Politesse
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I'm not really clear on what an "entity" is supposed to be or not be, here. Can someone clarify?
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God is not an Entity?
- Thread starter lpetrich
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skepticalbip
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The entity...
???
???
Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
[Monty Python voice on]
Mrs Thing: "Hello Mrs. Entity"
Mrs Entity: "Hello Mrs. Thing"
[Monty Python voice off]
Entity, a thing or a substance. A substance is a thing that has essences. Essences make a thing a hamster, a table or a god, depending on it's essences. A thing or entity has a substance and essences. Essences may be general, substances that are general, hamster for example. And may denote a specific example, Sid the Vicious Hamster for example, that makes Sid a different hamster than other hamsters, entities or substances. Some things are actual or real, others like numbers are abstract entities.
Politesse
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In that case, I definitely think of God as an entity, though perhaps more like a number than a hamster.
Cheerful Charlie
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Simplicity of God
God's essences and God's substance are one and the same. That way, theologians do not have to explain what the metaphysical essences are and what metaphysical principal(s) combined these essences into one substance. That way they can claim there are no metaphysical things outside and beyond God. God is a special substance. A special kind of entity. One of the oldest Christian doctrines, predating Christianity, now held as a dogma by almost all Christian sects. In this manner, God is not like tables, clouds or hamsters. Or mere mortals. Some philosophers and theologians do not believe in simplicity of God, holding it is not coherent. But then have to contend with what is the substance of God. God's simplicity supposedly includes his aseity, his existence. Thus all existence is in principle caused by God. Giving rise to the doctrines of pre-suppositionalism and The Transcendental Argument For God, TAG. God is still an entity.
T.G.G. Moogly
Traditional Atheist
That makes sense because everyone's god is different in every imaginable way.
Your "nature of god" is like that piece of paper upon which is written out a googleplex, not enough room to fit it into the known universe.
But when the rubber actually meets the road, you discover that their tires are flat. Or that their car doesn't have any tires at all. Or wheels for that matter.
If you have to define something as being beyond definition, there is no useful discussion to be had. Anything goes, and nothing goes. Now if a theist were to actually step up and define a god in terms of attributes that can be studied and quantified, that would be something. Like what is the quantum wave function(s) for God? How does God interact with the reality it exists in, and what are the properties of this reality? How does God defy the arrow of time (defy entropy)? How does God create universes? And so on. You can write volumes of fan fiction on what you think your God is, but until you are able to define this entity, your words are meaningless. I could write a five-volume epic on the nature of Bantu, the Supreme Cosmic Toad from whose divine flatulence this universe sprang, but it would still be worthless as a source of useful information.
Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
The big problem with debating God with theists on the internet is that God rests on claims that cannot be proven and may be fantasies. That there is a supernatural realm. That souls exist. That one can have a thinking personal being without matter. And then the problems start, free will and omniscience. Omnipotence, God's omnibenevolence and the problem of evil. And on and on it goes.
abaddon
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Theists solve such problems by making words mean whatever the believer needs them to mean, to get the wanted result: to protect himself from the possibility of disbelief.
T.G.G. Moogly
Traditional Atheist
For some folks it feels really good to pretend they have a real god. How would I quantify what I'm doing with the millions I just pretended to win in the lottery? That's as real as any god gets.
Atheism, on the other hand, is quite real, no pretending necessary.
bilby
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But think of the consequences!
If I hadn't won millions in the lottery, my life would suck. That's completely unacceptable. Therefore I must have won millions in the lottery.
QED.
Politesse
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Atheism isn't even a thing, how can it be "real"? At least, whenever you challenge some aspect of what would appear to be atheist philosophy, its supporters angrily insist that it is merely an absence of some other belief, and therefore needs no justification or support on its own grounds. You are simply an atheist if you aren't anything else. Even if you are a baby. Or a panda. Yes?
lpetrich
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Sort of like Friedrich Nietzsche's "If there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God! Therefore there are no gods." - Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Wikiquote
T.G.G. Moogly
Traditional Atheist
I didn't win the lottery. Is that something real? Let's see, "I really did not win the lottery." That sounds okay to me. "I really don't have a god." Sounds real enough.
Compare that with, "I really have a god." Just seems to leave a lot of questions don't you think?
ronburgundy
Contributor
What a gutlessly dishonest straw man of what I said.
Like the other thread, the purpose of my post is not to waste time arguing that theology fails to provide a valid intellectual case for God.
That issue what settled centuries ago by countless argument exposing the absurdity and lack of logic in all arguments for God's existence. Since there has not been a new argument for God in centuries (because theism doesn't care about evidence which accumulates over time), there is no need to rehash those arguments.
The purpose of my post is to discuss the purpose and nature of the rhetorical strategies that theists use when trying to argue for God.
So the question is why do they argue that God is a non-entity?
