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Traditional religion has often tended to see God as a person…

• In this framework, our God is a being with human-like characteristics. It feels heretical to imagine God as an unseen force or power like electricity. The first Star Wars movies came out when I was a kid. The idea that “the Force might be with us,” elicited more than a few hostile sermons. No! It cannot be! God is not a force. God is a person! Doug Hammack
• [God is represented as a theistic Person]: a Supreme Being who in Christian philosophy is portrayed as incorporeal, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly free, perfectly good, necessarily existent and the creator of all things, and who is also a “person” with person-like characteristics such as beliefs, intents and purposes; a “divine being” (as defined by Richard Swinburne ), a theistic God (as defended by Alvin Plantinga ) with a “nature.” The affirmative creative act of this theistic God may bring the universe into being by a creation from nothing (creatio ex nihilo),  or may be a continuing creative sustenance of the universe (creatio continua), or both.  A theistic explanation of ultimate reality is logically compatible with both One Universe and Multiverse Models.  Robert Lawrence Kuhn
• We talk about God as though he was like a somebody. We ask him to bless our nation, or save our Queen, or give us a fine day for the picnic. And we actually expect him to be on our side in an election or war even though our opponents are also God’s children. Karen Armstrong
• When I was six, God was a white man with a big beard riding on a white cloud. That’s the image television pumps.  Ice Cube
• When we think of God, we are apt to think of Him in human form. A. C. Dixon

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…particularly in the Judeo-Christian tradition…

• In Christian thought ideas about God and theological statements about the nature of God often represent a mixture or conflation of two very different worldviews: the Hebrew biblical tradition and the Greek philosophical tradition. The former uses metaphorical language to imagine God in personal terms: God exhibits emotions such as anger and compassion; God speaks and acts; God enters into relationship, in and through which God is known. The latter, drawing on Greek philosophical ideas, employs the much more abstract language of being and essence. God is being but not a personal being. God acts but not in and through relationship. God is not like us in our humanness but is totally other than us. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The Old Testament God revealed Himself to Joshua and others in human form. He puts Himself within the compass of our highest conception, in order that He may make Himself real to us in His love and sympathy and power. A. C. Dixon
• Plenty of people in the Judeo-Christian tradition want God to be personal, so they attribute personhood or personality to the Deity. Carolyn Jane Bohler
• The people who related to God best–Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah–treated him with startling familiarity. They talked to God as if he were sitting in a chair beside them, as one might talk to a counselor, a boss, a parent, or a lover. They treated him like a person. Philip Yancey

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…an old, bearded man in the sky…

• I believe in fate. Sometimes that means an old bearded guy sitting on a cloud and pulling the strings; sometimes it means random atoms swirling through a cheerless universe; sometimes it means everything being preordained thanks to your karma credit from your previous lives. Kyle MacLachlan
• How does a cosmos without a bearded, bathrobed God in the sky pull off all the things that a bearded, bathrobed guy in the sky was supposed to have pulled off? If there was no God who said ‘Let there be light,’ where did we get all that light? Howard Bloom
• I’m a religious man. I am Jewish but I believe in all religions. I believe in God and see him as an old man with a big white beard and pray to him every day for a few minutes.  Uri Geller
• The two big mistakes were the belief in a sky god – that there’s a man in the sky with 10 things he doesn’t want you to do and you’ll burn for a long time if you do them.  George Carlin

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…with the characteristics and behaviour of a person…

• It’s really important to understand that God is not an impersonal force. Even though He is invisible, God is personal and He has all the characteristics of a person. He knows, he hears, he feels and he speaks. Tanya Luhrmann
• There are many metaphorical names for God in the biblical literature . . . but playing a privileged role amongst them are anthropomorphic titles. These personify God, and it seems that the biblical writers were pressed to use anthropomorphism to do justice to a God whose acts they wished to chronicle. This is a God who cajoles, chastises, soothes, alarms, and loves, and in our experience it is human beings who preeminently do these things. Early Christian theologians saw in this plentitude of divine titles a revelation of the manner in which God, while remaining one and holy mystery, is in diverse ways “God with us. Janet Martin Soskice
• Once the Person-God became orthodoxy, we narrowed our collective imagination about God. The unintended consequence of framing God as a person (albeit a divine person), is that forever after, he will be a he, and he will have a mind like ours, feelings like ours, intent and purpose like we have. We have friends and enemies, likes and dislikes. God must, too. Doug Hammack

