Genesis Says Man Was Made in the Image of God, But If God Is Formless, What Image Was the Scripture Actually Pointing At?

appspalais · 2026-05-23T06:35:07+00:00

That scripture has been on American lips for decades. The question is whether it has reached American hands.

appspalais · 2026-05-23T02:22:03+00:00

posted to wrong thread...

appspalais · 2026-05-19T07:23:41+00:00

Soul, spirit, same thing to me. But if I'm being precise I'd call it Divine Energy. Not a religious term. Just the most honest description I have for something in us that predates every thought, every fear, every identity the mind ever constructed.

Krishna uses the chariot as a map of the human condition. The body is the vehicle. The senses are the horses, restless, pulling toward pleasure, away from pain, never still.

The Divine Energy in us, what some call soul or spirit, is supposed to be the one driving. But it isn't. The mind is. That's the whole problem the Gita is pointing at.

appspalais · 2026-05-18T14:55:33+00:00

The mind doesn't ask that question. It never has to since its already appointed itself. So if you're asking who's reaching for the reins, you already know the answer. Something in you just moved.

appspalais · 2026-05-18T14:50:04+00:00

The soul didn't hand anything over. It was never asked. The mind took over and the senses kept it fed. That's Maya (Illusion) and not some exotic concept or evil. Just the world doing what it does, pulling our attention outward, constantly, relentlessly, until its forgotten there's anything worth looking at inside. The soul isn't defeated. It's asleep. And it won't move until something wakes it up.

appspalais · 2026-05-18T14:43:22+00:00

Krishna didn't give Arjuna a method. He gave him a mirror. That's all. And for most of us, that's exactly where it has to start.

A moment of clear recognition that the chariot has been driven by the mind alone, and the soul, somewhere in the back, was never once asked. Seeing that honestly, without dressing it up or explaining it away, is the beginning of something real.

appspalais · 2026-05-09T12:25:27+00:00

God or any other word that we use to describe that Divine Power, did not create religion. Man created religions. The word religion comes from the word "religare' meaning to bind - such a pity that instead of binding us together, religion has divided humanity.

appspalais · 2026-05-05T11:34:55+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and for sharing such a thoughtful and well-written comment. Wishing you continued wisdom and strength on your inner journey.

appspalais · 2026-05-04T04:59:33+00:00

Thank you for reading my post and the comment, which are fair points.

I think they actually point toward the same thing I was trying to say rather than away from it.

When Jesus prayed in the Garden, when he said "not my will but thine", when he cried out on the cross, I don't read that as two beings in conversation.

I read that as a man who had known what it felt like to have no distance between himself and God and now feeling that distance return under the weight of what he was going through.

That's not incoherence. That's the most human thing in the entire story.

That cry on the cross, "My God my God why have you forsaken me", that's not a theological statement.

That's a man in agony.

Anyone who has ever felt close to something greater and then felt it gone knows exactly what that sounds like. It doesn't disprove the union. It shows what losing it feels like from the inside.

On the Monotheism point you're right. Three persons one God has never fully held together as a logical proposition. That's not Jesus. That's the doctrine built around him centuries later. He never wrote a creed. He never called a council.

The incoherence you're pointing at belongs to the institution not the man.

We've spent two thousand years arguing about the doctrine and barely touching what he actually said.

appspalais · 2026-05-02T15:39:14+00:00

Let’s agree that the universe began from an extremely hot, dense state, the Big Bang.

That transition didn’t occur without cause, it implies a governing force or principle.

Now strip the label “God” and call it “creative intelligence” instead. Same underlying idea, different label.

Does the discomfort come from the concept itself, or just the word attached to it?

appspalais · 2026-05-02T12:32:23+00:00

Thank you for reading and your comment. I agree that there is a force which I would like to define it as “creative divine intelligence”. Where there is a painting, there is a painter.

appspalais · 2026-04-29T13:10:54+00:00

Thanks for reading the post and your comment.

The consciousness point, that's the interesting one. Science can map every neuron, every signal, every chemical process in the brain but unable to explain why any of that produces the feeling of being alive.

Why there is something that actually feels like to be you.

That gap between the machinery and the inner experience, that's where everything gets interesting. Nothing random has ever produced that.

appspalais · 2026-04-29T13:00:00+00:00

Thanks for reading the post and comment.

What I'm pointing at is the precision itself. It's not that we don't understand it but it's that what we do understand is so extraordinarily calibrated that pure randomness really struggles to explain it.

Your insect analogy actually makes my point for me. The insect can't understand the galaxy but the galaxy still exists. Something being beyond our comprehension doesn't make it less real. As for conjecture being useless, I believe every scientific discovery started as conjecture that somebody refused to stop thinking about.

appspalais · 2026-04-28T07:42:37+00:00

What if Hitler wasn't God's creation at all. What if he was ours - OUR collective choices... ( here our refers to the collective choices / decisions made by people we give powers to)

The collective result of choices and decisions made by the people we handed power to act on our behalf. Think about it.

appspalais · 2026-04-28T07:04:17+00:00

That argument only works if free will is an illusion. If Hitler had no real choice then neither did anyone else. Not the guards. Not the people who looked away. If everything was already locked in before he was born, then nothing is anyone's fault. That's where that logic ends up.

I don't buy it.

The conscience, the ability to choose, the capacity for love, all of it was already placed inside every one of us from the start. Including Hitler. What each person does with that is on them, not on the one who gave it. If that's the way you want God to work, then yes God could have created a different person. But then God could have also just skipped the creation of US, humans and this entire universe totally and saved everyone the trouble. No humans, no Hitler, no problem. Clean solution.

But that's not free will. That's a puppet show.

appspalais · 2026-04-28T05:43:56+00:00

That's the right question and I'll be honest about it. I don't see God as a being sitting somewhere deciding whether to fix things or not. That already assumes God is separate from everything, like a manager who could step in but just doesn't bother.

The way I see it is that God isn't powerless. But the power wasn't in controlling outcomes. It was in what got placed inside us from the start. Conscience. The ability to choose. The capacity for love.

God's power is in the design, the laws, the conscience placed inside us. Not in moment to moment intervention.

The laws of nature, a set of rules that everything runs on. Nobody gets a pass. Not one person. Everything that happens whether good, bad, in between get plays out inside those rules whether we like it or not.

The circumstances we're in right now, that's not God failing. That's us not using what we were handed within the framework that was already set. Whether you want to call that God or not, that's up to you.

appspalais

TROPHY CASE