They do not at all "plainly say" their position. They constantly contradict themselves from moment to moment. All founding doctrines about their God (e.g. Bible) and the claims and ideas that most theists express about God have all the properties of a entity, and even all the psychological properties of a human being (emotions, goals, preferences, anger, jealousy, etc,). So, when they claim God is a non-entity when trying to make an intellectual case for God, there is clear evidence that they don't actually hold such a conception of God. In fact, a non-entity is non-existent by definition. So, if they were being honest in this claim about God, they are saying they think God does not exist, which would make them atheists. IOW, it is logically impossible for a theist to believe that God is a non-entity. Therefore, we can conclude with certainty that any theist making such a claim is not accurately stating what they believe about God.
So now that we know such a claim about God is clearly not the conception of God held by any theist who claim it, the question is why do they make such obviously false statements about the nature of the God they believe in. Given that they usually make these claims only when trying to present an intellectual case for God, the likely reason is that they know that their actual belief in a loving sky-daddy is so absurd and indefensible that they pretend their God is as vague as possible because any trait that admit their God has is another opportunity to show how implausible such a God is.
Thanks for proving my point. No where did I imply that theists never define God. I simply said that in the context of intellectual arguments about God, it is common for theists to refuse to define God. Of course they do define God at other times. That is clear evidence that they are intellectually dishonest whenever they refuse to define God, or claim that God is that which cannot be known, or that our logic doesn't apply to God (without logic, definitions don't exist), or many other countless ways that theists often backpeddle into a meaningless vague conception of God when confronted with evidence that their actual conception is absurd.
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It is real in the sense that atheists don't have to construct an elaborate facade of a worldview that can only be looked at from the right angle and in the right light, must never be load tested, and must never be examined in detail, or the illusion will be destroyed. Kind of like a movie set of a street, where you open the door to a house only to discover there is nothing behind the door other than the wooden props holding up the facade. Theists organize their lives so as to never have to open that door. They immerse themselves in rituals and affirmations to keep themselves from opening that door. Atheists aren't scared to open that door; in fact, they are likely atheists because they did.
ronburgundy
Contributor
You have a point in that some atheists go to far in trying to claim that atheism is merely the absence of theism. That would make it just as sensible to say "The sky is atheist" as to say "That guy is an atheist." The former is silly b/c it lacks the larger context that gives the concept of atheist its meaning.
Atheism is a state of mind in relation to a belief in a God. Thus, it requires a mind at least capable of forming a conception of God and then assigning some truth value to that idea. For anything else, the concept of atheism or theism simply does not apply.
I'd go even further and say there is an important difference between non-theist and an atheist. A non-theist is a person, who has a mind capable of being a theist or an atheist, but has not heard or ever considered the plausibility of the idea. Whereas an atheist is a person who has heard of and considered the concept of God and found it too below some threshold of plausibility to believe it is anything other than a concept.
All children qualify as non-theist at some point. But almost no adults in the modern world do, since they have nearly all heard of the concept and its centrality to so much of life in most societies makes it implausible that hardly any adults have not evaluated it's plausibility. IOW, I'd say that that the vast majority of people who don't qualify as theists are atheist in the sense they hold the position that God is implausible or at is less likely to exist than not.
Kharakov
Quantum Hot Dog
No, you're an entity with the thought of a cloud being an entity. The cloud is composed of entities reacting to one another.
T.G.G. Moogly
Traditional Atheist
If one has never heard of the lottery one cannot imagine winning millions of dollars by chance and considering how to spend all that newfound wealth. Life remains labor and reward for most of us to varying degrees of fulfillment.
I've heard believers say that accepting a god is like falling in love. I'd qualify that analogy by saying it is an imagined substitute for falling in love, a substitute for actually finding and falling in love with an ideal companion. The latter may in fact happen for a few of us but that companion in the end is a real flesh and blood organism, something with smells and sounds, something we can touch, not an idea, not something with supernatural powers, not something we're pretending is real, not an idealized extension of ourselves but something with its own sentience and awareness distinct from our own.
bilby
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People constantly and consistently underestimate and disregard the immense influence of the endocrine system on everything they think, believe, and do.
If 'finding God' is anything like falling in love, then reason, rationality, and the brain have very little to do with any of it. Any attempt to reproduce the behaviour in others (ie to convert an atheist), or to reverse the process (ie to get a theist to renounce his faith and become an atheist), by means of reason, logic, or thought, is doomed.
And of course, we observe that this is the case - very few people are ever persuaded by reasoned argument to change their position.
Yet we persist in the irrational belief that rationality is somehow a driver of belief.
I suspect that it's all part of the conceit that humans are somehow different from 'the animals'. But we are not different. We are animals. And our endocrine systems don't care if the brain wants to pretend to be in charge.
If 'finding God' is anything like falling in love, then reason, rationality, and the brain have very little to do with any of it. Any attempt to reproduce the behaviour in others (ie to convert an atheist), or to reverse the process (ie to get a theist to renounce his faith and become an atheist), by means of reason, logic, or thought, is doomed.
And of course, we observe that this is the case - very few people are ever persuaded by reasoned argument to change their position.
Yet we persist in the irrational belief that rationality is somehow a driver of belief.
I suspect that it's all part of the conceit that humans are somehow different from 'the animals'. But we are not different. We are animals. And our endocrine systems don't care if the brain wants to pretend to be in charge.