So if I'm reading the definition right, it seems like you're saying,
"This thing you call a rock? I call it 'God,' and I claim it has a personality. That I interact with. And it tells me things."
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God is not an Entity?
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So if I'm reading the definition right, it seems like you're saying,
"This thing you call a rock? I call it 'God,' and I claim it has a personality. That I interact with. And it tells me things."
Copernicus
Industrial Grade Linguist
No, we are back to one specific theist here being unable and unwilling to defend a definition of what it is that he believes in. Every time someone attempts to engage you on what you mean, you dance away with the excuse that the problem is with THEIR definition, not yours. Atheism is a denial of belief in any god, not just yours. But please feel free to tell us about yours, because, if we attempt to define what gods are, you will always come back with a denial that we are talking about your god.
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Use the effing quote function and show where I have said...
This thing which you atheists call an inanimate object, well I call it an animate object. This thing which you say isn't sentient, well say that it is sentient. This rock, unlike all the other rocks, has a personality"
There's no dispute about the long-standing, widely accepted, theological definition of God. The contention of atheists isn't that biblical theists are confusing rocks and God. Atheists and theists alike have the same definition of inanimate objects called rocks. Rocks exist.
The contention is about the existence of God. Does exist. Does not exist. Pretty basic epistemology.
But when atheists struggle to mentally process a counter-apologetic atheology of their own, (as an alternative to the internally consistent biblical/theological nature of God,) atheists go into their lame, fall-back sub routine - what do you mean by God...I can't debunk God because I don't know what you mean by God...I'm so confused...are you saying God is a rock?"
This thing which you atheists call an inanimate object, well I call it an animate object. This thing which you say isn't sentient, well say that it is sentient. This rock, unlike all the other rocks, has a personality"
There's no dispute about the long-standing, widely accepted, theological definition of God. The contention of atheists isn't that biblical theists are confusing rocks and God. Atheists and theists alike have the same definition of inanimate objects called rocks. Rocks exist.
The contention is about the existence of God. Does exist. Does not exist. Pretty basic epistemology.
But when atheists struggle to mentally process a counter-apologetic atheology of their own, (as an alternative to the internally consistent biblical/theological nature of God,) atheists go into their lame, fall-back sub routine - what do you mean by God...I can't debunk God because I don't know what you mean by God...I'm so confused...are you saying God is a rock?"
T.G.G. Moogly
Traditional Atheist
Well, god is just the name of a particular kind of ghostly delusion. Let's be rational, please.
bilby
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The definition??
There are fucking HUNDREDS of mutually exclusive definitions.
God is a guy with one eye, a long beard, a cloak and a big hat. He rides an eight legged steed, and has a number of children who are also gods - notably Thor and Baldr. He is the overseer of Valhalla, where half of all those who die in battle spend the afterlife - the other half hang out with the goddess Freya, in the meadow of Fólkvangr.
I presume that this is NOT the thing you mean when you say "God"?
You, judging by your posing elsewhere on this board, subscribe to 'God' as defined by the Roman Catholic Church. That god is very different from other gods worshiped by various Christian sects; The RCC likes to call the differences 'heresies', but from outside the church, they are just disagreements about the definition. Of course, other religions - both extant and historical - have even more diverse ideas about what the word 'god' might mean.
Your claim that there is only one definition is demonstrably false; so it fits in well with many of your other claims about this 'god' entity. Our observation of reality over the last several centuries leads to the inescapable conclusion that the god defined by the RCC is a work of fiction. As are any other gods that intervene in human life, or any theologies that include an afterlife. These things are demonstrably impossible - but fortunately for you, demonstrating this is quite difficult, and requires a level of education in physics and mathematics that most people do not have. Anyone who actually cares could obtain such an education however. There's nothing arcane, secret, or reserved about this knowledge, it is freely available to anyone.
So are you going to answer my post or are you going to change the subject because the answer points out the absurdity of your definition?
You defined a Thing. We are discussing YOUR definition of A Thing. And the fact that your definition is internally inconsistent and functionally meaningless.
