What is God? The question of "What is god?" is one of the hardest in the world to answer. There are plenty of reasons for this difficulty. I will be happy to inflame feelings while i state my feelings. God is not, and probably never was or will be, a real person. People say he has been, or will be in the future, a real person. This most often times is only a ploy to interest people who's attentions cannot otherwise be captured. I know that most religions state that god talked to "mehsiahs" who then passed his word along to his followers. How did he do this in some cases? He supposedly came down from heaven to deliever his message. In some other cases he talked through objects. Does he, or did he ever, have a body? If he did, or does, then no-one has ever found it. If you consider that god might arive in the future, how will he arrive? On the wings of a dove? That's one huge fucking dove.... Will he be spontaniously created, or will he be born a person, a supposed "immaculate conception" (hard to believe now unless it is a child under 15... and still even then). If you consider spontanious creation, any scientist will tell you that is fairly impossible (which is why science and religion conflict so badly - What? the world is 2 billion years old? impossible, god only created it a couple thousand years ago). If you consider that god will be born, in this day and age how will you be able to claim "immaculate?" Too many young mothers can claim their children have no father (either because they have had sex with too many partners, don't remember the father because of drunkenness, or refuse to allow acknowledgement of the father for one of many other reasons) for one to claim that a birth is virginal. If you still claim that it is possible then you must consider ALL children as possible being god. Do not follow the claims that god is male, female, black, white, etc, because it is possible for god to be any one of these or even possible none of them. Whose to say that god will be born as human? Uh oh, here come the right wingers. They say that god was created in his own image. What is to say that we are his image? We aren't the only intelligent beings on the planet. Oh great, here come the left wingers now. Just because we use the most complicated tools does not make us the smartest. We kill for fun, destroy anything and everything, and generally just do not act as smart as we all claim to be. Do dolphins or chimps murder or war just for the hell of it? No. They are both very smart animals however. Maybe one of them is god's actual image, you can never tell. I would imagine that god would prefer not to live through a modern childhood (what, being omnipotent, but still have to goto school until you turned 16?). You cannot be born full grown (doubtful the mother would survive that long). Ok, so he'd have to be created spontaniously. But then how can he prove himself? He isn't just going to have a drivers license with the name "god" on it, nor would he have a birth cirtificate. These days some people call their morning shit a miracle, so what would he do for that? Put cancer into remission? Medicine can do that. Fill a boat with fish? Any good scam artist could teach you how to pull that one off. Ok, so if god is not a person, then what is he? God is the ultimate abstract. How do i come to saying that? An abstract is a name that can represent a wide range of ideas. I believe this because every religion (and sometimes even sects amoung a particular religion) may have differing, if similar ideas about what god is. Each different idea is given the same name. At this point i would like to thank a nice young friend of mine. She pointed out to me that some people do have better ideas of what constitutes a miracle. She told me that she sees many miracles a day. To her young, fairly uncluttered viewpoint, lives of children and small animals are miracles. I must say that i can agree with her views. I guess sometimes it helps to have a sweet young girl (younger than me by about 5 years, but still mostly inoccent) point things out to you. Now back to the differing ideas about what god is to some people. God is the savior. To some people god has one purpose only - to "save your soul" from eternal damnation. Now what if we don't have an eternal soul? That would put him out of a job, wouldn't it? If we do have an eternal soul, then shouldn't god save all his creations? To me this view of god has a couple of purposes. First this will make people more complacent and therefor easier to control. Once people are under said control the second purpose can be seen. The group the people are with will milk the complacent ones for all they are worth. Why? Because these people will believe that if they fail to follow what they are told ("pay so much each week", etc) they will not be saved. This can have the effect of making poorer people suffer for the idea of being saved in death. God is the father and creator. Fine, but where is the mother to go with the father? According to the bible (in most of its form, actual name or religion not withstanding), god created everything in various amounts of time. Christianity said it took seven days to create the world (with the seventh being a day of rest), hence a seven day week (with sunday being the day of rest and worship), and seven being a lucky number (also, more useless but