Sssssooooo, if god was/is/use to be without form and void, to the point that there was nothing anyone could make that would be an acceptable representation of what he/she/it looks like, then HOW DID IT MAKE MAN IN ITS "IMAGE"??
If there was no form or image that would or could represent god, then how was it possible for it to make man in its image?
Ferpetessake, put the babbling book Down & start living your actual life!!!!
I posed that same concept to a religious person...but in a different way. I pointed out that humans have the physical features of primates...hands, feet, opposable thumbs, penises (some of us )...it would follow then that God, if we are made in his "image", must be a primate. The person responded by saying, "...we are made in God's "spiritual image", not physical image." In sum, you cannot pin down a religious person, they will always find a way to twist out of it. Nevertheless, I have often wondered why God needed a penis. .
Bragging rights? There's always an excuse when it comes to pointing out imperfections, eh?
Conflates the TWO origin stories in Genesis, Chapter one and Chapter two.
In one its "Male and female -- be fruitful and multiply" Chapter 2 is Adam and Eve.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
RIDDLE ME THIS . . .
Who is OUR?
OUR likeness?
@Seeker3CO and no mention of parasites, bacteria, virus, or cancers at all.
@Davesnothere Right?! What kind of fuct up God would make viruses?
"Our" may be intended to be used as king and queens refer to themselves in the third person, "we"...an example being, "We should like to eat breakfast now."
@dahermit Yes, and that IS the usual and expected response from ever so many Apologists as well as quite a few Atheists/Agnostics. etc, to whom I have also posed that self-same question.
But, and here comes the cruncher, when asked WHY this self-proclaimed " One and ONLY True God and Creator insists upon referring to itself as Us or We, the plural form btw, when, being as Omniscient as it is, it would know full well that ONLY IT exists in the place?"
And that is pretty much about the time when ALL of the Umms, Errs, Arrrs, etc, begin to pour out of the mouths of the Faithfools as if they were a stream in flood.
And when I speak to the Faithfools of the Ancient Egyptian Creation story where, Khnum ( later knowns as Amun) the Creator, said unto himself, " And I (note the use of the SINGULAR) SHALL cause the land, Kheb in ancient Egyptian btw meaning the land of Egypt, to rise from the Primordial waters and from Kheb I shall take hands full of clay and upon my pottery wheel I shall make all things living, trees, plants, animals and peoples of ALL colors and creeds," so WHY would ONE Creator refer to itself in the singular when your version elects for the plural?
And again comes forth the same flood of Umms, Arrrs, etc, AND the rare but sometimes occasional " But our Creator is different to theirs."
@dahermit Exactly, how is there any we when the only thing in existence is a MONOTHEISTIC God?
Powerful word, OUR. Yet thou shalt worship no other gods but me?
@Davesnothere What about the purpose of the mosquito?
@IAJO163 Gotta Love Genesis, creation and destruction in 6 chapters
IF the ark story were true, then Noah's Family were the most pest ridden humans of all time!
They HAD to carry, flesh eating bacteria, scabies, crabs, intestinal worms, tapeworms, pinworms, lice and Bot fly larva, just to name a few.
As well as all the diseases which ONLY reside in humans, smallpox, typhoid, malaria, Diphtheria, TB and a host of others.
IF that tale were true, you could not fit the INSECTS alone. There are over 35,000 species of spider known, and an estimated 35,000 or more as yet undiscovered.
Not to mention little issues like elephants tipping the boat, the unsoundness of a wooden vessel of such size, ignoring the fact that other nations on the earth took no notice of the flood at all, or that there is just not enough water, or the reality that other people HAD boats already, and in a years time would have assaulted such an ark for the wealth of food it contained.
THEN as the final kicker, it would be the ultimate genetic bottleneck, reducing our DNA finger\print to the results of ONE family, making us ALL siblings by DNA. This would result in all sorts of birth defects and inbreeding within a generation.
It not only takes faith to believe this, it requires turning off your brain as well.
@Davesnothere Evidently you did not see (or understand) my post about how kings and queens traditional have used "we" to refer to themselves. Example: "We need to use the bathroom.", whereas we would say, "I have to use the bathroom."
