Do Gods Exist?

RIS said:

Ford said:

You haven't proven that god(s) exist. You have asserted that they do.

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I've proven it.

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RIS said:

Could you define the word god?

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It's your thread; Why don't you have a shot at providing a watertight and unequivocal definition of what a god is to you?

As with all fan-fic, each fan has a unique take.

It's still all stories though.

bilby said:

Oh, yes, the great and unassailable "argument by dictionary".

"Kim Jong Un has never been a gallery in a theatre, therefore you are wrong to say that he is a God", and other such absurdities that result from this beloved form of argument, suggest strongly that it's not the slam-dunk you imagine it to be.

Equivocation is not cleverness.

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That isn't my argument. It seems to be yours.

My Claim is that a theater balcony is called a god. Why? Because it's high, because the artwork used to picture height thematically. Clouds, gods, etc. Because the people who sat there tended to be lofty. Elite. Though that isn't always the case, sometimes they were the poor who couldn't afford good seats.

The English word God means literally to pour. Libate. Because people sacrificed liquid to those they worshipped. It's just a word meaning mighty/venerated. The dictionary gives examples of mighty/venerated people and things, real and imagined. A god doesn't have to be anything except mighty/venerated.

Ford said:

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I love that clip. I've given it to atheists who have no real argument.

bilby said:

It's your thread; Why don't you have a shot at providing a watertight and unequivocal definition of what a god is to you?

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I don't know what else I can do. Wikipedia, Oxford, my personal definition in great detail and I've repeatedly asked you (the royal you, anyone) to define it. I've given Jewish, Christian, Shinto . . . now we just need atheism. And you can't.

I don't understand why you can't see this argument is not about gods. It's about political ideology.

"I have transformed the problem from intractably difficult and possibly quite insoluble conundrum, into a mere linguistic puzzle. Albeit," he muttered, after a long moment of silent pondering, "an intractably difficult and possibly insoluble one."

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—Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

RIS said:

bilby said:

It's your thread; Why don't you have a shot at providing a watertight and unequivocal definition of what a god is to you?

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I don't know what else I can do. Wikipedia, Oxford, my personal definition in great detail and I've repeatedly asked you (the royal you, anyone) to define it. I've given Jewish, Christian, Shinto . . . now we just need atheism. And you can't.

I don't understand why you can't see this argument is not about gods. It's about political ideology.

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It's about storytelling.

Humans love them some storytelling.

bilby said:

It's about storytelling.

Humans love them some storytelling.

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So, you can't define what a god is. It's so simple. I don't understand. It's been a long time since I read Dirk Gently. Zen method of navigation. The alleged vehicle.

RIS said:

I've given Jewish, Christian, Shinto . . . now we just need atheism. And you can't.

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Atheism isn't a bloc; Atheists don't have a single definition of anything, nor are there any rules of atheism we all follow.

I can give you my definition, but you shouldn't expect any other atheist to agree with it. Here you go:


I contend that no such entities exist outside fiction.

RIS said:

So, you can't define what a god is.

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You are very quick to make declarations that are utterly false. You should probably work on that. I was literally typing out the definition you say I can't provide, when you posted that.

It is unwise to get ones mental exercise by jumping to conclusions.

Also:

bilby said:

Angry Floof said:

There are no punctuation Nazis here, only people who don't bother to read other people's posts.

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To be fair, if everyone here read everyone else's posts carefully, half the replies on the board would disappear.

Perhaps we could have an automatic filter that deletes any post beginning with "So". That would eliminate about a third of those.

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bilby said:

Atheism isn't a bloc; Atheists don't have a single definition of anything, nor are there any rules of atheism we all follow.

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I don't buy that. They are the same in that regard as anyone. Theists or Buddhist or Taoists, republican, democrat, liberal, conservative or any other group, large or small.

bilby said:

I can give you my definition, but you shouldn't expect any other atheist to agree with it.

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Who said they had to?

bilby said:

Here you go:

A god is a character from a story about powerful entities that can do things that are impossible for humans to do.

I contend that no such entities exist outside fiction.

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You're only talking about one example out of billions of others. Why lump them all together?

