A description of God?
Atheists love to talk about God. But it's difficult for them, as there is no generally agreed description* of God. It's probably the case that there are as many conceptions of God as there are believers, but are there general beliefs about God that many or most of us share? Come on, let's help the atheists out, by giving them a description of God to play with. :wink:
For me, the omni- stuff is unhelpful. God is the 'shepherd' of life in the universe; we (all living things) are in Her care. Is even that an acceptable (to believers) starting point? If it is, can we add to it, and still remain in accord with the majority of believers?
Can we come to an agreed description of God, or is that just a pipe dream?
* - I've deliberately shied away from the word "definition", which somehow seems inappropriate.
For me, the omni- stuff is unhelpful. God is the 'shepherd' of life in the universe; we (all living things) are in Her care. Is even that an acceptable (to believers) starting point? If it is, can we add to it, and still remain in accord with the majority of believers?
Can we come to an agreed description of God, or is that just a pipe dream?
* - I've deliberately shied away from the word "definition", which somehow seems inappropriate.
Comments (151)
We have to lay out the bare essentials first and see how that goes before layering more upon.
It is an eternal First and Fundamental Being, with a creative Mind, it never having been made, without anything else before it or outside it. It is ever and it is All.
Its existence is necessity, as Everything, for 'Nothing' cannot be, much less be productive. It cannot not be; it has to be; there is no choice in the matter.
Problem: The only inconsistency that I see above is that beings would have to have parts—and so the parts would have to be more fundamental than the being, as in coming before, and the parts of parts, etc. Thus, beings have to evolve, just as we see in our universe, great complexity being later on, not earlier or first.
Do please elaborate.
This is certainly true, but the word "god" must imply something that words like "nature", "universe", "everything", etc do not capture. If we are TRYING to be objective, "All knowing" and "All powerful" (with both power and knowledge being unconstrained by the laws of physics) seem to be the minimum requirements...right? Otherwise why call it "god" when we could just call it "nature" or "Steve the alien" or "Hal9000"?
Quoting Shamshir
I think the "omni-stuff" includes concepts like the "all knowing" (omniscience) and "all-powerful" (omnipotent) I mentioned above....I am realizing that you likely knew this already...maybe you need to elaborate on which parts you want elaborated? Or maybe I should just let @Pattern-chaseranswer before getting all huffy?
And @Pattern-chaser, let me know if us atheist-types are supposed to butt-out of this one...but most theists would never bother THINKING about a description or definition of "god" as the answer has already been spelled out for them...? I guess deist-types and half-buddhists are popping up quite a bit, so more and more people are defining for themselves, the god they believe in.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Surely, if we ever come to the conclusion that there is a being or consciousness that created existence, the question whether it is truly omni-something is irrelevant.
It's probably a pipe dream, especially here of all places. But you might get some or even general agreement on some key aspects.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
It'll have to be acceptable to atheists, too, in a sense. If it's too vague, as the above is, then how can I even make sense of my atheism in relation to your theism? It must be clear enough, so that we know what we're talking about. A vague metaphor like that won't cut the mustard. This is more like a situation where I'm asking for a description of your car, so that I can look for it in the car park which is full of cars, and you respond with something like, "My car is the 'beast' of speed on the road. She'll carry us on our journey". Yeah, that's much less helpful than the typical response you'd expect.
This I would classify as the worst kind of response to the question. Vague, unconventional, subjective, arbitrary, renders theism indistinguishable from atheism.
Yes, otherwise it's just a redundant label, and it would fail to distinguish theism from atheism. That I believe that the universe exists does not imply that I believe that God exists.
But did you like it?
No. Too many people try to be novel and poetic, but it just doesn't work. It might be boring, but examples of workable descriptions are the ones that we're most familiar with, such as a creator of the universe, or a being which is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good.
In a way, yes. And yet, all those words though having their own idiosyncratic meanings that prevent them from being completely identical, strive to express the same relevance within the domain of human understanding. To me, it seems that any special significance over the others is largely due to subjectivity.
Yes, we may get to something like that.
Since my 'God' description had a "problem", I need to back off of it somewhat, leaving but what could be so.
I'll probably have to remove the 'Mind' notion, probably, but first, what is left intact?
We can show the necessity of existence, in that it has no alternative that can be, namely, non-existence, which now can't even be meant. We can call this The Existence Principle. Everything that is was already there, ever, either all at once, in a block, or potentially by combining bit by bit from what was ever there; however, we don't know the mode of time so we'll have to cover both. The Everything, then, survives as a step toward having 'God, and it seems that the Everything would have all that is possible in it, given that the unborn Everything couldn't have had anything specific designed into it. The Everything needs no creation and can't have creation of it, anyway, and it likewise can never go away. Beginnings and Ends are out, concerning the Everything.
For some reason, the One is energetic, as a given, and this is not only why it is ever, but also why it can never be still and continually has to transform and transition through the states which are probably stitched together via something like the laws of nature.
'God' is in sight, now, perhaps, though having less of a nature than we supposed, but still as the main event. All is a continuation of the one Event, we merely placing arbitrary local boundaries to try to identify local cause and effect, but our isolations of these local events can't incorporate everything and so they are but approximate and so cannot be precise.
And perhaps this is close to the core of the problem for humans, this insistence on patriarchal hierarchies, as opposed to understanding how homologous and congruent things (like male and female) really are, all connected and interdependent as everything in the cosmos is, nothing really subordinate to anything else; merely cooperative.
I'm thinking that there's a lot of patriarchal hierarchization in this forum... Dominance mode, not dialogic mode... Let me add that women can be patriarchal and men can be non-patriarchal. My favorite French Psychoanalytic Feminist Philosopher Luce Irigaray wrote that women's language must disrupt and confound until men are able to tune into a different frequency and understand.
There is no stasis; there is transition. However, we humans can devolve if we don't keep learning deeply.
Yes, for if there could be one Bang, then there ought to be others
Quoting uncanni
Not only that, but the making of 'God' to be a Person, but who makes us people, without a larger PERSON having then to have made 'God'. They didn't know about life from molecules becoming bacteria, etc., so they posited a 'God' in their image.
Quoting uncanni
Quantum entanglement far apart in space shows that connections are more primary than distance.
Quoting uncanni
Women, plus all good philosophers, don't just pull out a specific, labeled box, and talk only about that and put the box back in, but speak to connections not obvious to the straight and narrow thinker.
We could all go away in a flash; there is now a strain of bacteria resistant to even the last ditch antibiotic, it, too, as what had to transition.
We can also devolve if low-life's have more children than better people, but, of course, what happens pretty much has to, short of China-like limitations on offspring, and, now, lately they allow two.
