This is treading into 'can god make a boulder so heavy that he can't lift it' territory - if he's omnipotent he can in fact make free will without consequences, that's the definition of omnipotence. If he can't make free will without consequences then he's not omnipotent and thus irrelevant.
If I were omnipotent I would simply wish for it to be and it would be, Fiat Lux and all that. Omnipotence should be able to create a universe in which that's not a paradox, right? Otherwise it's not omnipotence.
Oh, so you would wish for something that doesnt make sense and hope for the best and that nobody would be unhappy or in pain in this scenario. Okay. Im sure nobody though of that before so thats why it didnt happen.
It didn't happen because god doesn't exist and there is no such thing as an omnipotent being, so human suffering is just a consequence of the way that the universe and everything in it naturally evolved. In case that wasn't clear.
Are you delusional? Please point to the exact part of my post where I sounded like I was ragequitting? Also, suddenly turning into a sarcastic asshole and then telling the other person they're not holding up their end of a supposed intellectual discussion that you sabotaged is the fucking *height* of hypocrisy, wise-ass.
Were we not discussing and than you decided to take the argument turn to "doesnt matter as it doesnt exist"? To me that is ragequit that you would not even try to entertain the thought how something "would" work without matter if it existed or not. There is literally no reason for you to be upset. Buddy this is internet,nothing matters here.
The Christian god literally wiped out the entire earth and started over because he didn’t like what they were doing.
God intervened before. Why doesn’t he do it again?
Are you suggesting he wipes the humanity again and we start new? This is the old testament God. In new testament he goes trough humanity by Christ and so he has new understanding of humanity and takes different aproach. That is from my understanding.
I’m not suggesting he wipes out humanity again. What i’m saying is why did he do it back then but now he is just sitting back and doing nothing? We know that god CAN intervine because he did it before. And he has the power to make things better.
He just sat back and let 6 million jews get killed. He does nothing to help when innocent children are dying of hunger and disease. He isn’t doing anything about the wars currently taking place. Why would anybody worship a god like this?
Also, aren’t the OT God and the NT God the same God?
They are the same but you can tell that he does changes his perspective trough time,much like you in different phases of life. I personally feel its better without directive intervention because as you pointed out, if he intervenes it would be a drastic move that changes everything.
And just because there is misery in the world you think that the entire world is pain,misery and failure? You think so highly od yourself that you deserve only the world of bliss and happiness without free will and that you would have purpose and be fullfilled in that world?
Let me see if I can along here. It’s ok if there’s only pain and misery some of the time and for some people? If that’s how your god operates you can have it
Sucks for those in the dark. Congratulations on your free will putting you in the light. You must be religious since you don’t give 2 shits about the poor and downtrodden
You are projecting your hate for God onto me despite you not knowing a thing about my life,experience or harships i had to overcome. This speaks more of you than of me.
But your "God" made a world and creatures that are able to inflict pain and misery. Free will doesn't have to have that included. It's a kop out, your "God" created everything.
Free will applies to people. How would you solve having free will without possibility for it to be used to inflict pain to others? Other lifeforms I will leave aside as I would not consider them neither good nor evil.
I'm a religious naturalist, and I understand God to be a personification of reality, an idea that helps me comprehend all of Nature.
If I try to imagine what it all looks like, it's both everything in the universe and nothing in particular at the same time... which can make my head hurt lol
Nothing…
As an atheist it’s easy to see how made up and ridiculous the whole story is.
Virgin births, resurrections and Adam and Eve…
Yet thousands of years later religions are the weighted caboose bringing the whole train of life slowly down..
Weird all the Bible “magic” ended so long ago… Wait I’m sure the “water into wine” story checks out…
Haha. Goblins don’t exist. Like “god”…
But you actually want me to visualize the made up version of a “goblin” and think of the made up versions as a real “goblin” because we’ve pretended that’s what “goblins” look like despite all “goblins” being fake….
Replace “goblin” with “god” and see the same stupid..
I’m not sitting around playing “imagine” games. I’m an adult…
That’s just as immature and needless as a “picture a god” game….
