I don't understand when some people say they have an aversion to a 'personal' god. What is god then? Some kind of divine ectoplasm? What's so hard about conceiving god as personal? Why would god be anything less than personal?
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>divine ectoplasm
Isn't that how you define the Trinity? A divine "substance" split into 3 persons.
Maybe, but it's still personal. Tri-personal, actually.
God isn't real. It's an ancient concept goatfrickers came up with because they didn't understand how nature works and didn't have the scientific method to figure it out. Today we know better.
Thanks for the high iq reply. Why do I waste my time on this site.
Go to r/Christianity if you want feel-good lies.
And what are your feel-good lies? That nothing we do in this life really matters?
Nature created you for one purpose, to have sex and reproduce, then die, and keep to process going until the sun explodes and everything goes extinct. That's it.
Why does life owe you meaning?
I don’t have or need any.
So that's your feel-good lie?
>24 That which is far off, and exceeding deep, who can find it out?
Something like this. I know better because I have Jesus so that could never be me but I want you to to gain an understanding the deepness of God so you could 10x, 10, your usefulness to the kingdom. They're not seeing in you that God is so big and so deep. They see you, they get the vibe of you liking God to you. Makes sense?
If you were real, you would not even joke about recommending anyone going to.... ayayayay. Bad!
The most precise I've ever heard an atheist express it is
>like a spark
>divine field
lol
It's not unlike the "pure awareness" that some hindu or buddhist schools of thought propose, but essentially they are describing a form of death. Nothingness.
False, scholars debunked this a century ago.
It works tho.
Most people have a relationship with him and a decent minority communicate with him. Then there are select few who have seen him personally. It's a pretty straightforward assumption to make.
>Most people have a relationship with him and a decent minority communicate with him. Then there are select few who have seen him personally. It's a pretty straightforward assumption to make.
Oh really, have you seen him? When was the last time he sat down to eat breakfast with you, or knit you a sweater, or cut your hair? When was the last time God gave you a hug, or you fixed his car, or cooked a meal with him?
Every PERSON in my life, Ive done at least some of these things with. But I never met anyone who did this with God.
Am I not a person? You haven't had breakfast with me.
We don't assign personhood on the fact we've done something with the person, but on the fact we could. And you can see him and communicate with him.
Yep, if you never interacted with me, then you arent PERSONAL to me. If God is PERSONAL to us, then God should be able to come visit and pull up a chair and tell a joke. He should be there to teach you how to fly a kite, to bandage a cut, or kiss you goodnight. If God doesnt do these things with you, he isnt personal with you. And I never met anyone who God did these things with.
Radio waves aren't personal with me, no.
>Yep, if you never interacted with me, then you arent PERSONAL to me.
It's not a subjective thing I can be "to you" and not to others. I am objectively a personal entity. And so is God.
> God should be able to come visit and pull up a chair and tell a joke
He is able to. Because he is personal.
>It's not a subjective thing I can be "to you" and not to others. I am objectively a personal entity. And so is God
Then look to what I said before. At best, God is as personal to you as Harry Potter or the President of Nigeria. You didn't ask if God is some nebulous, legal idea of a "person" sitting in some freaky outer space realm. You said why do people think God isn't PERSONAL with THEM. Big difference.
>He is able to. Because he is personal.
When was the last time God drew you a bath or made you cinnamon rolls? When was the last time you drove God yo the grocery store, or went hiking with him? Be specific, after all, God IS personal eith you, right?
There is nothing legal or nebulous or subjective about being personal. As long as you think there is, the sense behind belief in a personal God will escape you.
So you never cried with God? You never replace a flat tire with him, or rode a roller coaster with him? You never touched his hands, or tossled his hair?
How can you possibly say that God is personal with you if you've never done even these simple things?
Thats my point. People who profess to believe in a personal God have never actually been personal with him.
I didn't do that with many personal beings. Doesn't affect their personhood or my belief about it in the slightest.
If you dont do that with someone, then they aren't personal in your life. Thats my point. So then you dont believe in a personal God. You just believe that theres a guy fricking around in space who is God. That's it.
>then they aren't personal in your life. Thats my point.