very interesting, thats the reason for 666 being the number of the devil, it falls short of seven in many ways). I like a lot of the native american beliefs of how the world was made, simply because they use objects and animals that are quite natural (The Raven comes to my mind immediately). This is not to claim that they are that much better, but these myths/legends/stories are from well before any formal science, and they are taught nicely beside science. If one where to believe that the earth and humans where indeed created by god only a few thuosand years ago, exactly as we are todaay, then i must point out why i feel this is a major conflict. According to science the earth is a little over two billion years old. According to "The Word of God" the earth cannot be older than a few thousand years old. Some people will argue that science, tool for the devil that it is (not in my view), is incorrect, and that the only truth in the world is "God's Word", which i point out was written by, editted by, and interpretted by many generations of men (usually resulting in my being called an "Anti-christ" or "Pagan", which is not the forgiveness of the bible). Only you can decide your mind, after all i don't own you, but i will personally stick with sciences explanation. Back to the native american beliefs/myths. These myths are represented as such, leaving room for modern science to teach other explanations, which is why i have nothing against them. God as christ. God sent down christ as his own son to preach the word of god, but some people worship christ as god. Gee, i wonder how upset god must be with that little delelopment. Its one of those where you try to advertise your own product, only to have your target audience stolen away from you by your spokesperson. Kinda makes your advertising worthless. I really must laugh at this one, because anyone could have been saying they were christ, from a beggar hoping for help, to a rich person looking to control people. You really want to worship an abstract that might not have been what you thought it was? God is the ultimate crowd control. Go back to where i stated that god was the savior. I said there that people can use the idea of god to make others complacent. This is very true here. Invoke god properly when a crowd is restless and you can turn them in any direction you desire. You can calm down upset people (if you use this method only to be within the law). You could, conversely, cause a violent riot just as easily. This presents an interesting conundrum. As soon as you bring god into the picture, you lead the mob. If you bring the cowd under control, you are the hero, because you possible saved lives. But if the mob turns violent, as the leader, you are responcible for "inciting a riot" which is an arrestable offense. At this point i'd say its safer to try another method of controlling a crowd, because this method is so easily turned against you if you fail. God is the reason to commit murder. Of course the people committing these murders believe that they are rightous, and so it is acceptable. No murder is acceptable, especially when that murder is committed because one does not agree with another's religious beliefs. What kind of murder do i describe here? Jihad, known to the christians as Crusades. Warfare for religious beliefs, Jihad, is simply another way of attempting to commit genocide, but supposedly called for by god. Now i thought god told us "thou shalt not kill"? i know he told that to the christians, so why should he contradict himself? Well, it's hard to contradict yourself if you don't exist. If one uses the idea of god thou, you can convince people to do whatever you want them to, including kill. People who have weak wills or think little of it will hear "it's god's will" or "it's your religious duty" and they will follow, wanting to please god. Zealots like this mentality. This is how people like osama bin ladin work. They don't bother trying to get along with others, instead they bend weaker minds into killing others and themselves. Well, isn't suicide just another form of homicide, liked no more by god no matter what the reason. So what do i consider jihad in all its forms? Pure, unbridalled violence with no purpose other than to set others against you. The muslims might not be so pissed at christians if the crusades had never happened. Osama bin ladin might have been able to express his thought without hiding from bombs if he hadn't called for jihad against the United States. God is a reason to go overboard. Most people have at least seen a person who believes they must preach and pray over one's soul that "won't be saved in anyother way." I know i don't care for people like that. People have control of their own destiny. Lick plays just as much a role at times as good choices. But people who go too far with thier beliefs attribute everything, from luck to good choices, to god, and only god. So does this mean that i can have no brain and go through life on god's will alone? HA! No i can't... because god is an abstract. I'm sorry, but nothing can possibly control everything in that manner. What, every person is a puppet of god? Then he's controlling a hell of a lot of puppets at once. Over two billion of them, only counting humans, each with millions of other little parts which must be controlled in a like manner. Current