'God', then, seems to not intervene, or can't. Seven near extinctions have already come and gone.
These transitions point to that there can't be anything particular remaining even for an instant, and this kind of matches the supposed nature of the Eternal that of course can't have anything particular designed into it, given it has no beginning.
Round and round the Great Wheel turns, bang after bang, it being as impotent as you and I.
And what of the Everythingness about it? Its information content would be the same as not having any: zero, so, again, 'God' gets a revision but can still seem Great, minus the person-hood aspect..
_________________________
Autistic Screeching: A Cry for Help from Children with Autism?
perfection, omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence and the creator of everything. There's debate over anything additional to this and debate over exactly what it takes to posess those attributes, but surely that those attributes are essential is not seriously in dispute?
Haha, oops, I missed the UN part of unhelpful. Dang, and that is just about the ONLY part I can understand. Everything else seems to be people's feeling of what they think their god is - not an attempted objective description, for example:
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Quoting tim wood
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Quoting uncanni
Quoting jorgealarcon (I think I can wrap my puny human brain around "all powerful", but "timeless" and "limitless" are only saying what god is not, what does "timeless" mean as a trait for a being?)
I don't see how ideas like those listed above can possibly lead to any type of consensus. This thread is so far free of each side trying to convince the other they are right (hooray!), so maybe we can make a little progress toward a common understanding of the word 'god'? I think we would have to tend toward objectivity (probably impossible, but if we are not at least trying, well...), and S has had some worthwhile thoughts:
Quoting S
Quoting S
Right. If only belief and saying could make something true, but it doesn't. One needs to establish a sound ground first, such as the necessity of eternal existence, and build on it from there, which informed us that there can be no information coming into what had no beginning and was never made.
Alas no! Atheists like me DO NOT 'love to talk 'God' which they consider to be a useless concept for them. Those atheists with a modicum of intelligence concede that 'gods' may be useful concepts for others, albeit as 'opiates' or sociological facilitators, but leave the matter of 'description' of such mythical entities in the hands of the users. Ironically, the consenus among 'intellectual believers' seems to be that 'description' is an oxymoron, to be replaced with that blanket term 'ineffability'.
What some (militant) atheists DO want to talk about is the potential social perniciousness of the usage of what they see as an opiate. To this end they may cite 'history' as supportive evidence, but in my opinion, it would be futile to argue on the basis of 'lack of existential evidence' since that 'evidence' lies in the eye of the beholder/believer.
And what's going to differentiate that sound ground from a belief?
If God is existence of everything, did God create the laws of existence? I would say the laws are part of everything's existence. Why would/how could God intervene? It all is God.
Has everything existed forever? Has the cosmos contained matter forever? Are there realms in infinity that don't operate according to the laws of physics we use to describe the known-by-us cosmos? It would seem anthropomorphic to assume that infinity continuously operates according to the laws that govern our little space (which includes what we can observe, which is what? up to 13 billion plus light years away? What lies 13 billion light years beyond that? God skips rocks across all of this, and let's imagine that the rock skips 8 times; what is there? And this is like a very small pond. I mean, we're talking infinity... So this little neighborhood's been expanding over that time period; what's been going on elsewhere? What's everything up to? Is there _____ beyond God's infinity of everything?
I'm expressing my thoughts and my continuously-transforming understanding. If it makes you uncomfortable or you disapprove, it's fine with me. I'm not seeking your approval of how I think and question. But I have no intention of limiting myself to what you may be familiar with. If you don't want to consider things from a different perspective--if I bore you--you know the drill...
It would imply that one couldn't discern intervention from no intervention as they would be functionally the same.
I agree: the eternal respiration of the cosmos (God's breath): in (contraction, tsimtsum), out (expansion, big bang, matter moving away). I was imagining one day a while back after reading about black holes, that at some point, God's inhalation or contraction draws everything into a single black hole that would then expand, exhale in a big bang. Everything (God) breathes.
That's the idea, and thus we can eliminate the anthropomorphic and somewhat parental notion that God causes this and that to happen--like maybe global warming is simply God's latest version of the Flood because humanity has become so irritating and noxious again.
As I've stated somewhere above, I eliminate completely the image of God in the patriarchal, gendered image. It seems sophomoric, naive, to me.
That is so cool; I read that and I got really happy.
So in order to make sense of 'God talk' at all, one has to first be able to imaginatively enter into the community of discourse within which it is meaningful. But as can be seen in this and many other such threads, there is often an unwillingness to do even that.
But the second issue, and a more profound one, is that any description, if it amounts to an image, really amounts to a form of idolatry. Idolatry sounds such a remote and archaic fault, something that the ancients would be found guilty of. But for the grand tradition of theism, any idea of God whatever, and so anything which can be described, must be hopelessly mistaken, and a projection or a phantasm. God is known, according to the mystics, by unknowing, by plunging into the 'abyss' or the 'desert' or 'the cloud of unknowing'. Trying to communicate that reality by description can only ever amount to a platitude - better not to try!
To some peoples it is as you have variously described and to others "god" is a quite small bit player. The elements Zhoubotong lists only refer to a subset of candidates for "God" even with a capital G.
In my opinion the word "god" is a job title (like "cook" in the "great houses") and the variety pans out from there, never to be exclusively pinned down.
The questions you Uncanni are asking are in cosmology, and physicists are doing a lot of maths on this, which is based somewhat on observations, albeit with rather sophisticated equipment. They feed into branches of philosophy like ontology, while philosophy of science (e.g in the need to continually pose more hypotheses) feeds into it. For those who are interested in religions which include these matters there is additionally a philosophy of religion angle.
The statement by Poetic Universe on quantum entanglement is inspiring, in the light of what (littlish) I know about it having dropped out of physical science for too many years, the features of reality give me much joy also.
Necessity, eternal, and existence (Poetic Universe), are vital and exciting questions, that come into "god" questions for some people, as well as having far wider relevance anyway.
Uncanni, we can and must choose what images to accept or not, nonetheless I took the OP as inviting a general survey. To my mind the answer is staggeringly general and diverse. Wayfarer touches on this and I would further add that in those religions which are supposed to be deeper, there may sometimes be a duty on leading members to help members to not obscure truths from the public when or if they would be helpful.
As for personification - completely eliminating any imagery won't do.
The image that has affronted you, though it be no exact representation - is valid.
It's good to consider that the notion of father, does not directly imply the semblance of an earthly father; though it's easy to see how that could be manuevered as a political design.
