From: utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!tim
Newsgroups: net.religion
Title: Made in the image
Article-I.D.: unc.4941
Posted: Fri Apr  8 14:21:46 1983
Received: Sat Apr  9 04:21:51 1983


Here's a semi-new topic that we can all argue about until we get
sick of it and find something else to argue about. (At least,
that's how it always seems to wind up.)

In what way are we "made in God's image" as Genesis states? It
seems obvious to me that this statement was made by philosophically
naive people who conceived of an anthropomorphic God who had a
physical body like ours, only better. Doubtless many of the Xian
apologists can't live with that, so let's hear your explanations.

To start off, here's a partial list of ways that we are NOT like the
Xian God:

*   We fit through doors and such.

*   We are made of something.

*   We have senses, limited filters through which we are able to gather
    largely inaccurate information about the universe, instead of just
    knowing it all.

*   We have hands and such, tools by which we create change in the
    outside universe, instead of just making it happen.

*   We rely on the universe for support of our lives.

*   We die and stay that way. Even if there's an afterlife, the Xian
    God does nothing analogous to physical death.

*   We have parents.

*   We have genders and sex.

*   We have moral codes that forbid torturing people who don't do
    exactly what we tell them to.

*   [trinitarians only] We are just one, not three-in-one, one-in-three,
    or any other weird and inexplicable concatenation of numbers.

*   We can be proven to exist.

I suppose this should be followed by a list of ways that we ARE like
the Xian God, but they're a lot harder to think of. Occassional pettiness
and shortsightedness are about the only ones I can think of. No doubt
the Xian fundamentalists and apologists can help here.

Tim Maroney