Is there anything to call "the idea or concept of God"?

Question

If there is, I wish someone would explain it to me so I could have it too. I have no idea or concept of anything that could be labeled "a concept of God". I have searched my head for an idea or a concept that I could honestly label that. However, all the alleged definitions for "God" seem to amount to "God is that which created (or caused) everything but God", which is circular. If one can have no concept or idea of anything that a sequence of alphabet letters or sound such as "God" could refer to, then what has he/she other than -- that sequence or sound?

Answer 1

As mentioned in one of the comments, you should first search for 'different' Gods on different websites and select each God and verify whether there is anything irrational in all those Gods. After that, you could choose one 'Rational God' and ask this question. Otherwise it'd become a beat around the bush.

If you choose one or more things as the idea or concept of God, you will have to regard all the other things as the idea or concept of another God. [We can't rule out the possibility of another God or gods (since there are many similar creations or concepts in this world)]. Which God would you choose then for this question?

If you choose one particular idea, concept, category or religion only as the concept of God, that would also become a folly....since the supplement for that concept and the complement of that concept must be of another God's. Then also there must be another God or gods.

So, when we think of an (external) creator of ideas or concepts (God), some contradictions pop up.

We perceive this world through our senses. Knowingly or unknowingly we admit only the things perceived through our 5 sense organs (Some forms of lights, sounds, smells etc that we can't perceive with our sense organs are amplified or transformed in another form. But they also are for helping these senses only.)

The senses, brain etc create a feeling that there is creation here. Five is a small number. What about the situation if the number of our sense organs were below or above five? Then, would our understanding be like this...? Actually, we can't even imagine such a situation.

If you can imagine these senses, brain etc as somebody's creations, ideas or concepts, you will have to search their bases also. This is not possible with your senses.

The things, ideas and concepts that we understand with our mortal sense organs and brain are never the Ultimate Truth.

So, if you believe (this logic) or not, you will have to assume that there is no creation. When you realize yourself you will understand whether there is any real creation here. Then you wouldn't need to ask this question.

The notion that mAyA has no reality in itself, and that brahman is the only real, allows the sRshTi-dRshTi vAdin to "graduate", so to speak, to ajAtivAda, the view that no creation really occurred ever.

http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp/creation.html

If the aforementioned is difficult to digest, the following mantra would be useful in our daily life.

Isavasyam idam sarvam yat kim ca jagatyam jagat

Answer 2

The idea of god is not necessarily as the creator. The Greeks worshiped a set of idealized personalities that they removed by a couple layers of creation from the ultimate creator of the universe, considering those earlier layers of creators to have been overthrown or destroyed. (This probably just represented a succession of religious that had been tried out and lost currency, only in mythical terms.) That means their pantheon had no meaningful 'God the Creator', leading Plato to invent one in the Timaeus as a philosophical exercise. But they still believed that some sort of supernatural beings had to inherit or co-opt the status of godhood and do the job of being gods.

The idea of God, for Jungians, is the idea that there is something that keeps the world in order, that without some force of ordering the natural state must be chaos. In this theory, the archetype of God is conferred to us by the fact that we are raised by adults into some sort of ordered social structure, and we see that our own natural behavior as children without rearing would be much more chaotic.

Whitehead argues that this notion of God as the ordering force is stronger in Middle Eastern monotheisms than in a lot of other cultures, and bases the faith in natural order that allowed the West to become more demanding of our sciences after we Christianized.

We had had the experience of chaotic paganism prior to Roman occupation, the experience of brutal constraint by Rome, and then by the time we were free again, Rome had made us Christians. We appreciated the fact of order with less brutality, and a faith in ultimate order became our basic natural image of life, even though it fit our actual situation quite poorly.

