h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Perhaps the answer is very simple indeed.

GOD IS LOVE.

God is the ability to feel love for each other, and compassion. God is the way we are able to connect to loving feelings in terrible circumstances. God is the higher good, which itself is love.

Let me take it one step further. Heaven is where God is supposed to reside. Heaven is a place of peace and harmony, safety and contentment. (How could it be thus without love?) And of course, Hell is a place where we are tortured and hurt, where we do not matter, where nothing we need is given. (Surely the best analogy of a place without love.)

I do not personally believe in Hell, other than the hell we make for ourselves. I believe in a God who loves and welcomes everyone, and the only hell being when we deliberately cut ourselves off from feeling love, in other words, we separate ourselves from God. Because we have free will, we are allowed to do anything we wish to ourselves, including spiritual suicide, but I do not believe that ANYONE suffers eternally. Love will always find a way to reach them, given enough time.

Oooh, and love exists, so case solved.

But hang on, love is not an entity, so how can Love love everyone?

Can love not be a force which itself becomes a spiritual entity?

I guess in a sense you can have whatever metaphysical entities you want. But if love (an emotion) becomes something else, is it still an emotion?

I think this is similar to a mistake of Plato's. He confused the abstract idea of something with the perfect example of it. (There wasn't much in the way of abstract ideas before Plato, so perhaps we shouldn't hold it against him.)

So I could understand the idea of God as the perfect example of a loving entity, but this is not the same as love.

Although he had many objectionable views, Plato is widely regarded as the greatest philosopher ever, and he had a great influence on St Augstine and Thomas Aquinas, and on Christianity.

What if the emotion you feel for love is God? When you feel the emotion love, wherever or however you feel it, what's to say that that isn't really what God is, or part of God? You can really say "God is...." and add many things for it, so to say that God is love could possibly be correct to some extent, but you need to say more about God than just love. He is much more than just love, more things than I'll say on here, so saying that he's love is partially correct, but saying he's love, as only saying he's love is inaccurate. Of course, it's hard to say what he really is, so it's all a matter of how we perceive God, and how we look at him. I guess that's just my two cents on how I look at God.

God is love
Love is the sweetest thing
The sweetest thing is saccharine

Therefore God is saccharine.

one opinion
love is a form of energy that drive the hole universe,so love is doing the only thing it knows love,if love is the gratest form of energy then it might be god. but i think that love is just a psicological human need, and end result of your neurological conections in your brain

I stuck a quarter tank of love into my gas tank and my car wouldn't budge an inch. If it can't even move a simple car, there's no way love drives the universe. That's a pretty weak god yoou're worshipping.

Hi, Ecolinda - (GW Adviser)
I just came across this - I agree with you!

I agree with your view on love I also agree there is no hell. Why would a god of Love make such a place as hell, it would not make any sense. We are all given free will to use how ever we want.
Why do so many religious texts say we should fear God, what is there to fear from Love.

Fear God in this sense, means respect God - it's an old sense of fear... I believe Hell exists, but is not eternal, any more than prison here in our societies is meant to be (bizarre American prison terms of 2000+ years notwithstanding.)

I will not fear god in any sense, god is love. Respect for god and all things is just part of love not fear. There is nothing to fear.