Who or what is God?

We cannot simply define ‘God’, because it does not exist as a result of something we can sensory observe, like a tree. We give the name ‘tree’ as a result of our observation. ‘God’ does not become clearer in nature, details and characteristics when we take a closer look. As opposed to the tree, which does become clearer in nature, details and characteristics when carefully observed.

The problem with ‘God’ is that we don’t know what it is it refers to. The word ‘God’ is metaphysical by nature, we don’t observe God through our senses.

Since we don’t observe God with our senses, what causes God, what is God, as a concept that we somehow understand, and yet is so hard to define. We might say ‘God’ refers to nothing and we have no notion of God. The problem is that we are already speaking about God, as if it exists.

To see the difference between ‘nothing’ and ‘God’ we might take a look at a a random group of letters, like ‘wzgrt’. We know ‘wzgrt’ is nothing, because it refers to nothing and has therefore no meaning or existence (other than the meaning of group of random letters in this article). God, on the other hand, seems to refer to something more existent than ‘wzgrt’. What is it that ‘God’ refers to?

We don’t feel the need to talk like this about ‘wzgrt’. However, when it comes to God and someone disagrees our view, we haste to rectify the given definition as if we can see God. Even if we say ‘I don’t feel the need to talk about God, it is as irrelevant and meaningless as wzgrt’, the difference between God and wzgrt remain

• our sens of something higher that is not ourselves, nor what we observe, throughout all history that we associate with ‘God’, like the tree with its leaves

History has given us a lot of options about ‘God’:

• We can say something about the existence of God, like ‘God is a reality’, or ‘God is our own phantasy’ or ‘God is nothing’, etc.
• We can also say something about the nature of God, like ‘God is a stone’, or ‘God is an immaterial mind’, or ‘God is all we observe’, etc.
• We can say something about the position of God, like ‘God is the ruler of all men’, or ‘God created the earth and disappeared’ or ‘God is a construct to fill our intellectual gaps’, etc.
• We can continue about anything we want, like the character of God. ‘God is love’, or ‘God is cruel’ or ‘God has no character’, etc.
• And so on

But all options are merely aspects, all resulting from the picture we have in when talking as if we can see God like we see and talk about the color of a tree.

So we can say that ‘God is our own phantasy’ and is created as ‘a construct to fill our intellectual gaps’ and thus is ‘God not emotionally involved with human life’. On the other side we can say that ‘God is a reality’ who is ‘an immaterial mind’ who rules the world’ and ‘is love’. the tree and if it is of greatest urge that this vision is rectified. Scholars are fighting over the existence of God since ages.

So the good news is that we can identify God so far as something:

• we cannot observe
• matters more than nothing

Yet the question remains: Is God our own construct or does God somehow reflect to something real, that is, something other than our imagination?

To answer this question, we (luckily) have only two options to come to our conclusions about who or what God is:

1. We define God as a result of what we deduct God must be and what God must not be.
2. We interpret works that define God and believe that the works in its descriptions are true about God.

The options are limited and opens the door to our next question:

What reasonable options do we have to define God? Another day, another topic.

Explore similar topics:

1. The (ir)relevance of God
2. Can all religions be true?
3. Christianities best argument