• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

Is a Hidden God the Same as No God?

Can a bottle of Coca-Cola be a god, too? And if a Coke worshiper came across an empty Coke bottle, would he say that God is dead? :unsure:
 
Can a bottle of Coca-Cola be a god, too? And if a Coke worshiper came across an empty Coke bottle, would he say that God is dead? :unsure:

Just think of the most obtuse remark a "Creationist" could say about Evolution and hold that up to your statement above and you will know what it is like for me to have to read it.

When, uh . . . Pood? Oh, when will the madness stop?

I almost hate to ask, but what the hell's a pood anyway? Is that a fecal matter reference? Past tense of Poo?

Let me put it to you this way. If what you call God, the one I allege created life, the universe and everything, hadn't created any sentient being of spirit or flesh to worship him he wouldn't be God or a god. Do you understand that? So, if today, all living beings, human and angel, stopped worshiping everything - there would be no Gods. Jehovah and all other beings and things that were once worshipped will continue existing, or not, as they did before, but they would no longer be gods.

Because that is what a god is. Someone or something that is mighty or venerated. Worshipped.
 
Can a bottle of Coca-Cola be a god, too? And if a Coke worshiper came across an empty Coke bottle, would he say that God is dead? :unsure:

Just think of the most obtuse remark a "Creationist" could say about Evolution and hold that up to your statement above and you will know what it is like for me to have to read it.

When, uh . . . Pood? Oh, when will the madness stop?

I almost hate to ask, but what the hell's a pood anyway? Is that a fecal matter reference? Past tense of Poo?

Let me put it to you this way. If what you call God, the one I allege created life, the universe and everything, hadn't created any sentient being of spirit or flesh to worship him he wouldn't be God or a god. Do you understand that? So, if today, all living beings, human and angel, stopped worshiping everything - there would be no Gods. Jehovah and all other beings and things that were once worshipped will continue existing, or not, as they did before, but they would no longer be gods.

Because that is what a god is. Someone or something that is mighty or venerated. Worshipped.
So nature is God?
 
How many global deluges have there been historically?
Historically, there is no scientific evidence for a single global flood, but many cultures have myths and legends about catastrophic deluges.

That doesn't answer my question. I didn't ask about evidence or science, I asked how many.

So, none.

Is that answer evidence of anything other than your opinion, which can't possibly be informed? You think if your science doesn't say it is so it can't be so? How is that not religious dogma? How are you any different than the "Christian" idiot who answers with "God did it"? Because it's science instead of God? They're the same. You get it? You make it that way, not Science or God. You are the one doing that.

But that’s historically. As a rhetorical device or a point of religious dogma, one can summon as many global fluddes as one needs, to put their fantasies on even semantic or rhetorical footing with scientific observation.

Now you got it!
 
So nature is God?

Of course! A god to those not worshipping it, like Zeus and Satan are to me. God to someone who worships nature above all other gods as Jehovah is to me and Moses or David. Jehovah told them he would become their God. Paul said there are many gods and many lords but to us there is only one God and one Lord. Contextually, he meant God as almighty and Lord as having authority. God means mighty, respected, venerated. i.e. worshipped, lord means authority. usually, but not necessarily granted by another. Jehovah is God almighty; Jesus was a mighty god. Both are lords. Jesus was granted authority by Jehovah.

Godfather. Landlord. My King. A king. King Charles. King Jehovah. Etc. Make sense?

Ask the atheist that thinks there is no God(s) if there are any lords and you trip them up on their indoctrinated ideology, if only for a second.

They make God into their own.
 
That doesn't answer my question. I didn't ask about evidence or science, I asked how many.
Zero isn't technically an integer, but it's probably the right answer. If you need certainty, science definitely isn't for you.
Religion will do that for a person though, it just takes real devotion, a lot of effort and a little time...
Now you got it!
I "had it" long long ago.
One fantasy is as good as another, until it conflicts with another fantasy. Then you get to pick.
No need to indulge in science, unless one is overly entertained by stuff that is both predictive and explanatory regarding things in their environment. And that describes a whole lot of people.
It's an evolutionary vestige, a survival tool. But it has now outlived its usefulness, especially in the eyes of a lot of popular religions.