I think that's what we've been doing for thousands of years--perhaps throughout our existence as a species--which, as we know, is a lil drop in the bucket of time as regards life on this planet. So sometimes I imagine this micro-second of our existence as homo sapiens in the broader context of all the golden star dust exploding out of the big bang which we were a part of, molecularly speaking. And of course, our molecules were around for all the previous big bangs; I mean, we've always been around in some form or another;
I've read essays on topics like the history of childhood which make it so painfully clear what a primitive and savage species we are. We still haven't figured out how to raise our offspring. I conclude that most if not all human beings are emotionally damaged, and I often wonder if the majority is more like Hitler and the nazis, or less like them and more like their victims. Alice Miller, the German psychologist, wrote a book detailing the parental behavior which was the norm in Germany prior to Nazism's rise, and she basically says the Germans had been reared for generations to be completely seduced and enthralled by a character like Hitler. They were ripe for fascism. People are incredibly cruel to children because they were treated cruelly and abused, and it seems like a perpetual inheritance for our species so far.
I think the species will most-likely self-destruct before it comes to a place of self-understanding and control over and sublimation of aggressive behavior into truly constructive behavior.
I don't seek consensus--especially not about God. I explain my terms as best I can and will be glad to expand and clarify.
Which I believe it always has been. It's the essence of patriarchy. I've been studying a little about Isaac Luria's kabbalistic system and its sexism broke my heart. He couldn't have subordinated female to male any more thoroughly. This is why I'm working on a genderless understanding of God, except that metaphorically, I see the cosmos as a womb. Luria saw semen as the most sacred fluid in the cosmos, but I ask, what good is semen without an egg? The egg and the womb are nowhere to be seen in his mysticism. I'm moving beyond that. Perhaps all God is is Mother Nature on the cosmic level...
The reason he, and others before him tend to put it at the front - is because of its active role in conception. It's transmutation versus substance, or in simpler terms - player vs piece.
I wonder, though, if he supposedly omits the extensive female imagery throughout Hebrew literature, why study him?
You correct about your 'community of discourse', and that is why the OP 'atheism' issue is a straw man since atheists by definition are not members of those communities.
But if that doesn't work we could try a transcendent being that is in "the world" but not of "the world".
Not at all, but I think the privilege of describing God should be offered first to theists. That makes sense, doesn't it? :chin:
I don't buy that for a minute as a justification, as if the sperm were any more active than the egg. Your statement comes from inside the philosophy that I'm trying to stand outside of. The sperm is futile without the egg; the egg is empty without the sperm.
Why study Luria? If I don't study Luria and other kabbalists, how will I be able to add my voice, present my argument, create a non-sexist, non-gendered Jewish mysticism??? If I can't take the heat, I'd better stay out of the kitchen; but I can take the heat, so I'm in the fray.
Quoting Bartricks
That doesn't work for me. Beliefs vary widely, of course, and the details of my personal beliefs aren't important here, but the God I venerate is not a creator-God, for a start; and I don't care to speculate on what omni-s She may or may not exhibit, when I know so little of Her nature (etc). Perhaps belief just spreads too far to accommodate in one description? :chin:
It seems the most powerful descriptions of God are those made by the Aristotelian argument from motion or the Neo-Platonic argument from composition, to give two examples. Both get you to a purely actual actualiser (the ultimate ongoing source of everything) to which you can add for logical reasons the divine attributes of immutability, eternality, immateriality, perfection, goodness, omnipotence, omniscience and intelligence. To be an atheist for intellectual (as opposed to purely emotional) reasons it appears to be those descriptions you’re (speaking generally) up against in providing refutations, or at least compelling rebuttals, of theism.
Why are you so aggravated over this? It's merely a lack of symbiosis.
The sperm can do more than merely impregnate the egg cell; one is a producer, whereas the other is a container - and this is not a difference meant to insinuate superiority.
Quoting uncanni
There are other and better ways to perform what you wish to do. If you don't study Luria, you merely spare yourself Luria.
Mind you, Jewish mysticism is not sexist - that would be merely some mystics.
Ah, a proper atheist. :smile: I apologise to you and your brothers and sisters. When I referred to "atheists", I referred to the majority of people who take that label for themselves, but they are really just God-deniers. True atheists, as you say, are indifferent to the concept (and actuality? :wink: ) of God. The deniers seek only to express their contempt for belief and believers, not realising that their active assertion of the non-existence of God places them alongside theists in a faith position.
This topic is intended, if possible (and I suspect it isn't possible), to offer a description of God for these deniers to address. One that doesn't include some of the sillier parts of historical descriptions of God, like the omni-nonsense. She may or may not be omnivorous, but what does that tell us humans? Not a lot; nothing of note.
Excellent point, could not agree more with your analysis there!
I'll take a stab at your OP though, a metaphysical proposition:
The concept of God is a mottled color of truth.
That 'nature' or description can be inferred from the Christian God. Meaning, Jesus had a human conscious. Our consciousness is not logical (finite).
So the question for Atheists is how do they know the truth that the Christian God did not exist?
This bothers me a bit. To the extent that Jesus was God, he was not human. To the extent that he was human, he wasn't God. It's a bit of a puzzler (to me). I tend to think of Jesus as a human possessed by God. I'm sure many will disagree. :wink: I don't think much (anything?) about God can be inferred or deduced from what it is to be human. After all, if we were anything like God, we might understand Her - and what She is - much better than we do, no? :chin:
Quoting 3017amen
Yes; that question is aimed at the deniers though. :up: :smile: But maybe not here in this topic? :wink: This topic aims, if possible, to seek a common description of God, for us all to use in our discussions. Those discussions regularly (try to) consider how deniers come to their Truth....
I'm not aggravated--not in the least.
Quoting Shamshir
Here I must say that you are wrong, and that I know what my best course of reading consists of. I'm not asking for advice; I'm merely expressing my view on things. You can't appropriate my view.
You're expressing your thoughts and so am I. That's what we do here. It goes without saying. And my thoughts are that your thoughts on this topic are airy fairy, unworkable, and all over the place. Stuff like God is love, god is a state of mind, the rejection of God is sexist and violent, etc. Pseudo-intellectual nonsense.
Very well, if you intend to battle it out with the sandbag, go ahead.
...sure I get that! Aside from the various concepts of Christian Revelation/consciousness & phenomena, one can think of it another way if you will:
Anytime you encounter things that seemingly are not true, illogical or half-truth's, including ineffable experiences and the like you've subsequently encountered a sense of wonder. (Do lower life forms need a sense of wonder, or self-awareness to survive, or is it instinct and survival of the fittest? My view is that it's another metaphysical 'extra' , abstract feature like math and musical ability. Another question altogether of course.)
