Why does God look like a human?

He doesn’t represent humanity,humanity represents him

Because, according to the bible, God made humans in his own image so, God doesn’t look like humans so much as humans look like him.

@daytonamisticrip beat me to it.

In the bible it’s says, I believe he made us out of his own image. I am no expert. But I think God will look like whatever we want him to be. Woman , man ,black , white ,chinese, a ball of light. what ever we percieve him to be he will be.

I guess if you are Christian God and Jesus are synonomous, and so Jesus is God, and Jesus was a man. I think you can make God whatever you want. Whatever is comfortable to you. A man, a ball of light, nothing specific but rather defines the connection between all living things, some define God as within themselves, I have also heard that God represents the balance in the universe and that every actions causes a reaction. It’s what ever makes sense to you.

I am with you @PoiPoi… the earth and the universe has been around a much longer time than the bible accounts for. Energy is without question the force of life and that again has been around billions of years before man showed up. We are simply borrowing a smidgen of that energy while we go about our lives and then die and give it all back. My God is that big ball of energy you describe and very pretty too!

Who says that god looks like an old man? Where did you get that idea?

Because Man created God in his image.

Because she’d look pretty silly looking like a duck?

Who says God looks like anything we have the capacity to describe, even imagine. We silly mortals attach images to things and ideas that we can’t explain in order to give ourselves the illusion that we do. Personally, I don’t need a picture of God to believe in the spiritual qualities God represents.

God’s not human, he’s just drawn that way.

This came from gotquestion.org!

“What does God look like?”

Answer: God is a spirit (John 4:24), and so His appearance is not like anything we can describe. Exodus 33:20 tells us, “But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” As sinful human beings, we are incapable of even seeing God in all His glory and living. His appearance is utterly unimaginable and too glorious to be safely perceived by sinful man.

The Bible describes God appearing to people on various occasions. These should not be understood as describing exactly what God looks like, but rather as God revealing Himself to us in a way that we can understand. Two passages that powerfully describe God’s appearance are Ezekiel 1:26–28 and Revelation 1:14–16.

Ezekiel 1:26–28, “Above the expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.” Revelation 1:14–16, “His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.”

These passages represent Ezekiel’s and John’s best attempts at describing the glory of God that they witnessed. They had to use symbolic language and similes to describe that for which human language has no words, i.e., “what appeared like,” “like the appearance,” “he looked like,” etc. We do know that when we are in heaven, “we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:3). Sin will be no more, and we will be able to perceive God in all His glory.

Recommended Resource: Knowing God by J.I. Packer.

My bad. I guess he does look like an old man.

Side note:
Among those who believe god made humans in his image, the more curious and intellectually honest ones might one day realise god’s image is almost perfectly adapted to the conditions of earth, and wonder why an omnipotent being would have that form.

And if they’re curious and intellectually honest enough, that could be a first step towards escape.

He does not look like us, we just think He does.

Because god was created in mans image….

God doesn’t look like a human. There might be other intelligent life in many other places of our universe looking completely different. Human beings should be less presumptuous.

@mattbrowne
I’d like to interject here that in order not to think of god as a suspiciously humanoid being, you must also assume his minds doesn’t work the way our minds do. A non-terrestrial mind probably doesn’t feel emotions like love, sadness or anger, for example.
And the first person to suggest all intelligent minds must look human through “convergent evolution” is going to get a hefty plateful of copypasta debunking that presumptuous nonsense.

That’s not the way most people think of him, but I encourage the innovation. Provided it’s done properly, which isn’t easy.

“A non-terrestrial mind probably doesn’t feel emotions like love, sadness or anger, for example. ” How can one even begin to infer something like that?

@uberbatman
I figured someone would ask that. So much the better.
A non-terrestrial mind is unlikely to feel emotions like we do for the same reason that a throw of a hundred dice is unlikely to add up to exactly 314. The human mind is a very specific configuration of a vast amount of variables, a single point in a huge possible-mind space with more dimensions than you could count. Even just our emotion module on its own is already far too specific to have independently developed more than once. Nevermind the fact that we have an emotion module in the first place.

@uberbatman yes, the God that I worship and believe in, showed more love than the human mind can comprehend by sending His only Son to die for us. Too many people over intellectualize God. maybe, it gives them comfort to do so!

@Fyrius i would think the fact that emotions can be seen in most life on earth, not just humans would make the likelyhood of emotions in extra terrestrials pretty possible as well. But again I dont think its something anyone can infer at all.