I know. Your point is you can take "personal" to mean a subjective impression instead of an objective attribute. You're free to do that, perhaps God indeed did not make a direct personal impression on you, but that's not what this thread is discussing when bringing up "personal God".
Well if God isnt personal in your life, then he really isnt a personal God then is he? And if God doesnt personally exist in ANYONE'S life, then all youre going off of is some legal defintion of a "person". Which is irrelevant to the point of the people who say they have a "personal relationship with God".
>Well if God isnt personal in your life, then he really isnt a personal God then is he?
Yes, he is. "personal God" refers to an objective attribute, not a subjective impression.
>if God doesnt personally exist in ANYONE'S life
He does.
It wasn't just somebody. Virtually all secualar scholars have by 1950's abandoned the idea that religion and gods are supposed to explain natural phenomena. Because, again, for many religions there is no evidence that they have ever done that at all.
>Yes, he is. "personal God" refers to an objective attribute, not a subjective impression.
Let me put it this way, since you don't seem to fully grasp the English language: a person is not automatically personal. When people say they have a personal relationship with God, they don't mean they think he is a "person" in a legal sense. Deists believe God is a person, but not personal.
A person and being personal are not the same thing.
>He does.
When was the last time you kissed God, or made love to him? When was the last time he was sick and you took care of him?
If you haven't done anything with him that you do with your loved ones or even strangers, then he's not personal in your life or with you.
i take it you don't believe in radio waves because you can't have breakfast with it right? and even less if an actual person was communicating to you via radio? they're not physically there in my immediate surroundings therefore they don't exist, hmm
>False, scholars debunked this a century ago.
No they didn't. That sort of opinion can never be proven or disproven.
It can be disproven fairly easily, granted you have sufficient textual basis. The idea that religious traditions were created to explain the natural world's processes is incompatible with most religious texts and traditions we know of. Many religious cults explain literally nothing at all except providing some vague family history.
No actually it can't. Since there is no way to determine if any sort of deity exists or not. All you have for evidence is glorified hearsay written down by other people.
Why people came up with a concept can be proven and disproven regardless of its validity.
I find it highly doubtful that somebody debunked the idea that god(s) were invented by ancient people to explain unknown natural phenomena.
>Since there is no way to determine if any sort of deity exists or not
Yes you can but no evidence is required for the existence of God anyway, unlike atheism which can be summed up in brief as "muh feels." You can't even reject the evidence for religion without setting up arbitrary qualifiers of your own. Why isn't the Bible a valid source? Well because it's not written like a scientific text. And divine revelation is only valid if it's written that way, apparently?
>>Yes you can but no evidence is required for the existence of God anyway
If you expect someone to believe a deity or group thereof exists, you need to provide evidence that it/they exist.
atheism which can be summed up in brief as "muh feels."
Uhh no, atheism is just the lack of belief in a deity or group thereof.
>>You can't even reject the evidence for religion without setting up arbitrary qualifiers of your own. Why isn't the Bible a valid source? Well because it's not written like a scientific text.
Oh look, the latest bit of theist butthurt about the burden of proof. This sort of logic an be used to justify the existence of any given deity or group thereof. Applied consistently, you'd have to believe every deity that has ever been claimed to exist is real by this "logic".
>>And divine revelation is only valid if it's written that way, apparently?
What you consider to be divine revelation is something that skeptics like myself consider to be glorified faery tales.
>you need to provide evidence
Why? You assume atheism to be the default position, whereas I assume theism is, which I might add is far more in line with the norm in all civilized societies. By assuming I need to present evidence you are yourself making an unpronounceable assumption about reality. This cannot be reconciled with the ostensible rationalism of atheism.
>atheism is just the lack of belief in a deity
A cowardly and stupid rhetorical trick. This is the exact same thing as saying the *belief* in no deities, a belief you cannot demonstrate rationally. If you had any confidence in your belief you wouldn't need to use such tricks.
>to believe every deity that has ever been claimed to exist is real
I do believe this except for a handful of obviously fake ones like Santa Muerte. Achieving contact with the divine isn't even that hard.
