BellaOnline Forums Religion and Spirituality Bible Basics Does God have a Gender?

OK it's my fault for putting this question into this forum, maybe I should have put it into Bible Basics instead It just flowed out of another thread we were having and I clicked quickly. If I move the thread now it'll just be completely confusing though

OK so we established that Buddhists believe in no God so to them the point is moot. Other people are still welcome to chime in with their points of view

Jase - that is fascinating, I was hoping one of you of Jewish background would chime in with some information in that area. So the words they would have used would have referred to either gender?

Yes, but just as we are expected to respect Christian forum guidelines, (Bible basics, specifically asks that we not argue against the Bible, refrain from questioning the beliefs of others, not dispute the existence of God....) I think the fact that you are in a forum where no God exists is a funny place to discuss things - about God.

This has been the way I have thought since I was a child. If everything in nature (with the exception of a few animals and plants) needs male and female to procreate/recreate, God(s) must be the same way if we are a reflection of Him/Her/Them.

My dear Alexandra, yes this is the Buddhism forum where we discuss Buddhist topics, but when we have non-Buddhist some to ask questions, we are just trying to answer them. There is a grat misconception, as Lynn has already stated, that Buddhism does have a God. Many non-Buddhists think we worship Buddha. I think this discussion has been relavent and interesting to see all the different views and opinions.

I don't have the slightest problem wih people discussing God, They just picked a funny place to do it!
TBH, I think if we discussed the veracity, existence and gender of God in christian forum, to the extent we have here, someone would already have said somehing by now....
Why is it, do you suppose, that I don't go there.....?;)

I have already had my fingers burned by such discussions, and having been stuffed full of it for over 40 years, by a RC upbringing, education and overall influential environment, I'm happy to be done with it!

I guess if I wanted to be discussing God and whatnot, that's where I'd find myself. on a Christian forum.
I'm happy to have had a forum that either doesn't need God, or would be free from prolonged, protracted and frankly immaterial discussion.
I don't dispute the right of people to discuss religious beliefs here.
I just think it's an ironic place to do it.

That's all....
I don't see that as being unreasonable...
In fact, I am just expounding a View, and an Intention...
as in the Eightfold Path....?

...and yet the paradox is, here you are engaged in the discussion. From my perspective, perhaps you were drawn to it as material because the gender of "God" as a topic easily exists in each of your relevant topic examples here?

But most of the organisms on this planet don't have a gender. The vast majority of life on this planet are microbes. Also, some plants contain both genders on the same plant, some animals can switch gender depending on ecological stressors and such, many corals and even plants can clone themselves to create more of themselves. "Sex" is such a varied topic in biology. Which one does God fit under if he/she does have gender?

I'm all for joining in the discussion, if that's what people would like... but my first comment was, and still is, that it's immaterial.
I'll happily discuss it. But I just don't see the point....

If people don't believe in God, Why is it important?
if people DO believe in God - Why is it important?

Let me just try to explain why I find this discussion so bizarre:

I could understand it being discussed in the Christian Forum, where the notion of women priests still rubs some people up the wrong way, and where in some creeds, women priests are positively taboo...
Where in Catholicism, (I'm specific on this Doctrine because I was a Catholic) it is impossible to reconcile the prime example of Mary, as the ideal Catholic women ascribe to, with the fact that women carry the can for, and are the source of, original sin.

I could understand it being discussed in the Judaism Forum, where if I'm not incorrect, women carry and continue the lineage of Judaism: So if your father is Jewish but your mother isn't, you're not Jewish. if your father isn't Jewish, but your mother is, then so are you... yet God is male...

I could understand this being discussed in the Islam Forum, where - well, let's not go to how women are treated in the Islam faith, shall we....?

But the discussion taking place on a forum where God doesn't even figure, just seems totally odd.
or is this actually the safest place to say whatever you want about a Deistic religion, and (more or less, within reason) get away with it Carte Blanche..... is that it....?

OK yes I apologize again for putting this thread into the wrong forum, and have moved it. It now has nothing to do with Buddhism. It is simply a question, which is what I had intended originally.