What is God?

After an atheist asked "what is God", i decided to answer, but YouTube shadowed my comment. So i'm going to explain better this in this page.

I'm going to approach both my abstract personal view of God, that is not exactly related to any religion (even if i'm a Christian), and also my view on Yahweh and the Christian perspective of God. Then later i'm going to try to associate both in biblical terms as a way to show my abstract personal view of God makes sense both to me and in the idea that my type of worship can't be seem as non-biblical.

VERY W.I.P

FIRST, YAHWEH:

I'm a Christian and i think the Almighty Creator God is Yahweh!

Before i start talking about what i believe God to be in an abstract way, let's first talk a little about Yahweh and some misconceptions about him.

Then i can use those details to explain my view of God.

LET'S START WITH THE "EL" POLEMIC:

"El" was also a word for any deity, and does not exactly means "El" as the Semitic god. For example, El Hadad, El Baal, and even El Yahweh could signify a supreme or high god associated with particular attributes or roles.

As written:

"The Hebrew form (אל) appears in Latin letters in Standard Hebrew transcription as El and in Tiberian Hebrew transcription as ʾĒl. ʾel is a generic word for god that could be used for any god, including Hadad, Moloch, or Yahweh".

"The theological position of the Tanakh is that the names ʼĒl and 'Ĕlōhîm, when used in the singular to mean the supreme god, refer to Yahweh, beside whom other gods are supposed to be either nonexistent or insignificant (...) In the P strand, Exodus 6:3 may be translated:

• I revealed myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, but was not known to them by my name, YHWH".

This verse pointed in the end shows in fact how 'El' was just a generic word for God, since:

"El Shaddai is conventionally translated into English as God Almighty".

However some people see this as a "change in name", but i don't think so.

"The folk etymology given in the text derives Israel from yisra, "to prevail over" or "to struggle with", and El, a Canaanite-Mesopotamian creator god that is tenuously identified with Yahweh. However, modern scholarship interprets El as the subject, "El rules/struggles", from sarar (שָׂרַר) 'to rule' (cognate with sar (שַׂר) 'ruler', Akkadian šarru 'ruler, king'), which is likely cognate with the similar root sara (שׂרה) "fought, strove, contended"".

Here we can see the idea of "identifying El with Yahweh", and we can see it is always something small and silly that is blow out of proportion by emotional people that want to hunt some secret that makes them feel like they discovered something that society does not know: "there is El in Israel". This could make sense if the word El itself was not something complex.

As far as i understood (since i don't know Hebrew), we can see after the "however" word, the quote explain how the word "El" can be seem and used to make reference to certain qualities and not to the deity called El. It is something more complex and studied than merely "i saw the word El somewhere".

The conflation of Yahweh with El occurred over time as Israelite religion developed from its polytheistic roots into monotheism. Because El was seem as a "Supreme God", and Yahweh is the Supreme God, then El Shaddai in Genesis aligns Yahweh with the title of El as a Supreme God.

The name YHWH is distinct from El. Its etymology likely derives from the Hebrew verb h-y-h ("to be"), as indicated in Exodus 3:14: “I Am Who I Am” (Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh). This self-existent nature sets Yahweh apart from El and other deities tied to specific domains or functions.

Unlike El, who is portrayed as a passive and fatherly figure, Yahweh is depicted as actively intervening in history, engaging in battles, and making covenants with his people.

In the Yahweh wiki:

"Over time, the existence of other deities was denied outright, and Yahweh was proclaimed the creator deity and the sole divinity to be worthy of worship".

"The two gods are in any case quite dissimilar, with El being elderly and paternal and lacking Yahweh's association with the storm and battles. Even if the above issues are resolved, Yahweh is generally agreed to have a non-causative etymology because otherwise, YHWH would be translated as YHYH. It also raises the question of why the Israelites would want to shorten the epithet".

Also, Elohim is not exactly plural, it is as plural as the word "sheep" [1].

In conclusion, if you consider El a generic term, everywhere where an argument is used as "Yahweh was called El in this verse" can just be ignored as a generic word for a deity.

The other verses pointed are very ambiguous about if Yahweh is El.

And small similarities wouldn't render El as Yahweh, especially taking in consideration the tons of differences. Similarities, if you dig enough, can be found in any comparison.

ASHERAH POLEMIC:

God is not consort of Asherah. There is no good evidence of that, only otherwise. She was worshiped at a time that Israelite used to worship lot of gods and had strange rituals.

