What is the nature of God?

My opinion The 'Real' meaning is 'God' or whatever word you personally use to denote that which is actually known to all of us and denied by many. It is a symbol or token. However, arriving at a description will be impossible, since vocabulary is inadeqaute to provide a complete description. At best people will be describing a mixture of their own perceptions, feelings, interests, conditioning, hopes and fears etc., and only ever a part of the whole. There does not exist a 'something' that can fit the statement God = 'something'. (Except maybe God = God).

I would call it pragmatic, instead of logical, and that too for our benefit. Allah has created this book for us and naturally, He has kept the audience in mind when authoring this book... logic is merely a tool for us humanbeings to make sense of things around us, and to keep our emotions and our fiery disposition in check. Also, Allah's intention for revealing the Quran is clear (please read the first 3 verses of Surah TauHaa) 201 O Ideal Prophet! 202 We have not bestowed upon you this Qur'an to cause you any hardship. 203 But as a Reminder to the reverent, those who stand in awe of the Creator.

Peace Enquirer You going to leave me hanging like that? Joe

DanishMankind made assumptions of this MYTHOLOGICAL entity (God) long before the concept of "gravity" was introduced. Pointless to the discussion. Was mankind free from gravitational effects before Newton? In the same way, mankind was prone to suffering on earth. THAT'S what counts here. Gravity and its implications, whether relatively new or old, has absolutely no bearing to even suggest an UNKNOWN and UNSEEN GOD. If you think life is about your 'essence of nature' rubbish, then yes. God is unseen, sure but unknown? To ignorants, perhaps. All you can do for now, IF you are a Muslim, is to continue cicumventing and facing towards this "Allah" at kaba which your book professes. Because if you disobey, then you'll be aposticized and condemned as a non-Muslim. Your inspections, experiments and determinations will ONLY work on a physical deity Muhammad created for you to mourn about. Get it. Proving once again Danish's total ignorance about AQ's teachings. AQ doesn't bother at all about the people in the world normatively known as 'muslims'. It is not possible to make a LEAP OF FAITH (whatever that means) when you don't even know WHO or WHAT to have faith in. You are illustrating yet another BLIND example. Asserting an unknowable God is YOUR assumption, not S2S's. Getting confused ? With so many identities, I can understand.

Peace and blessings be with you Zantetsuken, Thanks for pointing out to me that i rely on other's actions too much, but the reason for that is, my recent lack of faith has lead me to that,(that's also what lead to my lack of faith). I believe it's the latter. But that's just my opinion. I don't agree on what you said that I will lose by seeing what other's are saying/doing, that's all I have to compare. As you're entitled to yours as well. Also, the reason I'm on the fine line between belief and non-belief, is because the tip of the scale depends on answering the crucial questions that i asked in my posts. Pheonix was the only one that addressed my question that, 'how could the prophet have meant the quran to mean these deep logic translations (e.g. hell is on earth, or god=truth) if you don't find any of this in hadith?' If I understand you correctly, you have questions in regard to quran, but you don't have the prophet to confirm what his understanding was, and you can't rely on hadith or Phoenix for answers... why don't you ask the Author? That is, if you believe they are God's words. I mean that in all seriousness. Peace

salam alpha that's a beautiful philosophy of conduct. as far as the arabic meanings of the words, i've decided not to embroil myself in doing simple research for other people. if its a simple matter of looking it up, i think it should be simple enough for those interested enough to do so. and if they aren't interested enough to do so, the chances are that they don't really care too much in the first place. i merely wanted to bring it to people's attention that those words being translated as mercy and forgiveness ought to be checked. the other thing i pointed out was not to translate one part of the quran to contradict other parts.

Peace Danish I don't understand why you start threads and just vanish in mid-thought. Please stick around if you're gonna talk smack As for your perceptions of Allah being a male idol, you are misusing the english. In Arabic, every object is either feminine or masculine. It doesn't mean a table is actually a female ... As for your interpretation that Allah was an idol created out of clay, please provide evidence, or else don't inject false conjecture. As we know from the quran, every community knew/will know of the Oneness of God. If Arabs of the time, took that information and twisted it to revert back to idolatry and create the "daughters of Allah" that does not necessarily prove that Allah was an idol made up by people. You made an assumption you simply can't make when making an extraordinary accusation. Give us an air-tight account of history with evidence, without any assumptions to fill in the gaps, and we might believe you. I'm sure eventually you'll back out of this thread as well. You even locked one, forever stopping the flow of thoughts after you made up a whole theory out of thin air (i.e. his-lam, mis-lam, mary had a little lamb ) I don't know if i even want you to answer because you may insult my deen and my Creator even more. For your sake, I hope you run away again instead of react as you normally do. Peace All

salam and peace brother Alen, Respectfully. Agentxxx, you are doing an excellent job. and most respectfull I thank you brother for your kind words sun God bless you, peace

