ArnoldRimmer said:
Well, they could for example read the catholic encyclica, published by Pope Benedict in 2006, that's even states so in its simple title: "Deus Caritas Est" (="God is Love").
Just pointing out that in a way, even the most official church claims so. ;)
My personal impression is that you're rather only looking for interpretations of "God" that you can somehow "logically" disprove. You consider your own interpretation of a mystical word as the only "reasonable/meaningful" interpretation.
But even if you'd succeed, you'd still have only disproved your own, unreasonable understanding of that word (which seems based on a rather letter-by-letter understanding of selected christian texts).
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You do realize plenty of people don't have access to that text through no fault of their own? Thus that does nothing to counter my point that many people don't have the opportunity to learn that love is God.
As for claiming that God is just a synonym for love, conscience, an indescribable "presence", or whatever you want to call it; It's meaningless because we already have adequate words in existence. There's no reason to use another word, especially one which has much greater implications and connotations - it just makes things unnecessarily complicated. It's unreasonable because almost every interpretation of God assigns characteristics far beyond merely "love" or "conscience", such as omnipotence, consciousness, physically creating the universe, etc.
I consider interpretations of God meaningful when they at least describe an entity which isn't already described using another ordinary word. If someone said God is a pencil, I would call that interpretation meaningless. If someone said God is another word for "presence", I would call that interpretation meaningless. If someone said God is an omnipotence, omniscient, omnibeloved, eternal, etc. presence, then I would call that a meaningful interpretation; since not only is it not already accurately described by another word, but this interpretation of God implies that God is something we should actually pay attention to and discuss.
If God was just another word for "presence" or some other word, then why should we treat it any differently than the already existing word?