Who is God?
It seems the best way to begin this topic is to make a point about preconceptions. Firstly, we are not Gods ourselves, and so we often leap to inaccurate conculsions due to personal bias, a lack of education or available information, our own human limitations, call it what you will. The writer, however, feels that such preconceptions are a negative force when seeking truth. As such you are politely requested to have an open mind, to prepare to be challenged, or to simply not read this article. The writer intends to better understand his God, and not to offend. Thank you.
As I'm sure you will agree, such an over simplified question demands some qualification before it can be properly addressed, so let's get started:
What is God?
To begin at the beginning, as it were, we should first collate a few pieces of information. Firstly we must address the undeniable spanner-in-the-works that challenges our most basic Christian concepts, namely the preponderance of religious belief systems in the world. This is a subject that in itself warrants lifetimes of study, as such I will be forced to wildly generalise in the name of expedience. Apologies in advance. Apologies also for my Christian bias.
To answer this question let us summarise qualities and concepts that appear (more or less) uniform to religious concepts:
God is the creator. Wether this be the Christian Creator of the heavens and the earth in their entirety, or simply the creator of humanity depends upon the religion in question. In its briefest form God is THE Creator.
God is immortal. Immortal? Maybe the wrong wording or even the wrong concept; God is independent of such earthly concerns as birth, ageing and death, possibly independent of the effects of time and/or space. By 'independent of' the writer means unnafected by, immune to or, simply, that God finds these concepts totally irrelevent.
God is everywhere. Again, space is irrelevent to our God.
God is everything. Same concept.
God is the Alpha and Omega. This means to say that God is the beginning and the end of all things; the one uncreated creator - nothing could exist without god, nothing can end without God. Many religions believe in vast numbers of gods- be it a pantheon or a veritable managerie, from Ancient Egypt to modern space alien religions, these concepts vary depending upon how far up the tree you must go to find something you yourself would accept as a God. The statement that God is the beggining and the end means that the God we are discussing here is the Ultimate God- the top of the food chain. Whether or not God has created infinite numbers of creatures we would ourselves consider Gods is irrelevent; our God is their God, the God of all Gods, the King of Kings in its most final form.
God has the ultimate power over life and death. If the reader were to travel back a hundred thousand years with a box of firearms and a box of medical vaccines, the reader could install themselves as a God in the eyes of tribesmen of the time. They simply would not understand the basics of our technology; our ability to end or restore life would be God-like. Shows such as stargate base their entire plot on this premise.
God is not phased by physics and science. The one uncreated creator is independent of these rules as we established above. God has established these rules for us, they are OUR constraints to deal with, not Gods. God created the rules of Physics if he created the universe, why should he be concerned about a few dinosaurs? They are there, they are real, the Earth is very, very old indeed; but why should anyone consider this a problem? The Bible, Quran or any other text is not threatened by science; God himself did not write them, he simply explained to human beings in terms a human being could understand at the time, which must be nearly impossible due to the fact that we are not Gods ourselves. Even Jesus Christ for a Christian or Mohammad for a Moslem, though undoubtedly a divine being, was created as a human being in a human form to relate these words to other human beings. The point here is that at least some of our human limitations must apply to any creature with our brains, hands, and eyes, irrespective of their level of divinity. And this is a fact: we are NOT Gods. However perfect we may be, we can never pretend to undestand Godhood and Godliness, we just were not created that way. All we must do is believe that God, in his infinite wisdom, knew what he was doing. For the writer, that is not a stretch.
God is devoid of shape. God is frequently a form of energy; moses spoke to a burning bush, zoroastrians worshipped the divinty or purity of fire, and this is not to say that God is fire, but merely to illustrate that being independent of the laws of physics cannot be limited to a form we, mere subjects to its laws, could understand or indeed view with our very limited senses.
God made man in his image. Simply put, we are built of the same stuff that God itself is built of. And God must be an 'it', as opposed to Him or Her, because unlike we limited human beings, God is not bound into a limited physical form such as man or woman.
Why don't we sumarise those definitions listed above?
God is:
The alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.
Independent of physics.
Every where.
Every when.
Every thing.
Infinite.
The Creator.
If you disagree with any of these definitions, please inform the writer, any such issues may be addressed at a future date.
For the writer, with his limited understanding of physics and science, the definition of God seems pretty conclusive:
God is the Universe itself.
How science backs up this argument:
1/ The universe is infinite.
2/ Everything that exists within the universe is created by it, and is destroyed when it ends.
3/ The universe is everything, everywhere and everywhen; all things that exist within the universe are of the universe.
4/ The physical form of the universe, as far as we can see, is compsed of matter - atoms and molecules. Everything that exists within is is composed of these in varying forms; the basic building blocks of the universe itself are the same basic building blocks of the human being. We are indeed created in the universe's image. To take this a step further, we are al a part of the universe itslelf, we exist within it, we are built of its parts, we are indeed actually parts of the universe in every conceivable way. And God made man in his image!
To answer the question Who is God?
All of us, everything around us, and things you and I could never imagine in our wildest dreams. While we are, in our own way, each a little part of God, so is a rock, a tree and a void of nothing. God is everything, and God is more than the sum of its parts; God is the consciousness that is beyond compherension, and yet comprehends all. And in its simplest possible form; God is You, and God is I; we are all ultimately one, in God.
A note on the infallability of God: The writer believes that God is indeed infallible, and that every fault we could concievalby attribute to God is purely the result of humanity and its inherent inadequacies. As such the writer urges you to understand that you and I are both precisely what God intended us to be, in precisely the way that God intended, in the exact frame of mind that God intended. As such, while God is not directly responsible for the content of this post, the writer feels that God intends this though process and content to be posted in this way. Being that we are all parts of God, by defnition we are not only linked to it, but also aspects of it.