What do you think God is?

[Beet]

On the whole I tend to agree. If there is ‘something’ that holds it all together, it’s not organic, it’s probably not sentient, it’s existence may even be transient. It may not be aware of itself or it’s abilities. It does not care if you or I know of it, or if we do know of it, whether or not we kowtow to it. Because in many ways, that would defeat the point of it all. The idea that if there is ‘something’, it’s human in its concerns and picked out a semi nomadic people in one planet out of countless billions of planets in trillions of suns in millions of galaxies in countless universes as important enough to impart it’s wisdom to deciding what people should do and what they should sink their d-ck into is vacuous. It would be the equivalent to me thinking that the entire universe, every person and every event that has ever happened has happened so that I alone (and to hell with everyone else) am here.

I actually agree with a lot of this; if anything I'm even more uncertain. In reality, God is just another word for the unknowable, so to answer the question 'what is God' would destroy the concept of God itself. It would also imply that knowledge is possible, when in reality it is subjective and just another word for confidence. That being said, I think it is reasonable to believe that God communicates to us through a series of avatars, one of which was indeed an old white man in the sky with a flowing beard

[Beet]

To take a very stark and very simple example. The Christian, in order to please the avatar of god that he worships, wilfully opposes evolutionary theory thinking that to do so pleases god. In actuality, evolutionary theory is part of the human story and is very much, through intent or causation, a representation of god. So the non-believer is acknowledging god and is close to god through learning about the human story but the believer, who has idolised one archaic avatar of god relevant to a now passed period of human understanding, is through his worship…not really paying reverence to god at all. If that makes some sense.

In this particular example, I actually agree that you are right, and Christians should accept evolutionary theory. After all, if God did not endorse evolutionary theory in some form, why would he have put so much seeming evidence for it on earth? The critical part however, is to draw from this only what Descartes called clear and distinct conclusions, and nothing that is not fully justified by the "evidence."

More generally though, you have merely pointed out a possibility. We can never answer any questions about God definitively. So why worship a particular avatar? It can only be for the same reasons why we do anything. Although we can never really "know" anything, it does not matter so long as we are motivated to do things that serve a purpose, and belief / faith is a form of action. So simply, if it makes your life better, then believe; otherwise, do not. The question to examine is not whether God exists, or what form God takes, or what God wants of us, all of these questions are hopeless. The responsibility of the individual and community is to examine what is good for us and how we can better achieve what we want. Any faith in God must flow from this question, and more often than not it does in practice, despite that participants in the debate would claim otherwise.

[Beet]

Was this too wordy or too obvious to get a response?

Well first off, God is love and not a stranger.  The rules God uses are simple so that we can all know them.  God offers a full commitment you won't get from anyone else.  God tries to communicate this in ways we all can understand.

God never gives up on us.
God never disappoints us.
God never leaves us.
God never makes us cry.
God never says goodbye.
God never tells a hurtful lie.

We all recognize God and our hearts ache for God, but we're shy about acknowledging that need for someone else.  But God sees inside us and knows that, so God goes along with the game we insist upon. If we'd but ask God how God feels about us, we'd see the love we blind ourselves to.

Anyway, here's a video that explains it better than I can.

Definitely not too wordy. I enjoyed the lines with the rhyme. Although obviously I think that God is a stranger in some ways, I don't think God has to be exclusively a stranger.