But back to half-truth's. I use the word 'mottled' because in logic that's a synonymous concept for things that are half-true (breaks the rule of non-contradiction). And so my theory is, since Jesus was recorded in history as being 'half man half God', it's not such a ginormous leap to infer that particular concept of God is real.
It doesn't matter to me if you disagree; I feel sorry for you that you have the need to be nasty about it. You can try to insult, but it may be that you can't understand a discourse so different from your own. You don't even want to. That is sad to me.
Sandbag? Are you the sandbag? I won't battle anything out with anyone.
For some this means explanation leads ultimately to God as the answer, but for others to God as the limit of human understanding, the unanswerable.
I'm not insulting you, I'm just given you honest criticism about [I]your expressed thoughts[/I], and apparently you don't like that. You're actually the one who is [I]getting personal[/I], not me.
By the way, the original version of your reply was much better.
I have nothing to prove to you, and I don't care what you think of my ideas. That doesn't hurt me, but it makes me sad to see you behave in a hostile way. So you should stop or I will report you.
Someone who refers to their teapot as God and insists that on their definition the teapot qualifies is simply using a common term with a well understood meaning in a misleading way.
Compounding the above, what is eternal has no input, making its outputs to be random, as we note in Quantum Mechanics, but which we can still presume as everything possible happening from it, this granting creatorship and the resultant transitions by laws that get formed at higher and higher levels.
In the superpositions of all that is possible, as our logical and new 'God', although reduced from our ultimate imaginings, all the paths get followed, but some don't amount to much, while others continue on, this brute force necessity of a method not having to impossibly foresee any specific, workable direction, but still ensuring that one will be found, as ours was.
This new 'God' works for the essential notions as a kind of a lowercase god but at least the contradictions are gone, making for more satisfaction.
Let us praise the creative potential of the Eternal, if that still does something for us, or at least be awed.
I can't take you seriously at all, either, because you say things like this:
Quoting uncanni
And this:
Quoting uncanni
And this:
Quoting uncanni
And this:
Quoting uncanni
Quoting PoeticUniverse
I will drink and vape to that. Essentially, infinitely and eternally, God is quantum mechanics and so much more.
Yes, you're absolutely right. It irritates me when people do that. Do you think that they think that they're being clever or inventive?
Yes, indeed, hail to the Source. We didn't arrive at 'infinite' though, at least not yet.
But I don't really believe that you're angry about these things; there's something else, underneath, that governs your anger and cruelty. You could have asked me a question at any time, and I would have been glad to clarify. But if I'm correct and you hate women--or you just hate me specifically--, then there's absolutely nothing that I can say.
All I want to do here is dialogue with people, have my ways of thinking transformed and influenced by the brilliant thoughts of others. This isn't graduate school anymore; this isn't a job where people treat you like shit; this isn't the family in which you were perhaps treated like shit. So it's all you know: how to hate and try to get others to hate you.
I refuse to hate you; as a matter of fact, you no longer have my pity. You have my compassion and you even still have my desire to dialogue with you.
One final thing that needs clarification, because I can see that you are correct and some of what I posted wasn't clear at all: I think I've sketched my current feelings and perceptions of what God could be, and I agree with what Poetic Universe has written as well.
What I didn't explain is that part about what goes on with humans, which isn't about God, but about human behavior and psychology. When people express a lot of anger and hostility, it's like an addiction, and it gets worse and they need more and more anger and hostility. One of the many biblical stories like it is the Israelites making the calf of gold as soon as Moses trundled up the mountain. There are all of these things that can take me away from love, which I really like to practice with others, and they are all false idols which, in the past, have alienated me from myself, from authentic relationships with other people and from Everything (i.e., God).
When I've been mean to others, it's like a loss of soul, a process of dehumanization and a concurrent ability to dehumanize others. Then I'm a bit demonic. On one end of the spectrum, you get psychopaths like Dahmer, and towards the other end, you get, for example, professors and parents who take pleasure in demeaning and belittling the people over whom they have power. I've been teaching college students since the end of the 70s, and while I've lost my temper and my patience many times, I was never one of those professors who took pleasure from putting down grads or undergrads. I've always been appalled by that type of bullying.
This is my definition of human evil (in a nutshell, I could expand, but not here): the desire to inflict harm and suffering on others; the derivation of pleasure or a sense of satisfaction from such behavior. I could go on, but this is long enough. Talk to me, S.
Nope. Just attempting to separate 'god' from everything else THAT WE ALREADY HAVE A NAME FOR.
Otherwise, you get any powerful or knowledgeable entity counting as 'gods'. Once they count, why wouldn't, say, a pharaoh, or Stalin, or 'the internet' count? This has been addressed in nearly EVERY sci-fi show/movie. If everyone wants to be vague and metaphorical in their descriptions, fine...but it seems cowardly.
I'm reading a book about the curious religion of Mormonism, where they describe a corporeal anthropomorphic God, fully endowed with all human attributes, including not just eyes and ears, but emotions. The trinity to them is that there are three separate gods, making it polytheistic. God is not actually the creator to them, as they believe matter has existed for eternity, with God simply organizing what there has always been.
So what is God universally? I don't think there is such a thing. Even within religions, you have disagreements, especially as religions evolve over time. There was a time when Judaism was not monotheistic, although today it rests upon that as its defining characteristic.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.
I thought we did arrive at Infinite. I don't think infinity is all the same; I think there's probably infinite variation.
These disputes about the viability of description of 'God' are of course grist to the mill for those who base their atheism on the potential social perniciousness of the concept.
Holy smokes! An obscure word! And just after the pleasant old country mill image. What a shock.
In this thread, I guess we mostly aim only for the plans for a workable 'God' for all, but perhaps the grinding of the axe at the mill toward religious belief's harm ever slips in. I think that 'God' is highly improbable. Live and let live, unless asked for an opinion.
Or at least all that's possible, which is still a heck of a lot.
Hmmm, based on the thread title, I thought "consensus" was the whole point of this thread. After Pattern-chaser's responses, I had to re-read and I am now aware I read the whole thing wrong (not sure why he went with that title), but anyway...
If we are not seeking consensus (some sort of shared understanding), why would I be interested in the explanation? I really don't mean that dismissively or rhetorically. I am sure you are a wonderful person, but I am not here to get to know people. If I am not trying to get you know you, and we are not seeking a shared understanding...what other reason would there be for an explanation?
Please be patient with me. I struggle to understand you. I will try to restate in words I understand...
So you are saying one necessary description of 'god' is that it must be eternal? And "complete' throughout all of eternity?
