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启蒙：什么是神？
（第二版，2012-09-27在原始版基础上修改而成）
神是什么？按照犹太人的远祖在圣经中的描述，神有以下几个自然属性：
它是万物的创造者，亦即它决定着宇宙间的一切，它是一切存在之存在和一切不存在之不存在的终极缘由；它全知全能且永恒无限地自有自在着；它还拥有至真至善至美的“三至”属性。
为了与那个远古时代里存在着的大大小小的“神”相区别，犹太人的远祖给这个神取名叫耶和华，其实这个神叫什么名字是一件无所谓的事情，所以，人们无需害怕“耶和华”这三个字。于是，摆在我们面前的关键问题可能有以下几个：
1）这样的神是否存在？
如果他不存在，我们就应该接受无神论。但是，这个问题等同于：
2）万物存在的终极缘由存在吗？
3）全知全能存在吗？
4）永恒和无限存在吗？
5）至真至善至美存在吗？
如果一个人相信这些具体的内容存在着，他/她就是相信神存在着；反之，他/她就是不相信存在着“至真至善至美、全知全能、永恒无限和万物的创造者”，也就是不相信神的存在。显然，当且仅当我们可以合理地否定了上述关于神的全部属性，无神论作为一种观念才能被人们接受；反之，只要其中的任何一个属性不能被合理地否定，我们就只能接受有神论。因此，如果用集合论的语言，神可以被表达如下：
神={一组关于神的全部自然属性的存在}
={一切存在之存在和一切不存在之不存在的终极缘由，
全知全能且永恒无限的自有自在，
至真至善至美的存在}
这就是关于神的全部属性。当神的上述自然属性被人格化的时候，一个人形的神的存在就跃然纸上了。这就是在远古时代的犹太人对神的认识。可以说，人类关于神的这个认识已经完成了。
远古犹太人以自己的经历为这个神的存在做了见证，并将这些见证记录在圣经中。因此，圣经不是一本类似现代科学理论的著作，而是一种关于神的存在的见证，目的就是要让一切人都能理解神进而接受神，因为用现代人类的哲学语言来说，神是整个宇宙中一种自然的本体性存在。它是一个哲学化的概念性存在。显然，除了疯子和傻瓜，无人能够否认这个唯一和永恒的神的存在。
有人探讨为何犹太人以及少量的人口在流离失所几千年的历史中为人类文明贡献了一大批杰出的人才？我的回答是：根本的原因是由于他们笃信神的存在，也就是相信上述关于神的全部自然属性的存在，从而在他们的心中有着一种对至高的真善美的追求。这就是成就一切科学和艺术创造的深刻的内在动力。
为反基督的人们启个蒙——什么是神？
（原始版）
网络世界里常常遇到很多反对神或基督的IDs。他们心气旺盛，出言不逊，英勇无畏。想必110年前的义和团员们如果能够看到此情此景便会感到无比的欣慰和荣光了，因为他们终于发现我们伟大的中华民族中敢于继承义和团精神的大大地后继有人。
为了帮助这些在新时代里反抗神的战士们消除他们在这场伟大的战争中的愚昧，我愿意借此机会给他们解释一下究竟什么是神，以便使他们能够做到知己知彼，百战不殆，且在战斗中能够充分发扬革命英雄主义的传统和大无畏的牺牲精神，真正做到有理有利有节，从而以最小的代价达至最大最终的胜利；反之，如果这样的一位战士连神究竟是个什么东西都不知道的话，他/她无疑没有取胜的可能性，因为他/她乃是在用自己对神的愚昧无知为武器来与神作战。为了塑造我们钢铁般英勇无畏的战士，我们要积极开动思想政治工作这台万能的机器，它是我们攻克一切敌人的至高无上的精神武器和法宝。
那么，神是什么？按照犹太人的远祖在圣经中的描述，神有以下属性：
它是万物的创造者，亦即它决定着一切，它是一切存在之存在和一切不存在之不存在的终极缘由；它全知全能且永恒无限地自在着；它还拥有至真至善至美的“三至”属性。
为了与那个远古时代里存在着的大大小小的神相区别，犹太人的远祖给这个神取名叫耶和华，其实这个神叫什么名字是一件无所谓的事情，所以，大家不要害怕“耶和华”这三个字。于是，摆在我们的战士们面前的关键问题可能有以下几个：：：：
1）这样的神是否存在？
如果他不存在，我们就可以不费吹灰之力地打败耶和华。但是，这个问题等同于：
2）万物存在的终极缘由存在吗？
3）全知全能存在吗？
4）永恒和无限存在吗？
5）至真至善至美存在吗？
如果一个人相信这些具体的内容存在着，他/她就是相信神存在着；反之，他/她就是不相信存在着“至真至善至美、全知全能、永恒无限和万物的创造者”，也就是不相信神的存在。由于不相信神存在，一个战士就可以勇敢地反对“至真至善至美”、反对“全知全能”、反对“永恒无限”和反对“万物的创造者”，当然也就包括了反对创造他/她自己的那个“存在”。
有没有圣经和基督教根本不关神的存在，只是圣经是认识神的最正确的途径。其他的道路的结果，可兰经和佛经的地方；和有圣经的结果已经不用在证明吧，起码到目前为止。
真诚的请教博主，那个宗教更更容易带人接近神呢？您的答案可能是基督教，但为什么不可以是佛教呢？
------------
第一个接触的不是佛堂，我心里还找个理由安慰一下自己。
http://bbs.wenxuecity.com/znjy/1649761.html
在与伊斯兰教的人辩论时， 那些神学院教授， 教堂牧师，用 “圣经” 来证明 “圣经”。
圣经是怎样来用，有机会的话，你向那些神学院教授， 教堂牧师等人说吧。
可能你从没参加过这样的辩论会， 但事实上北美洲各地常有， 辩论谁才是正确，谁才是神的忠心信徒，正如那个年代， 旗派与工总争论谁才是伟大导师，党，主义的真正信徒。
2000年以前的几十万年没有基督，这几十万年里的人类全进地狱 ？
犹太教， 基督教（包括罗马教廷），伊斯兰都信同一个神， 然而就因谁是神的代表互相残杀。
不信的都进地狱， 这样暴力的宗教， 怪不得这世界每天都有杀戮。
在这本自称“圣”的书里， 只看到人是怎样造神。