The only evidence of her is a vase that was done by people that don't knew God properly, and also, it says "his Asherah" (not "his consort Asherah"), which is ambiguous, especially that we don't know how they spoke back then.

For example, even the wiki comments:

"The final h on the construction yhwh šmrn w'šrth is "his" in "Yahweh and his Asherah." This is well-attested earlier but unusual in Biblical use with personal or divine names, raising the possibility that "Asherah" refers to some cultic object rather than a deity. Erhard Blum argues that since the Hebrew phrase corresponds to the regular construction of two nomina regentia with one genitive, it should be translated as "and the ashera of Yahweh." Zevit suggests *’Ašerātā as a "double feminization." Reuven Chaim Klein argues that w'šrth means "and His temple/shrine/site," following an obscure usage of the Hebrew root ʿšr and its Aramaic cognate ʿtr. Handbuch describes the endings of the words as reflecting inconsistent use of sofit plene among defective spelling, or the reverse".

So it is not even grammatically proper for us to simple say that "this is what this means", some people get too emotional to find polemics and when they find polemics they double it down with euphoria like they discovered some conspiracy or something. However, this could mean something very different than what people think of.

I believe she existed, but not as a consort of God. And there are passages on the bible blatantly and directly opposing the worship of her. Why would God dislike the worship of his own consort? If so, why would he dislike that people show a little of respect to her?

God is unique, and things were made by one, after one there is two, it can't be in my spiritual logic that two things can exist at once as eternal being, the source must be unique, like a water of life, like an ocean from where things come. And this is in fact pretty logical in all other non-spiritual mechanics, like, basic physics: things dimensionalizes / fractionalizes from one.

The wiki offers this study that denies Asherah, but i yet have to read:

https://www.academia.edu/9823742

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7hUVWnRwZmo

// Are Christians Hypocrites For Rejecting Asherah?

IS YAHWEH DEMIURGE?:

No, i don't think so, in fact, most religions points to a "god" that separates the heavens from earth, like, Odin, Vishnu and etc. That shows that in fact most beliefs believe more in like a "stolen from God" world than an "evil creator of the material world".

I explain the connections between such "gods" here:

https://telegra.ph/Genesis-10-14-21

Quote:

My view is that Satan comes from Saturn, and so, that Satan is Odin, Kali, Ra, Demiurge, The Great Architect of the Universe and etc. I believe Satan is "the god of Death", he is the "Father of Lies" and "The Death". Saturn is a "god of Death", there is interesting peculiarities to make Satan syncretic with Saturn. I do believe pagans talk about true things, but have not the correct practice and worship "lower gods" instead. And i think it is important to find syncretism in the bible with other religions, but taking the bible as authority of what is the real history.

But my view of the Demiurge is that he is a "robber", and not of a "creator of the material realm", i see Yahweh as the creator of the material realm, and that this realm was to be good and will be good in the end. Once again, i believe in a syncretism between pagan entities with Satan, which is not fringe to do, we can see pagan entities in the bible like the Canaanite's Baal.

We can observe this in some interesting curiosities:

https://www.biblestudy.org/meaning-names/chiun-remphan.html

Here we can see some name that were things being worshiped by the Israelites. It is an entity related to the planet Saturn and with Death.

"You have taken along Sakkuth your king and Kaiwan your star god, the idols you made for yourselves" - Amos 5:26.

"You have taken along the tabernacle of Molech and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship. Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Babylon’" - Acts 7:43.

Chiun (Remphan, Kaiwan)

Meaning of Name: An image, pillar, lifeless

Although there is some debate as to what Chiun (Remphan) is referencing, the consensus among Biblical commentaries is that it refers to the planet Saturn. Worshipping the "host of heaven," meaning the sun, moon, planets and stars (Deuteronomy 4:19, 2 Kings 23:5, Jeremiah 8:2), was common in the ancient world.

"Saturn is no less certainly represented by the star Kaiwan, adored by the reprobate Israelites in the desert... The same word... frequently designates, in the Babylonian inscriptions, the slowest-moving planet... The ancient Syrians and Arabs, too, called Saturn Kaiwan..." (1913 Catholic Encyclopedia).

"The passage in Amos refers to the Saturn worship which appears to have been in vogue in the prophet's days" (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia).

