do u belive in god.....??????
By cool_divij
@cool_divij (197)
India
11 responses
@moneymind (10510)
• Philippines
7 Nov 06
yes i believe in god. do you believe in God. greetings. : )
@classact (1394)
• India
22 Dec 06
yes
God is the deity believed by monotheists to be the supreme reality. He is believed variously to be the creator, or at least the sustainer, of the universe. [1]
Theologians and philosophers have ascribed a number of attributes to God, including omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, perfect goodness, divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence. He has been described as incorporeal, a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the greatest conceivable existent. [1] These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars, including St Augustine, [2] Al-Ghazali, [3] and Maimonides. [2] Freud regarded this view of God as wish fulfillment for the perfect father figure, [3] while Marxist writers see it as rooted in the powerlessness experienced by men and women in oppressive societies.
All the great medieval philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God, [3] attempting to wrestle with the contradictions God's attributes seem to imply. For example, God's omniscience implies that he knows how free agents will choose to act. If he does know this, their apparent free will is illusory; and if he does not know it, he is not omniscient. [4] Similar difficulties follow from the proposition that God is the source of all moral obligation. If nothing would be right or wrong without God's commands, then his commands appear arbitrary. If his commands are based on fundamental principles that even he cannot change, then he is not omnipotent. [5]
The last few hundred years of philosophy have seen sustained attacks on the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments for God's existence. Against these, theists (or fideists) argue that faith is not a product of reason, but requires risk. There would be no risk, they say, if the arguments for God's existence were as solid as the laws of logic, a position famously summed up by Pascal as: "The heart has reasons which reason knows not of
The earliest written form of the Germanic word "god" comes from the 6th century Christian Codex Argenteus, which descends from the Old English guþ from the Proto-Germanic *?udan. While hotly disputed, most agree on the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European form *?hu-tó-m, based on the root *?hau-, *?hau??-, which meant "to call" or "to invoke". Alternatively, "Ghau" may be derived from a posthumously deified chieftain named "Gaut" — a name which sometimes appears for the Norse god Odin or one of his descendants. The Lombardic form of Odin, Godan, may derive from cognate Proto-Germanic *?udánaz.
The capitalized form "God" was first used in Ulfilas' Gothic translation of the New Testament, to represent the Greek Theos (uncertain origin), and the Latin Deus (etymology "*Dyeus"). Because the development of English orthography was dominated by Christian texts, the capitalization (hence personalization and personal name) continues to represent a distinction between monotheistic "God" and the "gods" of pagan polytheism.
The name "God" now typically refers to the Abrahamic God of Judaism (El (god) YHVH), Christianity (God), and Islam (Allah). Though there are significant cultural divergences that are implied by these different names, "God" remains the common English translation for all. The name may signify any related or similar monotheistic deities, such as the early monotheism of Akhenaten and Zoroastrianism.
In the context of comparative religion, "God" is also often related to concepts of universal deity in Dharmic religions, in spite of the historical distinctions which separate monotheism from polytheism — a distinction which some, such as Max Müller and Joseph Campbell, have characterised as a bias within Western culture and theology.
The noun God is the proper English name used for the deity of monotheistic faiths. Various English third-person pronouns are used for God, and the correctness of each is disputed. (See God and gender.)
Different names for God exist within different religious traditions:
Allah is the Arabic name of God, which is used by Arab Muslims and also by most non-Muslim Arabs. ilah, cognate to northwest Semitic El (Hebrew "El" or more specifically "Eloha", Aramaic "Eloi"), is the generic word for a god (any deity), Allah contains the article, literally "The God". Also, when speaking in English, Muslims often translate "Allah" as "God". One Islamic tradition states that Allah has 99 names while others say that all good names belong to Allah. Similarly, in the Aramaic of Jesus, the word Alaha is used for the name of God.
Yahweh, Jehovah (Hebrew: 'Yud-Hay-Vav-Hay', ??-?? ) are some of the names used for God in various translations of the Bible (all translating the same four letters - YHVH). El, and the plural/capital form Elohim, is another term used frequently, though El can also simply mean god in reference to deities of other religions. Others include El Shaddai, Adonai, Emmanuel. When Moses asked "What is your name?" he was given the answer Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, which literally means, "I am that I am," as a parallel to the Tetragrammaton Yud-Hay-Vav-Hay. See The name of God in Judaism for Jewish names of God. Most Orthodox Jews, and many Jews of other denominations, believe it wrong to write the word "God" on any substance which can be destroyed. Therefore, they will write "G-d" as what they consider a more respectful symbolic representation. Others consider this unnecessary because English is not the "Holy Language" (i.e. Hebrew), but still will not speak the Hebrew representation written in the Torah, "Yud-Hay-Vav-Hay", aloud, and will instead use other names such as "Adonai" ("my Lord", used in prayer, blessings and other religious rituals) or the euphemism "Hashem" (literally "The Name", used at all other times). Another name especially used by ultra-Orthodox Jews is "HaKadosh Baruch Hu", meaning "The Holy One, Blessed is He".