Define God

I would say that an existential crisis is never superficial but the argument you have given is.

You have defined God as “non-empirical”, but the Bible did that a long time ago. It doesn’t mean that God is an illusion. It is probably the existence of consciousness that baffled the ancients, and gave rise to speculation about where it came from, rather than the primitive imaginations that modern man comes up with. The ancients described in various ways how mankind became conscious, in the Bible it was when God blew into the nostrils of Adam and “he became a living spirit”. It is an indication that the ancients knew that consciousness was special amongst the species on earth. For some reason, they assumed, humanity and not another species became conscious and they associated this with responsibility.

Modern man is of the opinion that he is as knowledgeable as anyone can be, and that his accumulation of knowledge grew as time went on. He doesn’t take into account that knowledge grows more like a plant, and relies on roots and lower trunk from which his branch or twig has grown. There are other branches bearing leaves, but have taken a different route. There is no doubt that the wisdom of humanity was often interrupted by ideologies that caused widespread suffering, but it pushed through and is still there today, if only we would put on the right spectacles. It is, in fact, when various areas of our accumulated knowledge come together and make sense, for example, of biblical texts that we start getting the big picture.

I can’t help but wonder how a “general description” argument of this sort might play out among the folks in the Bahamas right about now.

Of course God will still be embraced by many there. If only because without God, their lives will have been upended and destroyed in an essentially meaningless existence. Just as, no doubt, any number of folks in Florida are convinced that their prayers prompted God to reconfigure the path of Dorian.

Minds of mere mortals are able to concoct arguments like Bob’s. And, sure, arguments like mine. But until someone is actually able to convince me that behind the arguments, they are able to bring forth this God [always their God] I can only remain unconvinced.

Also, able to explain how a God generally described as “loving, just and merciful” could create a monstrous force of nature like a category 5 hurricane and then set it into motion to pummel the lives of untold millions over the centuries.

And I am certainly suspicious of those who argue that God need be but defined into existence.

Did you read my arguments why God is an impossibility to be real?
God as illusory is impossible to exists as real.
viewtopic.php?p=2683202#p2683202

Note there are many cases of people claiming to have had experiences with God presently but all these such cases has been proven to have some sort of mental problem as confirmed by psychiatrists.

Note this guy claimed he was with God but turned out to be suffering from temporal epilepsy.
There are many such similar cases.

the Temporal Lobes and God - Part 1
youtube.com/watch?v=qIiIsDIkDtg

There are many who experience God while on a hallucinogen trip.
DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2010)
youtube.com/watch?v=LtT6Xkk-kzk&t=10s

There are those who experienced God like states, but had a brain damage;

My stroke of insight | Jill Bolte Taylor
youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU&t=4s

Therefore there is a possibility Jesus, Paul, St. Theresa of Avila, Muhammad and other supposedly agents of god were suffering from the same as above 2000 to 1400 years ago but got away because there were no psychiatrist then to confirm their mental problem.

Note the basis to a believe in God is fundamentally based on faith, i.e. belief without proofs nor justified reasons.

I am [a]theist but not anti-theist and I believe theism [despite based on an illusion] is a critical necessity for the present [net positive] to deal with the existential crisis but not the future [it will be net-negative].
In the future the individual will be able to self-regulate and modulate the impulses of the existential crisis as done by many as present.

I have argued God is merely a philosophical idea [not a concept] thus absolutely cannot be empirical.
If God absolutely cannot be empirical, it can only be an illusion, i.e. a transcendental illusion as opposed to a sense or logical illusion.

It sounds a bit like the unconscious mind. IOW you have something affecting one’s motivations, even where one consciously thinks one should not have that motivation - a Spirit lifting up being, for example despite or in the face of guilt (from the superego, from parents, from society - for example, in the artist, say. You have an associational intelligence in the unconsciousn, rather than the linear conscious mind - and so the spirit who makes everything come together. You have unconscious urges, disrupting relationships, when one might stay out of habit, for example - transforms order when it becomes too limited. And the unconscious is also incarnated truth - the images and thoughts may not be, but they are representations of what is in the self, not what is supposed to be. I think Peterson is a bit Jungian, so it might nto be a surprise.

