What is god?

[AthenaAwakened]

What is god?

Is god an old white man with a long white beard in a long white robe sitting on a throne with a dove on his shoulder who is making a list and checking it twice?

Is god the ground of being, whatever that is?

Is god simply that which we don't know?

Is god a fiction we use as a vessel to contain our highest ideals?

When deciding if there is a god, should we define what god is?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

God is an entity who is shaped perfectly to fit in all the holes in logic and knowledge which we have.

This is proof of God, since the fact that he fits so perfectly within these holes is evidence of a divine guiding hand in the creation of those holes.

 

[rousseau]

God is a concept that gives people something to talk about on rationalist websites, and many billions of people reassurance that they aren't a material object living an entirely pointless life.

Beyond that, defining 'what God is' is irrelevant, because even if God was a real entity we would have no way of knowing what that entity is. That said, I like taking the materialist definition above: God is a man-made concept, that's the way in which it exists.

 

[Underseer]

Mostly, God is an excuse either for not taking responsibility or for not thinking.

 

[TV and credit cards]

A psychological defense mechanism that allows us to come to terms with our mortality.
Present company excepted.

 

[jonJ]

God is the final arbiter of all that is good and true in the universe -- and he thinks exactly the same way you do.

 

[Underseer]

God is the final arbiter of all that is good and true in the universe -- and he thinks exactly the same way you do.

I think we have a winner.

- - - Updated - - -

A psychological defense mechanism that allows us to come to terms with our mortality.
Present company excepted.

OMG, do you mean to say that I'm going to die some day? Holy crap! Why didn't someone tell me! I'm going to convert to the Ainu religion immediately! I have no idea what kind of afterlife they offer, but they get to eat their gods (in a much more literal way than Catholics).

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

God is sound we make, and a three letter word, at least in this language.

Does our new home have a god mod? You know, a mod with superpowers?

 

[Keith&Co.]

God is an interrupted defense mechanism.

A defense mechanism is to run away from the predator.

Stopping to pray to gods for protection from the predator interrupts the defenses.

Running AND praying adds no discernable benefit to the defense mechanism. But it also adds no discernable costs. Successful evasion can be attributed to either prayer or running. Unsuccessful evasion can be attributed to faith failure by survivors (who used successful evasion techniques).

It was probably generated either out of a hope to gain control over uncontrollable conditions, or out of an inability to remove bias from analysis of the component parts of successful evastion techniques.

 

[braces_for_impact]

God is the ultimate saying one has for orgasmic pleasure.

 

[aeebee50]

I enjoy God's inspirations.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I enjoy God's inspirations.

God's supposedly omniscient. What is there left that could possibly inspire him?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

God is a question, not an answer.

 

[fromderinside]

??

 

[Perspicuo]

God is a question, not an answer.

Poetic, but it really only means the theist in question admits s/he doesn't know what s/he's talking about.

 

[Thomas II]

God is the imaginary answer to all our questions...

 

[StarryNight]

best explanation ethically as well as epistemologically... the most attractive must exist?

 

[cpollett]

A god is a being so technologically advanced that to us its abilities seem like magic. Moreover, a god increases its abilities at a rate so fast or started with abilities so high that there will be no future time at which we will be able to view its capabilities as something other than magic.

 

[Zeluvia]

Gods drop phat lewt

 

[Duke Leto]