join the Mormon church at 18, so at that point I believed as you had. The only real difference to what I had previously thought was that the entity of God was more well defined.
When I did believe, (I stopped believing since teenager) I always thought of "him" as human in form. In catholic school we were taught he created us in "his" image. Also, they taught us that the holy trinity -father, son, spirit- is one (and three... it's very confusing usually).
ReplyDeleteYou might call whatever caused the universe to exist god. However, any deity, object, thing, being or whatever you want to call it cannot, in any way or form, affect our decisions, lives or anything in our world. Human experience, learning and understanding is the key to keep prospering.
"The sailor does not pray for wind, he learns to sail" G.Lindborg
I was raised as a Mormon and had the same concept you did. I remember feeling completely inadequate as I was striving to become a god but seemed to always, in my mind, fall short.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the assertion of Karen Armstrong, what is the point of god if he/she is a concept... ambiguous or not? I heard her interview on NPR and she makes a case that God is real to some degree. What power does a concept have and what compulsion do we have to obey or follow a concept?
I have not read the book. I will wait to hear more before I decide if it something I want to explore.
At my Southern Baptist church, the thing that was stressed was the "perfect" nature of God, his perfect love, wisdom, etc. Without ever bothering to really define those concepts. And if you kept pressing the matter, they would eventually fall back on the old "His thoughts are not our thoughts, His ways are not our ways."
ReplyDeleteDan Barker's book "Godless" has a chapter that shows how omnipotence and omniscience would effectively cancel each other out and make a perfect being impossible.
At my son's urging I read one of Karen Armstrong's books. I can't remember much about it now or even the title but I will want to check it out again.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in a family who believed in god but didn't really do much about it. We did not attend church regularly but someone was always praying. My idea of god was never really formed. I could never grasp the idea that an entity could hear and see everything, everywhere, everyday. It just did not make any sense.
I remember asking a lot of questions in Sunday School and usually pissing someone off because I never liked the answers.
Personally I'm not a big fan of the philosophical game of salvaging theism by making the word "God" ever more insubstantial. What Armstrong is describing saves nothing of God except the word itself. No thanks, I'd rather just be honest about the fact that I'm an atheist than try to avoid the label by being disingenuous.
ReplyDeleteAs to my definition of God when I was a believer:
ReplyDeleteThe omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent creator of the universe who is one in three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Though I wasn't all that strongly committed to the trinity business---never could make much sense of it and just believed it as yet another "divine mystery" beyond human understanding.
I remember sitting on my front porch in high school having this very discussion with you. I remember talking about the nature of God. If I remember correctly you seemed to be a bit surprised that I didn't believe that God, or as the Mormons refer to him, Heavenly Father, was my literal Father as a result of some sort of godly intercourse. Rather that I believed that God was my Father in that He created me and that He adopts us into His family through faith in Jesus Christ.
ReplyDeleteI have not read this book and therefore don't know what she has to say about the nature of God but if she believes in the God of the Bible then there is much that can be ascertained directly from the Bible. For instance, John says that God is Spirit. We are also told that God has always existed and created everything that has been created. He therefore transcends all that has been created. Jesus says that no one has ever seen the Father except him and that to know Jesus is to know the Father. We are also told that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. He also says that he and the Father are one. Although the Bible doesn't ever use the term "Trinity" it can fairly easily be derived from many of Jesus' comments regarding himself, the Father, and the Spirit. These are but a few references to the nature of God that can be found in the Bible.
You say you like complexity? How about a God that is infinitely complex enough to have the abililty to create the complex universe that we find ourselves in.
Patrik, I'm genuinely curious: what are your thoughts on the origin of God? How did something so complex come to be?
ReplyDeleteI won't try to argue with you or anything, I'm just wondering what your take on it is.
I don't believe that God came to be. I believe that He is. The Bible says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is unchanging. He calls Himself the 'I AM'.
