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Is God Effable?

SalixIncendium

अग्निविलोवनन्दः
Staff member
Premium Member
Is your concept or perception of God, the Absolute, Brahman, or whatever term you use to reference the ultimate divinity, effable in your religious or spiritual views?

If not, why not?

If so, how?
 

syo

Well-Known Member
Is your concept or perception of God, the Absolute, Brahman, or whatever term you use to reference the ultimate divinity, effable in your religious or spiritual views?

If not, why not?

If so, how?
Gods are effable. What do you mean how?
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
I’m not talking about gods. Please reread the OP.

Salix, I'm confused. Gods would be the polytheist variant of "whatever term you use to reference the ultimate divinity." If you intend to exclude polytheism for some reason, that's fine, but that's not clear from the OP. :sweat:

But the answer is yes, for this polytheistic pantheist. That said, human comprehension is necessarily limited and while words can be used to describe the gods, they never capture anything in full.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
Is your concept or perception of God, the Absolute, Brahman, or whatever term you use to reference the ultimate divinity, effable in your religious or spiritual views?

If not, why not?

If so, how?
Whatever you or anyone else is calling "God" is effable.

Any concept of God is necessarily conceivable. Any perception you call "God" is necessarily perceptible.

Anything that can't be conceived of or referred to is not the concept you're referring to as "God."

If God is inconceivable, then when you use the term "God" in a sentence, you're not expressing meaning; you're only making sounds.
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Is your concept or perception of God, the Absolute, Brahman, or whatever term you use to reference the ultimate divinity, effable in your religious or spiritual views?

If not, why not?

If so, how?
Even quantum physics is not effable......
 

Shantanu

Well-Known Member
Is your concept or perception of God, the Absolute, Brahman, or whatever term you use to reference the ultimate divinity, effable in your religious or spiritual views?

If not, why not?

If so, how?
God I know can only be described in terms of my own personal experience of what He represents given my surrender to Him in acknowledgement. Because I pursue sata-advaita, namely the seeking of truth through truth accommodation, whatever I am and have done in my life is a description of that God's character and intentions for mankind.
 

Jedster

Well-Known Member
I'd settle for affable.
Ok here is a fable

The Man and the Wooden God - An Aesop's Fable. In the old days men used to worship stocks and stones and idols, and prayed to them to give them luck. It happened that a Man had often prayed to a wooden idol he had received from his father, but his luck never seemed to change.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Ok here is a fable

The Man and the Wooden God - An Aesop's Fable. In the old days men used to worship stocks and stones and idols, and prayed to them to give them luck. It happened that a Man had often prayed to a wooden idol he had received from his father, but his luck never seemed to change.
I have a wooden Ganesh.
But I don't pray to him.
We just enjoy each other's company.
 

arthra

Baha'i
Is your concept or perception of God, the Absolute, Brahman, or whatever term you use to reference the ultimate divinity, effable in your religious or spiritual views? If not, why not? If so, how?

In my understanding for Baha'is the following is representative:

THE UNKNOWABLE ESSENCE

"All the people have formed a god in the world of thought, and that form of their own imagination they worship; when the fact is that the imagined form is finite and the human mind is infinite. Surely the infinite is greater than the finite, for imagination is accidental while the mind is essential; surely the essential is greater than the accidental.
Therefore consider:

"All the sects and peoples worship their own thought; they create a god in their own minds and acknowledge him to be the creator of all things, when that form is a superstition -- thus people adore and worship imagination.

"That Essence of the Divine Entity and the Unseen of the unseen is holy above imagination and is beyond thought. Consciousness doth not reach It. Within the capacity of comprehension of a produced reality that Ancient Reality cannot be contained. It is a different world; from it there is no information; arrival thereat is impossible; attainment thereto is prohibited and inaccessible. This much is known: It exists and Its existence is certain and proven -- but the condition is unknown."


~ Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i World Faith - Abdu'l-Baha Section, p. 381
 
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