Here’s a tangential thought, when think of the unconscious or supernatural beings like God.

Often when one is dicussion these entities, one is supposed to know. KNOW. If you don’t know the whole of the thing, then you are not supposed to talk about it. You are considered irrational but the skeptics for believing in something you cannot define and you are considered not faithful by religous peers or other Jungians, Freudians, artists, whomever if you do just confidently repeat whatever some authority as said God is or your unconsious is.

But these demands for complete descriptions and knowledge are themselves irrational.

Think of what one knows from a romantic partner or best friend. Their mind/self. Can you define them? Even these specific individuals`?

To a degree, sure. But what is going on behind the scenes, what is their experience, what are they hiding,what is hidden for them from even themselves. We do not expect full definitions of other people’s selves, but rather incomplete ones. Here’s what I experience. Here are the patterns I have experiences. There is much more that I haven’t touched. There is more I can never touch. I have an incomplete picture. I work with that but know they exist.

We can pretend to be theologians of our lovers and friends and family. Or we can simply be lovers friends and family to them. Believing they exist without presuming to know the whole.

Even these most basic hard to deny the existence of entities have a supernatural element. Facets beyond the empirical, for us. And yet they exist and we can talk about the interface we have with them.

This is where I find your thoughts problematic to begin with. The assumption that God is invented “via crude reasons” assumes to begin with that the Ancients were tumb and their reasoning crude. The fact is that they had to cope with problems that are already solved (by others) in our time, and that ideas had to be borne out by experience to survive. As I have written elsewhere, I believe that the content of the Bible, for example, has been gathered by generations of people looking for answers to their questions. Over a long time, only the answers that held up were accepted and grafted into the anthology we call the Bible. Of course the Bible is pre-science and we are post-renaissance, which makes our appreciation of what they had gathered difficult to understand. That is why I think that people like Jordan Peterson (and CG Jung before him) are best suited to help us understand what these scriptures are actually telling us. Theologians have fallen to the temptation of presenting arguments that are difficult to swallow, but even there you find ideas that are not completely different to the psychological exegesis.

It would be so easy if human beings were just biological robots with algorithms to hack. Fact is, they’re not. Of course there are sequences of behaviour, like the development of personality type within the first four years, along with an exponential learning rate. Then playing out the role they were expected to take on as adults. Going through the experience of adolescence and being initiated as an adult. During this development, answers were sought as to why consciousness separates us from the animals, and where meaning is to be found. That is really the first existential struggle, because human beings look ahead and need some motivation. They play out aspects of life, and myth, allegory and metaphor allow them to do that. I believe that God is a thought that comes to the young people entering adulthood, leading up to the initiation, giving them perspectives and identity.

The “crude reason” you are alluding to are talking about is too crude. Rather, the fairy tales told to children have become simpler and more soothing than they used to be when humanity was struggling for existence. Reality had to be described in some metaphorical way to make children understand that they have to obey to survive. You have not taken this survival aspect seriously enough. It is only recently in human existence that life has been as relatively comfortable as it is in the West. In the East, there are still young people who have to go through growing pains of a different kind.

Santa Claus is also something that is very new in the history of mankind. The original St. Nicholas was a figure that was known for his legendary habit of secret gift-giving, and who is said to have rescued three girls from being forced into prostitution by dropping a sack of gold coins through the window of their house each night for three nights so their father could pay a dowry for each of them. Of course these are just legends, but being forced into prostitution was a very real danger, and not kid’s stuff. Maslow gave us the hierarchy of needs which show that an awful lot must happen before people can aspire to write these things down in a way that inspires others.

At the extreme, atheists will do the same, and for the same reason. It is ideology that turns a religion or a philosophy into a reason for killing. Both religious people and atheists can fall foul of all the emotions that lead to war or oppression. The twentieth century is proof of that, and exploitation is everywhere – not only amongst theists.

I think that James answered you appropriately on that.

Your argument against perfection is flawed by the fact that you are not aware of what the word translated as perfection means. Even the English word means thoroughly made or formed, fully accomplished, completely prepared, in the state of compete excellence, free from any flaw or imperfection of quality, of supreme moral excellence or righteous, and fully answering to what a name implies. Taken with the context of how the word translated as perfect is used, we come to see that it isn’t used in the way we would use it today.