human made computer simulations can't simulate the function of the brain or nuclear fusion, let alone the control of an entire human body. I think that it might be a little hard for even an omnipotent person to keep up with that many indivuals. How else can people go overboard here? You also have your zealots, who use god as their excuse to kill, and one's lack of god to become a target. People who suicide themselves can most often times be considered zealots. My original point was people who preach and pray over one, even when it is not wanted. We must all choose our own religious beliefs. People who feel they must "convert" or "save" or even "damn" another who does not share their beliefs are almost always going to be made to feel unwelcome. Do you want to listen to someone else tell you try are going to save your soul, since you aren't doing it yourself? I myself have very little patience for people like that. Talk to me or don't, accept me or don't, i don't care, but don't assault me with your "rightousness." God is one of many. If one was to ask a christian or muslim "how many gods are there?" the answer would always be the same. "Only one, ours, and no other." Alright, then why aren't we all the same religion? "Because people who believe in other gods are either insane or heathens." Oh. So some people's beliefs, which are even older than your own, make them insane? Some people will agree. Well then i for one am glad for these "insane" people. Why? Well, because of the advances made by these people. The greeks believed in many gods. The name i sign to this paper, and some of my others, - mephistopheles - is the greek god of the underworld, or as most christians would know him, the devil. He is one of many greek gods. But if you were to wipe out the greeks (erase them from the history books, because time travel is impossible, read pitr neochaos' essay on time for more about that) then you must remove all references to them from daily life. Good luck with that. This means you must remove math (most of our higher mathematics is a derivative of, if not outright, greek work). This would destroy our modern society. Romans believed in many gods. They also left behind major architectural feats. Latin, and most of the romance languages that are spoken in the world today would have to be wiped out to get rid of rome's influence on the world. The best of the early calanders came from the mayans of aztecs, both of whom believed in many gods. Sailing ships where greatly advanced by the work of the vikings, who explored the atlantic ocean even before columbus was born. Did they believe in a single god? No. They had odin, the father of the gods, and then went down the list of various lesser gods. God is everthing. This is one of the more interesting beliefs in god. Whis is because in this view, god does not have to be a person. This is because god inhabits everything in a manner. In an unusual way of thinking, god is comprised of everything and everyone. People, animals, and even rocks could all be part of god's body, the cells making up the body. Is this absolutely true? Like all the othe ideas i've stated here, no. Due to the unusual style of this idea thou, i find it hard to bother attacking it. Are all these peole wrong for their beliefs? No, because those are their beliefs. This comes back to the earlier statement that god is an abstract. Earlier i described an abstract as being a name for a collection of ideas. What i did not make absolutely clear is the fact that the ideas collected under an abstract are most often times NOT from the same groups of people. This is how i make my point: You have the idea of god. The christian idea of god conflicts with the muslim idea, conflicts with the roman ideas, conflicts with.., well you get the point. None of these ideas truely match. Here is an example of what i am describing. Yesterday i heard a religious talk show that did exactly what i am talking about above. While i won't disclose the station, or the name of the program, i will state what i thought when i heard the program. The person speaking on the air was talking about the "pagan gods" and how they are inappropriate in "polite society." To the speaker "polite society" only includes church going cattholics who share his views. He speaks of his god as being forgiving, but yesterday he said his god destroys "unbelievers." They believe in god (or many in some cases), so what does god care what name he is called by? This is just another way to scare people who do not share your own beliefs. As part of an abstract ideas are not meant to match. If all ideas matched then we would all have the same beliefs, and nothing would ever be created. I would not be writing this essay now if i shared beliefs with everyone else, and the world would be without the religious chaos it is in now. Everything does have its own place in the world, and its cause or effect. I do myself believe in a higher power, but i do not agree with the requirement that i also have an organized religion to back up my beliefs. As long as one believes that should be sufficiant. Once you organize into a group, beliefs can be twisted in any of the ways that i described earlier. My opinion may not be backed up with facts, but not everything can, or should, be explained. Mephistopheles original completed 2-19-2002 typed and editted 2-21-2002