What do you think God is?

[angus]

A bit like a light bulb.  The old-fashioned incandescent kind, though, not a compact fluorescent one.  Also, not screwed into a socket.  Like a puff of logic, and not without a sense of humor. 

For the most part the gods, if there are any, leave me alone and I leave them alone, but when I hear the word God I see it as light without the burden of mass.  Voiceless, genderless, and probably without form.  Definitely not humanoid.

I think maybe God appeared to me in the form of a frail, old, black woman one time.  That was about ten years ago, in Mississippi.  She spoke to me.  Probably saved my life.  Or maybe it was just an old black woman giving me advice.  Who knows?  Either way, I ended up following the advice to my benefit. 

[angus]

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

It's rather unlike you to seek anyone's approval on this forum.  Anyway, I have for a very long time regarded you as the smartest poster here, bar none, and I really don't think you require such criticism.

"God is love" is pretty much right.  That is not only canonical, but it also makes sense.  I say "God is light" but I could repurpose God in the way of Love just as easily.  I'm not really spiritual--I suppose that I'm shallow that way--but to the extent that I have a conception that comes to mind when I hear the word, and I suppose anyone would given the way language works, my conception of God is one of ethereal energy.  You interpret that as Love.  I as Light.  That could also reflect my training.  Light is Energy, and vice-versa.  Planck's hypothesis and all that.  

I will say that none of this beaded toga guy comes into my mind, but apparently it does to many posters here.  I find that striking.  Then again, we have lots of humanities/liberal arts types here, who consider The Classics (exceedingly ethnocentric Western versions thereof) the core part of a proper education.  On the other hand, I'm not surprised at the references to George Burns and Morgan Freeman.  Personally, I'd say that if I had to give it a physical form, then the only reference point I have is a very skinny, paper-thin, old, black woman from Mississippi, but one can never really be sure.  It's sort of like that Futurama episode already referenced.  (I'd actually thought of that long ago as well.)

The other bits--about not disappointing us and not leaving us--that's harder to swallow.  The gods we invent have wicked senses of humor, that much is obvious even to the most casual observer of life.  Then again, you have to take a leap of faith to buy into any of it.  You're strong enough to take that leap.  I am not sure that I am.  I suspect that most of us are not.  As I said before, you are the smartest one here.  You can be a real jackass sometimes, but that does not diminish your intellectual qualities.  For the rest of us, it's easier not bother your god or any other god, and hope that it never bothers us either.  The light/energy/love may or may not be out there, but we're more concerned with temporal and corporeal concerns.  You and Buddha and Jesus and Einstein may have the luxury of diving Truth, but the rest of us are too busy paying the rent and putting food on the table.  Get it?

[angus]

the strongest reason I have for believing in God is my inability to take the leap of faith that we humans have divined enough of the universe to know that we are only a bunch of biochemicals trying to replicate our molecules.

That is an interesting point of view, although I'm not sure that such knowledge would necessarily preclude faith in God.  I imagine that one might even be able to demonstrate that both leaps are simultaneously possible.  That could be a highly philosophical debate.  Probably over my head.