Philip Clayton - Does God Have Traits?

To try to know God is to try to discern what God may be like. Though we risk creating God in the image of humans, we consider various Divine traits—expresssing capability and character—that a Supreme Being might have.

[MrDeppness]

That last statement is correct and I will tell you how. God created natural law. When we harmonize with natural law, we harmonize with God. When we go against it, we are fighting God's divine order for our physical universe. So in a sense, God is with us by offering the invitation to respect and agree with his divine order. So I am not putting all my eggs in the basket of prayer and intervention. In fact, there are only a few in there. Most of my expectation comes from cause and effect and understanding the natural world and how it was created. The process is by acting in accordance with natural law and allowing the nature with which God has created all things to work toward my benefit. God helps those that helps themselves. Faith without works is dead. Whatever you sow, so shall you reap. The message is a running theme of wisdom. Action is key to all progress. Knowing natural law is knowing the hand of God. It is also knowing the effect to your cause.

[charlesbrightman]

If "God" truly exists, and "God" is all powerful, why doesn't "God" respond on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc???? No internet connection????

[stanpak]

When I listen to this exchange I feel constantly urge to ask: How do you know, Sir, exactly all these things? How do you know that the concept of God represents real phenomenon existing in the nature and not pure imagination?

Clayton's main argument for God seems to be just from warm feelings - after speculations he just chooses the one which properties is most familiar, closest to his liking. No evidence of actual relation to reality is required. Who cares, apparently.

Atheists are right to dismiss such speculations as pure nonsense.

[BradHolkesvig]

Not even us saints and prophets get to learn who our Creator is or what his traits are. All we get to know about is the Voice of God which is the technology that our Creator used to create his simulation program. The Voice of God is similar to IBM's Watson but the Voice is capable of sending information to each conscious beings to give him a visible world to explore from a visible body. If you ever played computer simulation games on the internet, you should be able to understand how we were created withing a computer program.

[GainingUnderstanding]

From His Eminence Metropolitan Maximos of Pittsburgh: "In the estimation of the spiritual fathers of the Orthodox Church, knowing God is not just another kind of knowledge. ...knowing God is not just another intellectual exercise. It is the kind of Knowledge that commits your entire existence, it is an *existential*, *experiential*, *apophatic*, and *doxological* Knowledge. We know God when we experience His presence as filling and overtaking us, when we feel completely dependent on him, "as infants feel dependent upon their mothers" (St. Basil). We know God not through our concepts and ideas only, but beyond and above them: for our entire existence is united with Him. We know God when we are familiar with Him as "the cattle are familiar with their manger." We know God when "we breath Him, " when we feel His presence any place we are or go; we know God when we constantly depend on Him, when our lives belong to Him, when our lives become a constant praise of His Holy Name. ... Our Christian God, then, is not the "God of Philosophers." He is not a "Supreme Being" similar to other beings, another "essence" among many essences. The Christian God is "super-essential" and "super-existent" only in the sense that He is totally different from created existence. "If everything else is being, God is not a being, " said St. Gregory Palamas."

[JAYDUBYAH]

Does Santa Claus wear boxers or briefs?!

[stephanhoekstra]

Baffling video - It starts with a desire to speculate (about anything, really) and just keeps piling imaginary things on top of eachother for the sake of it.

If god exists in a meaningful sense then he has at least one trait - He would interact with the world in a way which has observable consequences.

[DJ_Dopamine]

The God 'delusion'. It's just a failure or refusal to accept the scientific method when explaining the universe. The guy says it himself, get beyond 'all that' and just allow yourself to accept God exists. Wtf logic is that? Well it isn't. It's not faith either, it's simply illogical thinking vs. logical thinking.