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…and even human body parts

• The sight of You delights, Your smell is sweet, Your mouth is holy. . . . Your eyes are merry with delight at all who kiss You, Your lips distill the fragrance of life, While balsam flows from Your fingertips. Who can set eyes on You and not breathe in Your fragrance? . . . How lovely are You in every way. Even Your mouth’s murmur tells of Your Father. How gorgeous is Your beauty, how sweet [Your] smell . . . O infant God! Syriac Hymn
• The most rapturous delights you have ever had – in the beauty of a landscape, or in the pleasure of food, or in the fulfillment of a loving embrace – are like dewdrops compared to the bottomless ocean of joy that it will be to see God face-to-face. Timothy Keller
• The true God; He has extension, and form, and dimensions. He occupies space; has a body, parts, and passions; can go from place to place. He can eat, drink, and talk.  Orson Pratt
• What was the appearance of God the Father? Like that of a man… God has the likeness of fingers and hands and a face. Benny Hinn

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God is seen as a person yet separate and remote from us

• I also had questions about the nature of God’s personhood. God was said to be a person, but “he” was not like us. God chose to create us, but God did not have to. Nor did God need us or anything outside of “himself.” I could not make good sense of this view of God as totally other and noncontingent, to use the theological term. To be contingent means to be related to, to be affected by, to touch and be touched. This patriarchal God was beyond affect and interrelation. This God did not allow touching. Flora A. Keshgegian

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Some argue we should not see God as a person with human characteristics

• And still more presumptuous are those who attempt to ascribe to THE ALL the  personality, qualities, properties, characteristics and attributes of themselves,  ascribing to THE ALL the human emotions, feelings, and characteristics, even  down to the pettiest qualities of mankind,  such as jealousy, susceptibility to flattery  and praise, desire for offerings and worship, and all the other survivals from the  days of the childhood of the race. Such  ideas are not worthy of grown men and  women, and are rapidly being discarded.   The Kybalion

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Surely God is far greater than a projection of human traits, writ large

• God is more than a projection of human traits, writ large. God is greater than our conception of him. David Layman
• If God is not a personal being for me like my earthly father, He is infinitely more. Mahatma Gandhi
• We have no right to pick out all that is noblest and fairest in man, to project these qualities into space, and to call them God. We only thus create an ideal figure, a purified, ennobled, ‘magnified’ Man. Annie Besant

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By seeing God as a person, we see God as a mere being rather than the ground of all Being

• A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was a tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect, he becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all‐knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified. Karen Armstrong
• The concept of a ‘Personal God’, interfering with natural events, or being ‘an independent cause of natural events’ makes God a natural object beside others, an object among others, a being among beings, maybe the highest, but nevertheless, a being. This indeed is not only the destruction of the physical system but even more the destruction of any meaningful idea of God. Paul Tillich
• Those who prefer a personal God, meaning that they visualize a Being, may have difficulty experiencing these abstract ways of conceiving of God. Carolyn Jane Bohler

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By seeing God as a person, we create God in our own image

• We humans create God in our own image. For many it’s an old man in the sky looking down and smiling on all of us, or ready to punish us if we don’t toe the line. Usually it’s some kind of anthropomorphic entity capable of caring about each and every one of us, including all animals, bacteria, plants and living cells (and all subatomic particles in the universe?!). God is regarded as an ideal person: all loving, all knowing, all powerful. The trouble is, there is nothing we can observe, so no real “image” available. Thomas B. Sheridan
• Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them. Karen Armstrong
• It seems obvious to me that the notion of God has never been anything but a kind of ideal projection, a reflection upward of the human personality, and that theology never has been and never can be anything but a more and more purified mythology. Alfred Loisy
• We have made up a God in our image. Because we are angry and judgmental, we have projected those characteristics onto Him. Marianne Williamson
• Gods always behave like the people who make them. Zora Neale Hurston
• There is no God separate from you, no God higher than you, the real you. All the gods are little beings to you, all the ideas of God and Father in heaven are but your own reflection. God Himself is your image. “God created man after His own image. That is wrong. Man creates God after his own image. That is right. Throughout the universe we are creating gods after our own image. We create the god and fall down at his feet and worship him; and when this dream comes, we love it ! Swami Vivekananda
• Everything flows from God, but we are limited by imposing our human perceptions upon him. Man designs God according to his own image and the image man has of himself is flawed. Tobsha Learner