The Septuagint translates "Chiun" into Remphan, as Stephen quotes it (Acts 7:42 - 43). The same god often had different names... Chiun, the Arabic and Persian name, written also Chevan. In an Arabic lexicon Chiun means "austere"; so astrologers represented Saturn as a planet baleful in his influence (Jamieson, Fausset, Brown Commentary).

https://biblenarratives.fandom.com/wiki/Sakkuth_and_Kaiwan

"Sak′kuth and Kai′wan are interchangeable names for the star-god Saturn."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remphan

"There is general agreement among bible scholars, however, that both remphan and chiun refer to the planet Saturn".

"Remphan is a rendering of the Ancient Greek, ρεμφαν. (...) It is likely in reference to "Kiyyun" ("Chiun") mentioned in Amos 5:26, which the Septuagint renders as "Raiphan" (Ῥαιφάν) or "Rephan". Kiyyun is generally assumed to be the god Saturn, the Assyrian name of which was "Kayvân" ("Kēwān")".

Check this out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_(mythology)

"The potential cruelty of Saturn was enhanced by his identification with Cronus, known for devouring his own children. He was thus used in translation when referring to gods from other cultures the Romans perceived as severe; he was equated with the Carthaginian god Baal Hammon, to whom children were sacrificed".

"Although these features are to be found in Greek god Cronus as well, it appears that those features were proper to Roman Saturn's most ancient aspects, such as his presence on the Capitol and his association with Jupiter, who in the stories of the arrival of the Pelasgians in the land of the Sicels(1.7.27–31) and that of the Argei orders human sacrifices to him".

"There was in the city a bronze image of Kronos, extending its hands, palms up and sloping towards the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tophet#Greco-Roman_sources

"In the Hebrew Bible, Tophet or Topheth is a location in Jerusalem in the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna), where worshipers engaged in a ritual involving "passing a child through the fire", most likely child sacrifice. Traditionally, the sacrifices have been ascribed to a god named Moloch. The Bible condemns and forbids these sacrifices, and the tophet is eventually destroyed by king Josiah, although mentions by the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah suggest that the practices associated with the tophet may have persisted.

Most scholars agree that the ritual performed at the tophet was child sacrifice, and they connect it to similar episodes throughout the Bible and recorded in Phoenicia (whose inhabitants were referred to as Canaanites in the Bible) and Carthage by Hellenistic sources".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tophet

Saturn and Cronus are [in many levels], in terms of history, equated with Baal and with the child sacrifices that the bible speaks of. So it is not fringe to think Saturn and Satan are syncretic. I'm not less Christian to think like this.

I then believe all other pagan gods that are falsely attributed as "The Higher God" are in fact all Saturn / Satan. Any god attributed to "creation" or "stealing" of the "material realm" is one and the same to me: Satan.

And if you change the name of Satan to Saturn, Odin, Kali, Marduk, Enlil, Demiurge or etc in the bible, then this is the history i believe to be correct. So, no, i wont consider pagan myths and histories without skepticism.

WHY MY BELIEF IN YAHWEH IN SPECIFIC:

I once wrote on my anti-soul-sleep article:

And i think everything modernizes and evolves with time. I think even religions and etc. And so i think Israelites seeing Canaanites sacrificing kids and etc was something they felt in their heart that was wrong, they saw other entities, like Inanna that have practitioners of sacred prostitution and saw that was wrong... By time they noticed those other gods were not gods, but demons, and by time they noticed that Yahweh was giving them everything and making them defeat way stronger enemies.

By time they noticed the other "gods" lied and that Yahweh was the true God that made everything indeed and other "gods" that stole his credit.

And by my own experiences, since i was initially atheist, my view of the spiritual in my mystical experiences was very abstract and rational, and the God i perceived to exist was imageless and not attributed to a single aspect of creation, it was a powerful force surrounding everything, with all virtues and capable of everything (which means, it could have created everything and not, i don't know, being a god of ocean and create the ocean). And then i noticed that if i were to follow this God, i would act like the Israelites and also abandon the polytheism. Especially that by my atheistic past, i studied numerous religions, i have not done weird dances and rites, but i can't lie that i believed in certain concepts and did certain stuff that was part of other religions, and what i felt is what i feel that the Israelites may have felt when they had to see since their birth the Canaanites doing (while i have all information i can in my hands).