There are numerous people who have said that they had “mystical experiences” that are also quite revered, like CG Jung for example. Research into the psychedelic experience has shown that mystical effects can be profound and meaningful. Mystical experiences have been the cornerstone of religious and spiritual practice for thousands of years. From early Christian mysticism to Zen Buddhism, almost every religious path offers space for experiences that make a more direct connection to the more mysterious aspects of reality. Worldly practices such as meditation, yoga and being in nature can also produce mystical experiences, and people who encounter mystical experiences often find them life-changing and positive.

Or perhaps it is just that we do not yet understand what was going on all that time ago and prefer to pull in pathological examples as though these were the same as what these other people in history experienced. Like I say above, mystical experiences are often found to be life-changing and positive. Even astronauts have had mystical experiences at the sight of the earth rotating below them.

Your argument that what is not empirical is only an illusion suffers the lack of knowledge as to what consciousness actually is. We know that the brain reacts in different areas according to the varying thoughts we have, but an old tube radio used to do the same without being the source of what it was playing.

The main argument for something not graspable, but present, is the fact that our existence and abilities beg the question, how can consciousness come to be on a bunch of rocks if it isn’t inherently present in the universe? There are simply things that we have to leave open.

I appreciate that this is definitely a question that those suffering the onslaught of a hurricane may ask. They may even be praying that the hurricane swerves away or that they survive. Of course, how their ideas of God play out under such circumstances, we can’t know. My father was once in an accident with an amphibious tank that sank and took his crew with it. He survived because he was a good swimmer. After that, he couldn’t bear the sight of a pastor or priest. I didn’t understand that for a while, but now I do.

I don’t believe in the God of millions of Christians across the planet, but I do experience faith in the whisper in the storm, in hope in the face of disaster, in the beauty of poetry and metaphorical stories, or in love and in flow. None of it is graspable, but it is there none the same. Many of these things are only individual experiences, impossible to be passed on, except by metaphor or in poetry, but it can be life changing.

Quite right about Peterson being Jungian in his approach. However, I think that there are both unconscious and conscious forces at work. There are many people who beat themselves up, having an idealistic idea about the world, or having a high standard they are trying to achieve. Feeling inadequate or as a failure may be a way of elevating their being, but I see his meaning as something that is far more a principle of validating people, putting them up a step higher and acknowledging them as complex human beings.

The spirit that brings everything together is a force against those influence that lie transversely in relationship to what would make things good. Those who are in this spirit align themselves with what is good and elevates being, whether in action or in prayer for example. Prayer is more about actively being a channel for good and using affirmations to that goal. Incarnate truth is where people are actively in faithful to the truth you can sense an air that is somehow different and inspiring.

Agreed, mystical experience is a sensual experience, which is something you can never describe perfectly, even if you employ all methods available to do that.

Yes, but why would you want to touch that which hides behind their personae? Are you as open in your relationships? I think not, nobody is. We feel that they could stumble upon the shadow that is lurking behind some facade, and suddenly shy away. Why expect other people to accept your shadow – you don’t!

It is a good thing that it is that way too. A little mystery is what lures us and enthrals us at the beginning of a relationship and once we think we have nothing more to discover, we grow tired. We may start looking in other quarters for the next mystery.

My point was that when people are confronted to give explanations of God by skeptics, it is presumed that you either have a completel coherent answer or it is meaningless or you have no reason to believe. So, I was talking about how we only know portions of those we live with for years. IOW the demand and the conclusion is confused.

But, now, in answer to your question: sure, of course. What hides behind the persona is in contact with us already and ours with them. We cannot keep others from experiencing even things that we are not conscious of about ourselves. And beyond that, yes, I want that. I want as much of the authentic other as I can find. If I am either wanting to be close to them or sometimes if I want to protect myself from them.

There are obviously degrees, but my relationships generally include agreements to show as much as possible, even if it seems ugly, evil, chaotic. This is balanced with the day and everyone’s needs.