Answer 3

There are lots of different ways people talk about a Creator or creative intelligence behind existence or try to define the concept. I'm not sure how helpful these descriptions are. If there is a Creator, perhaps if you go somewhere beautiful in nature by yourself, and ask It. If It exists, perhaps it could tell you in some way that you might find more satisfying than anything someone might tell you to believe. If there is a Creator you probably would not even need to go anywhere special to find it. One interpretation might be to say that the deities, angels, demons, devils, and so forth are elements of our psyches, perhaps other ego states or elements of part of what we might call our "unconscious minds," although it does not necessarily mean they are not conscious or powerless; it just means that you are not usually conscious of them in your mind/body/world. The words and myths could be describing processes in our brains. Prayer can also be thought of as a form of self-hypnosis. You are going into a quiet peaceful state of mind and communicating with other levels of consciousness within your mind. There can be powerful healing and insight gained from that activity. However, it does not seem necessary to me to give it a bunch of labels and words or a religion. Just appreciating music and babies, and beautiful scenery is much more meaningful for some than wordy descriptions, although -what- it means might not be clear. It seems to always remain somewhat elusive if you try to pin it down. It could be something beyond our capacity to fully grasp in our normal states of consciousness or any state of consciousness. You don't even have to call it God. It could just be a felt sense of connection with the universe and your awe and appreciation for it. That is one way of thinking of it. It seems that the character(s) and personalities ascribed to it can take as many forms as there are people.

Answer 4

Here I will focus on a generic vision of God as "superior entity", without particular reference to any specific religion or property (for instance the fact that it has created everything, that is ageless, and so on).

The tricky part with the concept of God is that is something lying beyond what we can perceive, by definition. If you could completely understand him, you would be on the same level as him (or her, or its!).

A strategy could be the one of thinking something concrete as a reference and comparing where God is on this scale, and repeat this process many times. For instance I might not be able to understand how "smart" God is, but I might take as a reference the smartest person that I know and say: God is smarter than that.

This situation is similar to the trouble in understanding the concept of infinity in mathematics. How big is infinity? You cannot really understand it, since you are a finite being, but you think about a very huge number and point out that infinity is bigger than that.

Answer 5

There is nothing ambiguous or formally incorrect about the definition of God you described: "God is that which created (or caused) everything but [itself]." I can look at a celery stalk, ask, "did this celery stalk create everything except for itself? No. How about this lobster? No." and proceed this way until I have iterated over every object that exists. If I answered yes with regard to any object, there is a God, if not there isn't. This procedure is practically impossible, but that it is theoretically possible makes for a distinct and intelligible concept.

Answer 6

Somebody said "The tricky part with the concept of God is that [it] is something lying beyond what we can perceive, by definition. If you could completely understand him, you would be on the same level as him (or her, or its!)."

I'm sorry, but I can't think that "beyond what we can perceive" makes any sense. I say that because it seems to me that we could have only learned how to use the word "beyond" from cases of usage of "X is beyond Y" in which both X and Y stood for things we COULD perceive. So I don't know why we should think it would automatically make any sense when we can't even perceive anything that Y could stand for.

Answer 7

GOD 101

A. Philosophy fails to define God. Let's not use it. Otherwise, this question would not be here.

B. Words fail to define God. Let's not use it. There are two ways comprehend something: by mind or by experience. Concept of God is impossible to understand by mind because mind is a limited system of dualistic values. One can allude to it by using tricks like poetry or abstract definitions, but it pushes you towards experiencing, rather than understanding in definite terms.

C. So, now that we know that we can only experience God, how do we do that?

1. Take as a working theory the rule that your happiness is a happiness of the Universe, since we are one.

2. Close your eyes and find the bright area of desire on your horizon. Something that you really, really want to happen.

3. Throw away the form and focus on the feeling you have about that. Choose to believe, that this will happen. Make an order to the Universe.

4. Click "Send". In other words, stop worrying about it. Let the Universe handle your order.

5. Repeat 1-4 as often as possible.

6. Cultivate unwavering Intent and utter surrender: When something goes not accordingly to your plan, believe that Universe is taking a detour to get you the best results. Take in every experience that Universe trows into your plate. Be grateful. Be patient. Be fluid.

7. Eventually, (God knows how long) things will turn your way. You will get your confirmation if your belief was clear of doubt.

   INTERPRETATIONS:

   One can call this God, some: Universal Flow, some mechanics of Intent, some – magic. Try it if you dare and this will become your experience of God. Your way of communication. On the way, you will see signs: first occurences in the new pattern to be. Signs make no sense to those who has no direction. Only when your aim is set, you know where you are going – signs start to get into context. It's like if you encounter a road sign: "50 more miles to Sacramento" it makes no sense to you unless you know what Sacramento is and how far it is from where you are going.