Going back to letting religions exterminate other religions wheresoever they encounter them, but using modern warfare technology and science, we can enact a purge on a truly wholesale level. With good luck thereafter, we shall begin again from the point where science-ignorant tribal goat herders needing answers for phenomena beyond their control or ability to explain, started writing "scriptures" from the threads of orally repeated stories and accounts, thereby sowing the seeds of our eventual precipitous decline. As long as that decline doesn't go all the way to extinction, it's all good. The environment will recover, however slowly, and The Garden of human prosperity will be re-born in it's newly remodeled biome.

Well, fuck that shit.
 
Can a bottle of Coca-Cola be a god, too? And if a Coke worshiper came across an empty Coke bottle, would he say that God is dead? :unsure:

Just think of the most obtuse remark a "Creationist" could say about Evolution and hold that up to your statement above and you will know what it is like for me to have to read it.

But you just got through telling us upthread, and at the Lipstick site, that anyone and anything can be god, did you not?
When, uh . . . Pood? Oh, when will the madness stop?

Yes, quite.
I almost hate to ask, but what the hell's a pood anyway? Is that a fecal matter reference? Past tense of Poo?

Getting progressively more snippy? The Pood is the Poodle of Guernica (see avatar) and named after our publishing house, Pood Paw Prints.
Let me put it to you this way. If what you call God, the one I allege created life, the universe and everything, hadn't created any sentient being of spirit or flesh to worship him he wouldn't be God or a god. Do you understand that?

No. If your god exists as you say he had no need to create anything, being perfect and all and utterly self-sufficient.
So, if today, all living beings, human and angel, stopped worshiping everything - there would be no Gods. Jehovah and all other beings and things that were once worshipped will continue existing, or not, as they did before, but they would no longer be gods.

So let’s be clear. You are actually saying God may be fictional, but that is OK so long as he is worshiped, then he is god? Can we worship Santa Claus and then he is god even though he does not exist?
Because that is what a god is. Someone or something that is mighty or venerated. Worshipped.

And you said earlier that anyone and anything can be god. So why not bottle of Coke, on your own stated reasoning?

But no, sorry, this is the non-standard definition obfuscation I talked about. Plenty of people worshiped and venerated Hitler, so Hitler was god?
 
A god can be anyone or anything. A car? A bottle of whiskey? The planet Saturn?

Correct. Can be and probably are.

I guess that’s very convenient if you want to simply define God into existence.

Which God and what difference would it make?

But you said you are a biblical believer. Which means you believe in a supernatural all-powerful deity that proofed the world into existence and presides over it and interacts with it somehow, with humans a special object of his concern. If you don’t believe that you are not a biblical believer in the commonly accepted version of the term. So what, specifically, do you believe god is? I’m betting it’s not your car, or Charles Darwin.

Let me tell you a story about a god that definitely exists. A man slowly makes his way across a frozen tundra. It's dark and cold. He's tired and hungry. The eyes of the wolves are upon him. Following his every move. He hasn't any food or fuel for fire. He has no hope. And then suddenly he stumbles. In the darkness he finds a dried heaping gob of bovine excrement. Underneath it are creeping things to eat. Looking around he finds more. He makes a pile and lights it. It keeps him warm, and safe from the wolves. He makes the shit his god. The shit is God to him.

Why?

"Well that ain't God!" The uninformed atheist laughs with that uncommitted, unsophisticated sort of smug selfrighteous inferiority complex only an atheist could pull off.

"Why not?" You oppose the question with the purest sense of optimism, expecting an original answer.

God means mighty. Venerated. Worshipped. Nothing else. When you or I use the term God we are referring to one of any specific gods. Like King, Prince, Mr. or Mrs. God isn't a name. The God of which I assume you speak is Jehovah. But it could be Satan. Or any other, depending on context and geography. In a Jewish land it might be Yahweh. In a Muslim land it might be Allah (al =the; lah =god). They are both the same. It might be Brahma, Amaturasu, Kim Jong Un, Eric Clapton.
 