Me and my spouse, for example, are openly working on integrating our shadows and are will to expose these to each other. We can even do this very expressively. But also we discuss what we find and are quite open with the very unpleasant stuff we find. It is much harder to integrate the shadow alone.

Why bother? We can only be all wrong anyway though we think that we know. We like to romanticize things.
As much as I would like to know God AS IS, IF IS, it is never going to happen.
If i cannot know the Real, or even IF it is Real, I would much rather be within the mystery within the darkness.

It is all darkness - well perhaps except for the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest pinpoint of light and do I even see that!
That is not God. What is it? I have no idea.

I think it is worth the effort to be clear about what we mean by God, even if you are an atheist, so that we are aware of what we are thinking. There are many people who have an unclear idea about what they mean and in some, their idea of God needs some exchange. It is in defining that we come to terms with what we’re thinking.

There are hundreds of thousands of people in the world who have no idea of their own, but instead obey what the church or the party, or their particular peers group, say they have to say. I believe we are religious creatures insomuch as we need an orientation that gives us that meta view, as though from above, the big picture etc. so that they have a blueprint of acceptable behaviour.

When people are talking to themselves, even in thought, who do they mean? Themselves? Maybe, but I believe that people hope that someone is listening, especially when pleading that something will or won’t happen. Many are acting AS IF, but what do they hope for?

I too accept God to be a mystery, but there are aspects of interaction, like mystical experiences, or that surprising alignment of events that leaves us in awe. We experience selfless love and ask where it comes from. Or we are amazed at what can happen when people with the same spirit join together. Or quite simply, we look into that chaos of stars and ask, why me, here, at this time?

The question of consciousness, i.e. the hard problem, does not warrant anyone to jump to the conclusion God exists.

What you missed out is the criticalness of the existential crisis and the terrible impulses manifesting from it.

Here are the facts surrounding the existential crisis;

  1. DNA wise all humans are programmed with terrible fears under any threats [real or apparent] of premature death.

  2. This is why babies and children will be very fearful and cry if they are away from their parents. They will feel relieved and secured in the presence of their parents.

  3. But for adults, they are endowed with self-awareness to be aware from empirical evidence, death is inevitable. While most can suppress the thought of death at the conscious level to some degrees, there is nothing to prevent the more stronger 90% subconscious mind to pick up this fact of death.

  4. At the subconscious level, a cognitive dissonance is generated, i.e. the person don’t want to die but death is inevitable. Note more to the subconscious mind than the conscious.

  5. This cognitive dissonance at the sub-conscious level in ALL humans generate terrible angst, anxieties and despairs to drive the mind to seek solutions to relieve this terrible mental sufferings.

  6. For the majority of humans, the idea of God [despite factually illusory] is twisted and bent by the subconscious mind to be real and thus provide instant relief to the terrible mental sufferings.

  7. For the non-theists they will find other non-theistic solutions which could be good or evil.

For all the deflections and excuses you gave above, you cannot avoid the above fact of the existential crisis.

As I had stated the idea of God is manifested from very crude reasons, e.g.
-Every creation must have a creator [from cause and effect]
-The vast universe is an existing creation
-Only God the omnipotent an create a vast universe.
-Therefore God exists

The above is driven by crude reasoning without proper empirical groundings and each premise is full of holes but theists would not give a damn with proper reasoning and justifications as long as what they thought of is sufficient to relieve the terrible mental pains exuding from the above existential crisis.
Why such bad logic is accepted is because the belief in a God [despite illusory] really works to relieve the mental sufferings and in many cases almost immediately.

If you were to research the scriptures of all religions, the main purpose for the believers are focused on the eschatological and salvation, for most the assurance of going to heaven with eternal life [a relief to the existential crisis].

The relieving and maintaining of the resolution of the natural existential crisis at the subconscious level is so critical that many believers are willing to kill if there is a threat to their belief or a calling by God to do so. [note Abraham willingness to sacrifice his son].
Such a permission is sanctioned within the Quran - words of Allah, the core scripture of Islam.
Christianity [based on Gospel] is basically a pacifist religion but it has it other negatives in hindering the progress of humanity.

