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Entity?

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
I read on a thread most people believe God is an being.

What does that mean?

God has been described by abstract words, adjectives to an unknown "force," profound emotions such as love, a experiential practice, the source of spiritual awakening.

Without making this into an evidence/god debate (well, at least try not to), if you see God as an being or entity or if not a believer that's how you were taught, what does that mean?

When I think of being and entity I think of the movies. Explain?
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
It's typical to think of God as an external being or entity. It's the way I child might think of God, a being at the North Pole, or the bigger equivalent, Heaven. It's all very concrete and literal. God is outside, up in heaven, a person, and that sort of thing. And then they grown older and the image of God remains largely the same. It doesn't move much beyond that.

I like to challenge that thought by asking if God is infinite. If so, then that means he cannot be outside of us, as that creates holes in God where God doesn't exist. If inside creation is outside of God, then God is not Infinite. Once you start thinking about that, this idea of God as an entity, or a being, or a person, or such, becomes not quite as we imagined.
 

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
It's typical to think of God as an external being or entity. It's the way I child might think of God, a being at the North Pole, or the bigger equivalent, Heaven. It's all very concrete and literal. God is outside, up in heaven, a person, and that sort of thing. And then they grown older and the image of God remains largely the same. It doesn't move much beyond that.

I like to challenge that thought by asking if God is infinite. If so, then that means he cannot be outside of us, as that creates holes in God where God doesn't exist. If inside creation is outside of God, then God is not Infinite. Once you start thinking about that, this idea of God as an entity, or a being, or a person, or such, becomes not quite as we imagined.

If God exists, he's not as commonly imagined. I'm more convinced of that than anything else.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
I was not really taught but picked it up from my environment and continued with it for part of my life before finally questioning it and abandoning the idea in favor of 'what exists' (Brahman). I term that as an 'entity' (which certainly is not a God).
 

PoetPhilosopher

Veteran Member
My current understanding is that God may have about two components. One is being an entity. The other is expanding beyond the entity into a force. That's how I see the Abrahamic God, anyway.
 

PoetPhilosopher

Veteran Member
My current understanding is that God may have about two components. One is being an entity. The other is expanding beyond the entity into a force. That's how I see the Abrahamic God, anyway.

I'll give another example. I see Jesus and God the Father kind of more as entities, but the Holy Spirit as a force.
 

SigurdReginson

Grēne Mann
Premium Member
When I was a believer, god was a formless being far from reach who could peek in on me and see my life as I lived it. Strangely enough, I did regard Jesus and Yahweh as two different beings. I believed they were the same god, but while I felt Yahweh was distant, I was much more close with Jesus, who I felt cared about the concerns of men. I regarded them as two different people. The holy spirit was vague and not really personified like Yahweh and Jesus.

As my ideas on god changed, he grew into a more polytheistic view. These gods were still formless, but they embodied the various aspects of nature I felt and experienced, such as riding with thunderstorms - lightning arcing through the sky and drumming thunderous booming through my chest. God went from being some distant being to becoming beings that were very much experiencial.

Now, the concept of god feels like a figment of my mind. Not that this diminishes anything for me, but "god" to me seems much more like it's taken the roll of a way for my inner thoughts to project themselves. This means that I am an atheist of course, and even a naturalist, but the concept of god still has value for me.
 

A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
I read on a thread most people believe God is an being.

What does that mean?

God has been described by abstract words, adjectives to an unknown "force," profound emotions such as love, a experiential practice, the source of spiritual awakening.

Without making this into an evidence/god debate (well, at least try not to), if you see God as an being or entity or if not a believer that's how you were taught, what does that mean?

When I think of being and entity I think of the movies. Explain?
As a "being" it would, I feel, be something that "can be" as a standalone thing. It is actively "being" something in particular. In stating that God is "a being" I feel it means that it is something that can be counted distinctly from the rest of anything and everything - even if it supposedly counts those things as a part of its "being." So... possibly that it has thoughts of its own, acts independently of other objects, beings or non-beings, etc.
 
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