A god can be anyone or anything. A car? A bottle of whiskey? The planet Saturn?

Correct. Can be and probably are.

Great. So why did you freak out about my question if a bottle of Coke can be God? And if the bottle is empty, God’s dead, right?

Let me tell you a story about a god that definitely exists. A man slowly makes his way across a frozen tundra. It's dark and cold. He's tired and hungry. The eyes of the wolves are upon him. Following his every move. He hasn't any food or fuel for fire. He has no hope. And then suddenly he stumbles. In the darkness he finds a dried heaping gob of bovine excrement. Underneath it are creeping things to eat. Looking around he finds more. He makes a pile and lights it. It keeps him warm, and safe from the wolves. He makes the shit his god. The shit is God to him.

That’s nice. But it’s not the biblical god, and you said you were a biblical believer. That means you don’t believe shit is god but the triune omni-god is god, right? And, frankly, I think very few people, if in the situation you describe above, would worship the shit and the things to eat. They would just be very grateful they got lucky.
"Well that ain't God!" The uninformed atheist laughs with that uncommitted, unsophisticated sort of smug selfrighteous inferiority complex only an atheist could pull off.
Yes, right on schedule, the snotty little insults directed at atheists, and the usual mistake of treating all atheists as monolithic.
 
I had this dream where I walked with God on the beach. And I relived scenes from my life, and I kept looking at the footprints. Footprints in the sand. And then I noticed that in my worst trials, in times of anguish, sorrow, or defeat, I saw only one set of footprints. And I said, Lord, you said you would always walk with me. Why did you abandon me, in my darkest times?
And the Lord answered my spirit and said, Because you can be one big awful crybaby. Too much drama. Get your diaper changed. Yeah, those times you mentioned, I took a Kahlua break with some angels and a paraclete. The paraclete thought you were a wuss, too. Grow a pair!! You are so, pardon the expression, goddamn boring when you whine.
 
I’m guessing RIS is one those theists who believes that everyone worships something, and so atheists have gods but they are false gods, and they are practicing idolatry.

I suppose it will come as a news flash to him that a great many people worship nothing, myself included.
 
Zero isn't technically an integer, but it's probably the right answer. If you need certainty, science definitely isn't for you.

I most certainly don't need certainty. In fact I would be uncertain of my certainty, I can tell you. At least I would hope to be. I'm only certain of my uncertainty. Boy, though, this science sounds like my bag. Metaphorically speaking. Where do I sign up? The Atheist Alliance League?

Religion will do that for a person though, it just takes real devotion, a lot of effort and a little time...

Am I to understand that you . . . do these things?

I "had it" long long ago.
One fantasy is as good as another, until it conflicts with another fantasy. Then you get to pick.

I see. Like Darwinian evolution.

No need to indulge in science, unless one is overly entertained by stuff that is both predictive and explanatory regarding things in their environment. And that describes a whole lot of people.

:thumbup:


It's an evolutionary vestige, a survival tool. But it has now outlived its usefulness, especially in the eyes of a lot of popular religions.

A survival tool that has outlived its usefulness. Hmmm. What do you think is keeping it around? The need to criticize it? I personally think all organized religions should be done away with. Obsolete, like money and government.

Going back to letting religions exterminate other religions wheresoever they encounter them, but using modern warfare technology and science, we can enact a purge on a truly wholesale level. With good luck thereafter, we shall begin again from the point where science-ignorant tribal goat herders needing answers for phenomena beyond their control or ability to explain, started writing "scriptures" from the threads of orally repeated stories and accounts, thereby sowing the seeds of our eventual precipitous decline. As long as that decline doesn't go all the way to extinction, it's all good. The environment will recover, however slowly, and The Garden of human prosperity will be re-born in it's newly remodeled biome.

Ah, yes, of course. Hear, hear! The great atheist/science utopia! Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. We call it Armageddon. To each his own.

Well, fuck that shit.

