An All-Perfect, All-Knowing, All-Loving God...

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Sophist,

I chose none of the above. I do not believe in the bible, I don't see god as the type to have pearly gates or a white beard. I don't believe in heaven or hell. I think this realm here, earth, is all we got. I guess I prefer explanations over faith.

Thanks
Jay

if anything I would be an immanentist.

I have been fascinated in these days by iguanas and chameleons. I must say that lizards have fascinated me since I was a child, I looked at them scurrying over old walls when I was on my way to the beach and I was attracted by their swift movements, the capacity to drop their tail (which would grow again) their strategic immobility when they realized they were observed (playing dead) the colors and the structure of their skin.
Now about chameleons: they have a perfect sight, a tongue which moves at incredible velocity in order to catch an insect or other prey, and the habit of changing their color to communicate within the species in order to mate. The change of color is not mimickry it is the opposite. There are known some one hundred of species. They originate in Gondawan, which was that great continent starting to exist some 400 millions of years ago and disintegrating some 170 millions of years ago to form the actual continents. And this means that Chameleons have existed at least for some hundreds millions of years. In some particular niches they are very effective creatures, beautiful in their own way, like my lizards when I was a child.
Why after reptiles mammals prevailed? Well probably mammals had better thermostatic regulation. Together with birds they have a constant body temperature. That gave them an advantage in carving their ecological niche.
What a god should have to do with all this? Well life seems to be a field for decentralized experimentation, with one thing in common of all living creatures: the obligation to keep alive and the obligation to reproduce themselves.
I don't see any reason to postulate a personal allpowerful deity. And in any case, like is said in the Book of Job, and in Hindu and Tao philosophy, not understantable with the mind we possess.

I skimmed through the first page. Almost entirely emotion-based arguments. What's the point...

it's funny how so many people seem to think that belief in god and religion is "emotion based" and "not explanation" etc.
my experience is the opposite of that, that in fact it is a great explanation.
that belief in god is highly logical. ( i can't speak for other people's belief though)
but it's true that you really have to be dissatisfied with the meanings, reasons, and explanations that are popularly accepted.
think they really aren't good enough.
not going to carry on letting myself be fobbed off with all the arguments,... which seem so small, there's nothing more, there's nothing else. WHY believe that?

I have very rarely thought that the sacrifice of my body to allow this consciousness, at some point 50,000 years or so ago, was worth it. I really would rather turn back the clock and have that body jumping like a cat, running like an antelope, flying like a bird, swinging in the treetops like a monkey, rather than this brain, this "freedom" from instinct. After all, next to the animal's oneness with its body, what is the point of this brain? What on earth do i get out of this, except various ways to pass the time until i die?

That is how i feel, most of the time when i am not absorbed for a while in some new perseverance, some new obsession, and even then am aware of its pointlessness. It is just a "superior" way of passing the time.

The only thing which begins, i say begins because i'm only just getting the hang of it, to make that loss worthwhile is what i feel when i believe in god. This is, perhaps, as Monty says somewhere, only a way for me to communicate with my unconscious, but "unconscious" sounds like a dark cupboard in the hallway, and doesn't convey, or even allow me to feel, the same thing.

I don't know how it works. I don't know very much about it at all. But it has an effect. For instance it provides a prosthetic executive function, aswell as a place for passion which is always inappropriate/often unhealthy when directed at other people.

Until i understood that my very brain structure itself ( perhaps under food opioid influence as a result of gluten intolerance etc since infancy too) might inherently "involve" this somehow, that there are perhaps many whose highly developed cognitive functions create a "space" for religious belief, in that they seek meaning everywhere, constantly attempt to attribute agency and cause to everything, and look for patterns in everything, for whom belief in god is a virtually sensible cognitive choice, i did not allow myself to do it.

Belief in god does not signify abandoning thought ( just look at history of thought, philosophy, invention, mathematics, etc, to see this), nor a reprehensible desire for repose or comfort, an abdication of responsibility, or attempt to avoid reality.
It may on the contrary, for some/many be the result of seeing reality very clearly, and recognising a need/weakness, a reason for believing in precisely god. God like the perfect replacement part. Like people saying, ok, i need anti-depressants. Though i would still suggest, because i don't like pharma treatment of mental illness! that there must be something else that they could do!!

On another thread, as i mentioned above, ( "Do you have a supernatural friend?" OP by Ragtime)

I think the reason "the unconscious", as framework/construct, doesn't work for me is that it is MY unconscious. I own it.
That feels way way way too small for what i am connecting with.

Although i am much struck by the gnostic and pagan mysteries' take on god, as our Heavenly Twin, etc, in which progressing in the mysteries reveals that god is "just" ones higher self, ( after which also discover that there is something linking everyone etc, that is even "higher", etc...) i do not believe that the god i'm believing in, who created and creates the universe around me, is "me", however unconsciously!!
Not yet anyway! Impossible to. It is god. ( and i'm just "me", no relation!!).

And i am glad that "it" is NOT me when i think of doing things out of "love" for "it", ( like you do when in love, easily because simply want to, for them), because i am SO bad at doing anything for myself.

Maybe later on i might discover that god is my higher self. Right now i haven't. Right now it is essential to my relationship with this power that it is god, that i believe it is god. Like that it makes sense to me, and is useful to me. ( because i'm an absolute beginner).

Beginning to see maybe why the mysteries were mysteries. Get people believing in this stuff in public and problems start.