Portal:Religion/Selected biography/11

God is often viewed as a consciousness which can be manifest as a natural force, often symbolozed as illuminating light and mysterious darkness.

God is the deity believed by; monotheists to be the supreme reality and only deity; by polytheists to be the only reality and supreme deity. He is believed by some to be the creator, or at least the sustainer, of the universe.

Theologians and philosophers have ascribed a number of attributes to God, including omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, perfect goodness, divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence. He has been described as incorporeal, a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the greatest conceivable existent. These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars, including St Augustine, Al-Ghazali, and Maimonides. Freud regarded this view of God as wish fulfillment for the perfect father figure, while Marxist writers see it as rooted in the powerlessness experienced by men and women in oppressive societies.