无条件的信是这个宗教第一要义， 没有盲从，这宗教不能立足， 犹如哪个60年代，70年代，不信就是罪， 罪的功架就是死。
圣经不是用来证明上帝是什么，而是告诉你上帝是什么，并以犹太人的历史来加以验证。
我的信仰已经超越了faith，而是将它奠定在事实——那些关于上帝的属性——之上。谁也否认不了那些属性的存在，从而也就无法否认上帝或至高神的存在。
多神论在一神论的眼里就是无神论。
你的信仰观的实质属于多神论，从而也就是否认唯一的至高神，也就是否定上述关于上帝的属性的全部内容。
本文就是要告诉无神论者神存在，因此，无神论是无稽之谈。
要想得到解答，我已经将圣经中对上帝的定义或人们对他的属性的认识列在了这里。你不妨将你所知道的人们对“佛”的属性的认识与上帝的属性作一番比较。这是可以帮助你解答自己的疑惑的唯一途径。
不单如此， 全部基督徒都犯一个很严重的错误， 就是用 “ 圣经” 来证明 “ 圣经”。
穆斯林已走出这条路， 他们与基督徒辩论时， 是用 基督徒的 “圣经” 来证明 自己的 "古兰“。
譬如说， 现在最好战的国家就是以 “神” 的名， ”和平“ 名义来开启战争
He realized that there is no inherent evil in the world. Evil doesn’t really exist. Evil is simply a symptom of not knowing God correctly, or from servicing one’s ego desire. His example was that even a bad person can worship God and finds beauty in God. What made people bad is his ego and selfishness, not inherent evil. Evil is part of God’s kingdom just like a bad person is also a creation of God. Evil is fleeting and temporal. God is the ultimate quietness and unchangeable peace that all things will reunite to.
[My comment]: This finding is compatible with Buddhist’s conception that evil is simply a symptom of ignorance, not knowing what the truth is, causing man to serve his own earthly egoistic desire. Once a man wakes up to God and truth, he will not find any evil.
Augustine struggled hard to imagine God. Is God a massive body with super power, possibly with human like eyes, hands and hairs? As he studied further and further, he started to realize that God is not of a physical substance. God is infinite, yet has no shape and form. God is not part of physical world, yet all physical worlds are born from him.
During his studies in Milan, he finds out that Bible’s Genesis is very similar to Platonic creation theory, yet Plato refers to no Christ. (Of course when Plato was alive, Christ was even born yet). Despite that, he finds great similarity between Platonic philosophy and Christianity.
Deep studies of ancient philosophy and Bible, Augustine finds that true believer should not be restricted by words’ face value in books like Bible. In Genesis, Bible described God created the world, but this should not be imagined as a human like physical God with bears and hairs performing magic to create earth, mountain and oceans. Rather, such creation should be perceived in a spiritual way. Because God is not a human, but an infinite eternity. It is important to study Bible by going beyond face value of words in the book.