Carry on.
 
Last edited:
Can a bottle of Coca-Cola be a god, too? And if a Coke worshiper came across an empty Coke bottle, would he say that God is dead?
Funny you should ask. I recently experienced the loneliness of atheism in a microscopic way. I was opening the refrigerator, brimming with confidence as I reached for the half-full 17 ounce bottle of Coca Cola I knew to be hiding behind the half gallon of milk. I groped, and found the void, which suddenly expanded to envelope the universe of my mind.
It was gone.
In that moment, nothing else mattered. I couldn’t explain it. Yes, there is more in the pantry ten steps away. But it’s not cold, and I’t have to open it which really hurts my arthritic hand unless I use pliers…
the whole vision was a nightmare.
But it only lasted a fraction of a second, then I grabbed the 2 liter ginger ale bottle that was staring me in the face, and carried on. Any God will do in a pinch.
 
I’m guessing RIS is one those theists who believes that everyone worships something, and so atheists have gods but they are false gods, and they are practicing idolatry.

I suppose it will come as a news flash to him that a great many people worship nothing, myself included.

Define worship.
 
Can a bottle of Coca-Cola be a god, too? And if a Coke worshiper came across an empty Coke bottle, would he say that God is dead?
Funny you should ask. I recently experienced the loneliness of atheism in a microscopic way. I was opening the refrigerator, brimming with confidence as I reached for the half-full 17 ounce bottle of Coca Cola I knew to be hiding behind the half gallon of milk. I groped, and found the void, which suddenly expanded to envelope the universe of my mind.
It was gone.
In that moment, nothing else mattered. I couldn’t explain it. Yes, there is more in the pantry ten steps away. But it’s not cold, and I’t have to open it which really hurts my arthritic hand unless I use pliers…
the whole vision was a nightmare.
But it only lasted a fraction of a second, then I grabbed the 2 liter ginger ale bottle that was staring me in the face, and carried on. Any God will do in a pinch.

At that moment you understood Nietzsche’s “God is dead” dictum.
 
Great. So why did you freak out about my question if a bottle of Coke can be God?

I didn't.

And if the bottle is empty, God’s dead, right?

It was never alive.

That’s nice.

Heartwarming, isn't it.

But it’s not the biblical god, and you said you were a biblical believer.

And I've repeatedly explained that there are many gods in the Bible. I've named more than a few.

That means you don’t believe shit is god but the triune omni-god is god, right?

Omnivore? The triune omni-god is pagan nonsense. Shit is a god. Dicks are gods. That is what the cross is. The cross we know as "Christian" is actually a Roman Phallic symbol. A fertility symbol, idol, god. Now you, with your handy atheist compendium of theistic knowledge, probably think God is a Dick but a dick can't be God. You got that backwards.

And, frankly, I think very few people, if in the situation you describe above, would worship the shit and the things to eat. They would just be very grateful they got lucky.

Right. 2,000 years before Christ, on the alluvial plains of Ur Abraham would have undoubtedly witnessed the Easter (Astarte) cellebrations where the fertility goddess, whose symbols were the colored egg, cross, and rabbit, dress a select few of their children in their finest new clothes and sacrifice them with fire, place their bones and ashes in an urn decorated with Astarte's symbols, bake bread in the shape of a cross and have an orgy.

Today we send young men to defend bullshit ideas like "freedom" and "democracy" and wish them luck. Tomato, tomato. That never works in the written word. Same difference.
 
Let me tell you a story about a god that definitely exists. A man slowly makes his way across a frozen tundra. It's dark and cold. He's tired and hungry. The eyes of the wolves are upon him. Following his every move. He hasn't any food or fuel for fire. He has no hope. And then suddenly he stumbles. In the darkness he finds a dried heaping gob of bovine excrement. Underneath it are creeping things to eat. Looking around he finds more. He makes a pile and lights it. It keeps him warm, and safe from the wolves. He makes the shit his god. The shit is God to him.
That's a story that is definitely a story; The god it describes is is exactly as real as Superman, but less well written.