Political ideology is an abstraction. Gods are abstractions. We're simply describing and categorizing human behavior is all.

As claims go, some become belief and some become knowledge based on whether given claims can be supported with evidence. If someone claims to have a political ideology or a god we can quantify and document that person's behavior and give it a label. That can be helpful in furthering our understanding and ability to communicate with others of our species, which is a good thing.

Essentially, gods are a way to take one step back from claiming magical powers. People who claimed such powers would come unstuck when their magic didn't work. By becoming a priest, rather than a magician, a confidence trickster can excuse his failures by saying "I would love to help, but god says 'no', so I am afraid I can't".

It renders him that little bit less likely to be tarred and feathered.

A god is the fictional silent partner in a magic scam.

RIS said:

bilby said:

Atheism isn't a bloc; Atheists don't have a single definition of anything, nor are there any rules of atheism we all follow.

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I don't buy that.

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Well it remains true whether you buy it or not. That's a defining feature of reality.

RIS said:

They are the same in that regard as anyone. Theists or Buddhist or Taoists, republican, democrat, liberal, conservative or any other group, large or small.

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The only thing atheists have in common is a lack of belief in gods.

RIS said:

bilby said:

I can give you my definition, but you shouldn't expect any other atheist to agree with it.

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Who said they had to?

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You just did:

RIS said:

bilby said:

Atheism isn't a bloc; Atheists don't have a single definition of anything, nor are there any rules of atheism we all follow.

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I don't buy that.

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RIS said:

bilby said:

Here you go:

A god is a character from a story about powerful entities that can do things that are impossible for humans to do.

I contend that no such entities exist outside fiction.

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You're only talking about one example out of billions of others. Why lump them all together?

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Huh? I said nothing about any examples.

My definition (which btw I have since refined to remove an unwarranted question begging) is general - it applies to all gods.

Here it is as revised:


That such entities are only found in stories is not a part of the definition, and I shouldn't have included it - it is a conclusion, and not a part of the definition.

I am working this stuff out in real-time here; Gods are not important to me, so I don't waste a lot of time thinking about them, until and unless asked to do so.

RIS said:

Ford said:

So we're clear, I don't actually think that thunder is caused by gods. Nor do I believe that the Sun is a god.

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Why not?

Ford said:

Or that there is a god of war. An over-arching supreme being that encompasses all of the other gods? Not so much.

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The question was intended to establish if gods exist. It didn't specifically mention any of that, so why bring it up? You surely don't think that just because you have a ridiculous take on gods that means no gods exist, right?

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Yes, no gods exist, that’s correct, except as fictional constructs in the mind. If someone is silly enough to worship the nonexistent god of the bible, or Zeus, or the ruler of North Korea, or a tube of toothpaste, and further believes that the object of his veneration is a god, then that is his business, but he is behaving in a very silly manner. And as Krishnamurti pointed out, all worship is really self-worship anyway.

RIS said:

Ford said:

Serious question: Are you trolling us?

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I was beginning to think you were trolling me. Actually.

Ford said:

As far as your first questions go, it is pretty clear that thunder is not in fact caused by gods, the Sun is a star at the center of our solar system composed of mostly hydrogen and helium, and not a being named "Ra" (or whatever) that travels in a chariot across the sky every day and needs to be placated with sacrifices to keep doing his job.

As to your second point, I put it to you that the notion of a god of war (or thunder, or the Sun, or the Moon, or love, or any of the other things attributed to gods in the past) is itself a "ridiculous take." If you go back far enough in human history, many people thought that each of their cities (think Ur, Uruk, Babylon, etc) had their own gods.

Is there a god of Los Angeles? A god of London? If you were able to bring an ancient Assyrian forward in time to the present day and show them New York, they'd assume that the god of New York must be pretty damned powerful. The god of Terra Haute? Not so much.

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Terre Haute.

Could you define the word god? Since you obviously don't accept my definition or the Oxford definition, or any definition I've ever encountered. It seems to me atheists have their own definition. It seems to me that their definition is that there is no definition? Is that correct?

I've talked to many atheists over the years and I can't think of them ever actually having defined what a god is. Could anyone do that here?