On a side note, apparently, I am a VERY literal thinker. I have largely hated poetry my whole life. That doesn't mean that others don't appreciate it, so I tend to just avoid getting in discussions with you, as I have been amazed at how well you live up to your screen name. Whether written in stanzas or not, all of your writing seems rather poetic to me.
I think a place to start is can we say that God can be a metaphor for "what is" (aka metaphysics)? Does God have to have a telos (a universal end or goal)? Does God have to involve some sort of mystical understanding?
If God is simply a metaphor for "what is", then I think that is a starting place. From here we can perhaps examine things like point of view. What is the world without the point of view of a self? In other words, what is the view from anywhere, everywhere, and nowhere? So far we can only imagine views from a subjective self, but not anywhere, everywhere, and nowhere.
As that is CLEARLY the thrust of your argument, the OP seems a bit disingenuous?
The whole thing just seems designed to make fun of atheists who are interested in the concept of god. How dare they. You certainly got me :smile:
First, I am interested in all this, but I want to get right to the point. Feel free to call me stupid, but please don't get offended and stop arguing (same goes for @PoeticUniverse, @Pattern-chaser, @uncanni and everyone else).
Ok, but if 'god' is a metaphor then it doesn't actually impact our reality (at least not any more than any other fictional being that one might believe is real), right?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not a requirement for me.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not sure. Can you give me an example of mystical understanding? I am probably making it far more complicated than it needs to be
Quoting schopenhauer1
Correct me where I am wrong...doesn't this line of thought start with admitting there is no god? If it is JUST a metaphor for 'what is' then it is ONLY a metaphor....? I am fine with this, but I doubt many of the theists will be?
I wasn't arguing, at least in this thread or yet rather :).
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Well, I should say a "stand in", a synonym maybe for "what is the case". As for being not real, it depends on how we want to limit the concept. For example, Plato had a concept of "The Good" but Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Dionysus, Pan, and all the other Greek deities and demigods were floating around too. Plato's The Good seems more like a metaphysical statement and the Greek deities (pre-Socratic at least) seemed more like traditional gods of some transcendental kind that looks after human affairs and creates the universe and all that. So are we rejecting things like metaphysical statements and keeping deities, or is the field relatively open?
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Oh prophetic visions, some divine communion sensation, otherworldly beings, otherwordly trances, otherwordly visions, revelations, feelings of oneness, out-of-body experiences, things like that.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Right, theists generally believe there to be an aspect of a transcendent being usually to be considered "God". But if we are in the realm of something like Plato's The Good, or Spinoza's God, Schopenhauer's Will, Whitehead's process theology, and other metaphysical foundational ideas, then the field is opened up to more than just "some transcendent being that creates and cares what humans do".
Haha, well once I am in the picture, it is only a matter of time.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Now that I am starting to understand you (I think?), I think I am on board. You are getting into all of the concepts or ideas that god or gods have ever represented and including them in a potential description of god...right?
Quoting schopenhauer1
oh. Duh. I was thinking of how to describe god in a mystical way, vs "learning" about it using mystical methods.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think this sounds rather interesting and I have never considered looking at 'god' from this perspective. But rather than referring to it/them as god, couldn't we just say "metaphysical foundational ideas" and our communication would be more clear?
I like it, but I really don't see any theists (or even many agnostics) agreeing to this description of god?
Yes, as not a smart evolved alien but as Fundamental and First, intact and complete, with no beginning and no end, as eternal, since something exists, obviously, and that Existence has no alternative that can be. Even if we were only philosophically discussing what 'IS', not 'God', those attributes would still apply, and so it's a good starting point. It's like Parmenides’ unity in multiplicity idea sort of.
Logically...isn't there no more reason for an eternal god as there is for one that just popped into being? If this paragraph was supposed to provide that logic, I am not seeing it. Seems more like fancy restatements of your position?
How do we know that all that 'is' is eternal?
Hypothetically, IF (big if, I get) the big bang was the start of the universe then your argument would be that the permanent nothingness that existed before that was 'god'? And because by your definition 'god' is 'all that is' then after the big bang, all of that is still 'god'? Couldn't the lower case 'existence' capture everything you are saying in simple everyday language?
Since it cannot be made from the impossible 'Nothing' nor can it make itself, it just 'is', as ever, without beginning or end. If we still really want to have something from nothing, then there had to be some way, some potential or capability, which is something, and so we didn't really have nothing in the first place as we claimed. That's just to doubly close the idea, for 'nothing' cannot even be meant, which is Parmenides' great claim.
Yes.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Yes, and that is looking more and more as what 'god' really boils down to, without us making big unwarranted jumps to more. Instead of "I am what I am", "Existence is what it is."
Yes we can. This is why I ask these questions.
:grin: 'Existence is what is'...is a phrase that would have the 'E-Prime movement' rolling in the aisles since their philosophical mission statement was to proscribe the word 'is' !
If interested in 'existence', I invite you to visit or revisit my entry discussion ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5901/existence-is-relative-not-absolute
Did you really think there would be consensus about this topic? If I'm limited to express what I think will fulfill the expectations of the readers, then my writing will be subject to all the wrong influences. I must express my understanding of God and see how it connects--or not--to others' ideas.
I thought consensus, or something close, was the idea too. I called it what I called it because that's what I was looking for, if it was/is there to be found?
No, it wasn't/isn't. I'm sorry if it seems that way to you. :yikes:
So does this restrict the kinds of propositions about God that one can put forth? I thought I was getting close to consensus with at least some folks, while others were never seeking consensus.
Not as far as I'm concerned, but if we go too far out from the 'mainstream', if there is one, that won't take us in the direction of a general description of God that we could agree on. Aside from that, go for it! :up:
What if the Mind isn't a part, but the totality of the First and Fundamental Being?
Can the being or consciousness itself be part of the creation, in no way extraneous to it?
Then we are all made of God-stuff, as the atman in the Brahman.
Or, without God's Mind, we are all made of the base existence.
All that 'is' already is, complete.
I assumed that Everything was God; I thought we came to that conclusion--at least, I had.
What is base about existence? If God is existence, then... I suppose "base" is as good an adjective as any--except, is existence the foundation, or has existence, er, existed for eternity?
I think language inevitably does us a disservice with these issues.
As I said before - these questions can only be meaningfully discussed within ‘communities of discourse’. In the mainstream Christian community, the notion of ‘God being all’ or ‘all being God’ is heresy or worse. There’s no prospect of changing that.