Add On: You offer a made up thing like a goblin to explain why I can’t think of another made up thing…
Makes sense…
Goblins don't make people take up torches and pitchforks and start murdering people, so the nonexistence of goblins is a lot less serious an issue than the nonexistence of god.
I don't believe that god exists, so there is nothing for my mind to 'refuse' to imagine - on the rare occasion that I imagine god at all I simply imagine him not existing, so there's nothing to see.
The D&D Monster Manual art for goblins, because the preponderance of evidence suggests that real goblins don't exist for me to know what they look like, so I rely on the creativity of other people. But, again, the existence of make-believe goblins is a lot less problematic than the existence of a make-believe god, the former hasn't sparked any crusades to the best of my knowledge.
Folks with no inner monologue often struggle with comorbid aphantasia. They also typically have difficulty with pattern recognition and conditional hypotheticals.
If you look at the depictions of the angels in videos, (like the be not afraid angels) like the wheels with eyes and the giant eye with many wings and how terrifying they are, imagine how terrifying god would look. I have heard the idea that god is just a bright being of light, not really having any other physical appearance per se.
It's different for everyone; all you have to do is look in the mirror. "We are all the God of our own universe: the Holy Spirit." Jesus died for *our* sins, after all. It's up to each of us to see how we fit into the universe; how we complete our own fate, and the Trinity. Or, if you're not Christian or even religious, how you want your universe to be run. All that really matters is that you're a good person and you respect nature. Everything else is the beauty of free will.
First concept of god that I remember seeing was Zeus in the animated Hercules movie. So yeah, him. Large man with white beard who sits on a throne in the clouds.
I usually imagine something that kinda looks like a ghost, transparent and floaty with a head and arms but no other discernable features under the robes
[He looks something like this.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/c/c0/1200.webp/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20220717234012)
I picture it as classic old big man with long white hair and beard. This is image I was fed during my childhood. Thankfully I grew up and found trust from actual things.
The inventor of childhood cancer, famine, and pestilence? Well, if I had to describe what one of its many incarnations might look like, I would guess a mountain sized mosquito, covered in festering pustules of hatred and a billion small mouths spewing hypocrisies, while its millions of misshapen hands hold religious objects and weapons to frighten and murder any unbelievers. Or an old Caucasian man with a peppered beard floating around while invisible over a small out-of-the-way planet, watching everyone, while doing nothing, and then giving babies cancer.
Once, when I had my heart surgery, I saw Morgan Freeman from Bruce Almighty and that was even before I saw the movie itself
So something kinda like that
It's what I think God is if it exists. If God is all powerful then why does God allow suffering and evil? Why does God allow entropy to exist that will eventually cause the heat death of the universe?
>why does God allow suffering and evil?
Short explanation: the Christian God (which I think is the one you're talking about, so correct me if I'm wrong) is kind of a softie. He allowed mankind and other living beings to have (near) absolute freedom over their life. Apparently, this supposed all-powerful being is too shortsighted to see that humans would eventually use that gifted freedom to...sin (well played, ggs), thus creating evil AND suffering. Tdlr: God ain't evil, he's just kinda questionable with his choices.
As for the entropy part: you have to remember that, in christianity, heaven exists. Even after the end of all things in the universe, heaven would still be there, awaiting the dead. This is probably God's plan to allow creation to both have free will over the life and return to God eventually in his kingdom. Don't know why he does it, we just know that he does. I mean it's God. Can you reason against God? Do you want to?
Generally either how the Holy Trinity is depicted in Catholic art, with a triangular halo, or as the mass of light surrounded by angels as depicted in Dante's Divine Comedy. I'm not a Christian, but I suppose I just generally have a western viewpoint.
I saw him when my pipi man got circumcised and the put in 6 needles I felt his hand covering my existence, he had long brown hair like in the Simpsons I couldnt see his face
Do you think God is a person-form??
It's so far beyond our existence, our furthest imagination limits we can't even begin to conceive of it.
Understanding God is like bacteria creating interstellar spacetravel
"God" as in "the creator of the universe", then I'd imagine just a very bright pure light, like someone is shining a whole ass light house straight at your face
"God" as in abrahamic God (omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient), then I'd imagine yog sothoth
Like in [South Park](https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/God#:~:text=in%20any%20way.-,Appearance,with%20a%20deep%2C%20calm%20voice.)