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You’ve pretty much defined EVERYTHING or ANYTHING as God, which means if everything is god nothing is god.

So it’s you who don’t really have a definition for god.

The definition of “god” for most atheists I would think would be: “a fictional being or beings who dwell in a fictional realm called the supernatural and who exercise enormous fictional powers and who fictively often demand to be worshiped.” Precise definitions may vary according to the fictional god under consideration, since history has produced so many fictional gods.

RIS said:

Ford said:

You haven't proven that god(s) exist. You have asserted that they do.

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I've proven it. I think that you only question it because you think I'm saying all gods exist. I'm not saying that. I've repeatedly said that some gods exist, some don't, gods exist in various ways, i.e. fictional, fabricated, literal, etc. The question of does man exist differs from the question do all men exist.

Kim Jong Un exists. He literally exists. He is literally a god by definition. Therefore, gods exist. Superman doesn't exist, aside from being a fictional man. He doesn't literally exist. He isn't a man in a literal, only a fictional sense. Fabricated.

Just because I have proved, without a doubt that Kim Jong Un is a god and exists don't mean that the same can be said of Zeus or Satan etc.

Would you agree and if not, why?

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Kin Jong Un is not “literally a god by definition.” That is just nonsensical.

If you want to appeal to No. 3 in the Oxford dictionary, be my guest, but don’t expect others to be impressed. Definitions and descriptions are not reality. No. 3 is referring to the informal and idiomatic way people sometimes talk. Someone may say, to someone he greatly admires, “You’re.a god to me!” That is the sense of “god” Oxford’s No. 3 refers to. But Oxford is dealing with language, definitions formal and informal, and idioms. In no way is Oxford dealing in ontology or epistemology. Dictionaries are concerned with the way people use language, not what is real about the world.

In the main, atheism is about rejecting god or gods in the sense of Oxford No. 1 and No. 2. You must surely know this, so bringing up “god” in the sense of No. 3 is a just a pointless and time-wasting sideshow.

(Brings box back, sets it on table.)
-They wouldn't give me a refund.
-What?!! You told them the box was empty??
-I told him. He gave me some shit about God being invisible and having many forms and that how was I to say that God's presence wasn't in the box. And a whole bunch of other stuff. At one point he was reading to me from the dictionary.
(Pitches box in waste basket.) -Well, we're not going there again. Ever!!

ideologyhunter said:

(Brings box back, sets it on table.)
-They wouldn't give me a refund.
-What?!! You told them the box was empty??
-I told him. He gave me some shit about God being invisible and having many forms and that how was I to say that God's presence wasn't in the box. And a whole bunch of other stuff. At one point he was reading to me from the dictionary.
(Pitches box in waste basket.) -Well, we're not going there again. Ever!!

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Since god really is nothing, I guess the seller has a point.

RIS said:

Yes. Piece of cake. Don't understand the confusion.

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So I'm going to use a specific definition of god. It is perhaps the most general, and least restrictive definition possible for the concept: a god is any entity that creates, administrates, or otherwise controls a Universe. As something made of a more "foundational material".

In turn a Universe is "any closed system of isolated and mathematically defined behaviors for all action except direct intercession by a god."

Now by THIS definition, I'm a god. In fact by that definition MANY humans are gods! Pretty much everyone who owns a computer is trivially close to being a god if they aren't already.

For instance, the space in a simulation is made of molecules of real stuff. I can point to the real structures in real space and really you what structures of that stuff create the secondary system of space. I happen to be made of the same fundamental material that the subspace I created happens to be made of.

That's what makes something a God. But it's pretty apparent that I only have powers insofar as manipulating the space I am in gives me power to understand or change the subspace or even stop it's sub-time. It doesn't give me power to understand the unobserved future of the subspace.

LIke, humans study singularities of light by studying singularities of sound.

Why would we not study gods of "this space as a subspace" by studying gods of subspaces of this space?

It won't tell us absolutes or certainties, but it will give us far more useful intuitions if only because it's useful to consider it from our perspective anyway... Getting knowledge that generalizes "up" is just a bonus.