While theism provide instant relief for the existential crisis which is good since past years but it has its cons. The point why serious criticisms of theism is needed now and the future is because its cons are slowly outweighing its pros toward the future.

For God to provide the maximum assurance to relieve the existential crisis, God has to be perfect, totally unconditional and second to none. But a God with such qualities is impossible to be real.
What is real is that which can be empirically justified with philosophical reasonings [not groundless crude reasons].

Thus God manifesting out of crude reasons necessarily to deal with the inherent unavoidable existential crisis is an impossibility to be real, i.e. a transcendental illusion.

I think you should do what you want. But the ‘why bother’ and some of the way you word your response is as if there is a general answer to what one should bother with, and also that everyone’s experience is similar. Below also…

Why should you bother? I have no answer for you on that. That’s up to you. The same question could be asked ‘why bother trying to be intimate with people?’ or with nature, or even for ‘being within the mystery within the darkness.’

We bother about things that matter to us, and also based on our experiences, both of which differ. Sometimes be don’t bother based on ideas we have been given or built up, perhaps based on experiences or emotions - ones we may or may not be conscious of.

We are a varied bunch.

An existential crisis is, as I have already said, not something to ignore. It forces people to recount what they consider important, valuable and desirable. It is, after all a matter of existence.

There is no proof that the fears of humanity is genetic, but rather they start from the moment the unborn experiences its existence in the womb. Fear is reactive, even if the stimulus is imagined, and the body goes into flight or fight mode – to the degree at which it is able.

The parent, usually the mother, is the only interaction it knows of and when this interaction is terminated (even in the short term), the baby cries until another soothing influence is given. The baby is getting to know its environment and its experiences in a spiral outwards. If it experiences something unpleasant it will cry. However, the experience of the child teaches it when to cry and they are not fearful from the beginning.

Self-awareness grows on people and young children can be confronted with death so that it becomes a reality for them. Once children realise that something as final as death can happen, they fear it. However, we all suppress the thought of death until we are reminded by circumstance.

A mental discomfort (psychological stress) can be experienced by any person who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, but it isn’t necessarily the case with death. Many people go through life blissfully ignorant until confronted with death.

I don’t believe that the fear of death is always present. The may be fears, like suffocating for example, but the fear is mostly concerned with the experience rather than its consequence. There are many fears that a human being can have without it being a fear of death.

No. God is not always the relief of fear, but the all-seeing eye. There are many children who are brought up on the idea that God is only good and they are quite shocked when they read that God is also a source of fear. I don’t see the instant relief, especially because many children have no idea of a God in the Judaeo-Christian sense. There are enough children in the West that only become aware of something called God when they are confronted with the idea in school or church. That can be relatively late. Then it is also a question of how the parents opinions influence children.

Like what exactly?

You really push your argument that this reasoning is something that everybody goes through. I didn’t, for a start. I experienced Sunday school as a place where we were told stories that we immediately forgot when we left the room. I couldn’t even relate them to my mother, despite being an imaginative child. In all my games, God wasn’t a part of them, despite being “impressionable”. Speaking to other people, there are many who grew up completely ignorant of the idea of God.

My first experience was when, at 11, I was on a summer camp run by Christians who read the Bible to us. On the way back, we had to cross the Bristol Channel on a small ferry and were caught up in a storm. Despite the storm being something I had never experienced in that way before, with the sea rising up above the boat only to fall immediately afterwards, I wasn’t scared. Waves came crashing on deck, soaking all those who were hanging over the rail to be sick. I was enthralled by the experience and felt quite safe, and connected for the first time with the God of my imagination.

I don’t see many people with “terrible mental pains”, and especially not in church. I don’t know where you get this from. People do experience suffering in its various forms but their immediate reaction is not to believe in a God that will relieve that.

You obviously haven’t read scripture. The book of Genesis first describes the situation of humanity in a myth that is very truthful in its estimation. It then goes on to describe the situation of the world. Then there is the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which are all very cryptic and gives food for thought. It is followed by the story of Israel, the rise of Kings and finally prophets.

The NT commences with the tragedy of Christ, follows with the hope of Christianity and letters to the communities and ends with Revelations, a book with seven seals. It is what theology takes from that great anthology that turns it into what you have said.