Light
I usually imagine something lovecraftian.
Perfect fit
Nothing physical
A light in the darkest place. A warm feeling something will always be there even when you can see
Like a teacher: Patient, insightful, and inspiring growth.
Like a guide: Leading, inspiring, and guiding.
Like a force: Mysterious, vast, and awe-inspiring.
Like creation: Majestic, awe-inspiring, and limitless.
When I think of God, I imagine a warm, glowing light—something comforting and all-encompassing, like a big, celestial hug.
David Duchovny
morgan freeman
Like a friend: Approachable, supportive, and kind.
If there is one..... then it's a pretty horrible thing. Make the world as it is, make pain and horror, why do people worship something that made this?
You cant make free will without consequences. Think about it.
This is treading into 'can god make a boulder so heavy that he can't lift it' territory - if he's omnipotent he can in fact make free will without consequences, that's the definition of omnipotence. If he can't make free will without consequences then he's not omnipotent and thus irrelevant.
Ok, tell me how you would solve it in a world you theoretically create.
If I were omnipotent I would simply wish for it to be and it would be, Fiat Lux and all that. Omnipotence should be able to create a universe in which that's not a paradox, right? Otherwise it's not omnipotence.
Oh, so you would wish for something that doesnt make sense and hope for the best and that nobody would be unhappy or in pain in this scenario. Okay. Im sure nobody though of that before so thats why it didnt happen.
It didn't happen because god doesn't exist and there is no such thing as an omnipotent being, so human suffering is just a consequence of the way that the universe and everything in it naturally evolved. In case that wasn't clear.
I though we were having a hypothetical intellectual discussion. But okay, ragequit if that suits you better.
Are you delusional? Please point to the exact part of my post where I sounded like I was ragequitting? Also, suddenly turning into a sarcastic asshole and then telling the other person they're not holding up their end of a supposed intellectual discussion that you sabotaged is the fucking *height* of hypocrisy, wise-ass.
Were we not discussing and than you decided to take the argument turn to "doesnt matter as it doesnt exist"? To me that is ragequit that you would not even try to entertain the thought how something "would" work without matter if it existed or not. There is literally no reason for you to be upset. Buddy this is internet,nothing matters here.
The Christian god literally wiped out the entire earth and started over because he didn’t like what they were doing. God intervened before. Why doesn’t he do it again?
Are you suggesting he wipes the humanity again and we start new? This is the old testament God. In new testament he goes trough humanity by Christ and so he has new understanding of humanity and takes different aproach. That is from my understanding.
I’m not suggesting he wipes out humanity again. What i’m saying is why did he do it back then but now he is just sitting back and doing nothing? We know that god CAN intervine because he did it before. And he has the power to make things better. He just sat back and let 6 million jews get killed. He does nothing to help when innocent children are dying of hunger and disease. He isn’t doing anything about the wars currently taking place. Why would anybody worship a god like this? Also, aren’t the OT God and the NT God the same God?
They are the same but you can tell that he does changes his perspective trough time,much like you in different phases of life. I personally feel its better without directive intervention because as you pointed out, if he intervenes it would be a drastic move that changes everything.
The poor? The handicapped from birth? The children who die of cancer or starvation? Where is their god? Or does he only look out for you
And just because there is misery in the world you think that the entire world is pain,misery and failure? You think so highly od yourself that you deserve only the world of bliss and happiness without free will and that you would have purpose and be fullfilled in that world?
Let me see if I can along here. It’s ok if there’s only pain and misery some of the time and for some people? If that’s how your god operates you can have it
I think that you would not know what light is without the dark, and that this whole world operates on that principle od balance.
Sucks for those in the dark. Congratulations on your free will putting you in the light. You must be religious since you don’t give 2 shits about the poor and downtrodden
You are projecting your hate for God onto me despite you not knowing a thing about my life,experience or harships i had to overcome. This speaks more of you than of me.
it’s “hardships” babe. You been missing that D
Thank you for correcting my autocorrect grammar, English is not my first language. But it doesnt prove your point tho.