Actually "atheism" is literally speaking "without gods" meaning, you dont follow any gods. You lack gods. It doesn't actually mean asserting that the tribal God of the israelites doesn't exist, though it CAN.
>>Why? You assume atheism to be the default position, whereas I assume theism is, which I might add is far more in line with the norm in all civilized societies. By assuming I need to present evidence you are yourself making an unpronounceable assumption about reality. This cannot be reconciled with the ostensible rationalism of atheism.
If you expect me to take your claims seriously, you better have something better than "lots of people believe this, therefore it is true".
>>A cowardly and stupid rhetorical trick. This is the exact same thing as saying the *belief* in no deities, a belief you cannot demonstrate rationally. If you had any confidence in your belief you wouldn't need to use such tricks.
Lemme put it like this, atheism is a religon, or a belief, in the same way that baldness is a hair color.
>>to believe every deity that has ever been claimed to exist is real
>>I do believe this except for a handful of obviously fake ones like Santa Muerte. contact with the divine isn't even that hard.
Then you are more moronic than the average theist, because various religions/cults/whatever all make contradictory claims about reality.
>I don’t understand when some people say they have an aversion to a “personal” god
Read about divine simplicity. God is not just a really big and powerful person. God is the foundational Reality. The Absolute Being. God is unconditioned, uncaused, and without parts. God is unchanging, eternal, and unlimited. “Personal” gods change their minds, are limited, and depend on the world for their attributes. This demiurge creature cannot ever be the true God.
>What is god then? Some kind of divine ectoplasm
God is the Ground of Being. Reality itself (which is not the same as “the universe”). the only true existent, from which all things derive their existence.
>Why would god be anything less than personal?
You have it backwards. It is not “less than” to be impersonal. Personality is a limited state and therefore cannot be the foundational ultimate reality. Truth is not something “personal” (unless you’re a postmodernist), God is Truth.
Your insistence on a dead God is not merely lesser than the living God, it is lesser than the lowest beast, and hardly a match for a man. The infinite nature of God does not preclude His will.
>The infinite nature of God does not preclude his will
God has no desires. Desire implies a deficiency of some kind, and God is perfect and lacks nothing, ever-fulfilled and self-sufficient.
if god had no desire then the world wouldn't exist
>If god had no desire then the world wouldn’t exist
Not true. Even Thomas Aquinas concluded that while the world has a real relationship with God, God is not really related to the world.
The world has no inherent existence, it derives it’s being from God which is Being Itself, but the order of reality is not the same. The world is “less real” than God (though not absolutely nonexistent). The world is like moonlight. While moon light appears to be its own thing separate from sunlight with a different color/brightness/etc., it is in truth nothing other than the light of the sun (which in this analogy is God). Sunlight exists independently of moonlight, and from the Sun pov, there is only sunlight, but the moonlight is absolutely dependent on the sun and has a real relationship with the Sun
There's no contradiction here. God can be both transcendent and immanent, utterly impossible to comprehend and yet so close we can interact with Him.
I just don't believe that Jesus is God because it makes no sense
Some people may think this is dumb, but it makes sense to me that the true nature of God would be confusing and difficult to comprehend.
it is one thing to say you don't understand something, and another to say something doesn't exist because you personally don't understand it
I find the idea of a "personal God" moronic because 99% of the people who believe God is personal have never seen him, heard him, talked to him, touched him, fed him, clothed him, been fed by him, been clothed by him, or anything else you do with ACTUAL personal people.
Therefore, until God does those things with you directly just like the PEOPLE in your life do, why believe he is personal with you? At the best, he is as personal to you as the Predisent of Nigeria.
does the world cease to exist when you close your eyes? does not hearing your father's voice in the other room mean he is not there and cant hear you in turn?
Because the concept is nonsensical when you consider the sheer scope and scale of the universe we live in. The idea that some tiny group of humans on specific part of the planet would be correct about the existence both a deity in general and their own specific deity is so absurdly unlikely that the proposal is inherently asinine.
Assuming for a brief moment that some sort of deity or group thereof exists, the likelihood that your particular beliefs about that deity are the correct ones is practically non-existent.
