"
The difficult word θεος (theos) means god, and it's difficult because it's commonly assessed from the Roman pagan legacy that dominates modern thinking. The ancients were not religious like we moderns are. The ancients were mostly interested in survival — surviving nature, wild animals, disease and attacking neighbors — and for that they needed an unbiased, accurate, verifiable and shared world view. In those days, false prophets were executed (Deuteronomy 18:20-22).
We moderns may be tempted to think that religious nonsense was the old standard and science the new, but the fact of the matter is that science was always the standard until politicians began to muddy the waters with religious demagoguery. The information technology we celebrate today began when prehistoric people began to share symbols. A book is a far greater miracle than a hard drive, and the narrative technology in which the Bible was written far exceeds any sort of data compression, storage and retrieval that came after that.
The word θεος (theos) probably comes from the noun θετης (thetes), setter, from the verb τιθημι (tithemi), to set or place. It derives from the idea that the universe runs on a set of fixed laws, which ultimately are one. Modern science calls this the Theory Of Everything, and assumes it's a mere set of detached mathematical statements. The ancients, however, understood that this unified set, or Word, describes a universe that is alive in essence, and as one as the Word that governs it. In that sense it's like the DNA that could be confused with a mere inanimate code, but which in fact is the very source of life. The Word contains everything, including DNA..." What God is and what God is not
with apologies to mr ewe--who suffers my presence with much dignity--as i am vaguely becoming aware that such a lengthy quote is prolly a felony or something? Or somehow at least not very kosher
i would much prefer to have threaded this in Interfaith Discussion--which is imo a misnomer at best--but i am trying to be a good little fascist, so.
God is a term humans have used for an eternal being who in some form is the source of our existence.
In a christian sense, Yawah is God the creator of everything, who revealed himself in detail to the prophets and ultimately in Jesus the Messiah.
The revelation of Yawah through His people, defines who He is and how He wishes to interact with people.
The testimony limits our behaviour, and boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not.
The church historically tried to dictate what was truth and what was not outside their understanding and view, which failed, and was definitively not loving or understanding of others.
Science is the study and extrapolation of material observations and theories that explain it in a physical sense.
The danger scientists have fallen into is they have begun to believe their material observations define reality, rather than are a pragmatic approximation of our daily interaction with reality. This step of faith, for some, has made science into their god.
To make sense of the world we are linked to these ideas.