Gods are fictions, as you demonstrate here.
 
That's a story that is definitely a story; The god it describes is is exactly as real as Superman, but less well written.

I'm no writer, that's for sure, but to be compared to a comic book superhero?! That's low. Shit is real. Superman is real in a different sense. Gods are real in various different ways. God doesn't mean exclusively sky fairy, like Superman, or shit like my story. It simply means mighty/worshipped. The Biblical Hebrew word for God, El, means simply "mighty."

Gods are fictions, as you demonstrate here.

Some are, some aren't. You guys just don't get it. You never do. You most likely never will.
 
I’m guessing RIS is one those theists who believes that everyone worships something, and so atheists have gods but they are false gods, and they are practicing idolatry.

I suppose it will come as a news flash to him that a great many people worship nothing, myself included.

Define worship.

Sure.

The worshipper is the worshipped. To worship another is to worship oneself; the image, the symbol, is a projection of oneself. After all, your idol, your book, your prayer, is the reflection of your background; it is your creation, though it be made by another. You choose according to your gratification; your choice is your prejudice. Your image is your intoxicant, and it is carved out of your own memory; you are worshipping yourself through the image created by your own thought. Your devotion is the love of yourself covered over by the chant of your mind. The picture is yourself, it is the reflection of your mind. Such devotion is a form of self-deception that only leads to sorrow and to isolation, which is death.

As J. Krishnamurti figured out long ago, “worship” is base and primitive, nothing more than self-glorification. As he said, “truth is a pathless land.”
 
Science is the weatherman. With all of the training and technology he still gets it wrong. Social science you describe isn't any better than the Bible. Science is often way behind. Science didn't figure out how to boil water, it figured out why it worked hundreds of years later. Science only figured out babies under 14 months can feel and should be anesthetized during surgery in 1986, until then only paralyzing them so they wouldn't struggle. The Bible said the earth was spherical long before science, the hygienic law Ignaz Semmelweis was murdered for was explained pretty well in the Bible thousands of years before he pointed it out to dogmatic arrogant doctors using the miasmatic school of medicine. The hydrological cycle was described in the Bible long before science had a clue. Day and night science thought was caused by miasmas from either the sky or the ground long after the Bible better explained it.
OK, leaving aside the numerous errors of fact here, it is clear that you (like many, perhaps most) people don't grasp what science is.

As I posted on another thread here recently:


The problem, as I see it, is the way that science is taught in schools, particularly at the primary school level, which for many (likely most) people in any given community is the only science education they ever get.

See, people have this impression, based on that educational experience, that science is much the same as all the other subjects we study. But it is not. Science is fundamentally different, and most people are never exposed to that fact.

Worse, we use the word "science" in two distinct ways, and this only adds to the confusion. "Science" can mean "The methodology by which we find out about reality"; But it can also mean "The body of information generated by the scientific method"

Education (in the west, at least) started off as a religious activity, and in primary education, this history has an enduring footprint. When teaching children about Christianity, there is a primary reference, the Bible, which is supposedly unquestionable, and which contains the right answers. Even in non-Christian religions, there are fundamentals that are to be accepted without question; And behind it all is the pre-literacy understanding that writing is magic.

If something is written, then it is true. The answer is in the book.

If a teacher and his student are in dispute, they resolve the dispute by refering to the textbook. The book has the right answer. If the book agrees with you, you win the argument.

Science (the methodology) fundamentally rejects this. In science (the methodology), books are just the words of people who are not even present; No dispute can be resolved by direct reference to mere writings. The writings themselves must be tested against reality.

Science (the body of information) is just an attempt to save time and effort. When the methodology has been applied repeatedly to a given question, and has so far always given the same answer, we write the answer in a book and get kids to memorise it, not because it is The TruthTM, but because it would be impossible to get things done if every time we wanted to examine anything, we had to start by demonstrating (yet again) that matter comprises particles of such-and-such a mass, with such-and-such an electric charge, etc., etc.