>Because the concept is nonsensical when you consider the sheer scope and scale of the universe we live in. The idea that some tiny group of humans on specific part of the planet would be correct about the existence both a deity in general and their own specific deity is so absurdly unlikely that the proposal is inherently asinine.
Atheists say things like this, then put their faith entirely into the scientist knowledge of a slightly different tiny group of humans that live on a slightly different specific part of the planet.
if god knows about me, he hates my ass
tl;dr - removing the 'person' part of God makes the weird philosophical mindfricks that the idea of god always brings up a little bit less mindfricky.
It makes betraying him a little easier too.
>a person is not automatically personal
>A person and being personal are not the same thing.
"Personal" in "personal God" refers to him having personhood. If you can think of a better term, shoot away. We use this one and until now I've never seen anyone struggle with it.
Thats just meaningless legalism. If God doesnt personally appear in your life as a person IN your life, doing everything a PERSON does, then God isn't personal to you and its all just wordgames to cope.
You and I both know that when people say "I believe in and have a relationship with a personal God" they don't mean some obtuse legalistic idea of "person" (that has no tangentiality to anything that actual people do). They mean God is a person IN their life, like their mother or father or children or lover.
>personal to you
It is not subjective.
>when people say "I believe in and have a relationship with a personal God" they don't mean some obtuse legalistic idea of "person"
Correct. They mean God has personhood. Nothing legal about it.
And again, God does literally appear to people. You can ask them if they ate breakfast if that is the threshold for personhood in your own legalism, but your argument fails on both fronts - the theoretical and the practical.
>It is not subjective.
If someone told you they are in a deeply personal relationship with George Washington you'd think they were a LOONEY. Despite George Washington being a person who existed. Or if they said they were in a personal relationship with Tom Cruise, and that he invisibly speaks to their heart and talks to them in dreams, you'd think theyre a NUT. But Tom Cruise IS a person. See now how being a person and being personal are not the same thing?
I swear, half the arguments with Christians end up devolving into hollow word games with you people.
If they told me they believe in a personal George Washington despite never having had a breakfast with him, I would be fine with that. Because it's an objective attribute.
You clearly aren't reading my posts, and are just barrelling forwards with your word games. Pretty pointless discussion. Until you deal with the idea that "personal" as in "I have a personal relationship with God" or "God is personal to me" as everyone means when they use that word, versus "person" as in the legal idea of "personhood", then I'm not gonna talk to you further.
>spirit invisible and everyone ok
>Tom cruise invisible and everyone loses their minds!!
Great argument
Well if someone told you theyre in a deep personal relationship with the invisible spirit of Tom Cruise, would you think they're a fricking loon or not?
I absolutely would. I would also think they're a loon if they told me a cucumber gave an interview on a red carpet. Putting random things in places of each other is always a weird move.
Well Tom Cruise is a person. Therefore he is personal. So that statement should be perfectly rational, no?
God betrayed every single one of us before Adam was created. Turnabout is fair play.
God never betrayed anyone. Everything is for the good.
>Everything is for the good.
What source do you have for that beyond 'book sez god sez so!'?
The best source there is. Revelation.
>>Make an argument about the word "personal"
>Upset that the response is about words
>Shifts goalposts from "personal God" to "personal relationship with God"
>"Pretty pointless discussion".
You said it.
I'm fine with you bailing. I understand what people mean when they say "personal God" and why they say it, you don't. I've lose nothing.
Have a good day and I hope God will make that personal impression on you that you insist is de-legalizing the entire idea of personhood.
I think it's more about the implied relationship that catches people up
Like 'my own personal chef' rather than the person-hood of God
The reason why I believe that God is a person is because God had to decide to create the Universe when he did
Who says God decided to create the Universe?
Well it doesn't make sense otherwise to me
God is timeless and yet the Universe began
Either the Universe had to begin an infinite amount of time ago or there had to be a decision
Unconscious impulse.
What caused that unconscious impulse?
Nothing. No decision was involved, it was pure spontinaeity, and God was pleasently surprised at the results.
>What is god then?
The transcendental ontological and moral ground.
>what does that mean?
"God" is solely something that exists so you can compare things to. It's not a he, it's an it.