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But you're ranting in the back row when the math teacher asks you how to factor (X2-4) and shouting, "HOW COME YOU CAN'T DEFINE POE'S 'ON WALDEN POND,' HUH?!?"
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Keep trying. But your tactic is pretty transparent. You don't know how to factor (X2-4) in the math class when you said you knew all the math.
Okay,
Which god, now?
Are you claiming there is only one god?
Christians and Jews and Muslims can't even agree on a theological definition of the god they share.
Even Christians alone can't agree on a theological definition of the god they share.
Yabbut, you just said your rock contains a god that you can get messages from.
"of or relating to the pantheistic conception of God, as being present throughout the universe" I.e. that it doesn't have a being/entity outside of the natural univer, that it indwells there. Looking forward to the bible verse about how your god created its own body - what was it before?
But in order to determine if a thing exists, don't we have to first determine, "which thing, now?"
LOL. No. Since Christians can't agree on a definition of their god, then in a discussion about a god's existence it is required for us to determine from teh one we're talking to, what they think is a god, their god. Or is it fair for us to just debunk Zeus here and you're hunky-dorey with that? And here we were giving you the benefit of assuming that you meant Yahweh. But if it's no holds barred debunking of any god thereby debunks yours, then... well, you've just made things pretty simple.
Copernicus
Industrial Grade Linguist
What you said was that God was "immanent". That means that God is in everything, including rocks. All you are saying in reply seems to be that God has a property of immanence, not that God is immanence. So you don't want to claim that any specific thing is God, just that your deity has the property of being in all things that exist. Nobody here denies the existence of physical reality, but atheism is still about denying the existence of your god (along with others) as entities that merit worship. You do worship your god, don't you? That is, you attend church services and pray to it. You have some idea of its nature that goes beyond the mere property of immanence. It is the nature of this entity that we are discussing, not just one aspect of it.
As I've been at pains to explain elsewhere, definitions are not to be confused with meaning. They are merely succinct descriptions of word senses. They are heuristic in that they allow people to discover the full meaning of a particular sense by distinguishing the usage of that sense from other senses of the word and from words with similar meanings. So a more appropriate description of what any of us mean by "god" or "deity" would be a list of properties that are more or less true of it. Not all uses of the word will have all of the same properties or all of those properties to the same degree.
What might such a list look like? Perhaps something like this:
A god is an entity that is...
- Immaterial (i.e. a spirit)
- Intelligent
- Emotional (i.e. has likes, dislikes, desires, moods...)
- Able to manipulate reality at will (i.e. perform miracles)
- Very powerful
- Immortal
- Extremely knowledgeable
- Worshiped by people
- Benevolent (i.e. worthy of worship)
- Influenced by worship and prayers
- Etc.
The list of properties need not be comprehensive for our purposes, and there will be some instances of word usage that do not include all properties on the list. This is the kind of entity that atheists reject belief in.
Your god represents a subclass of this kind of entity. We could describe it with a list of additional properties:
God is...
- A god
- Immanent
- Omnipotent
- Omniscient
- Omnibenevolent
- The creator of physical (material) reality
- Singular (i.e. there are no other gods)
- The specific god referenced in the Christian Bible
- Etc.
T.G.G. Moogly
Traditional Atheist
I think to a believer the word "god" contains its own definition that cannot be defined. It literally means everything and anything the holder wants it to mean at any time because the believer is constantly struggling with the concept. That's what makes it god and that's what god means. It's impossible to define because it is everything and anything forever. It kinda means unlimited anything.
Also I think that to believers they kind of resent any bible because it doesn't say this about god. A book about god cannot and should not contain any writing. A song about god would not have any words or notes. Poems would have no verse. This is the only description that can be god. They have it, you don't. It's all or nothing.
Also I think that to believers they kind of resent any bible because it doesn't say this about god. A book about god cannot and should not contain any writing. A song about god would not have any words or notes. Poems would have no verse. This is the only description that can be god. They have it, you don't. It's all or nothing.
God exists because atheists are unwilling/unable to define god.