Hearsay I’m afraid. It is what people with little knowledge of the Bible assume, but once you get to know it, it becomes quite another thing.

I’m sure there are people like you describe, but all of them? I think not. You shouldn’t whitewash everyone with your theories.

“Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies.
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand.
Little flower–but if I could understand
What you are, root and all and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.”–Tennyson.
As a pantheist I see religion’s atheists and agnostics as arguing with parts of themselves they dare not try to understand.
To understand is to acknowledge being part of the whole.
Many ideas from indigenous people are superior to ideas espoused by literalist Christians and atheists. The Earth as holy is one of these as is the idea of all creatures being relatives.

A beautiful verse. D.T. Suzuki wrote in his Essays in Zen Buddhism, “‘shujvo’ (or a staff) … seems to have been most favourite instrument used in the demonstration of the truth of Zen … According to Yeryo (Hui-leng), of Chökei (Chang-ch’ing), ‘when one knows what that staff is, one’s life study of Zen comes to an end’. This reminds us of Tennyson’s flower in the crannied wall. For when we understand the reason of the staff, we know ‘what God and man is’; that is to say, we get an insight into the natureof our own being, and this insight finally puts a stop to all doubts and hankerings that have upset our mental tranquillity. The significance of the staff in Zen can thus readily be comprehended.”

Karpel Tunnel,

I certainly agree with this BUT perhaps it is not so much what I want but what I sense/feel/see leading me to my only recourse.

No. I do not think that I was coming from that kind of a “place”. I do not see a general answer to most things. But many people do experience the same kind of things insofar as the God concept goes and many people experience other things.

I do think that my response “why bother” came from a place of never being able to know. This is what I see. At the same time, I can and will admit that perhaps the moment before I typed that in, I may have been feeling a bit disheartened by the whole idea.
Normally, I have no problem living with not knowing because there is just so much beauty and knowledge in the universe that gives meaning. At the same time, none of that is an answer to the question of who is God or is there God. We can try to lie to ourselves and to sweep the questions under the carpet, but they do not go away.

I wonder if bothering would actually make a difference to my mind. I wonder how one would even go about changing or trying to change an agnostic mind. I wonder what journey one could take toward bringing that mind a little closer to seeing a reality of whatever pertains to this God question.

That is an easy question. We are human beings. We need human intimacy, we need to be intimate with nature. It stands there and waits for us. It is healing, it is teaching. We need that for human survival or we can whither and die (metaphorically speaking - but for some in actuality).

Of course, people also feel a need for God but how can one have a relationship with something which they cannot fathom?

We need that to feed our psyches, to come to know ourselves, our real selves at our core. Mystery allows us to realize that we cannot know everything and that is a good place to be. I also have a thing for the darkness (not evil). You can experience your self there in all the ways in which you might not even like but need to see before you can bring on chaos.

.
They do not necessarily differ. But those things we can reach out and touch, we can feel them, they are “real” to us even though on a different level as far as experiences go, they may be something different. We are human beings. Do not get me wrong. There are times when I wonder and muse about this God thing but I am not able to take that leap because the branch is just not strong or long enough to uphold this human mind.

This is certainly true. I think that for the most part, I am quite conscious of my unconscious self and needs and conflicting interests.
I have done quite a bit of excavation in those nooks and crannies.
But how do we find or know God with only one’s rational mind. Everything else is just chemicals right?

Yes, we are. I wonder what the world would be like if we all realized that?!

Bob,

I agree with that. We have to do that with our thinking about everything for ourselves and those with whom we are speaking.
Maybe I defined what I meant by God perhaps on the other side of the coin? Or did I?

True and also in opening the doors to change that thinking. This is, after all, a philosophy forum. How does one define something in the negative?

Does that make us religious creatures or people who have to follow the pack?

Can you explain this a bit more.

But then why not focus on those things individually? Why bring God into the equation?

I know. It’s no small matter that I lost faith in God myself given what I had experienced in Vietnam. And given the arguments of those then and there who had already embraced a No God world.

But that’s my point. Any particular individual’s belief in God is, in my view, predicated largely on his or her own actual experiences in the course of living his or her own actual life.