In Book VII, Augustine told us that through deep medication, he was able to see the true light of God. He said he was able to see God by turning inward as suggested by Platonic teachings. He finally saw that immutable light higher than my mind.
He told us that this light was not a visual kind of light. It was “utterly different from all other kinds of light. This light transcended my mind, not in the way that oil floats on water.” He also said that “this light did not come from the flesh”. He was able to see God with his mind instead of his mind’s eye.
[My comment]: Please notice here, Augustine’s sudden illumination is actually the same kind of illumination that Buddha experienced. In Buddhist terminology, this is called enlightenment. After man reaches enlightenment, he is free and forever happy and forever free from suffering. He reached Nirvana. But in ancient Italy, what Augustine experienced was exactly the same transcendence. He was able to see God with a light in his heart that is not any regular visual light, but a light that allows him to suddenly understand everything in the world. Augustine is enlightened and transcended.
From the light, he understands that “For God, evil does not exist at all.” All things are “good in themselves,” but may appear evil when there is “a conflict of interest.”
Augustine finally finds out that evil can be repelled through personal improvements. Once a man can grow toward more God-like, there is no room for evil.
After his conversion to Christianity, he was getting firm with his belief that God is no substance; God does not dwell in space and time. But all space, time and material are born from God. During and after Augustine’s conversion to Catholics, he again and again went through periods of enlightenment (or illumination). Each period is very transient. He regretted the shortness of his transcendence. He blamed that to himself as being not graceful enough, so that God is not ready yet to see more of his grace.
[Jing’s comment]: Period of enlightenment is actually a period of time man ascend into eternity, a timeless state, and able to see (not with mind’s eye or flesh), but with soul the whole truth. This is a state that a man temporarily reunited with his creator, God. You can say that you see God in such enlightenment experience, or you simply see the state of eternity that is the foundation of all things. Such experience is of untold beauty.
After one experience, Augustine said: “Eternal life is of the quality of that moment of understanding”. Plain and simple, he is right to the point.
Book X, XI and XII are the key analysis of his belief and philosophy. We should spend more time reading these books. These last 3 books are very deeply philosophical. It’s hard for regular people to comprehend. I only bring out a few key points that I find very interesting:
Augustine acknowledged that there is life before current life, i.e., concept of reincarnation is a truth. We humans don’t just live one life, we live infinite amount of life. Our life time is infinite just like God is infinite. We humans are created by God, is a part of God. If God is infinite, then we humans must be infinite as well. There is no separation.
A man’s essence is of God, yet not knowing of his God nature. Why we want to learn? Because learning is a process of the soul remembering what it already knew and forgot when taking human form. Our soul migrates from one previous human form to the next endlessly. Death is not a true end, but a temporary migration from one body to the next. The only true end must be the reunification with God who created us. True end must be accomplished by self improvement that eventually leading up to complete enlightenment very similar to what Augustine experienced in his illumination. In other word, a soul’s goal is return to God, before he can do that, he keep spending time in eternal incarnation and reincarnation.
[My comment]: Such finding matches Buddhist ideology completely. Although Buddhism doesn’t emphasize soul concept, it recognizes the need for personal liberation to awaken ourselves to God. Buddhism doesn’t even emphasize God concept, it never mentioned God in Buddhist scriptures. But Buddhist emphasized meditation and voids self of all the selfish and ego desires to prepare for the final illumination to truth that is the state of Nirvana. Basically, the only real difference between eastern philosophy and western philosophy such as Christianity is that the first only described the state of eternity and the latter name the same state as God, trying to make the state a human like form with the name God. Obviously, that’s easy for regular people to comprehend.
His studies of human memory are intriguing. He finds that the vastness of our memory is much more than we can grasp. He further postulates that memory is actually infinite if our souls live infinitely. That means, our body can die but souls move on with all the memory. That explains why for a limited and short life, a man can have such a vastness of memory.
He postulates that knowledge must be infinite as well, residing in the infinite memory. Learning is simply remembering things already in memory. We are actually not learning, but retrieving things already stored in vast memory, yet we don’t know it. The pieces of these ideas are present somewhere far back in our memories.
Why we don’t remember all the things stored in vast memory of soul (please note he is not talking about flesh’s memory, but a memory that survives the death of flesh) ? because just like rebirth, previous memory is temporarily blocked from us.
