In God's Image?

[steve_bank]

As you go back farther in time the more speculative it gets, that should be obvious.

Arguing speculative details philosophically and academically at some point becomes analogous to biblical theistic interpretation.

There is nothing wrong with that, it has social value. But no one today knows what the Genesis stories meant symbolically to people in the times it was written.

There are sayings and metaphor from the 19th centenary people use without knowing the origin.

A good example is the word maverick. Maverick was a cattle rancher who let his cattle roam freely, people began calling stay unbranded cattle 'Mavericks'. It became a culturall tern for a free sprited person who shuns convention and goes his own way.

Samuel Augustus Maverick was a lawyer, politician, landowner, cattle rancher and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Sam Maverick, a free-spirited character, refused to brand his cattle and allowed them to roam freely across his sprawling Matagorda Island ranchland.

It is impossible to know how ancient Hebrews actually used the myths.

 

[Politesse]

As you go back farther in time the more speculative it gets, that should be obvious.

Arguing speculative details philosophically and academically at some point becomes analogous to biblical theistic interpretation.

There is nothing wrong with that, it has social value. But no one today knows what the Genesis stories meant symbolically to people in the times it was written.

There are sayings and metaphor from the 19th centenary people use without knowing the origin.

A good example is the word maverick. Maverick was a cattle rancher who let his cattle roam freely, people began calling stay unbranded cattle 'Mavericks'. It became a culturall tern for a free sprited person who shuns convention and goes his own way.

Samuel Augustus Maverick was a lawyer, politician, landowner, cattle rancher and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Sam Maverick, a free-spirited character, refused to brand his cattle and allowed them to roam freely across his sprawling Matagorda Island ranchland.

It is impossible to know how ancient Hebrews actually used the myths.

Grammar, however, can be known.

 

[steve_bank]

You must know what my response would be.

One can know grammar without knowing the meaning.

I had mandatory Latin in my RCC high school. We read Cesar;s Gaelic Wars in Latin.

I knew the grammar but that does not mean in Roman times I would have been able to understand contextual meaning. I read hat formal Latin was typically used in formal settings. Caesar would have spoken a dialect he grew up with.


I have been picking at Spanish for a while. There arr contextual and cultural subtleties you would miss going solely by formal grammar and a dictionary. And context can vary throughput Central Ans d South America.

The same applies to American ad British English. Someone learng English in different part of the world not being around English speakers might have a hard time going by grammar and a dictionary if dropped in LA or NYC.

I doubt there is anything profound or controversial in that.

So, we do not know how the ancient Hebrews actually sploke ad what meaning was attched to the myts and sypires.

What we have as translation is 2000 yeras of people interpreting what they think it means in their languages and cultural context.

From what I remember from the Oxford commentary one interpretation of the creation myth is
'out of caos god brought order'. In the oldestt documents there are wprds for which there are no known exact meanings.

Humans naturally and unconsiously fill in the blanks. In a psychology eperiement groups of peole wre given texts to read with missng details. When asked questions about the text some tended to fill in the blanks.

Therer are 2000 years of filling in the blanks.

 

[Learner]

Archeology seems to coincide with biblical descriptions.
Descriptions that coincides with archeological findings, implicates the Hebrew language as being fairly understood to a good degree.

 

[Politesse]

One can know grammar without knowing the meaning.

You don't need know what someone's intentions were to know whether they wrote a noun in the singular or the plural.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

If we are in the image of god does god have a penis?

Yes, but it's holy and you are supposed to capitalize it, like His Holy Penis.

Well, I suppose this opens a new paradox, is God's Penis too large for Him to grab?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

If we are in the image of god does god have a penis?

Yes, but it's holy and you are supposed to capitalize it, like His Holy Penis.

Well, I suppose this opens a new paradox, is God's Penis too large for Him to grab?

Good question, especially because He already has the whole world in His Hands.

 

[uzersuperman]

Genesis 1:26-27 ESV / 290 helpful votes
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

The plural in Genesis has always puzzled me.

If we are in god's image, or god and friends., then we are as god. Violent, greedy, petty, and warlike.

If we take the passage as poetry and metaphor instead of a literal belief it makes sense. We are self described gods or god like with dominion over the Earth. The Earth is for us humans to consume.

The attributes of God are all human, even the definition that He is a male God may carry the meaning that He has a male organ if it exists in the first place. I do not know why there is no other female God beside Him, and I do not know what this God did before the existence of galaxies and planets.

 

[Gospel]

Hebrew Scriptures remind me of D&D rulebooks. Both are texts that guide followers/players - D&D players consult rulebooks for spells, while followers of the Scriptures consult prophets for wisdom (and probably avoid casting real spells). In D&D, you gain experience points. In Hebrew, you gain wisdom, often the hard way. Think of Job and Solomon. In D&D, you may roll for a character with high wisdom or strength; in the Scriptures, Moses had great charisma, and Jonah’s underwater escape suggests he needed more points in swimming. The Dungeon Master controls the game in D&D, while in Hebrew Scriptures, it’s multiple authors and editors over centuries.

