Is God male or female?

[Godwilling]

Jews, Christians, and Muslims refer to God as He, but is God male or female?

[Egyptian Phoenix]

Both and none

[FlyingTeaPot]

If god is a being that created men and women, then this entity need not have any physical attributes, because this entity also created asexual amoebas and plants and so on. I think this question is a waste of time.

[Terrywoodenpic]

God is unlikely to have a gender.
To have a gender suggests that there must be at least another God with the opposite gender, or the sexuality would be redundant.
Few religions perceive of multiple gods.

[Odion]

Originally Posted by Egyptian Phoenix

Both and none

Yep.

I conceive the appearances of gods in both male and female ideas--but God Itself? The Supreme Absolute and Ultimate Reality that is beyond form and gender? None, of course. Why would God need a gender?


Although I'm not sure if this is for Abrahamics only.
Scripture-wise, I can't find anything off the top of my head. I'll hopefully remember and find some stuff though..

[Pegg]

he is physically genderless

our physical genders really have no relationship to him...our genders are all about reproduction, he doesnt reproduce the way we do.

the reason why he is always presented in the masculine is because his dominant qualities are masculine qualities...while he does have feminine qualities, they are less dominant and this is why the man naturally dominates over the woman...a mans inner qualities are geared for it. Man was created in Gods image with his dominant qualities...woman was created in mans image with the feminine qualities dominating her makeup.

[lunakilo]

Originally Posted by Terrywoodenpic

God is unlikely to have a gender.
To have a gender suggests that there must be at least another God with the opposite gender, or the sexuality would be redundant.

God point - at least if we are talking about a monoteistic god.

Also:"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."( Genesis 1:26 - wow! I just quoted the bible )
I guess that means that the god in the bible does not have a specific gender.

[Terrywoodenpic]

Originally Posted by Pegg

he is physically genderless

our physical genders really have no relationship to him...our genders are all about reproduction, he doesnt reproduce the way we do.

the reason why he is always presented in the masculine is because his dominant qualities are masculine qualities...while he does have feminine qualities, they are less dominant and this is why the man naturally dominates over the woman...a mans inner qualities are geared for it. Man was created in Gods image with his dominant qualities...woman was created in mans image with the feminine qualities dominating her makeup.

That is a lot of assumptions....
It is more about how languages distribute personal pronouns. God comes withe male tags, Goddesses come with female tags. This is more respectful than calling God "it".

Neither men nor women were created in any particular image, their distinctions are are functional sexuality, following on from their evolutionary forebears..

[GabrielWithoutWings]

Both and neither. I like the Feri phrase 'God Herself'.

[Levite]

Originally Posted by Godwilling

Jews, Christians, and Muslims refer to God as He, but is God male or female?

Gender is an anthropomorphism. We use the terms descriptive of gender to metaphorically relate to different aspects of God. But that doesn't mean that God actually, literally possesses gender.

The custom of using gendered pronouns to refer to God in the masculine is something that the translators of Jewish scripture unknowingly picked up and disseminated into common usage. In Hebrew, the masculine pronoun and verb forms are used for God because Hebrew is a grammatically gendered language, without a grammatical gender neutral form. Therefore, anything ungendered is arbitrarily assigned the masculine grammatical form. But that doesn't mean that the subject is literally male, any more than doing the reverse would mean the subject is literally female.

God, not being in any way, shape, or form a physical being, or resembling a physical being at all, has no gender.