It’s just that with a belief in God, the stakes are considerably higher. The folks in the Bahamas, as with all of us facing calamitous situations, are faced with the option of continuing to believe and putting their faith in God’s “mysterious ways”, immortality and salvation…or rejecting God and accepting that their wrecked lives are merely as the result of an essentially meaningless existence, with no prospect of anything other than just accepting in turn their plight and preparing for oblivion.

My thinking then is that the option chosen here is embodied more in dasein than in a “thinking through” their situation and, using the tools of philosophy, agglomerating the most rational conclusions.

I can respect that. After all, there is no way that I could ever possibly understand the choices that you make, given how our lives are, I suspect, very, very different.

But, in a philosophy venue, my own interest in religion revolves more around closing the gap between what one believes about God and what one is able to demonstrate that, perhaps, all rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.

Also, in exploring the manner in which this belief is more the embodiment of “I” as an existential contraption. In other words, a sense of self ever subject to change given new experiences. Rather than as a commitment to the “real me” in sync with the “right thing to think feel and do” in relationship to God.

Finally, the manner in which someone connects the dots between their faith/belief in God on this side of the grave as that impacts on the behaviors they choose here and now in order to sustain what they wish their fate to be there and then on the other side of the grave.

The “for all practical purposes” implications of choosing here.

So, when I see a thread entitled “define God” my own interest lies in taking that definition out into the world of interacting men and women, and putting it to the test given particular contexts.

But that’s no less my own embodiment of “I” – here and now – as an existential contraption. It will either click with others or it won’t. I am certainly not suggesting that others ought to share it. Let alone are obligated to.

Darkness, and a tiny pinpoint of light … that reminds me of Elijah who, after a great hullabaloo in which God “was not”, heard a whisper… the account ends there, leaving the reader to guess. I think that there are multiple ways to describe the phenomenon we call God. The religious traditions of the world give us a lot, but is that all?

That’s why we’re here. I think many people have defined God by what he/she/it is not … including the story of Elijah. I think that we need as many possibilities as there are, including pantheist ideas.

I think we are both, following the pack may be just be following the best alternative.

I have caught myself, especially in situations of stress, thinking as though I was addressing someone and some of my friends, even atheists, have admitted the same. I asked myself who I was talking to. Am I talking to myself in such situations, or do I assume that there is someone listening? There are times when I know I’m beating myself up for being so stupid, but that’s different.

I think it is because I feel it has to come from somewhere and if consciousness is inherent in the cosmos, what is behind it all? Especially when things happen so beautiful that they stand out, I ask myself how that can be. Of course, on the surface, you accept these things individually, but underneath my curiosity starts up …

You got it wrong.
DNA wise all human are coded and born with the primal instinct and the primary emotion of fear i.e. necessary to avoid dangers, threats and premature death thus ensuring survival.
A child will not be able to express feelings of fear consciously but the actions of primal fears in a child and adults are very universal.

Signs_and_symptoms of Fear
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear#Signs_and_symptoms

This is proof, fear [primal and emotion] is genetic.

I had mentioned above, there are two levels re the fear of death;

  1. Conscious fear of death

  2. Subconscious [subliminal] fear of death

1. Conscious fear of death
DNA wise a person will experience conscious fear of death intermittently when triggered by the sight of it or thoughts of it. Humans are programmed with inhibitors and modulators to ensure that the conscious fear of death do not manifest all the time.
This is a very natural to ensure all humans are not paralyzed by the conscious fear of death.

Anyone who has a persistent conscious fear of death is a mental case and has to see a psychiatrist. This mental illness is called Thanatophobia or Death Anxiety.

Death anxiety is anxiety caused by thoughts of death. One source defines death anxiety as a “feeling of dread, apprehension or solicitude (anxiety) when one thinks of the process of dying, or ceasing to ‘be’”.[1] Also referred to as thanatophobia (fear of death), death anxiety is distinguished from necrophobia, which is a specific fear of dead or dying people and/or things (i.e., fear of others who are dead or dying, not of one’s own death or dying).
-wiki

2. Subconscious [subliminal] fear of death
This is the critical issue.
I had stated above, the power of the subconscious mind is 10 time greater than that of the conscious mind.
The subconscious mind is very cognizant of the cognitive dissonance of must not die but will certainly die. This create a turmoil in the mind that manifests unidentifiable unease, anxieties, despairs, Angst that drives the mind to find solutions to ease the mental pain.

