God. A Woman?

[Loe Mayax]

God is neither man nor woman.

God is omnipotent.

[O n y x]

Yeah I don't think God is suppose to be one particular gender, but that is not to say that God or Spirit can't appear as a gender or form, despite not being it. And of course you'll see the old earlier Greek statues of Gods looking like they're half-man and half-woman...And well some people believe that the first people on earth were actually half-man and half-woman.

[Phyrex9]

This is probably discussed at some point in this thread, but I dont want to read it. God doesn't have a gender. To give any sort of monotheistic god a gender is limiting it in some way, and as monotheistic gods are all power, well, you get the picture.

[Captain Saeta]

Joe Maya

God is neither man nor woman.

God is omnipotent.

I do not think that word means what you think it means, but in any case your point is clear wink . Agreed.

[Captain Saeta]

O n y x

Yeah I don't think God is suppose to be one particular gender, but that is not to say that God or Spirit can't appear as a gender or form, despite not being it. And of course you'll see the old earlier Greek statues of Gods looking like they're half-man and half-woman...And well some people believe that the first people on earth were actually half-man and half-woman.

Agreed in full, save for that last bit about commonplace hermaphrodites in early mankind (this is new to me, and it seems that this'd be discussed a fair bit, at least as much as the Bing Bang and so forth anyway, if only for its being so controversial).

[Suki_Chan_Kaggy]

God's genderless. Why would he be something he created?

[Malevolent Jelly Bean]

Amerixican

Solomon's Song describes the beautiful Black woman whom God loved the most and the nature of their relationship. This also describes the nature of Man's relation to God.

What the ********? I thought it was infamous for being the only piece of softcore erotica in the bible.

[leamhan]

God is neither male nor female.

Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

The Bible speaks of God using both "male" and "female" traits but also says:

John 4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

Pneuma (spirit) is neuter, for obvious reasons (how can a spirit be physically male or female?)

[O n y x]

Captain Saeta

O n y x

Yeah I don't think God is suppose to be one particular gender, but that is not to say that God or Spirit can't appear as a gender or form, despite not being it. And of course you'll see the old earlier Greek statues of Gods looking like they're half-man and half-woman...And well some people believe that the first people on earth were actually half-man and half-woman.

Agreed in full, save for that last bit about commonplace hermaphrodites in early mankind (this is new to me, and it seems that this'd be discussed a fair bit, at least as much as the Bing Bang and so forth anyway, if only for its being so controversial).

I don't think I necessarily believe this, but people have told me that the first people on Earth were half-woman and half-man and over time, we did seperate into two distinct feminine and masculine forces.

I mentioned it though because translations of Genesis into Aramaic has Adam-Eve being the one person, and it also partly rhymes in some of the verses.

Interestingly, I'm pretty sure that some people talk about the Lemurians as hermaphrodites. This was interesting on Adam being one (pg. 80) -
http://books.google.com/books?id=WxISb61NjkMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Kabbalah:+An+Introduction+to+Jewish+Mysticism&sig=yE2fUE3T1G_U6WQ0RvXDwApp8Xo#PPA80,M1

And go to 'fable of the rib', which talks of the same translation (no. 39) - http://godswordtowomen.org/studies/resources/onlinebooks/gwtw.htm

[Reniefuwa]

Going strictly by the Bible, God is described in both masculine and feminine terms: father to the fatherless; like a mother hen.

Both aspects. My theory is that originally the pronoun for God was neuter, or just one that was used for God alone, and not to describe anything else. English has no neuter personal pronoun-only one for objects.

[Diskolated]

This is exactly the question I posed in my thread here.

[Goyuki-sama]

The Christianity/Judaism/Islam tripartite religions seem to be the only religions to not only worship only a single 'god', but also to make that 'god' a rigid gender.

Even in religions where their 'gods' have a rigid gender, they generally have a counterpart of the opposite gender to balance them/make them 'whole'. Think the Egyptian pair of Sekhm/Sekhmet.

One of the only other times in history where a single, masculine god has been worshiped was Aten in Egypt, and look what happened to them.

[skittles the drummer]

ibobby II

God is always depicted as a man. Why not a women. The bible never really says what he/she/it is. My opinion is that he is genderless, the all mighty, but Adam did come before Eve. So???

You're putting God as if he were human. Sure, we're created in his image(and "his" has always been a statement that refers to a masculine approach, and a usually popular one, too.), but God has never had a gender. He made genders in order to for 1. humans to be more intimate with each other and 2. creating a basis of unity between humans

Like the 3 godheads (father, son, holy spirit) even if God is reffered to as the "father", it is on the statement that he is the teacher, leader, and support.

It was never meant to be sexist at all. Everyone is equal under God. There is no race, no gender, no prefrence in God's kingdom, so he does not need to be a certain gender. If so, who is he trying to appeal to?

It is a pretty confusing subject, and yes, I wrote this at 2:00 in the morning, but I said the best that I could. xp

[CommandoDude]

I'm going to go with Option C. He/She/It/ does not exist regardless of gender.

(Though I admit, the idea of having sex with the most powerful *female* being in the universe that can create anything on whim is overwhelming) I almost want to believe in a female god for the sex now...Almost.

[DarkLordDiasnis]

A - If there is a God that created us, who's to say that the same aspect and idea of creating live via divine means isn't seen in females in their ability to nurture life?

B - Pope Boniface VIII was believed to be an agent of the divine on Earth. As such, when he made a decree, it would only be fitting for him to say it was not of his choice, but the choice of the divine. Does this make it real? A man's writings are nothing but words on paper. There is no proof as to who delivered the words that Boniface VIII wrote, whether it was a divine being or simply delirium in his mind. As there is no proof that any god or goddess exists, quoting the words of a man, calling them divine, then calling someone "clinically retarded" is wrong on so many levels.

C -

Tamen Dico

By definition, you can't predicate the Divine Nature of a gender. Gender is something that's almost entirely predicated of bodies...but by definition God is not a body. He is not composed of matter and form.

However, when God took a human nature, He did become a man. Jesus wasn't a woman.

If God's child had took the form of a woman, no one would have listened to her, she would have been called mad, and probably exiled if she continued to have "visions" and hear "voices" of her divine father. In the time of Jesus' birth, women were nothing more than house-slaves and soil for men to plant their seed.

D - For God to have been female, by human standards, there would have had to have been a "papa" for Adam and Eve to have been sired from. That would take the monotheistic aspect out of Christianity, I believe.

E - No matter what, we can tell that Adam was not black. Have you ever tried taking a rib from a black man? </sarcasm>