God created Himself?

Yes, a ridiculous concept no matter how one phrases it.

That would be a neat trick.

But honestly, I can't apply the laws of logic to an illogical being any more than believers can apply an illogical concept to a logical world.
I'd sooner believe that something can come from nothing before I could believe that this nothing had some sort of intent, although it would practically make the same amount of sense.

Neither concept is more fundamentally credible than the other, and I wouldn't treat either as fact regardless of the side of the fence I happened to be standing on.
Faith only exists due to the absence of knowledge.
I just have a problem with people treating it like fact.

Funnily enough... fact is a matter of faith to begin with.
I've come to a point where the entire discussion makes just as much sense to argue about, as it does trying to prove.

I think I'm mostly a Gnostic

a believer seeking knowledge and truth more than what has been written on some papyrus by some people who were sometimes stoned when they wrote it

That's not really what being a Gnostic is though...

Don't think anybody phrases it better than Carl Sagan:



Carl Sagan seemed a firm believer in the concept that the universe can be powerful, and unexplainable without the need for a logical motive.

I think it's safe to believe in a God if you can admit existence = God. God in itself is a motiveless, neutral, non-being. God is a set of rules that constructs matter, time, space, and energy. Just as a Judeochristian image it's very well all powerful, all knowing, constant, and works in a fashion that's beyond human understanding. The only difference is that it's entirely motiveless, and cares nothing of the progress of human life (Which, if you observe nature, does it seem to really?).

From my knowledge the closest thing to this is in terms of religion a lot of the concepts of some variations of Hinduism and Brahman. Hinduism still has an insane very inconstant hierarchy of God's, and ridiculous - yet interesting- folklore, though.

I agree wholeheartedly with everything you and Mr. Sagan have said. I think that one of the reasons why the popular concept of "God" has taken on a human form in the minds of theist is the way in which humans relate to whatever "God" represents. It's a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, relating to "God" as being an autonomous, human-like entity provides a degree of personal intimacy in relating to the whole of all being and the scientific laws that govern existence, which is my way of expressing what God represents as neutrally as I possibly can. On the other hand, by relating to God as if "he" were a human we impose certain human like qualities, like motive, that God, the universe, does not possess.

Hinduism and related Vedantic sects and philosophies really get into the area of pantheistic/solipsistic philosophy, and it's important to note, as it is with any other marginally theistic belief system that each deity in the hierarchy of gods is symbolic of a particular aspect or quality of of the divine. Whether you divide the divine into a pantheon of gods, or espouse the belief in "one true god" you are essentially pointing at the same thing. Atheist and theists both have a difficult time realizing that "god" is both a concept and a symbol that points to something that is very subjective, very experiential, but at the same time very real, as intangible as it may be.

The problem is that a theist will balk at the idea of God as simply being a component of one's own essential, pragmatic psychology and consciousness, one's mind, and an atheist, rather, a materialist, will use that fact to invalidate the entire experience. Essentially they are both doing the same thing with different motives. That is a sweeping generalization; forgive me for that, but it's one that I find is true more often than it's not.

It's not faith. Faith is believing in something without evidence. Certain facts are just true as far as can be possibly determined (I am currently wearing a shirt, I am standing on the ground, I am sitting in front of a computer). We have reason to believe (and belief does not necessarily constitute faith) in other "facts"(gravity, evolution, microbial life) because a scientific community has provided a preponderance of evidence that these are true. To question the validity of these facts, one would have to show evidence that society and the scientific community was perpetrating a gigantic fraud.

Faith is belief, not only without evidence, but belief even in the face of evidence. To call belief in facts faith, is to change the definition of the word "faith".

'Laws' do not 'govern the universe'. This is one of the leftovers of science being seen as an instrument to explore God's creation. The universe (Or 'everything', whatever the hell you want to call it) isn't following rules, it just is a certain way and we extrapolate laws from various patterns we find in nature.

I'm just oversimplifying things and taking the roots of it. Most of Gnosticism is too esoteric for me anyway.