Angst means fear or anxiety (anguish is its Latinate equivalent, and anxious, anxiety are of similar origin). The dictionary definition for angst is a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, or insecurity.[1] The word angst was introduced into English from the Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch word angst and the German word Angst. It is attested since the 19th century in English translations of the works of Kierkegaard and Freud.[1][2][3]
It [Angst] is used in English to describe an intense feeling of apprehension, anxiety, or inner turmoil.

It is this cognitive dissonance and Angst that drives theist to a God as a very quick-fix solution and it is very immediate and effective.

Generally it is a relief but not instant relief all the time.
It is an instant relief when there is a conscious crisis and when one surrender to God there is instant relief.
For the majority of theist the idea of God is like a comfortable security blanket. For many theists, when that security is pull or tug, they will even kill the one who is pulling their security blanket - this is so evident.

There is non-theistic religions like Buddhism [including Zen] and others.
Others may turn to pain-killers and all sort of drugs to relieve the mental unease to their detriment in the long run.
Others keep themselves occupied with various interests to keep suppress these impulses from the subconscious mind for an idle mind is the devil’s playground.
Others turned to spiritual self-development programs to strengthen the inhibitors that inhibit the impulses of Angst.

My argument is that reasoning of the existential crisis is a fundamental and a potential, DNA wise, in ALL human beings.
It get triggered to be very active in various circumstances.
It is not likely to be triggered in a child until the person is in the late teens with a stronger self-awareness of death that feed backs to the subconscious.

As stated above, for most, the existential crisis is active within the subsconscious during late teens or early twenties, and for adults it can be anytime when the inhibitors are weakened by stress and various factors.

The existential crisis will manifest stronger as one get older because all brain cells naturally atrophized and for the said inhibitors they are not replaced.

Across the world, people have varying levels of belief (and disbelief) in God, with some nations being more devout than others. But new research reveals one constant across parts of the globe: As people age, their belief in God seems to increase.
livescience.com/19971-belie … m-age.html

Even the once world’s most famous [a]theist, Anthony Flew, succumbed to the existential crisis impulse in the later part of his life where his neural inhibitors eroded and the existential crisis impulse overwhelmed his rational faculty to some degree that he turned to deism.

It is possible for any [a]theist including me that the relevant inhibitors will weaken via atrophy in my later years. Thus I am taking steps to strengthen the relevant inhibitors so my mind do not drive me into theism in the future.

I have explained above, the conscious mind is not supposed to fear death persistently and have feeling of fears.
But deep down, the existential crisis is brewing strongly deep in the brain especially those theists who are zealous of a belief in God.

What??
As a Christian, you are not aware what is the core of Christianity for a Christian?
The core of Christianity is not the Bible but the doctrines of God expressed by Christ in the Gospel. The Epistles, Acts and OT [relevant verses] are merely supporting texts to the main doctrines within the Gospel of Christ.

For a Christian, the central focus in the Gospel is God’s offer within John 3:16 and the likes;

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The above is an offer for anyone to accept.
One a person accept the offer, there is an implied contract, i.e. a personal covenant with God.
Once the divine contract is signed, the Christian will have to comply with the covenanted terms as in the Gospel in exchange for an everlasting eternal life in heaven.

Thus the main purpose of Christianity for a Christian is to receive the promise in a contract of everlasting eternal life in heaven.
Everything else is secondary.

I am not an expert of the Bible, but I am well aware of the main doctrinal principle of Christianity from the Gospel alone. Note my explanations above.

Whitewash??
I have justified all my points.
I don’t expect anyone to agree with me based on blind faith but for one to review the justified arguments I have presented and counter them rationally.

Show me, where am I wrong or have presented clear-cut falsehoods in the above.

My point;
God is an idea which is a transcendental illusion manifested out a psychological driven existential crisis to ease existential pains and Angst.