When I want to know the speed of light in a vacuum, I look it up in a book. Not because the books are never wrong, but because I have decided to provisionally trust the existing science (the body of information), as a time saving shortcut. If I had any inkling of a doubt, I could, should, and would reject what is written, and go test for myself using science (the methodology) to find the speed of light in a vacuum.

Disputes in science (the methodology), regarding what is a part of science (the body of information) are resolved by reference to reality - we devise and conduct experiments to test hypotheses, and these experiments belong, not to a priestly class, nor to a teacher who has control of the textbook, nor to a Board of Education who decide which books are textbooks and which are not, but to anyone who wants to conduct them.

Science (the methodology), unlike any other educational discipline, is ruthlessly egalitarian. Anyone can overturn science (the body of work) by coming up with a test that anyone else can repeat, and which reliably demonstrates (a part of) that body of work to be false.

But (at primary school) we teach science (the body of work) the way we teach religion; And we don't teach the methodology part at all, or if we do, we treat it as though it were just another rule to be memorised and regurgitated without question.

Kids are left with the impression that science (the body of information) is just another set of beliefs. And as we see from the massive diversity of sects just within one major branch of one religion, this implies that anyone can just make up any old rubbish they like, and then set about collecting disciples, adherents, and evangelists to believe it and spread the word. The criteria for success are having as many adherents as possible; Having evangelical zeal, to accrue still more adherents to your position; And most importantly of all, having a book.

Science (the body of information) is taught this way in schools. So it's hardly surprising that so much pseudoscience arises amongst those with limited exposure to science as a methodology, rather than as a body of information.

This fundamental failure to grasp what science (the methodology) is, or how science (the body of information) came to be, and how it can be (and constantly is) changed as new observations are made and new experiments carried out, is at the root of the problem here.

We can talk about free will, eyes as sense organs, how light works, etc., etc., until the cows freeze over, and it won't change a thing - because peacegirl is not on the same page as the rest of us. Peacegirl doesn't understand that science differs in any important way from theology, and so is determined to win her argument on the basis of theological rhetoric. She has a new book, and wants it to replace, or supplement, the old book. Because she thinks that's how knowledge works.

She does not, and perhaps cannot, grasp that the science books we use are not books of power, but are mere aide-mémoires that tally the current state of the game.

Replacing Newton's Optiks, or Einstein's General Relativity, or Maxwell's Electromagnetic Equations, with a new book of wondrous claims is not only difficult; It is futile. No part of science (the methodology) is beholden to books of science (the body of information); Unlike in literally every other educational discipline*, in science the relationship is reversed.

The body of work derives from, and is entirely subservient to, the methodology. You can subvert a church by replacing its Bible with a new work (a Koran, or a Book of Mormon, or the scribblings of L. Ron Hubbard, or of Lessans, or of anyone). But you can only subvert science (the body of information) by following the scientific method - and if a change is shown by that method to be required, the science books are all rendered obsolete at a stroke. There are no sects or splinter groups - only people who have abandoned the scientific methodology, and thereby rendered themselves irrelevant.

The methodology is simple. Hypotheses, rigorously tested against repeatable and universally testable observations, and those shown to be false, discarded.

If you want to change science (the body of information) it is simple (but not easy): Just detail an observation that anyone else can make for themselves, which demonstrates that a part of that body of information is false.

Be aware that trust is not a part of science (the methodology). No scientist trusts anyone, particularly not himself.

The question is not "should we trust Newton, or should we trust Lessans?". The question is "Which of these two has given us the details needed to repeat his work, and surprise ourselves into agreeing with his answers, starting from a provisional assumption that his answers are bullshit?"

Newton has done that. You don't need to take his word for anything, and he doesn't ask you to; He has provided a detailed set of procedures for proving him wrong, and invites you to give it your best shot, either using his procedure, or coming up with your own. That, right there, is science.







* The very word 'discipline', meaning 'a field of study', carries the historical baggage of the idea that one learns by rote, from infallible books, whereby error arises only from incorrect reading or interpretation of the sacred text. Science ain't like that, but primary education usually acts as though it were.
 
Back
Top Bottom