@dahermit I did, but we are not talking about Middle ages linguistics (although it might be translative depending on edition.)
Even in such a case there was a "We" (The royal authorities.)
Such language was also part and parcel of having servents for everything, so you did very little alone, but as we repleat with servants to wipe your ass.
It is even more apparent when the old Testament makes reference to "other Gods", and the understanding that Judaism evolved from prior Semetic Polytheist religions.
Asherah is identified as the queen consort of the Sumerian god Anu, and Ugaritic ʾEl, the oldest deities of their respective pantheons,as well as Yahweh, the god of Israel and Judah. This role gave her a similarly high rank in the Ugaritic pantheon. Despite her association with Yahweh in extra-biblical sources, Deuteronomy 12 has Yahweh commanding the destruction of her shrines so as to maintain purity of his worship
All of the gods I personally know about were described as being like a man or woman with super powers. Zeus, apollo, Thor, Dionysus, Prometheus and there are thousands more. Apparently it's just the nature of us humans to invent gods who look like us.
In the bibble it was the earth that was without form and void when god created it. The idea that this same god is "without form and void" is some modern apologist nonsense to help believers protect their feeble and vulnerable god. Apparently he is now in another dimension. Nobody have ever seen him and if they claimed otherwise they were lying.
In creating Earth he left 8 other discovered failures? Why leave the rest uninhabited?
@IAJO163 Yeah, and don't forget about ALL of those other planets and stars in the Universe as well.
Why even bother making all of those when you 'Eternal' Big Plan is to put ALL your eggs in one tiny basket and then things kind of go a bit astray, flush everything down the toilet EXCEPT 8 humans and a wooden boat load of animals, etc.?
Wow, I wouldn't trust this god thingy with drawing up plans anything, even something as simple as changing a light bulb.
It's because God was always a projecton of self, and males have dominate cultural structures.
[pnas.org]
He was white too, right?
@IAJO163 - Well, I doubt people who were black, brown, red, purple, or green would project a white God unless their culture idealized the color white for some reason, or unless the white God was imposed upon their culture from one outside it. I would imagine the white Christian God was adapted to fit the white Europeans cultures from a darker shaded Middle Eastern like version conceived first by those peoples who invented them.
A Christmas hymm we sang in our high school choir for our Christmas program said that the children in different parts of the world saw the face of the baby Jesus like their own but eith heavenly grace. I would surmise that this concept didn't apply to children only.
It is quite coincidental that the god of any specific church tends to not only look like the people in that church but he/she/it thinks like them too.
So god is a "Hood Rat?" LOL!!!
When I was a Christian the obvious answer would have been "eve ate from the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil, cursing our species and banishing us from the Garden of Eden. Before she ate from the tree we were able to see and interact with God directly in the garden. Now we need to beg Jebus to come inside of us in order to see God after we die"
Why was there a tree of Good and Evil? What was THAT plan about?
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that it won’t contradict itself. So there’s no contradiction there.
I don't know where you get the claim that God was without form. In Genesis we are told that the earth was without form and void (1.2).Are you conflating this with a description of God?
This
Good question. It turns out that men made god in their own image.
Not sure. But since the Bible says it is, Christians undoubtedly believe it. And their version of God matches their own nationality.
The bible never said god was formless. According to the bible man was made in gods image.
So flawed.
I think you’re right. the formless void in the Bible was describing the earth in genesis before the land was brought up to separate the water. Not to say that that makes much more sense but the problems are geological more than with image.
You should read the Bible more. Moses himself declares that god has no form.
@charliemmann
have you read genesis? Didn't the bible say god made us in it's image?
When I was Christian I believed it was our souls that made us in God's image.
You are pointing out one of the thousands of impossible gawd stories....the bible is full of insane genocidal misogynistic violent abortions rapes and shit that never happened like an alleged baby gawd birthed in a dirty donkey stable by an alleged vaginal virgin on a fake back dated calendar at least 4 years wrong when real King Herod died 4 bce
Isn't that nearly a metaphor on election meddling??
Buddy...youre asking the wrong folk here. You need to talk to some christian to avoid and echo chamber.