And if God created everything, those other gods are not even creators of what they are attributed. I think those "gods" are demonic spirits that sprouted from the winds produced by the creation and they aren't creator, and then they fooled people to worship them and the fool people did.

And i think the first Israelites were seeing the Canaanites and seeing that Yahweh was not asking them that, that Yahweh had a moral basis (lot of pagan religions don't discern between moral basis and normally the good and the bad goes to the same place), that Yahweh don't had an image, don't asked those silly rites they did... And then i think that is how our religion came to be.

However, what they saw was true, just like what i saw that guided me to be where i'm now, after atheism and Christianity-mixed-with-different-concepts-of-different-religions, i can see a pattern, i can see that pagans are fooled, but i can see that they saw something true and went for it just like i did when i started my spiritual journey. And what i mean with that is that i don't think Israelites just "stopped seeing this spiritual thing" or "stop believing in such spiritual mechanics", they just stopped worshiping lower gods and stopped being fooled by these gods tales and lies.

My answer to an atheist:

Here is the comment YT shadowed.

What i believe most theists agree:

God is an Almighty force of creation that exist on another layer of reality that affects earth as above as below (Matthew 18:18).

This force generated all atoms and all matter and "quantum fluctuations" or whatever. You can see it as a mere force if you want to talk at a physical level, but we believe conscience is also a type of force and that this Force that is Source of Creation is conscious.

What i complement with my own beliefs:

By analyzing hard-problem-of-conscience, we noted that our brain seems to light itself by mere will, and there is nothing in computer science and robotics that explain how a body is owned by a conscience. A computer don't pick its own exoskeleton, even some scientists think we are ignoring other types of phenomena.

Consequently, i believe that it is by understanding how or conscience works that we understand God, because i believe our conscience can have access on that other axis of reality (deemed Heaven by the bible).

Neurons constantly rewrite the DNA (that is scientific), and evolution is NOT random (that is an error lot people assume), so i believe that God uses our conscience to rewrite DNA and code the living being of the world.

By the Logos, God created the world, the Word means syllable, but also Logic. Consequently, i believe God used mathematical archetypes, and only God is above Logos (being himself Logos; John 1:1).

Consequently, God can express any mathematical archetype to develop life and its miraculous chances of existing because he knows all parameters and all variables. But, we humans, are just a part of God, and not a whole like God, so we need to abstract from Logic. That is why it is a strange sensation to know easily that 1+1=2, but we have to take longer to define what "123123141+132132421" is equal. God is like an entity that can simple "solve" anything in an instant, he is the source of the archetypes.

I think that is why people in the past began to use geometry to link it towards God. I also saw lot of geometries in my experience, but i think that simplifies God. All tribes and religions were trying to understand this Almighty Force that they felt and had experience of, but it is very hard to understand something so complex and above the principles of basic archetypes of creation. Consequently, people began to get small pieces of that archetype and attributed that to gods, but they were considering part of the creation to be a creator.

But then Jesus appeared and broke the confusion, he showed that God is above all symbols, all archetypes and all images and anything in the creation. People that had those experiences of seeing such geometric archetypes of creation, or images of lower beings knew what Jesus was talking.

John 18:37:

"“Then You are a king!” Pilate said. “You say that I am a king,” Jesus answered. “For this reason I was born and have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice.”"

And people that noticed such aspect of creations, be it lower entities, geometric archetypes and etc knew about the truth he was speaking off, and decided to listen to him.

A source of creation should be above the realm of this world, that is the only way the world can be created out of "nothing".

Now, you can say that physics is going to explain that by whatever theory, be it multidimension, a "Force X" or whatever, all of that is going to simple be changing in the words to fit a secular narrative.

Just like what you guys did to other words.

"There is no magic", but if you did hypnosis in the past, people would call it magic, so, hypnosis exist, and hypnosis = magic, so magic exist. But you call it hypnosis so you can say magic does not exist.

"There is no enchantment", but there is "Tetris-Effect", which is based on the same concepts, now that religious thing called "enchantment" was "defeated" by science and "Tetris-effect" is what exist. Can you see?

You guys just don't understand the words people used in the past. Once you understand, you are going to notice it is not something "supernatural", in fact, it is realistic and looks like normal mechanics of everyday.

The problem is that atheists think of a highly fantastical view of what those stuff is.

"Spaghetti monster in the galaxy". That is assuming that a Source of Creation is a physical being on the physical layer of reality. That is a thing only Atheists believe about God.