@uberbatman
That’s not a fair sample. All life on earth is genetically related, which means you can expect a lot of similarities in the basic mind architecture of different vertebrates. For the same reason, we also all have roughly the same skeletal structure, roughly the same internal organs, the same cell structure, we all use blood to distribute nutrients around the body, et cetera.
Common descent. That’s the reason for all these similarities among terrestrial life. On the other hand there is no reason at all why extraterrestrial life would have the same features.
The key term is “independent development”.

@Fyrius fair enough, but how can you even begin to infer anything on alien life forms. They could evolve in the same ways we do or completely different. You simply dont know. No one does.

I mean we are looking for life right now in space and what do we look for? Water. But who is to say this life form will even depend on water in the slightest. No one really knows. Thats why i think its just a bit silly to say what some extra terrestrial may or may not be like when one has no way of knowing anything about it.

Both the Bible and good philosophy report that God is non-physical – spirit. In John 4:24 it is said that God is spirit (see also Luke 24:39; Romans 1:20; Colossians 1:15; 1 Timothy 1:17). This is why no material thing was to be used to represent God (Exodus 20:4). But this can also be shown by reflecting on what God is. Philosophically the same truth comes through. All that is created is necessarily finite and limited. But the first cause (God) is uncreated, and therefore must be non-finite, or infinite. That which is beyond the finite must, by definition, be infinite, and the Bible states that God is beyond creation (1 Kings 8:27; Job 11:7–9; Isaiah 66:1–2; Colossians 1:17). That which is physical cannot be infinite – for you cannot add finite parts together until they reach infinity. Therefore God is spirit as opposed to physical/material in His Being. This does not mean He cannot localize a physical appearance. God is not composed of matter nor any other imaginable substance. He also cannot be measured, is not spatial, and has no true location (presence is a different concept).

http://www.gotquestions.org/God-physical-body.html

@uberbatman
I think we agree about everything.
But note that an implication of the fact that there are so many possible minds and we can’t know what any given alien mind would be like, is that any particular possible mind is just as likely as those innumerable other possibilities. That means that the possibility that a non-terrestrial mind looks anything like the human mind has a probability equal to the number of possible minds that are human-like, divided by the total number of possible minds of the same or less complexity. Suffice it to say it’s not a big number.
I never said it would be impossible, but it would be astronomically improbable, to a point where it’s hard to distinguish from practical impossibility.

Note also that I’m not inferring anything about extraterrestrial intelligence, I’m refraining from making any assertions anything about it. The null hypothesis must be that there is no reason to expect a non-terrestrial mind to be anything like us.

And to bring this all back to the main subject: if you don’t believe the creator of this entire universe looks suspiciously like a particular ape-descended life form whose body and mind are meticulously adapted to the conditions of some small planet in the sol system, but you do insist on believing there is a god, then you should come to terms with the fact that you can’t anthropomorphise his mind any more than you can expect him to have toe nails and wisdom teeth.

@BoBo1946
I’m going to get Socratic on your butt now. :)

“All that is created is necessarily finite and limited.”
Necessarily? Why?
Could a hypothetical universe exist where created things are not always finite and limited?

“But the first cause (God) is uncreated”
Are you sure?
The course of time might not even be so reliably linear.

“That which is beyond the finite must, by definition, be infinite”
What does it mean to be beyond the finite?
If it means anything other than “infinite”, how does it follow from the meaning that it must be infinite?
If it does simply mean “infinite”, isn’t the infinite actually something entirely different from the finite, rather than just more of it?

loll…well, you picked a good one!

The term Alpha and Omega comes from the phrase “I am the alpha and the omega” (Koiné Greek: τὸ Α καὶ τὸ Ω), an appellation of Jesus[1] in the Book of Revelation (verses 1:8, 21:6, and 22:13).

In the Book of Revelation, it reads “I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.”[2].
Wiki

This is what I believe @Fyrius !

@BoBo1946
That hardly answers anything.
But if this is as concrete and substantial as you intend to be about it, suit yourself.

@Fyrius – Well, if God does exist, human beings still won’t be able to come up with a description because of our limited human mind.

To me the best way to characterize God is “the ultimate big picture”.

@Fyrius loll…got’cha! Different opinions is what make the “world swirl!”

@Fyrius i didnt quite follow what you were saying at first. But now that you lay it out like that, I agree completely.

@uberbatman
In that case, thank you for handing me an opportunity to elaborate. :)

anytime pal :P

GOD is sexxxy!