Ideas like ‘?tman and Brahman’ were up until recently confined to the Hindu domain of discourse. However influential Hindu public intellectuals became highly influential in the Anglosphere in the early 20th century, later picked up and amplified by New Age books and other cultural currents. If you take the time to study the actual teachings they do make philosophical sense, but in many cases, bit and pieces of ideas get picked up and sloganised, which we’re seeing here. And there’s nothing intrinsically the matter with that, as it’s part of the means by which such ideas are assimilated into culture.
Yes, since what 'is', as ever, is all there is, and so, as @rlcauler says better, it has to transmute into forms of itself, heresy or not, and so this is what logically has to be, as the new common ground of 'God' or 'IS'.
A nun wonders, about a philosopher of old,
“I have read in your flowing ancient tome
That a man’s mind is God in human form
Though it does admit this idea is rough
And might not with normal logic conform.
“So, like you and me, mind and God unite
Just as the sun is connected to light.
“What’s here now has to be as that long before,
Not new out of the blue, for there is no more;
So we and all are akin to what is,
Ne’er less—we're united beyond the door.”
"Oh, thou, that olden wise man, come here fast,
For you're alive in that keep of the past."
The Ancient soon arrives, full of energy.
[i]‘Hail to the All, philosophical clergy.
I’ve read your poems’ presents to the forum.
I a-rose from death, from fumes down the stems.’[/i]
The young nun now caught in the light that shined,
Stilled her racing heart and then searched her mind
For questions fit for resurrected Guides
To ask the Apparition by her side.
She hoped that in some miraculous ways
Her monk was included in the man's gaze
But fearing that she might be all alone
She would address the man in trembling tone.
“I’m seeing,” said her monk, “his spectral form.
He’s moving, by Something, out of his norm.
We’ve stirred him from the underground city—
Of unity in multiplicity.”
"Great spirit, I have lately read your words
And have some questions you might find absurd
My abiding wish is to understand
And beg your patience with my learning bland."
The spirit then turned as the world stood hushed,
Regarded the nun with her young face flushed,
[i]‘Your quest and your love are both holy pure
And deserve answers you are seeking for.[/i]
[i]‘All must at last to itself return One,
When each age of long existence is done.
Matter exists by reconstitution
And existence works by revolution.
‘The One splits and breaks to diversity,
So becoming the All that you can see.
Humanity, twixt their birth and their death,
Is the turning point of His Holy Breath.
‘All matter is chains of numbers composed,
Built into each entity’s science code.
That’s how Life keeps order within the change,
As One to All simply builds and erodes.
‘This is the message so plain and so clear
That you two this day are given to hear.'[/I]
…
el - towardness
o - conduit
him - sea (as in: expanse)
which I find are the image (male: phallus who bestows) and likeness (female: ovum which receives) qualities that give rise to Adam and Eve made in the image and likeness of Elohim, and the conduit through which they operate and interact with one another, which fundamentally reduces into the reproductive organ. Thus "GOD" I would define as:
and this is how knowledge of good and evil is attained.
And also the children of God (El).
Quoting A Gnostic Agnostic
That seems like a jump, but I'll be darned, for all along I thought "good and evil" became of "God and Devil", or vice versa, rather than of reproductive organs.
Anagramming is the REAL Key to All
Hidden in the word ‘Evolution’ which as an anagram…
is the meaning
Outlive On
which means literally metaphorically to outlive the others,
in order to survive and live on, and
Vile No Out
Vile On Out
which symbolically means that we can go either way, vile or not, and
Live On Out
which the wise old ancients took to mean to live well and look alive, and
Evil No Out
Evil On Out
which the symbolic Bible reveals to have a mixture of good and ‘bad’ is best, and
Novel I Out
which is the story of evolution read to us by the fossils, and
Ovule In To
Love In Out
which means for man and woman to know each other
in the Biblical way to procreate and recreate, and, finally
Love I Unto
which proves beyond all doubt that
evolution = love.
In total, then, all the above really proves the great insight that…
letters can be rearranged.
And yet: Whence evil? Is it uniquely human creation? Is it somehow separate from "God," and if not, how is it a part of the whole? Should one attempt to examine evil without anthropomorphizing it? Why would it be separate? It would have to be a part of the whole.
It's when I contemplate evil, which I consider entirely human-made, that I'm left asking more and more questions. I never consider this issue from the standpoint of original sin or any other kind of origin of evil; I'm personally not concerned with origin in this case.
I'd be interested to know others' thoughts on the nature of evil.
Evil and all the kinds of ugliness of humans needs to be of the All/'God', for how could there be something independent and separate? Dismay follows. There are no longer many gods; so, we can't stick the evil onto just a few of them, as was done in the poly past.
eclipse of the sun. When the eclipse came exactly when predicted, the simpletons had hard time reaching any other conclusion rather than the one the priests wanted - i. e. that they indeed are in contact with God. (if you don't bring me gold, the God will punish you!) Who are priests anyway to claim any sort of expertise when it comes to God? Well, if you believe anyone without exercising critical thinking - you're in for trouble. There's a whole lot of money to be made on the naive masses. God is just one of the tricks. Some people are even clueless enough to kill in the name of God and not seem to be aware that they're violating a major commandment. To sum it up: we just invented God that is like us: emotional, vengeful etc. , just because our limited imagination couldn't do better than that. Frankly, I think it's pitiful. I think we should focus on practical matters and things that we are able to grasp. And accept, that some things remain unexplicable. At least for now.
We suspect as much, but this thread's OP ignores that kind of literal, Biblical 'God', since it is disproved by contradictions and science.
Quoting enqramot
Still, it gets one to thinking about alternatives and what can and cannot coincide, philosophically, beyond the Person-Hood Mind aspect that gets abandoned, such as deriving Existence to be here all at once, as ever/eternal, and what that would further imply, as I've hinted earlier, such as it having to be an everything of no information content, as not anything in particular, for it seems to have no inputs of cause that can go into it, due to its no beginning, and so the effects would be as random.
Original Sin doesn't work out so well, anyway, as a blame, for 'God' would be fully responsible for creating a human nature that has His intended capabilities in it, for evil, good, and whatnot.
So, evil would have to be some necessity for us from 'God'/All. The 'freedom' given to humans would then have to be totally free of consequences from Him.
Conventional descriptions depend on our physical senses and this is out of the question since God is a non-physical being whatever that means.
If we God can be perceived non-physically then there would a problem because such experiences would be private and impossible to convey to another except in approximations so vague as to be useless.
Also I think a description forms the basis of a definition. A description that is unique, as is required here, would be a definition wouldn't it?