Another answer to a legit curious person that seems to be agnostic:

Yw! :)

Kinda off, but research about the "hard problem of consciousness". There is a gap between the physical explanation and conscience. Two good questions that arise from that problem are:

1) Our brain seems to light areas by mere will. Atheists normally say the brain is subproduct of chemicals and etc. But that is not true, those things are an effect and not a cause. You first feel love, then it releases oxytocin, not otherwise. Also, we can control consciously ourselves regardless of what chemicals are there. Such control also regulates the release of such chemicals, and so, there is like an "invisible force" that controls the chemical releases and conscious acts. Such force makes no sense in "physical term" (i dislike this idea, i think both spiritual and physical are interconnected, as above; as below). If there is no soul, that means our brain have reactions without actions, and that would be against what we know about basic physics. Also, if chemicals were true, we would have already found stimulus to trigger uncontrollable actions. But self-control is self-evident.

2) What makes you you? I studied computer science, there is no computer or robot that picks its own chassi, the fact you are the owner of your own body is impossible scientifically if there is not a force that picked your body to be yours. Computers don't have individuality. Search term: "Neurons constantly rewrite their DNA".

We have the bible as reference, every interpretation of such texts as reference depends on the individual. Since most of the primal history of our religion is basically lost, we require deep study of the old terms and concepts to understand the bible. Just like a poem can have numerous personal interpretations, the same for our faith.

I would say that the best way to understand the spirituality is to have a spiritual experience yourself, that type of experience is know universally with the same patterns of events and effects. By having such experience, certain explanation about the spiritual in the bible begins to make more sense.

However, that does not stop that there will be numerous interpretation of the same text. That is why in Christianity itself there is numerous denominations.

I consider myself non-denominational, i have my own version of Christianity, but i align with a mix of Catholic and Orthodox. So it is hard to pin-point what is the christian belief, since there are niches with very different approaches.

My view (and mere belief, i don't claim / affirm anything) is that spiritual forces can interact with small quantum forces or other small forces (like, magnetism) and lead to deviations that makes possible for a spiritual force to design what would seem random.

So, my view is that God was the first mover, because even quantum mechanics have energy decay, and so, if existence always existed, it would be at full equilibrium and wouldn't be possible to start creation. God made such move in a very precise way that made a perfect fine tuning to make our world like it is now.

Then, after the elements necessary for life began to appear, such elements would be able to be influenced by spiritual forces. I believe God, by using such spiritual forces, controlled an energy that would guide certain direction for certain primordial structures to follow and assemble in the correct order to generate the first functional RNA.

Such living beings would carry a connection to the spiritual realm, and in this connection, God would guide the recurrent RNA transformations to develop a more complex life. That would led to complex animals, that would use this same mechanism and connection to God with their conscience to rewrite our DNA through our wisdom, that makes our neurons rewrite its DNA.

We can see such impact in animals, for example, dogs release more oxytocin and understand more human expressions, because we educated them with love, we are "installing the love program" in animals. If evolution was random, we wouldn't be able to do that, this would have to be a result of "chance" and "survival" after "mutation". We know already that evolution is not random, that is a scientific fact, but atheists keep saying it is random, because they don't research new science and they need to hold to such premises to validate themselves.

And so, if very obvious recursion of intellectual information leads to non randomic evolution, that means such "conscious" force is the source of evolution. If our love makes dogs more loveful, that means something virtual (real meaning of the word 'virtual'¹) was made in a conscious realm that was later installed in the material realm in the form of neuron construction and DNA information, and the interact with such stimulus developed the evolution of such virtual virtues to other animals by proxy.

This effect in itself of animals having very specific copies of virtues by proxy shows it was not a random evolution, but installed and designed evolution. Random would have to keep trying "the love function" until it develops, but if dogs becomes more loveful by having contact with human love, that shows that evolution is in fact installed and designed. So i believe that, just like the water is for fishes and the air for birds, the intellect is for humans. That God made us the pillar of intellect that have stronger access to God's influence and information so that we are the carriers and programmers of intellectual evolution. The installers of heavenly virtues.

In summary to your question, my belief is that God made with fine-tuning a proper environment for life until a particle of pre-life could be guided by spirit so God would be able to use conscious force to design the evolution and now also uses us for this job.

¹ Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name. Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination.