I'm not trying to start a debate. I respect your opinions.
I know you're not. I don't mind answering your questions. I understand that my views must seem very different to you, and very wrong. But you have to understand that I come from a different religious tradition... so my views on God ARE different.
A question that I have for you is, what God do you believe in?
Oh boy, I've sure had to answer this question a lot! My views on the nature of God are all over this forum! Let me see if I can round them up...
Okay, to quote myself: "A) 'All Gods are one God', or, more accurately, 'There are not many Gods but many ways of looking at God'. God is the sum of all energy found anywhere and everywhere in the universe, male and female, positive and negative, and 'good and evil'.
b) God is everywhere, in everything and everyone. God IS everything; similarly, everything is not God, but everything is PART of God.
c) Most of all, the totality of Gods nature is incomprehensible."
This will help you understand how I arrived at this conclusion (no book told me...):
"Science knows that everything is energy... EVERYTHING. Science can look at the behavior of little clumps of this energy (subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, biological organisms, communities of biological organisms, weather, etc), and it can determine the nature of each of these little clumps... but what about the vast totality of energy? ALL OF IT.
Some scientific theory (string?) dictates that all energy interacts with other energy, indicating that it is all interconnected in some vast, incomprehensible way. Therefore, just as the energy of every atom, every molecule, every system of of a single biological organism is basically an ARRANGEMENT of energy with a specific nature when it combines to form a whole (combining to form "me" or "you")... so all the nature of the universe, ALL OF IT, when viewed in its totality, forms...something. Something vast, incomprehensible, unknowable...something that CANNOT be viewed by science simply because it is so big.
I call this Something, whatever it is, "God". I know nothing about this God. I cannot try to define what it IS beyond saying that it is vast, incomprehensible, and unknowable, but using my meager human logic I can try to define what it ISN'T.
It does not have a personality... this is something that biological organisms have. Therefore, it is not loving, caring, angry, wrathful, or any other human/biological emotion. The best I can perhaps say, using these imperfect human emotions to describe something that is inhuman and has no emotions, is that this Something is "apathetic" or "uncaring".
It is not finite... how can something that is EVERYTHING, all energy, be finite when energy cannot be created or destroyed?
It is not male or female, but encompasses both (because It, being the totality of energy, encompasses the biological world, which has gender)."
The God that I know made us in his image. I'm not applying human characteristics to him, I'm applying his spiritual characteristics to us.
As am I... I wrote somewhere (all this has been beat over the head for me, so I'm just quoting myself right and left) "The Christians were right when they say that God made us in Its image...but I think perhaps they misinterpreted what It meant. God, in the simplest terms, is energy. So are we. Thus, we ARE created in Its image... not male or female, not bipedal or humanoid, but pure energy. Our 'soul' is energy, our body is energy... WE are energy."
You're right, God is beyond our understanding only because we choose to not fully live by his word.
Ah, but there are SOO many interpretations about what he was really saying in the Bible, even among Christians. In fact, I think the fact that there are so many different interpretations about God is PROOF that It is beyond our understanding: It is so great, so vast, so mysterious that its nature CANNOT be confined to one mere book!
When I said I'm not worried about whether or not God cares for us you said:
Ah, but I'm not worried about whether or not God cares for us! If God wished to smite me down right now, there is no point in fearing or not fearing... God will do what God wants, and my own personal feelings on the matter won't change that fact one bit!
If God doesn't care about us then what would stop him from destroying us. He doesn't have to hate us for that. He just has to not care.
Ah, but God is destroying us all the time! Hurricanes, earthquakes, accidents, drownings, lightning, volcanos...cause and effect...the very fact that It "created" death (it COULD have made us immortal, but chose to slowly destory us over time...)
Again I ask, what would be the point of making us if he didn't care?
Good question. No idea. Who truly knows the "mind" of God? I seriously doubt It thinks in the same terms as us!