He also asks very interesting questions. Why a man seeks happiness? His answer is that a man must have known such happiness a long long time ago, even before this life time, eons ago when a man’s soul is still at union with God. How else would a man want to seek happiness yet not experience it? Augustine’s happiness is not flesh happiness like sex or material possession, but together with God happiness. He said that we humans are from God, and once are together with God, so we know such happiness. That explains our inherent desire to struggle our ways back to God.
Wickedness and evil or distance from God is due not to any mistake in God’s creation, but rather caused by a man’s lack of will to recognize God’s perfection. Therefore, wickedness, evil or loneliness is not permanent nature, but a temporal nature of a confused soul.
In Book XI, he went into a study of time.
He asks when the true beginning of time is. Although in the Book of Genesis they described that God “made” creation, Augustine argues that God did not make the heavens and the earth in a literal sense. God did not do it like a human did, or like an architect did. Augustine said that God did not create this universe in our universe all. Because God is beyond space and time. From a place that is not a place (space and time), our physical universe with space and time was born.
[My comment]: From modern astrophysics and quantum physics, Augustine’s idea is proven to be correct. Our universe was actually born from a Big Bang from who knows what. Current physics theory seems to point to a fact that our space and time is not permanent, but will have an end. Modern quantum physics further showed that the material is not as solid as we imagined. Once scientists go deeper and deeper, all they can find is no physical item, but wave functions. Everything becomes undeterminable in microscopic level. Heisenberg’s famous quantum uncertainty principle is a big mystery. Current physics is getting closer still to find that TIME may not be real at all, just like material and space may not be real at all. Buddhism doesn’t acknowledge the existence of time in its ultimate state of enlightenment, neither does Augustine.
Augustine finally reached the conclusion that time is actually an illusion, a human feeling, rather than something real. From spirituality, he explains that time is not a property of external world but rather of the soul itself. Relating to memory, he said that when we appear to be measuring time as some property of the world, we are actually measuring something in our own memory. Since the past does not truly exist, we can only be considering the images of the past times as they are now retained within us. Therefore, it would seem that time is some property of the mind (or soul) itself.
Since time is temporal, God does not know time because God is eternal. Human’s soul falls down from God therefore time seems real to human. Time is actually a measure of how far we fall from grace. We every human returns to God, we will be one with God in a timeless eternity.
[My comment]: Augustine has completely repelled the concept of time. He emphasized that there is no past, no future, only eternal NOW. This concept matches exactly to eastern philosophy such as China’s I Ching and India’s Buddhism.
如果耶和华是善的，就该民主点，允许不同的宗教信仰。这点都做不到的话，那他严重违反人权，违反联合国宪章，敢露面的话，会被告上法庭。
信仰基督教的西方国家，似乎都洗白了，西班牙毁灭过南美文明，葡萄牙是海盗国家，英国靠鸦片把最富的中国人沦为病夫，美国贩卖黑奴，。。。
耶和华的信徒们直接导致中国近代的苦难。楼主前一阵有过自称汉奸的帖子，对教会在近代的作用有过肯定。我在多年前接触过民国及清代的一些文献，清朝的教会教徒的不法行为，抢占国人土地资源甚至杀害知县等官员，对白莲教义和团运动有促进的作用。这些不法之徒可能是少数，但肯定的是他们不受清廷约束。
还有认为鸦片是合法贸易的言论，那是对今天全世界范围内肃毒的否定，不客气的说是站在人类大多数的对立面。虽然时过境迁，可以不再追究，但要我对鸦片贩子的国家有好感是困难的。
楼主的艺术造诣我是佩服的，又及。
任何宗教，能同等对待不信教的，那才是好的宗教。
这儿的无神论者众多，大家连想都不想就嘲笑, 开骂. 如果不同意观点，忽略就是了, 用不着动怒.
介绍大家一本书, , 这是一本关于Near Death Experiences 的书，是一个Medical Doctor 收集众多濒死个案写的. 同类型的书很多，但这本是最有权威性的. 灵魂是否存在，人死是否如灯灭，看完了可以自己判断.
本书Amazon链接如下:
http://www.amazon.com/Life-After-Investigation-Phenomenon--Survival-Bodily/dp/0062517392/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316801650&sr=8-1
还有wiki 链接如下:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_Life
真诚的请教博主，那个宗教更更容易带人接近神呢？您的答案可能是基督教，但为什么不可以是佛教呢？
我可爱的同济校友，你何必气急攻心呢？若非如此，你断不会对你熟悉多年的校友和学长出此恶毒之言。请你自省。
一个人可以接受至真至善至美的存在，与永恒和无限的存在，而否认有人格(personality)的神存在。两者没有必然关系。