The only difference I see is in D&D, every player creates separate characters that progress in power through levels, starting as relatively ordinary individuals and potentially becoming heroically powerful, but not reaching the status of gods. In Hebrew Scriptures, the purpose of every rule in the book is to recognize that there is only one character, and that all players must follow the rules in order to know* (aka create) it. Being that the players create the one character in the Hebrew Scriptures game, it's not surprising that it adopts the attributes of each participant.

*In modern terms not Hebrew terms.

So yeah, humans weren't created in God's image it's the other way around.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

 

[Rhea]

Being that the players create the one character in the Hebrew Scriptures game, it's not surprising that it adopts the attributes of each participant.

That also explains why it’s not partucularly consistent, either. Too many cooks spoil the soup!

 

[ideologyhunter]

God having a gender pretty much gives the show away that God is fictional. The same way that God picking favorites among the humans he created does. If you're part of the priesthood writing these scriptures, yeah, the Head Dude will be all guy, and he'll think your group is just swell and entitled to perks.

 

[Lion IRC]

Why cant a spiritual being have a nature which we identify as 'male'?

I am reliably informed by the woke politburo that it's quite possible for a woman to be trapped in a man's body (and vice versa)

So this suggests a non-physical gender expression.

 

[EricH]

Why cant a spiritual being have a nature which we identify as 'male'?

I am reliably informed by the woke politburo that it's quite possible for a woman to be trapped in a man's body (and vice versa)

So this suggests a non-physical gender expression.

The idea that God has a gender would suggest that God is a product of boological evolution, and that both male and female gods are required to procreate and produce the next generation of gods. Is this what you believe? Or do you believe God doesn't actually have a gender, but chooses to identify as male to be woke, or to support misogynistic priests in the Christian church, or some other reason?

Just an interesting thought I had reading your post.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Going back to post #33:
The transgender statement is too weird for me to comment on -- you really want to knock on "wokes" to promote a god with gender attributes?
For the rest: my post above is subjective, yes. But a male deity -- it just doesn't pass the giggle test. It's absurd, it's the ultimate in anthromorphism. It ties in -- for me -- with other Biblical descriptions of god displaying negative emotions. He's famously jealous (Ex. 20:5,6) and demanding of attention and worship; he's rueful about earlier decisions he made (Gen. 6:6); he's lethally violent against children (Exodus 12 credits him with killing all the Egyptian firstborn children.) He's constantly killing people over unreasonably petty differences; a short list would include killing Aaron's sons for attempting to worship him with incense, but doing it incorrectly (Lev 10), and killing Uzzah for touching the Ark in an attempt to keep the damn thing from falling over (II Sam 6). In Numbers, when his chosen people complain about the boring manna they have to eat, he sends a plague, and later, poisonous snakes to kill more of them. Snakes! (Num 11 and 21.)
I find all of this bizarre, if it is believed in today, in 2024 CE. You're free to find it consistent with the god that Christian ministers talk about.

 

[Jarhyn]

First, I'm going to do my normal shtick and toss out the normal definition of God, instead replacing it with my much wider (and wiser) definition of "administrator of a simulation", and "special creation" with "simulationism", of which Christian beliefs are a subset.

My reason for creating simulations, and I quote, is "to give birth to some new life with my mind and my hands and explicitly understood invention rather than through my loins".

This is a fairly male endeavor, as females can, in fact, just give birth with their loins in most cases.

It's just not the sort of mindset that typifies "femininity".

To that end I find that in general, though with clear exceptions, in any situation wherein creators of simulations are divided at least between females ("those who can give birth with 'their loins'"), and males ("everyone else"), more such entities are going to be males.

So if there is a god, and if the class of entities which god belongs to has "male" and "female" representatives, god is probably a male.

 

[DBT]

I think that God is made in Man's image.


"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

 

[SIB]

Genesis 1:26-27 ESV / 290 helpful votes
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

The plural in Genesis has always puzzled me.

If we are in god's image, or god and friends., then we are as god. Violent, greedy, petty, and warlike.

If we take the passage as poetry and metaphor instead of a literal belief it makes sense. We are self described gods or god like with dominion over the Earth. The Earth is for us humans to consume.

I kind of agree. About the only thing I try and do is put all the traits of humans. We do love and we do hate. We do enable and we do ignore. For me its not weather or not we are part of a larger more complex system that may be alive (key word: may). Its the traits some religions assign to this "aliveness". Much like a bunch of atoms in us going around preaching about how we (our body) care for them and love them. They call us "god". And some of us will even take advantage of them ... lol. Like the twilight zone episode with the astronauts that find the little people.