Peace It's more than a matter of what's right and what's wrong. I'd think many people understand what right and wrong is, but knowing does not entail that one will act in the right. People lie frequently, knowing it is wrong, especially white lies. Sure one may know that helping out the less fortunate is a good thing, but how many want to give freely of their own stock to help another? Besides, in my opinion, many of the injunctions of the quran are not meant for everyone, except s/he who takes on its principles. Joe

Peace, The word everything in my view goes beyond matter. God is infinite in presence. He has no shape or place as He is everywhere. Where ever you go or look, if it is here on the here after, He is everywhere. The God with a shape or position, is from the Bible not the Quran. To God belong the East and the West. Wherever you turn the glory of God is everywhere All-pervading is He and all-knowing.

peace phoenix1, Good posts Agentxxx and sugar. ) thank you brother ;D peace.

Peace Tony, only "1" is figure, Two and three and four and five and six and seven and eight and nine means two "1", three "1", four "1", five "1", six "1", seven "1", eight "1", nine "1", ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen....twenty....thirty...... One hundred, two hundred,.... One thousand, two thousand,.... One million, one billion, one trillion, one quaterlion.........and all are only "1". peace,

peace, guess what, i have found my answers. bravo bravo ... it is in the quran... you have to realize the fact WHY we ask questions and... what is the purpose of asking questions... if you do not approach this method then you will never find your answers... "god knows what you reveal and what you conceal" "do they not reflect" peace, rifat

HE CALLS HIMSELF ALLAH OR RAHMAN. THE MOST COMPASSIONATE. THE SOURCE OF ALL MERCY AND COMPASSION. ALL THE GOOD THAT YOU SEE IN HIS CREATION COMES FROM HIM. COMPASSION, MERCY, FORGIVENESS, LOVE ARE ALL ORIGINATED FROM HIS KINGDOM AND IS BESTOWED UPON US. ALLAH IS QUITE CLEAR ON THIS. HE IS NOT A FEARFULL, DRY DICTATOR. HE IS THE SOURCE OF ALL BEAUTY AND BOUNTY. ZE L JALAAL VAL EKRAAM. HOWAL AZZIZ OL VADOOD. HOWAL RAHMAN O RAHEEM. PEACE

Peace khalil,idol-free and all. Khalil;great understanding. Idol-free;i agree.He who truely knows himself knows God. I believe god is a word to denote the sum total of all that exists,united by the common factors of being concious and being a form of energy. God is not seperate from all that exists. Peace all.

Its not possible to know the "mind" or "feelings" of God. However God does inform us a little about the reason for our creation; "I have created you just for Me." 2041 "We created them for a specific purpose, but most of them do not know." 4439 (and many others) For my part, I think the very concept of existence, creation and life are beyond describable beauty and magnificence. Could it be for this reason also that God has brought into existence what He has? ?

Hi Phoenix1, i was just thinking that if we do assume that shirk is creating divisions in the whole, seperating the one. And if hell and heaven are experienced on this earth, then is it possible that "God" represents the oneness of this world? hope you get what i'm trying to say because i don't really know what im talking about. Just a thought that's bugging me. I am not one of those who understands all of that is said in Quran as symbolic. I believe there are literal as well as symbolic messages. So, my ideas might be different than yours. I dont believe Heaven and hell are experienced on earth. I think, in the actual heaven and hell, the joy and sorrow felt would be infinite times the joy and sorrow we feel in our lives on earth. Way more than we can even imagine. What we experience in this life, I think, is just a minute fraction. The real heaven and hell would be absolute and perfect. As for God, Again I dont think God is a metaphor. I believe He exsists in real. He is the creator. But He isnt restricted in time, space, form, shape, size, etc. So, I think we cant really paint a picture becoz there are no dimensions. He is One. And another thing, disregarding what i said above, what exactly is judgement day and life after death? I believe, Judgement day, will be a day when all the dead people would arise and be held accountable for every minute detail of their life by God, and He would reward/punish them accordingly. On that day, we will see real justice, where there will be absolutely no error and every soul would feel/agree/see the judgement as absolutely correct. ''Life after death'' would be the life man has earned from his deeds on earth. And another question about symbolism. How do we know if anything in the quran is NOT symbolic? like drinking or gambling or eating meat of pigs. How do we know those are literal commands? Taking everything as symbolic, in my opinion, is a bit of stretch wink If done so, u can give any meaning to these verses and see what u want to see. I believe, God speaks out clearly and literally, in some verses, while He may imply some deeper symbolic meaning in some other verses. All the verses cant be taken as metaphors as some, I think, are very clearly literal. Peace!

I think what brother Ahmed is trying to say is that the "soul" that is inside us is the ruh, while nafs = ones identity. There is no controversy here.

I have no idea, I don't get the whole holy book thing myself LOL

Khizar, Nice reply you got there.