hahaha faceBook friends say that if I knew how to spell it, I might find God.  computer.

Actually, from my experiences here, those who claim to know God best are the worst spellers. There seems to be an inverse relationship between spelling and God-finding-ability.

Likely any physical "thing" can be an aid in finding/exploring God. For me, that "thing" is books. But for others it could be the church building, or even the cumputor. Its all about gathering information and changing (or solidifying) your views, your beliefs.

I don't think God is in my computer.  My computer is an inanimate object.

God is very much a "living" presence.

The dialogue that takes place here on WonderCafe, the questioning and exploring...can certainly assist us in looking more deeply and more critically at our faith.

Computers are useful tools for information gathering and dissemination but there are risks involved and we do have to be discerning about the websites we visit.   That may lead someone to observe that if God is in the computer, so is the Devil.

A paintbrush can be used to express a perception of God, or a camera.

A passage in a book may lead us to a deeper understanding of God.

More than half of my congregation are not computer literate, but I would never question whether they are moving forward in their faith because there are so many other ways and places to find God.

 It is getting to the point where I would be lost if I attempted to do without my computer.

One day a super-computer may be able to define God—if we let the computer do the computing.

But we may not like the definition the computer comes up with.

What's happening, crazyheart? Your latest crazy heart is cut from a CD, and you are looking for God in a computer?

I think God is best found and/or created in our very own biocomputer, also known as "the brain."

The computer, in combination with the internet, is an excellent means of communication: one quantum leap up from oral and written communication. The computer enables us to easily communicate the creations of our brains to others, and thus come up with ever better creations, including our conceptualization of God.

This reminds me of one of my favourite short stories by Arthur C. Clarke "The Nine Billion Names of God."   Worth a read if you aren't familiar wth it.

The story appeared in an anthology in 1966.  Arthur Clarke states in his forward, "...I appear to have created a durable myth:  not long ago, a radio talk on the BBC referred to the opening situation of this story as actual fact.  And now that IBM computers have entered the field of biblical scholarship, perhaps this theme is coming a little closer to reality."

Ah yes, there is a movie out which pits the Flying Spaghetti Monster against a movable feast of some poor teens (dare you to try to find it) :3

crazyheart,

have you tried to look at your computer's insides?  Remember the ads for Intel?

Makes sense, computers powered by your G_d.  I wonder what the enticement/trap was?

(reality is deeply strange, for we have created 'tiny computers' that calculate without calculating and cause events that occur but then don't occur...I guess when these become mainstream, sombunall believers can go "Oh, that is G_d as well".  And so it goes...expansion and contraction around the fundaments of the Artistic "You Did It")

Does anyone remember how Data, the humanoid computer on Star Trek, defined God?

I vaguely remember that he said something about God, but I don't remember what.

I think the self-creative cosmos, a.k.a. God, created us as self-creative organisms.

So if we, as self-creative organisms, created a self-creative computer, I wonder what the computer would come up with? Would it define itself as self-creative, and us as its creator, and God as the ultimate creator?

Funny you should mention all this...heh..heh...heh...:P

Deus Mechanicus at your service!

In my opinion, being created in the image of the creator meant that we ourselves are creators, ergo machines (including computers) hold sparks of the divine as much as anything!

As-salaamu alaikum

-Omnissiah

But in response to the original sentiment expressed by crazyheart, I too feel God through my computer, because it is a source of community and religious discussion for isolated old me :)

As-salaamu alaikum

-Omni

God is in my computer to the extent that God is in the people who build, program, ship, and install the computer.  God is in the hands and minds and hearts and words of the people who interact, relate, and communicate with me on the computer. 

Well said, Omni!

One of my favourite speculations is that the universe, as it unfolds, etches the memory of its unfolding in the form of a cosmic hologram into inverse space. I speculate further that our brain can access the cosmic memory body, via inverse quantum leaps, and that the memory of our brain actually is a sub-body within the cosmic memory body. 

The entire cosmos would then be a an unimaginably vast supercomputer of astronomically proportiones, with the totality of cosmic memory as its memory bank. And we humans can access this memory and create the programs to enact it outwardly.

This is not just idle speculations. During one blessed night I experienced the unfolding of the cosmos, from nothing to the present. The only logical explanation I have for this is that I experienced the totality of cosmic memory, and that this memory is somehow there.

Some people tell me that my cosmic experience could have been psychotic or imaginary. It it was a psychosis, then it is the kind of psychosis I wish for everyone. If it was imaginary, then I agree with William Blake: "Long live the imagination!"

I won't resort to supernatural explantions, though. But I think that the natural is supernal, the mundane divine, and that God is the totality of being—and maybe the cosmic supercomputer.

i wouldnt say God is in the computer, as he is in my heart, but i would say in regards to spelling, its because we dont focus on spelling as with computers and religeon, in the case of religeon, the media is not the message.

CH - God is in relationships, and to the extent that those relationships are nurtured by a computer, or face-to-face, then God is present. From time to time we chose to remove God from those relationships by being petty, vindictive, self-serving, intolerant or uncharitable. But God always reserves the right to be invited back into such relationships. Just because we choose to manifest our relationships in new ways doesn't mean God somehow needs to take a lot of time to catch up because he/she can't figure out those dang contraptions. It is us that needs to catch up to God when we start experimenting. God is already there, waiting for us, as in all our relationships, be they with other individuals or with the world at large.

I wouldn't necessarily say that God is in my PC (although it does behave as if God, or someone, was in there at times ). I think, however, that as a tool for relating to others and the universe, it does help me "find God" and, perhaps, as a creation of our human creativity, it may manifest something of the spark of universal creative energy that is in all of us.

Mendalla