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Surely God is as far removed from a personhood as can be imagined

• God is probably as far removed from a personhood, as conceived by man, as can be imaginable, that is, not a he/she/it that has a persona/ego nor material biology, or purpose or fears or doubts or anything remotely human. Jeff Lee
• We use the word “God” as representative of that which is timeless, immortal and infinite, that which produces order, which holds together the nucleus of an atom, which gives us life and death, neither masculine nor feminine, not a person, beyond any comprehension.  Frederick Lenz

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Surely God is not an old man in the sky

• God was something I did not understand the way kids who went to church did. They said God was a man in the sky with white hair and a beard like Santa. This seemed strange to me. When I thought of God, I imagined only mist over the pond, a sliver of moon in a dark sky, scatterings of stars, birdsong.  Melissa Coleman
• I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong. John Lennon
• It isn’t always the middle-aged who refuse to listen, who will not even try to understand another point of view. One boy would not get it through his head that for all adults God is not an old man in a white beard sitting on a cloud. As far as this boy was concerned, this old gentleman was the adult’s god, and therefore he did not believe in God.  Madeleine L’Engle
• Love is a deception and a trap. Love is as big a myth that God sits with his flowing white beard in a throne and looks at us. Al Goldstein
• Sure I believe in God and the Devil, but they don’t have to have pitchforks and a long white beard.  Keanu Reeves
• The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by ‘God,’ one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.  Carl Sagan

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To see God as a person is to anthropomorphise way too much

• Anthropomorphism: The attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to a god, animal, or object. Oxford Dictionary
• Anthropomorphism: An interpretation of what is not human or personal in terms of human or personal characteristics.  Merriam Webster
• As human beings, we anthropomorphise way too much. God’s not a person. God, for me, is a power that lies outside the definition of time and space. Scott Glenn
• The word “anthropomorphism” comes from two Greek words: anthropos (humanity), and morphous (having a shape or form). It means to give a human form to something that isn’t human. In religion, it points to our tendency to project human characteristics onto God. We get angry, so we assume God gets angry. We treat people according to how they treat us; God must do the same. Doug Hammack
• We worship a mysterious not an anthropomorphic God. Frances M. Young

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Even to speak about God having will is anthropomorphic

• God’s will is a metaphor, which is to say that the concept of God’s will is metaphorical. To talk about God as having and exercising a will usually implies that God is a person and that God acts or exercises agency. Flora A. Keshgegian
• There is no one way to imagine God, no one way to understand God’s will. To be sure, to propose that God has a will would seem to mean that God is like a person, most often imaged as father or lord. Expressions, such as “the guiding hand of God” or “the commanding voice of God” or even “the mind of God;’ all suggest that the divine operates like a human person. They imply that God has hands and a voice and a brain and that God exercises agency. These ways of talking about God reflect an anthropomorphic view of God, that is, God imaged in human terms. What kind of person is God? Does God have to be imaged as a person? Or as father? What happens if we understand these ways of imagining God as metaphors? Flora A. Keshgegian

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Surely God is far too dynamic to be a static person

• This vision offered a very different view of God than the one the professor had just described. She saw God as a male person; my image was not of a person at all. Her God ruled over a set and static order. In my vision the divine was not only in constant motion but was the motion itself. In the professor’s universe God gave everything an assigned place in a hierarchy. My imagined universe was not hierarchical but relational, multidimensional, and even random. Flora A. Keshgegian

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God is not a human-like object separate from us

• God is not a person; God is manifestation itself. We think that God is a superhuman person, but God is not a person. He is not a subject. We can never experience God in a subject/object experience. God is what makes a subject/object experience possible. We can never see God or experience God as separate from ourselves. God is a being but there is no division.  Ricky Ray
• The word God has become a closed concept. The moment the word is uttered, a mental image is created, no longer, perhaps, of an old man with a white beard, but still a mental representation of someone or something outside you, and, yes, almost inevitably a male someone or something. Eckhart Tolle
• Whether we think the Absolute can reasonably be called God or not, Bradley is surely right when he says there could be a sense in which, whether called Absolute or God, it includes in itself all persons. Timothy Sprigge