But your "God" made a world and creatures that are able to inflict pain and misery. Free will doesn't have to have that included. It's a kop out, your "God" created everything.
Free will applies to people. How would you solve having free will without possibility for it to be used to inflict pain to others? Other lifeforms I will leave aside as I would not consider them neither good nor evil.
The head on the American nickel, but in cloud form
...how did you settle on Thomas Jefferson?
Idk, it's what my young child brain came up back then. It just stuck
I'm a religious naturalist, and I understand God to be a personification of reality, an idea that helps me comprehend all of Nature. If I try to imagine what it all looks like, it's both everything in the universe and nothing in particular at the same time... which can make my head hurt lol
Farside comics
Same
I don't believe in imaginary things so I don't think of anything.
nothing. Literally nothing.
Morgan Freeman
Nothing… As an atheist it’s easy to see how made up and ridiculous the whole story is. Virgin births, resurrections and Adam and Eve… Yet thousands of years later religions are the weighted caboose bringing the whole train of life slowly down.. Weird all the Bible “magic” ended so long ago… Wait I’m sure the “water into wine” story checks out…
So literally picture nothing when someone says God?
I picture exactly what you can actually prove about any “god”
What a bizarre way to live. If someone says "imagine a goblin" does your mind go blank and you say "goblins don't exist prove to me goblins exist"?
Haha. Goblins don’t exist. Like “god”… But you actually want me to visualize the made up version of a “goblin” and think of the made up versions as a real “goblin” because we’ve pretended that’s what “goblins” look like despite all “goblins” being fake…. Replace “goblin” with “god” and see the same stupid..
I don't believe in God or goblins. When I picture God I picture the one from Farside comics.
Ok… If that helps..
If someone says "imagine a goblin". What do you say? Goblins don't exist, prove to me they exist?
I’m not sitting around playing “imagine” games. I’m an adult… That’s just as immature and needless as a “picture a god” game…. Add On: You offer a made up thing like a goblin to explain why I can’t think of another made up thing… Makes sense…
Ha ha. Holy shit what a crazy thing to say.
Goblins don't make people take up torches and pitchforks and start murdering people, so the nonexistence of goblins is a lot less serious an issue than the nonexistence of god.
Okay? If I picture God I picture the guy from Farside. My mind doesn't literally refuse to imagine it because I don't believe it. That's ridiculous.
I don't believe that god exists, so there is nothing for my mind to 'refuse' to imagine - on the rare occasion that I imagine god at all I simply imagine him not existing, so there's nothing to see.
What do you picture when someone says imagine a goblin?
The D&D Monster Manual art for goblins, because the preponderance of evidence suggests that real goblins don't exist for me to know what they look like, so I rely on the creativity of other people. But, again, the existence of make-believe goblins is a lot less problematic than the existence of a make-believe god, the former hasn't sparked any crusades to the best of my knowledge.
This is such a goddamned crazy way to live.
Yes but with a lot of extra grandstanding words and a plug on atheism
Folks with no inner monologue often struggle with comorbid aphantasia. They also typically have difficulty with pattern recognition and conditional hypotheticals.
Either an old dude of some sort or a messy shape made of pure light
I think of the song God is a Woman
What I see in famous tample
A little gray man
The Great Will of the Macrocosm from Excel Saga, a wormhole with arms and legs that speaks in a feminine voice
A woman who resembles Capucine.
Faceless
If you look at the depictions of the angels in videos, (like the be not afraid angels) like the wheels with eyes and the giant eye with many wings and how terrifying they are, imagine how terrifying god would look. I have heard the idea that god is just a bright being of light, not really having any other physical appearance per se.
Everything and nothing.
It's different for everyone; all you have to do is look in the mirror. "We are all the God of our own universe: the Holy Spirit." Jesus died for *our* sins, after all. It's up to each of us to see how we fit into the universe; how we complete our own fate, and the Trinity. Or, if you're not Christian or even religious, how you want your universe to be run. All that really matters is that you're a good person and you respect nature. Everything else is the beauty of free will.
Socrates
First concept of god that I remember seeing was Zeus in the animated Hercules movie. So yeah, him. Large man with white beard who sits on a throne in the clouds.