ReplyDeleteThe Bible says that God created the universe, all of time, space, and matter. Therefore He exists outside of the universe. I think that outside of this physical universe that we live in, one of it's dimensions being time, is God. He is not a part of the physical universe and therefore not limited by the constructs of time. It is hard to think outside of time (mind boggling) but if it is a physical part of the universe then it had a beginning. And we know that time is a physical part of the universe that has not always existed. Think about it like this...if time has always existed and stretches into the eternal past then we would never arrive at today because there is an infinite amount of time to expire before we get to today. And if time is finite then there has to be some sort of predecesor that existed prior to but is not a part of it that caused it to come into being. I believe that is God. The first cause. The Creator.
If we say that at some point God was created then who created God? And then who created the thing that created God and on and on and on either forever until we arrive at a first cause. An uncreated.
Anyways, that's my two cents.
I'm not interested in arguing either but I am open to hearing your thoughts as well. Leah mentioned The Heavenly Father as once being a man. I am curious if the Mormons do not believe that The Heavenly Father was the creator of the universe. As far as I understand it He exists today living on a planet Kolob or something. Who do the Mormons believe created the universe if not Heavenly Father. Maybe with your background you could shed some light on this for me. That and offer your opinons about what I said above.
Mormons believe that as man is, God once was, and as God is, man may become. In Mormon doctrine, Heavenly Father is the creator of this universe, but there are innumerable other Gods of innumerable other universes—Heavenly Father was born of some other Heavenly Parents, and they were born of yet another set of Heavenly Parents, and on and on, infinitely—and eventually mortal humans (who are the spirit children of Heavenly Father) can become Gods of their own universes with spirit children of their own by complying with the doctrines of Mormonism. Nothing is ever mentioned in Mormon doctrine about the nature of our Heavenly Grandparents, or Great-Grandparents, but I always wondered about it when I was Mormon (is Heavenly Father still subject to the rules of his Father? Are his Father's rules the same rules Heavenly Father imposes on us?). And I could never wrap my mind around the infinite aspect of it; I imagined maybe time was circular, and we created that which would eventually create us.
ReplyDeleteAs far as God existing outside our universe, I have a hard time understanding how something outside our universe is able to affect events and matter within our universe. It's possible there could be an omnipotent being that exists outside our universe, but if there were, what would it matter? To me, if something is outside our universe, it's as good as non-existent since we'll never be able to see it, or know it, or measure it, or interact with it in any meaningful way.
I also have a hard time understanding God's motives for creating the universe. Was he bored? Was he lonely? Was he following the commandments of some other God? We'll probably never truly be able to answer the question of why there's something instead of nothing, but it is fun to think about anyway.
So, yeah. My two cents.
As a child I had a somewhat cartoon-y concept of God - a nice person, rounded cheeks, smiley, that sort of thing. But God wasn't someone to think much about, there was a lot of things to get to in the world.
ReplyDeleteI was brought up by two Christian parents that were much more focused on the practice of being good people than believing (or being right all the time). So when I first came face to face with zealots in my teen years, I was in shock. It was so obvious to me - they weren't believing in the same God I was. And all the more, I didn't want to be lumped in with them. They took the word Christianity away from me, and they redefined my God for me to the point where it was all unrecognizable. (I was getting away from the faith anyway, but the thumpers made the path all the more clear...)
So, @David,
Although I completely understand your approach of wanting to be honest rather than playing the philosophical game, I would cordially disagree with you on the (lack of) merit around the salvage operation. To me, the word 'God' is just too powerful of a word to leave solely in the hands of the religious. They are using the word all wrong. Just like how they messed up the word 'love', and the word 'peace', they can mess up the whole language and cause too much spiritual damage.
If we reduce the power around that word, if we stop worshiping the word, we might have a chance to save one another, and save this planet (sorry, couldn't resist, but yes this is a deliberate, awkward hint at further illustrating the power in certain words...)
