I was tempted to make Jack's why=when correction and then delete the correcting post, which is what I usually do. But his why=when=why post is #100, and I can't take that away from him.
This, however, is post #101, which has a nice symmetry to it - and you can't take that away from me.

John P. says: Little Hawk, you've just hit on why these discussions can't get very real without a commonly shared definition of "god" and without a clear statement from the believers about what it is they actually believe.

And there's the hitch. I think most believers would agree that one of the primary aspect of God, is that God is ineffable, beyond definition. Indeed, traditional Judaism even avoids naming God, referring to G-d or the sacred tetragrammaton, YHWH,

To me, God is That Who Is Beyond AND That Who Is Within - beyond all things and yet the essence of all things. We personify God because we humans can only understand the ineffable by comparison with human persons - but any attempt at definition falls short.

The Eastern (Orthodox) Christian churches define God by contradictions or oxymorons - akin to my beyond/within definition, I suppose.

The standard definition of God by the critics here at Mudcat, is closest to the understanding of God held by the most extreme fundamentalists. But we have few extreme fundamentalists here, and the rest of us feel offended when we are lumped with them.

-Joe-