I serve an amazing God

[Omaha-Husker]

For our theistic posters, I'm curious - what is your visual perception of God? How do you comprehend what he looks like or what he is? Do you even know?

 

I'm not asking to prove a point. General curiosity.

 

A Jesuit would say all things are a visual perception of God. At least that is the goal.

 

I would assume all true Theists see God everyday. I don't.

[Enhance]

I merely ask because God is often referred to as a 'He', but I've never really found that overly fair. Even I am guilty of referring to God as He, when really 'It' would seem like a more accurate term, since the likelihood that the 'creator of all things' is a man isn't very high. Why would 'He' constrain himself to a gender?

 

Plus, we don't know what else is out there in our universe. It's possible that our idea of gender roles is completely uncommon.

[Omaha-Husker]

I merely ask because God is often referred to as a 'He', but I've never really found that overly fair. Even I am guilty of referring to God as He, when really 'It' would seem like a more accurate term, since the likelihood that the 'creator of all things' is a man isn't very high. Why would 'He' constrain himself to a gender?

 

Plus, we don't know what else is out there in our universe. It's possible that our idea of gender roles is completely uncommon.

 

It can be argued that since Jesus was a male and he was/is God since God exists in three parts(Father, Son, Holy Spirit) that He is a reasonable term.

[Enhance]

I merely ask because God is often referred to as a 'He', but I've never really found that overly fair. Even I am guilty of referring to God as He, when really 'It' would seem like a more accurate term, since the likelihood that the 'creator of all things' is a man isn't very high. Why would 'He' constrain himself to a gender?

 

Plus, we don't know what else is out there in our universe. It's possible that our idea of gender roles is completely uncommon.

 

It can be argued that since Jesus was a male and he was/is God since God exists in three parts(Father, Son, Holy Spirit) that He is a reasonable term.

I guess, but it doesn't make sense to me why a supreme being would choose one gender.

[Omaha-Husker]

I merely ask because God is often referred to as a 'He', but I've never really found that overly fair. Even I am guilty of referring to God as He, when really 'It' would seem like a more accurate term, since the likelihood that the 'creator of all things' is a man isn't very high. Why would 'He' constrain himself to a gender?

 

Plus, we don't know what else is out there in our universe. It's possible that our idea of gender roles is completely uncommon.

 

It can be argued that since Jesus was a male and he was/is God since God exists in three parts(Father, Son, Holy Spirit) that He is a reasonable term.

I guess, but it doesn't make sense to me why a supreme being would choose one gender.

 

I am just playing devil's advocate. I think the whole bible, while has teachable stories, was in the end written by man and has their skewed views. I can't take it literally.

[Enhance]

I merely ask because God is often referred to as a 'He', but I've never really found that overly fair. Even I am guilty of referring to God as He, when really 'It' would seem like a more accurate term, since the likelihood that the 'creator of all things' is a man isn't very high. Why would 'He' constrain himself to a gender?

 

Plus, we don't know what else is out there in our universe. It's possible that our idea of gender roles is completely uncommon.

 

It can be argued that since Jesus was a male and he was/is God since God exists in three parts(Father, Son, Holy Spirit) that He is a reasonable term.

I guess, but it doesn't make sense to me why a supreme being would choose one gender.

 

I am just playing devil's advocate. I think the whole bible, while has teachable stories, was in the end written by man and has their skewed views. I can't take it literally.

Nor can I, and I think even most theists think the bible shouldn't be taken for face value. It's just an interesting cultural dynamic that everybody refers to God as a He.

[Ratt Mhule]

I merely ask because God is often referred to as a 'He', but I've never really found that overly fair. Even I am guilty of referring to God as He, when really 'It' would seem like a more accurate term, since the likelihood that the 'creator of all things' is a man isn't very high. Why would 'He' constrain himself to a gender?

 

Plus, we don't know what else is out there in our universe. It's possible that our idea of gender roles is completely uncommon.

 

My interpretation: the bible was written by men and on this Earth all we have is male/female species, so we know nothing else other than the two genders. Nobody has ever seen God, but it is said that man is made in the likeness of God, therefore, we put a gender to Him because it is human nature to categorize things as male/female. Because of this and because we know God is not human, we capitalize the H which I think shows God is greater than man. Just my thoughts...

[knapplc]

Jesus refers to God the Father on several occasions. Father being a male-only term, that would seem to indicate gender specificity.

 

But I agree with the consensus that this is likely a bone thrown to the audience to whom he was speaking - if the creator of the universe sits on the shores of some iron-age lake and starts expounding on the nuts-and-bolts physics of the universe, it's likely he's not going to be understood, much as if Neil DeGrasse Tyson dumped the sum of his knowledge on a class of pre-schoolers. In the interest of "keeping it basic," God presented himself to man in a way man could easily understand. I think early man would have been a little baffled by gender neutrality, or a non-gender being.

 

As a Christian, my thought on that was always, "It's not necessary for your salvation, so why should God tell you?" The primary Christian tenet is You are saved by grace through faith. That's it. Live your life, do your thing, attempt to be decent, believe in Jesus and let the magic happen to you. There's no reason or need to understand the mechanics of the underlying universe, but if you want to poke into it, God doesn't seem to have an issue with the attempt. God's whole thing was to keep things really basic for mankind. You need "A" to be saved. Here's "A." Everything else, from B to Z, is there, but it's not necessary.

[AR Husker Fan]

I guess, but it doesn't make sense to me why a supreme being would choose one gender.

So he can piss standing up. No worries about whether the toliet seat is up or down.

 

Makes perfect sense.

[HSKR]

I guess, but it doesn't make sense to me why a supreme being would choose one gender.

So he can piss standing up. No worries about whether the toliet seat is up or down.

 

Makes perfect sense.

 

Or needing a toilet in the first place. That tree over yonder will do just fine.

[Landlord]

Enhance, as far as visual perception, there are a few passages of scripture where people witnessed heavenly glimpses of the image of God. It's almost humorous to kind of see them struggling with words for what they saw, knowing that what it actually looked like probably wasn't anything close but they had no way of communicating it properly.

 

 

"I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, ¹³and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man,^[d] dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. ¹⁴ The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. ¹⁵ His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. ¹⁶ In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.

¹⁷ When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. ¹⁸ I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades."

"Then there came a voice from above the vault over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. ²⁶ Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. ²⁷ I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. ²⁸ Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.

This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking."

[Landlord]

Also, I've tried staying out of this thread, but I read through the last two pages or so with all the evidence talk. I don't mean this unkindly, but there hasn't been a single actual post from a theist with actual evidence towards God. That's lame.

 

 

A few quick things I have to say in response to that. First, I think we can all agree that a lot of the time (I won't say most or some, I know it happens and it happens frequently but to what frequency I have no idea) we mistake evidence with the perception of evidence. Two people from two different camps can take the same observation and use it for their own ideas, slanting it through their world view and both making compelling arguments with the same thing.

 

Secondly, even if the knowledge of science were hypothetically 100% complete and 100% accurate with no stone left unturned, while it would prevent severe difficulties with religious texts and human perceptions of a God, it still would not ever really have anything to say about God at all. Science works by experiments, observations, etc. Its job is to come up with statements such as "I did so-and-so and so-and-so happened". Science is meant to say "There is a universe", but even if science were to be complete the questions such as "Why is there a universe?" "Does the universe have any meaning?" and so on would still remain unanswered.

 

 

Lastly, I think there is plenty of evidence in favor of the existence of a conscious, involved creator. The Kalam cosmological argument, a perceived moral standard and conscience, the teleological argument from fine-tuning, even the Big Bang seems to me to be extraordinary evidence of a creator (There is no such thing as an infinite number in reality - arguments that the universe is infinite or that it came from something -- which must have been infinite or come from something else, still the same problem -- just can't hold up). Just a few examples.

[zoogs]

(There is no such thing as an infinite number in reality - arguments that the universe is infinite or that it came from something -- which must have been infinite or come from something else, still the same problem -- just can't hold up)

Some simple "it doesn't make sense" statements don't really hold up as evidence. Just objective conclusions you may draw from what we know.

[MLB 51]

If the universe isn't infinite then what happens when you reach the outter most point.

[Landlord]

(There is no such thing as an infinite number in reality - arguments that the universe is infinite or that it came from something -- which must have been infinite or come from something else, still the same problem -- just can't hold up)

Some simple "it doesn't make sense" statements don't really hold up as evidence. Just objective conclusions you may draw from what we know.

 

 

Of course you are right. I didn't mean to imply that it was in itself evidence, but that the simple statement I gave has an incredible amount of information surrounding it that I believe to be valid evidence, but for the sake of brevity I was pretty brief.