I've read this thread from its beginning through the end and I am delighted at the conversation and the information it displays. God is an existence assigned in the intellect of man to comprise the before and the after of physical creation, in a place before and beyond time. The name of God is true to the language of the intellect shared in cultural terms, to signify and address this supreme existence that is common in perception to all cultures and in effect to all persons. Each person is an equal part of humanity, each fulfilling a different role and carrying differences in potential. The fetus is alive in the womb, but is not independently so until its takes its first breath, becoming a citizen of the world (and its territorial nation of birth), then becomes adult with the settling in of the last of its adult teeth. This signals the ability to manage and recycle one's nervous energy and to focus it on communal concerns as the physical drive toward adulthood (the birthed child's base personal occupation, motive, and right) has been accomplished. God, being the source and destination of life and all creation, is unlimited in creation, which exists to house God's concerns. Each part of and identity in creation is an expression of the unlimited God in limited form, for the reason for creation is to provide limits that the unlimited occupies. In other words, each life and object houses unlimited God as God's own design and vehicle for experiencing limits. In these limits, we each come to identity and struggle for sustenance and harmony. The Adam and Eve story, read for its pristine meaning beyond the Roman corruption, suggests that Adam and Eve, God as human male and human female, were designed to come to rely on one another rather than on their inner voice, making humanity interdependent like all other species of life, and marking out a genetic territory through which conscious human independence from other species is established, and cultural interdependence with other species is established. Every thing went according to plan. Even Cain's slaying of Abel. Until then, there was no trauma in Eden. That incident taught man that inter-human death was a cause of grief, that may be avoided by supplying parental, and developing prophetic, authority, and suggests that all human death is caused by human error, for the instinct of each human is Godly, but the capacity of each human is only human. Each body is an outpost for human observation and experience of creation, storing and housing by universal coordinates, a journey undertaken by God. As much as this is realized and practiced in our encounters with others, is as much as peace, beauty, and justice reigns. The Roman corruption of the Hebrew texts proclaims that God favors some of God's creation and condemns, to varying and certain degrees, other parts, extrapolating the Hebrew claim of being "God's Chosen" into the claim of white supremacy. In response, many religious sects have developed, each professing God's favor and considering others to be condemned, if not convertible. This led to the European war on Africa, whose captives were disguised as "slaves", and employed as commodities. In order to convince themselves and their women of white favor, ancient white men violently opposed their true descent from blacks, and terrorized their wives (assigning the fall from grace to Eve's responsibility, hence the word "evil") and abandoned their occasional black children, until today, melanin suppression is accomplished by calcification of the pineal gland. Their harm is accomplished by denying that God is omnipresent, but exclusive to their interests. What might be known as "lesser deities" are usually cultural regard for the facets of God that appear in limited forms of nature, such as flood, water, fire, etc. I'm particularly grateful for the writer in this thread who explained the symbolism of the overlapping opposing triangles that make up the star of David: Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, Male, Female. Other cultures, no doubt, have similar and differing exponents. Being equal, we can celebrate our differences. Being the same, we can only rage to create differences. We are the rage of God in the peace of man. To think God is male is somewhat logical, for we observe that females bear children, and God, like males, does not. But of higher consideration is the fact that God, being only one, does not reproduce and therefore has no gender, and being a sole existence, has no personal name for names are to distinguish one from another of similar attribute. I'm thanking the writer as well, who wrote of the "He-she" myth of Egypt.