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To see God as a person opens us up to the risk of being patriarchal

• In the legends that males have invented to explain life, the first human creature is a man named Adam. Eve arrives later, to give him pleasure and cause trouble. In the paintings that adorn churches, God is an old man with a beard, never an old woman with white hair. And all the heroes are males: from Prometheus who discovered fire to Icarus who tried to fly, on down to Jesus whom they call the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, almost as though the woman giving birth to him were an incubator or a wetnurse.  Oriana Fallaci
• The traditional God is a patriarchal, controlling authority figure, an often angry man who you should live in fear of, as the Old Testament suggests. This God is a projection of the human mind. Eckhart Tolle
• Undoubtedly, the most commonly know metaphor for God is father. When people imagine God as an old man with a long white beard, they are often thinking of God as a father and as a patriarch. Flora A. Keshgegian

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To see God as a person runs the risk of the relationship becoming dysfunctional

• Imagining God differently, we experience the spiritual journey differently. That’s the way it goes. When we imagine God as a person, we search for God within person-like parameters. God is a guy with friends, so we wonder if we are his friends. Many Christians live their lives in this insecurity, wondering if they’ve done enough to gain God’s favor. Many of us labor away, either trying hard to please God, or we give up in despair, believing we just can’t measure up. “Persons” have preferences. It is only natural to wonder if God prefers us. Doug  Hammack
• We unwittingly project onto God our own attitudes and feelings toward ourselves… But we cannot assume that He feels about us the way we feel about ourselves — unless we love ourselves compassionately, intensely, and freely. Brennan Manning
• When we imagine God as a man with a plan, and things go badly in our lives, we naturally assume we somehow misbehaved, somehow missed the plan, or somehow stepped out of God’s will. Persons have plans, and if someone crosses their plans, they react badly. When something bad happens, we can’t help but ask ourselves, “How did I upset the man with the plan?” Doug Hammack

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Some argue it’s not a bad thing to see God as a person; just an incomplete thing

• Some of the most beautiful and moving writing in history speaks of God in human terms. It is one of the best ways we make meaning. We compare something we don’t know to something we do. We use what we can experience to understand and talk about that which we cannot. So humanizing God is not a bad thing. It’s just an incomplete thing. Doug  Hammack

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Instead of seeing God as a person, we could choose to see God as energy

• People think God is a man. People think God has got ears, nose, teeth and he rises daily in the morning, brushes his teeth and washes his mouth. And he is an old man and he has a beard. All these things people think. But no, God is energy. God is perfect and pure energy.  Prem Rawat

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Instead of seeing God as a person, we could choose to see God as intelligence or consciousness

• God is a wider consciousness than we are, a pure intelligence, spiritual life and actuality. He is neither one nor many, neither man nor spirit. Such predicates belong only to finite beings. Joseph Alexander Leighton
• By understanding evolution as the expression of universal intelligence, now becoming conscious of itself within us, and as us, we overcome the dichotomy between current evolutionists who see no design in evolution, and creationists who often propose and anthropomorphic God as creator. Barbara Marx Hubbard

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Instead of seeing God as a person, we could choose to see God as a force

• God is not anything human. God is a force, God is chaos, God is unknown. God is terror and enlightenment at the same time. Ralph Fiennes
• My biggest problem with organized religion is that God has been imagined as a human being with emotions. I feel if you let go of that, then it’s possible to see God as a force, to connect to him or her spiritually. Christopher Durang

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Instead of seeing God as a person, we could choose to see God as the ultimate reality

• God is not a person; God is a sacred personification of one or more deeply significant dimensions of reality. If we miss this we miss everything!  Michael Dowd

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Instead of seeing God as a person, we could choose to see God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence or an all-pervading spirit

• Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words.  Jimmy Carter
• Spirituality is natural goodness. God is not a person; God is a presence personified in us. Spirituality is not a thing; it is the atmosphere of God’s Presence, goodness, truth, and beauty.  Ernest Holmes

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