Is This God? | Episode 1303 | Closer To Truth

Who is God? Can humans probe God? Can we inquire into God’s essence and nature? Is God at all knowable? Or forever beyond human understanding? Let’s be bold in questioning God. Featuring interviews with Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Brian Leftow, John Cottingham, Paul Fiddes, and Alister McGrath.

Season 13, Episode 3 - #CloserToTruth

Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes viewers on an intriguing global journey into cutting-edge labs, magnificent libraries, hidden gardens, and revered sanctuaries in order to discover state-of-the-art ideas and make them real and relevant.

Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

#God #Theology

[gorbachevdhali]

I really appreciate Robert's wholly honest, and challenging self reflections. What a refreshing series, I'm glad it has been made available on youtube.

[AN-]

you gotta love that smiling nod he always does, as if to say, "interesting!, go on..."
Lawrence exhibits the most noble of human characteristic, listen to the other person, he might know something you do not.

[walking]

Good afternoon, Salam, Robert, I find your programs fascinating, full of enchanting queries, and quest about Truth ! I am thankful to Almighty that I came across your program and met you as amazing human being who is so passionate about finding Truth!

[michaelhall]

I continue to love this show, even as I note (and am occasionally frustrated by) its limitations. Each episode begins with Kuhn’s puzzlement or discomfort over a typically weighty cosmological, philosophical or theological conundrum. He brings his qualms to a distinguished scholar on the subject, where they engage in respectful discussion framed against imposing backdrops of immense cathedrals or immaculate university offices, trying with varying degrees of success to shed some light on the matter. This is inevitably followed by a sonorous voiceover where Kuhn expresses both his appreciation for the insights offered, as well as his doubts. Wash, rinse and repeat for the next thirty minutes.

Again — mistake me not, I love this show. Like its host (who I would personally love to meet), it’s elegant, intelligent, sincere, and the civilized tone between people who have profound disagreements is a wonderful tonic for our current era of increasing polarization and craziness. But if Kuhn and the audience ever do get any “closer to truth, ” it’s only by way of Zeno’s Paradox.

[robbass]

I think the philosopher Alister McGrath gave Robert the clearest path to truth, one must experience God in order to know God, and thus Truth

[irohmeliodas]

The eloquent introductions never cease to amaze me.

[raduiacob]

I really love this channel and all your mini documentaries about God! May God bless you!

[ELEMENTJ]

I enjoyed the variety of word salads coming from the guests here. The amazing verbal gymnastics all these people could conjure up are truly outstanding.

[dhoyt]

Robert, it would be amazing if you interviewed the Pope's Astronomer Guy J. Consolmagno :) Love your channel!

[billwassner]

Good job, Robert, as always. I start each day with one of your episodes. Thank you.

[rjgood]

My first class as a freshman in college was a philosophy course. On my first day of classes a student asked the professor why the universe could not have been created by a force or being that possessed the power to create but was itself mortal and had created the universe as this self governing engine and then died off. It blew me away because I had never considered such a proposition or ever heard anyone else voice it. It begs the question, do we have to define God as all knowing, all powerful and infinite?

[tonybklyn]

God is the unfathomable primal reason for all things. I feel completely comfortable with this understanding.

[nat]

I believe in God because I perceive it, I feel its presence. Once I asked God to show me who He was to make me understand and it happened. My mind became one with His conciousness. God is closer than you think.

[yehudahhachassid]

Hallelujah ! Thank you for a fascinating video on the many excellant speculations about the Blessed Supreme Being. May all beings be happy ! Amen !

[Aaron-yrtn]

"It is time now for a greater comprehension of God and an expanded understanding of God, who is the Source and Author of your life and of all life within this world and throughout the Greater Community of worlds in which you live.
This new understanding is not to correct previous understanding as much as it is to expand it, to make it more complete, to leave the door open for a greater experience of the Divine Will and Presence in your life.
In presenting a New Message from God, it is necessary then to renew this experience, to freshen it, to separate it from all the things that have been added by human institutions and human inventions, to bring it into greater focus and clarity for you.
Here it is important not to confuse God with religion, for many terrible things have been done in the name of religion and in the name of God. But God exists far beyond all of these things—far beyond human error, far beyond human imagination, far beyond human invention and far beyond human corruption.
It is necessary now for you to consider God within the larger arena of intelligent life in which you live, which includes all life within this world, but extends beyond it into the Greater Community [the universe].
To have a pure experience of the Divine Reality and the Divine Will for your life, you must gain this Greater Community understanding of God.
Otherwise, you will think of God as a projection of your own personality, as a projection of your own emotions, thoughts and feelings. You will project onto God your anger, your preferences, your judgments, whatever sense of revenge you might have, your notions of justice and punishment and so forth.
But God exists beyond all of this—the real God, the pure God that has been shining like the sun upon you. Regardless of the clouds in the sky, regardless of the pollution in the atmosphere and the turbulence on the ground, God is like the sun shining upon you.
But God is beyond the sun, beyond any definition that you can make. Beyond your histories, beyond the great teachers and the great Messengers from God, beyond the great spiritual books and testimonies, there is God the Creator and the Author of your life and existence.
What God has created in you lives within you now. It lives beyond your intellect, beyond your thoughts and understanding, beyond your concepts, beyond your ideas and beliefs in a deeper place within you—a deeper mind, a mind that in the New Message is called Knowledge. It is the mind that knows. It is the mind that waits. It is the mind that sees clearly without distortion, without fear, without preference, without confusion, without speculation—a deeper mind within you."
From the "Comprehending God" a Revelation in the Book of Revelation "The One God".  All free online at newmessage(dot)org.

[matthewlopez]

My boy Rob got testy on this episode. He straight up gettin sick of not knowing.

[StanTheObserver-lorx]

To me, the spookiest thing about the Universe are rules. How could vibrating particles or strings...create rules? and so many?.
Reality I take it existed long before the big bang. Where reality came from is a head scratcher.

[afriedrich]

God is a word for many things, too many things.

[rclrd]

I enjoy "Closer to Truth" episodes because the intricate word games played by intelligent and articulate people are entertaining. But these word games are obviously incapable of satisfying Robert's obsessive "need to believe". What he _really_ needs is to step back and ask himself "what exactly _is_ this "need" that's driving me on this wild goose chase? Is it, perhaps, _deluding_ me?"

[followyourbliss]

My humble opinion is there is a higher intelligence responsible for us being here but not an omnipotent and benevolent God.