in God's image... how?

[alreadyGone]

"made in God's image" doesn't really tell us much.

 

Does it mean physically?

Does God have 5 fingers on each hand, 5 toes on each foot?

How would the authors of the bible know what God's image is, physically speaking?

 

The bible tells us clearly that we cannot know the mind of God, so that must mean that we are not made in God's image mentally.

 

The bible tells us that we are wicked and evil, so that rules out being made in God's image spiritually.

Surely then, I must be overlooking something.

 

 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

gods were made in our image.  That's why so many of them have human attributes: jealousy, egocentrism, anger/vengefulness, pride...

[LogicalFallacy]

This quote by Carl Sagan sums this topic up best, and with greater clarity than I could if I waffled on: (Emphasis mine)

 

Quote

"We seem to crave privilege. Merited not by our works, but by our birth. By the mere fact that, say, we're humans, and born on earth. We might call it the anthropocentric, the human centered, conceit. This Conceit is brought close to culmination in the notion that we are created in god's image. 'The creator and ruler of the entire universe, looks just like me. My, what a coincidence. How convenient and satisfying.' The sixth century B.C. greek philosopher, Xenophanes, understood the arrogance of this perspective, here is what he said. "The Ethiopians make their gods black and snubbed nosed, the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yes, and if oxen and horses, or lions had hands and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do. Horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses and oxen like oxen'."

 

[◊ Krowb ◊]

I was always taught growing up the phrase was related to our free will. Although Satan presents a problem for this interpretation, it was taught to us that only humans have free will and that angels did not have free will.  Thus, man was made in their image.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

2 hours ago, Krowb said:

angels did not have free will. 

But, how did lucifer rebel without free will?  If it was true rebellion, it must have been predicated upon free will.  Otherwise, he simply did what he was designed/programed to do.  

[◊ Krowb ◊]

5 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

But, how did lucifer rebel without free will?  If it was true rebellion, it must have been predicated upon free will.  Otherwise, he simply did what he was designed/programed to do.  

 

The church has never been above naked contradictions.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

34 minutes ago, Krowb said:

 

The church has never been above naked contradictions.

Naked contraceptives are another story, though.

[alreadyGone]

Does God have hair?

A beard?

[mwc]

On 11/14/2020 at 1:02 PM, alreadyGone said:

"made in God's image" doesn't really tell us much.

 

Does it mean physically?

Does God have 5 fingers on each hand, 5 toes on each foot?

How would the authors of the bible know what God's image is, physically speaking?

 

The bible tells us clearly that we cannot know the mind of God, so that must mean that we are not made in God's image mentally.

 

The bible tells us that we are wicked and evil, so that rules out being made in God's image spiritually.

Surely then, I must be overlooking something.

 

 

     I've mentioned elsewhere that we're like idols.  No one seems to like that answer.  I'll add to that here with the Strong's for the word used in the verse:

Quote

tselem, tseh'-lem; from an unused root meaning to shade; a phantom, i.e. (figuratively) illusion, resemblance; hence, a representative figure, especially an idol:—image, vain shew.

     As you can see we're images, like shadows, that aren't (as I'm reading it) precise.  We resemble the thing in question but we're not the thing in question.  We're just copies in the above senses which is what an idol is.  A model that represents the thing in question (to some degree).

 

     That's all we are.  God made knock-offs of itself.  Little dolls.  Idols.  That's us.  To look at us is to look at god.  I tend to think of Plato's Allegory of the Cave for the answer here.  Maybe we're like god in the shadows on the wall of the cave or maybe we're much better versions like the reflections in the water (this only makes sense if you've read it or crib it somewhere)?

 

     I also see this as fairly literal.  We're meant to be copies.  The rest of the creation story is fairly literal.  All the things are what they are.  Then, from nowhere, we're created and the "image" is only meant to be some aspect that's not really emphasized?  So we get literal, physical, trees, water, animals, so on and so forth and then humans show up, in their "image," and that image is spiritual?  Seems odd.  Seems better to just think let's make these look and act like us instead of some dumb critter.  That's why they get blessed and are given dominion over the other things.  Little god-alikes to run the place (although it turns out we're really just gardeners in the next chapter).

 

          mwc

 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

49 minutes ago, mwc said:

So we get literal, physical, trees, water, animals, so on and so forth and then humans show up, in their "image," and that image is spiritual?  Seems odd.  Seems better to just think let's make these look and act like us instead of some dumb critter.  That's why they get blessed and are given dominion over the other things.  Little god-alikes to run the place (although it turns out we're really just gardeners in the next chapter).

This has put a somewhat random question in my mind.  Why would god create us in his image, and apes in our image, and monkeys in apes' image, and bonobos in monkeys' image... and then... birds?  Was there originally meant to be a hierarchy of images starting with basic primates and working its way to god, the real thing, but also separate from other orders and classifications of beasts?  Is so, then why do the other primates along the line not have little sub-dominions of their own under the general supervision of those higher up the line?  Was there a conversation between a snake and a gibbon that we don't know about?  Did some lemur somewhere eat some fruit he wasn't supposed to?

 

Or was god just practicing his image when he created primates?  Were they like his biological sketchbook?

[mwc]

10 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

This has put a somewhat random question in my mind.  Why would god create us in his image, and apes in our image, and monkeys in apes' image, and bonobos in monkeys' image... and then... birds?  Was there originally meant to be a hierarchy of images starting with basic primates and working its way to god, the real thing, but also separate from other orders and classifications of beasts?  Is so, then why do the other primates along the line not have little sub-dominions of their own under the general supervision of those higher up the line?  Was there a conversation between a snake and a gibbon that we don't know about?  Did some lemur somewhere eat some fruit he wasn't supposed to?

 

Or was god just practicing his image when he created primates?  Were they like his biological sketchbook?

     It's been awhile since I've gone through Plato but, as I recall, there is the idea of an "archetype."  So in heaven there is a single perfect archetype that exists for any object or set of objects.  So a chair has an archetype and all of our chairs here are simply cheap knock-offs of that one perfect model (even though there's a wide variety of shapes and sizes and so on).  These are generally revealed in visions (read: dreams) so we never really get to have the one perfect chair as a result of this system.

 

     With that in mind I imagine this to be similar.  There's a perfect archetype and then as you look at all these you just sort of imagine you're moving further and further away from it.

 

          mwc

 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

On 11/19/2020 at 6:02 PM, alreadyGone said:

Does God have hair?

A beard?

Yep.  He's a wooly booger!

[◊ Krowb ◊]

On 11/20/2020 at 4:43 PM, mwc said:

   It's been awhile since I've gone through Plato but, as I recall, there is the idea of an "archetype." 

 

Indeed. Those are the Forms.

[LostinParis]

I was taught that god created us “perfect”. But then we messed that up in the Garden of Eden. Now we humans are like a cake that has been baked in a dented cake tin. 
 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

"Let them eat cake."  Thus saith the lord, thy god.