Define God, no
Describe, ergo, so
here full the description
but that's just the definition
if you describe fine
that's just what we do when we define
That's ok. But why even use the word "God"? Words should mean something, have some definition, whereas "God" is just a placeholder. What if we were created by some entity itself created by another entity that was created by yet another entity. Giving "God" any attributes is completely mad IMO. Possibly the only way to find out about the nature of the Universe is through direct experience (idk, meditation? drugs? lucid dreaming?) Scientific exploration for as long as it takes before we destroy our world and put a self-inflicted end to all our ill-conceived efforts.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Not sure what you mean there :)
The concepts employed by the majority of people I've ever discussed it with turn me off completely, but I think I understand why people believe the way they do: it's too terrifying not to have what Unamuno referred to as fairy tales to comfort them.
It's 'merely' a summary of the derivation of the ultimate Theory of Everything, which would conclude with Totality/Existence being causeless. Yes, it's simple and almost boring, as not what was expected, but still the answer to the most often asked question.
Nicely done :smile:
Did you come up with that on the spot, or have you used it before? How long did it take to originate? It would have taken me hours, but I get the sense you can just spit that out off the top of your head?
It was fast, for there are sites on the internet for making anagrams.
Well, I am still impressed. You still had to make up all that BS for the anagrams to make your point..
I can't disagree. The aim of this topic is laudable, I think, but quite possibly unattainable, as you suggest. :smile:
The reasoning spurred by investigations into 'God' even gives us the outline of The Theory of Everything:
TOE Bound
The philosophical strides leap and bound,
For the causelessness of All must be found,
Along with the unfree will that dooms a Mind;
It’s staggering: All goes round and round!
Actually the somewhat acceptable definition would be as the Creator of the Universe. This assumes that existence of the universe begs a maker. This is of course just a matter of belief, it is not proven. On the other hands some might entertain a definition of God as the source of Good things in the universe like Love, beauty, kindness, empathy, etc.. The second definition need not be confused with the first, for a belief in ONE maker of the universe who has absolute dominion on it, might raise ethical points against him, like allowing evil to happen at such a great scale that is not explainable on the basis of testing, or any reasonable basis really. The second God might not have that dominion but it is more beautiful in the sense it only give rise to what is good, so there are no ethical points against him, but he looks weak in comparison with the first God. I think the nature of God and the relation of its dominion to what's happening in the universe is almost impossible question to solve, that we might as well be agnostic about it. The real point is to seek HOPE in existence being something more than just an emotionless stream of stuff. It confers more value to existence. However on the other side, we notice that the known revelations are doing very bad job in drawing an image about that God. Unfortunately the bible depicts God ordering some of his prophets to kill thousands of people including children, and their animals, burn whole cities, but take their GOLD to the treasury of God? Others picture God as sending you to an EVERLASTING TORTURE for not believing that an apparently human being called Jesus who lived some couple of thousand years ago is in reality God himself impersonated in a human form? What a sin? Other religions would also picture God sending the MAJORITY of people he created to an EVERLASTING burning in fire, for not believing in a revelation made by Angles for which we have no evidence whatsoever of them being really angles coming from him? Clearly those religions are just human ways of trying to solve the religious philosophical questions about existence, they failed, they need to be improved. That doesn't mean that there is no possible source of Goodness in this universe which is a rational being, it only means that we failed to approach him in the right way. It doesn't mean he is not helping us, however we cannot prove that he did. On the other hand It would be a mystery to explain his apparent silence?
No; it's mine.
Quoting Sunnyside
Only sometimes.
Happy to see that you're not from the dark side.
I find your lack of faith disturbing. You don't know the power of the Dark Side. :smile:
@Sunnyside Poeticuniverse is certainly talented...unfortunately I just have a general aversion to poetry. But even I can admit that he adds something to the forum...hopefully people like you can enjoy it.
If one believes human reason and logic is capable of describing everything, including God, then one must realize that the evolution of human intellect and reason has peaked, that there is no room for further progress. Because only a mind that has reached the epitome of evolution, and is capable of understanding every aspect of God's creation (the universe) might have a possibility of understanding God. At least to the point of providing a meaningful description.
However if one believes that homo sapiens is just another link in a continuing evolutionary process, that the super sapiens of ten million years in the future will look back at homo sapiens' intellect in the same way we view the intellect of a house cat... then clearly we lack the capability to formulate an appropriate, meaningful description of the universe, and even less, of God.
So the real question is, do we have what it takes to come up with a description resembling The Creator of the universe?
It is really just a matter of faith, of believing. Believing we are the fanciest thing the universe is capable of spitting out, or believing we are just another rung in the ladder. Pick your poison.
Excellent! Rather than trying to describe God, you wonder whether humans are capable of describing Her ... as a good philosopher should! :up: :smile: Thanks for the comments. :smile:
Zhou BoTong, trapped in a cave by a poem,
As by the writing on the wall stranded,
Was martially both right and left handed;
Such he slashed rhythms and rhymes from the stone.
No, clearly not, for exactly the same reason that I've given multiple times now, which is that a meaningful distinction between theism and atheism must be maintained if we're to talk any sense. I believe in what is. That doesn't mean that I believe in God. That doesn't make me a theist.
Honestly, how can anyone fail to see the importance of this?
If it's not a sensible consensus, then it's not worth it. If the rest of you all agreed that God is a state of mind, then good for you, but that's still a terrible description.
Hahaha. Nicely done again.
Imagine my dismay
Having smashed the rhymes
And entered the light of day
Just to spend my time
Listening to people rhyme away
I would definitely score high marks in 4th grade poetry :grin:
You don't have to answer, but do you get paid for some form of writing? From my amateur, poetry-hating perspective, you really do seem pretty clever in your writing.
I am also realizing that I don't mind poetry if the purpose is just to have a laugh (and I obviously enjoy some music). But, when someone is trying to make a serious point, I wish they would just make it (even your simple poem above took me two or three reads before I really understood all 4 lines).
Quoting S
I hear all that. But I am not convinced that most people in this thread are even understanding what we are getting at...I certainly am not understanding what they are getting at?
I had to first look up the Zhou Botong character on Wiki so that the poem would make a little bit of sense.
Nice. I thought you lucked into all that martial stuff.
Oh, and I thought it made perfect sense. It is just that figurative language and the grammar of poetry cause me to take longer to understand. I thought it was brilliant (well, clever for poetry anyway, haha) by the time I figured it out
The adventurous Zhou was back in the light of day, wondering what the descriptions of 'God' had in common, but there was a paradox with the 'Eternal' being timeless and and 'God' seeming to do things in time, this perhaps making for some bad weather in the thread when it became known.