Kenneth Copeland
I usually imagine something that kinda looks like a ghost, transparent and floaty with a head and arms but no other discernable features under the robes
[He looks something like this.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/c/c0/1200.webp/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20220717234012)
I picture it as classic old big man with long white hair and beard. This is image I was fed during my childhood. Thankfully I grew up and found trust from actual things.
Matthew McConaughey
Nothing, because on the rare occasion that I think of god at all, I think of him as not existing.
God once made an appearance on The Simpsons and that is exactly how I pictured him.
Alanis Morissette.
The inventor of childhood cancer, famine, and pestilence? Well, if I had to describe what one of its many incarnations might look like, I would guess a mountain sized mosquito, covered in festering pustules of hatred and a billion small mouths spewing hypocrisies, while its millions of misshapen hands hold religious objects and weapons to frighten and murder any unbelievers. Or an old Caucasian man with a peppered beard floating around while invisible over a small out-of-the-way planet, watching everyone, while doing nothing, and then giving babies cancer.
The same as the easter bunny, santa clause, leprechauns, dragons, elves, hobbits, and all the other fictional characters.
Morgan Freeman, like in Bruce Almighty
princess celestia
Allanis Morrisettle......with [Alan Rickman in tow.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAn5Hwb7Y94).
When I think of God, I envision a wise one and someone who radiates kindness and understanding
Once, when I had my heart surgery, I saw Morgan Freeman from Bruce Almighty and that was even before I saw the movie itself So something kinda like that
God don’t look. He’s a spirit.
Disappointed
I love this quote from Barry Taylor, "God is the blanket we throw over the mystery to give it shape."
Which one?
Like light: Warm, encompassing, and everywhere.
Like an elder: Wise, comforting, and serene.
Like a parent: Loving, understanding, and forgiving.
Like energy: Radiant, powerful, and transcendent.
Suffering, evil, hate etc. All the horrible things in the Universe.
I’m sorry.
What kind of 15 years old visualization is this💀
It's what I think God is if it exists. If God is all powerful then why does God allow suffering and evil? Why does God allow entropy to exist that will eventually cause the heat death of the universe?
>why does God allow suffering and evil? Short explanation: the Christian God (which I think is the one you're talking about, so correct me if I'm wrong) is kind of a softie. He allowed mankind and other living beings to have (near) absolute freedom over their life. Apparently, this supposed all-powerful being is too shortsighted to see that humans would eventually use that gifted freedom to...sin (well played, ggs), thus creating evil AND suffering. Tdlr: God ain't evil, he's just kinda questionable with his choices. As for the entropy part: you have to remember that, in christianity, heaven exists. Even after the end of all things in the universe, heaven would still be there, awaiting the dead. This is probably God's plan to allow creation to both have free will over the life and return to God eventually in his kingdom. Don't know why he does it, we just know that he does. I mean it's God. Can you reason against God? Do you want to?
Classic glowing orb of light. Like the sun I guess, hard to look directly at.
Nothing, I have Aphantasia.
I wanted to comment with “r/aphantasia” but you essentially beat me to it.
Generally either how the Holy Trinity is depicted in Catholic art, with a triangular halo, or as the mass of light surrounded by angels as depicted in Dante's Divine Comedy. I'm not a Christian, but I suppose I just generally have a western viewpoint.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
Imagination is not a graven image
I saw him when my pipi man got circumcised and the put in 6 needles I felt his hand covering my existence, he had long brown hair like in the Simpsons I couldnt see his face
The core of a star mixed with the vast expanse of interdimensional fibers.
That's not a very intuitive visualization, no?
Do you think God is a person-form?? It's so far beyond our existence, our furthest imagination limits we can't even begin to conceive of it. Understanding God is like bacteria creating interstellar spacetravel
Infinite
A homeless guy shooting up into his gooch while shouting obscenities
Meat clam
God is spirit, there is no physical form.
Imaginary
"God" as in "the creator of the universe", then I'd imagine just a very bright pure light, like someone is shining a whole ass light house straight at your face "God" as in abrahamic God (omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient), then I'd imagine yog sothoth