As a child I had a somewhat cartoon-y concept of God - a nice person, rounded cheeks, smiley, that sort of thing. But God wasn't someone to think much about, there was a lot of things to get to in the world.
ReplyDeleteI was brought up by two Christian parents that were much more focused on the practice of being good people than believing (or being right all the time). So when I first came face to face with zealots in my teen years, I was in shock. It was so obvious to me - they weren't believing in the same God I was. And all the more, I didn't want to be lumped in with them. They took the word Christianity away from me, and they redefined my God for me to the point where it was all unrecognizable. (I was getting away from the faith anyway, but the thumpers made the path all the more clear...)
So, @David,
Although I completely understand your approach of wanting to be honest rather than playing the philosophical game, I would cordially disagree with you on the (lack of) merit around the salvage operation. To me, the word 'God' is just too powerful of a word to leave solely in the hands of the religious. They are using the word all wrong. Just like how they messed up the word 'love', and the word 'peace', they can mess up the whole language and cause too much spiritual damage.
If we reduce the power around that word, if we stop worshiping the word, we might have a chance to save one another, and save this planet (sorry, couldn't resist, but yes this is a deliberate, awkward hint at further illustrating the power in certain words...)
Mormons believe that as man is, God once was, and as God is, man may become. In Mormon doctrine, Heavenly Father is the creator of this universe, but there are innumerable other Gods of innumerable other universes—Heavenly Father was born of some other Heavenly Parents, and they were born of yet another set of Heavenly Parents, and on and on, infinitely—and eventually mortal humans (who are the spirit children of Heavenly Father) can become Gods of their own universes with spirit children of their own by complying with the doctrines of Mormonism. Nothing is ever mentioned in Mormon doctrine about the nature of our Heavenly Grandparents, or Great-Grandparents, but I always wondered about it when I was Mormon (is Heavenly Father still subject to the rules of his Father? Are his Father's rules the same rules Heavenly Father imposes on us?). And I could never wrap my mind around the infinite aspect of it; I imagined maybe time was circular, and we created that which would eventually create us.
ReplyDeleteAs far as God existing outside our universe, I have a hard time understanding how something outside our universe is able to affect events and matter within our universe. It's possible there could be an omnipotent being that exists outside our universe, but if there were, what would it matter? To me, if something is outside our universe, it's as good as non-existent since we'll never be able to see it, or know it, or measure it, or interact with it in any meaningful way.
I also have a hard time understanding God's motives for creating the universe. Was he bored? Was he lonely? Was he following the commandments of some other God? We'll probably never truly be able to answer the question of why there's something instead of nothing, but it is fun to think about anyway.
So, yeah. My two cents.
I don't believe that God came to be. I believe that He is. The Bible says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is unchanging. He calls Himself the 'I AM'.
ReplyDeleteThe Bible says that God created the universe, all of time, space, and matter. Therefore He exists outside of the universe. I think that outside of this physical universe that we live in, one of it's dimensions being time, is God. He is not a part of the physical universe and therefore not limited by the constructs of time. It is hard to think outside of time (mind boggling) but if it is a physical part of the universe then it had a beginning. And we know that time is a physical part of the universe that has not always existed. Think about it like this...if time has always existed and stretches into the eternal past then we would never arrive at today because there is an infinite amount of time to expire before we get to today. And if time is finite then there has to be some sort of predecesor that existed prior to but is not a part of it that caused it to come into being. I believe that is God. The first cause. The Creator.
If we say that at some point God was created then who created God? And then who created the thing that created God and on and on and on either forever until we arrive at a first cause. An uncreated.
Anyways, that's my two cents.
I'm not interested in arguing either but I am open to hearing your thoughts as well. Leah mentioned The Heavenly Father as once being a man. I am curious if the Mormons do not believe that The Heavenly Father was the creator of the universe. As far as I understand it He exists today living on a planet Kolob or something. Who do the Mormons believe created the universe if not Heavenly Father. Maybe with your background you could shed some light on this for me. That and offer your opinons about what I said above.