So, he takes a walk in the woods to clear his head of 'God' and from capital letters beginning verse lines…
BoTong sights an ominous type of cloud,
And shakes, hearing thunderous rhymes so loud,
Just having survived the meters’ melodies
And scans, and the ten syllables allowed.
He runs breathless through meadow and forest,
Fast pursued by the stings of wind and rain;
On and on he pushes, wild without rest,
Searching for haven from the forum’s pain.
The storm chases him till he can go no more;
He stands helpless, backed up against a door,
But falls through it before death can touch him,
Saved by the library admitting him.
He wanders deep, down the poetic path,
Aglow in the soft beauty that it hath.
He sees John Keats kissing Fanny Brawne,
As he spoke more than words but less than song.
And Byron, endowing form with fancy,
While Wordsworth pens his thoughts to Lucy,
And Shelley, plumbing depths of mystery.
He reads them all; they grow his poet-tree.
Deeper still he probes, looking in on it,
And hears Mrs. Browning reading a sonnet.
Poetically, he takes them all in, even
The shadowy Emily Dickenson.
As soon as the lightning storm is past,
Zhou Botong enters the courtyard so vast.
Here the secret garden, half as old as time,
Where poets live and write their words and rhyme,
While the nightingale creates the rose,
By moonlit magic, from their thoughts sublime.
Literary scenes unfold before him,
Such as music approaches and surrounds,
And builds on the vibrance which in one is—
To fill with beautiful visions and sounds.
His quick thoughts rise, mist wafting from the dew,
As living dreams unveil more than he knew.
From poetry’s light the garden grew,
Revealing mysterious wonders new.
There Zhou relaxes, up against a tree,
Savoring the feeling of the poetry,
Where all the flowers used in Shakespeare’s plays
Grow together in a living bouquet.
It's because they don't care. They have different priorities, like sounding creative and profound, even though they're actually just talking uncritical nonsense without realising it.
I don't really know.. I actually do wish I was a true believer considering I'm at my lowest point where Jesus's shoulder to cry on might actually fix everything. I'm going to have to intuitively perceive their god as a vibration of love and unity and just see where it takes me.
As this is almost a direct argument, I would take issue with your use of "eternal", "timeless", "god" and "do things", but as I am probably missing some metaphor, I will leave it alone.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
I don't dislike things that I have NOT been exposed to (damn, is that a triple negative? oh well, it says what I mean). So are you suggesting if I try shakespeare, dickinson, byron, keating, etc, for a 2nd (or 20th) time, I will change my mind? I am not sure that vague, fictional metaphors will convince me of poetry's value...even if they seem clever and well put-together :smile:
Nah, it's just for fun and because you commented. 'Adonais' by Shelley is one of the best I've come across.
So, if 'God' is outside of time, as timeless, He can't change or change events, I suppose.
Obviously you have never even seen an atheist. It is easy to talk about the alleged god: "God does not exist." Period.
Did you see any hardship or difficulty there? There was none. So there.
You can come to any agreement, as long as you and the parties you are conversing with agree on something.
Let me put my vote on this description of god: "An imaginary but non-existent entity that many use as a crutch to fill all kinds of gaps in their philosophical outlook. The tangible benefits of god worship are non-existent. Only spiritual benefits can be measured, but these benefits are counter-balanced and nullified, or displaced by spiritual damages."
Prove it! No, I know you can't. That's why yours is a faith position, just like mine. But, unlike me, you assert your personal faith position to be factual, without evidence. Your reasoning is fatally flawed.
And like a fish on a hook, you became the example.
That's not true. You're putting words in his mouth. What he actually said was that it's difficult for atheists to talk about God because there's no generally agreed upon description of God.
But don't you think that's a basis for polemics?
Yes. :smile:
Polytheistic gods, like Zeus and Shiva, have been extensively described over the centuries. But singular capital "G" God, as in monotheism, is generally viewed as undefinable and indescribable. The Jews were so in awe of such a mind-boggling concept that they were even afraid to pronounce the name of God, as-if defining the infinite would be demeaning.
But, in general, the god concept has always, in all times, and in all cultures, been the ultimate answer to all mysteries . . . to all philosophical questions: How did the world begin? Where did I come from? Why is the world the way it is? Why is the world so imperfect and evil? And to many personal questions : Will I ever be truely loved? Where did my beloved go at death? How can I avoid the evils of tomorrow?
In recent centuries though, Science has found mundane answers to many of those old philosophical riddles. By describing the physical universe in fine detail, it has almost put philosophers out of their job of answering Big Questions. Meanwhile, astrologers and psychics and fortune-tellers have provided vague-but-effective answers for minor personal uncertainties. So, the only niche left for impractical idealistic philosophers was the quaint category of murky meta-physics : the catch-all for leftover enigmas, not otherwise addressed by pragmatic Physics or sympathetic Psychics.
But now, Science has whittled the material world down to intangible particles & invisible fields, and found that -- lo and behold -- the foundation of physics is grounded on immaterial metaphysics. So, maybe philosophers, the experts on trans-physics matters, can regain some of their lost stature by looking again at the big questions from the perspective of modern physics and cosmology instead of ancient myths and traditions.
If God is infinite. If God is ALL. Then any descriptions we might come up with will necessarily be incomplete, and maybe misleading, and always controversial. But Philosophers have never been afraid to go where angels fear to name names. :cool:
— Extrinsic Shadow, Intrinsic Light —
Physics, once more direct, is now but an
Immaterial science of math-shadows,
While mysticism, once but a fogged notion,
Claims the direct observation of the Light.
— The Mystical Realm —
It said, in my dreams, “Of ever waking,
It’s hard to convince you, in dream-language,
As when, in wakeful reality,
To tell you of that which is beyond telling.”
;)
And whining turns discussions in to gang wars.
And yours falls under the latter?
:up:
Good thing sufficient descriptions of god are irrelevant, as well as agreement on them and multiple descriptions of god are not at all necessary for atheism disprove things, but instead just paint a colorful picture that makes the ride easier for the religious folk.
It is not at all relevant to know what type of "God" they are, only what they are claiming about reality and asserting to be true. Consensus is a religious problem, not an atheist one.
Atheists that make mistakes usually just don't know what they're talking about but it doesn't discredit the ones that do. So how about talking to atheists that do?
"The impious man is not he who denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many." ~Epicurus
I was a believer earlier in my life but part of the reason for converting to atheism was the fact that there were so many definitions and beliefs in God which seemed to all coincide with the culture you grew up in, so the beliefs and definitions were inconsistent and arbitrary. Which God should I believe in? Why call it a god in the first place? Most descriptions seemed to describe God as an extradimensional alien.