You come across as a smart guy, but you say some incredibly stupid things sometimes. Atheists deny the existence of all gods, whether based on the Bible, Quran or other religious scripture. Every Tom, Dick and Harish on the planet who believes in god(s) likely believes in something different. Even the fucking Pope issues proclamations changing the dogma of the Roman Church from time to time: "This is what we believe about limbo right now, but stay tuned, because we may change the dogma next year". Why you think it is incumbent on atheists to define your gods for you God only knows.
Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
Oh, we can do that. Again, I have a little concept I call the God Zoo. All the various kinds of God mankind has invented. Not in the sense of Zeus, Jehova, Odin, but in a deeper sense. Omni-everything creator Gods. Process theology Gods that are not omni-everything. idealist Gods ala George Berkeley. nature Gods, multiple Gods of non-monotheistic religions. And more. No God you can conceive of can with stand critical scrutiny.
But I usually aim my criticism at the omni-everything creator God of standard Christianity, Judaism, and Islam etc. The pest religions. But this type of God is not the only God I can define, and critique, and do not believe in. the problem with these sorts of debates is that theists like to dodge defining their God in detail because it makes it easy to point out the deep theoretical problems with a specific definition. And so we get these little games.
Is your God the Simple God of standard theology, not made of parts? This has been used by theologians to not have to explain what God's substance is and where these essences of God came from and what metaphysical process combined these essences into one substance. God then is the truly basic foundation of all existence, there is no metaphyisical world beyond God that creates god or makes God what God is.
But then God creates all the metaphysical necessities of the world, including logic. And if God is good, he could then by fiat create a world where moral evil cannot exist. We don't live in such a world. what is wrong with the basic Simplicity of God theory? The whole God theory demands a lot of ad hoc rationalizations such as the ancient Simplicity of God hypothesis, which collapse when examined critically.
The greater the God proposed by theologians, the easier it is to demonstrate that God is not logically coherent or logical. Theology cannot escape naturalism.
Now, what God Zoo denizen do you believe in?
DrZoidberg
Contributor
I thought the whole Christian thing was that God was outside the material world? And then reaches in now and again. Which I guess is immanence. Is that what you mean?
DrZoidberg
Contributor
That's called "post atheism". Atheism is when there's a dominant religion in a society and those who don't believe in that god are atheists. When a society reaches a point where theists can't agree on a definition of their god/gods then atheism stops being a coherent identity. Today religion as a collective identity is dying everywhere. Religious faith is becoming an individual choice as well as dying outright. Which is why theists today have no hope in agreeing on anything.
So we're increasingly shifting over to the post atheistic mindset. "Post atheism" is when religion and God stops being a thing we talk about or even feel the need to relate to. It's when blasphemy stops being taboo and exiting. It's when God has been reduced to nothing but a punchline for jokes. That's the world we are increasingly living in today. Non-believers like that, of course will struggle with defining what gods they don't believe in.
All these words sprung up in specific contexts. We've left the French Enlightenment era which gave birth to the modern term atheism. We don't live in that context anymore.
It's an irreversible trend. The moment religion becomes a personal choice, and not something society and family forces upon you, it's dead already. It's just a matter of time. And society is only getting less and less collectivist and more and more individualistic
Anyhoo... that's why "atheists" today struggle with defining what they're not. The thing they're not is dying.
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Why is this ontological concept of "entity" causing you guys so much grief?
The etymology of the word means "to be". (Many languages disambiguate the verb "to be" so as to distiguish between the being of living entities and the being of inanimate objects.)
In order for God to do anything (omniscience, omnipotence, immanence,) God has TO BE an entity.
I get it that you don't think He exists - is not a real entity. But are you really so philosophically challenged by such a basic notion as "entity" even for a hypothetical entity?
The etymology of the word means "to be". (Many languages disambiguate the verb "to be" so as to distiguish between the being of living entities and the being of inanimate objects.)
In order for God to do anything (omniscience, omnipotence, immanence,) God has TO BE an entity.
I get it that you don't think He exists - is not a real entity. But are you really so philosophically challenged by such a basic notion as "entity" even for a hypothetical entity?
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Yes.
And that shows that you know very well what an (Abrahamic) monotheist like me means by the word God.
bilby
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It isn't. You appear to be projecting.
Yes. Well done, have a gold star.
Indeed. And god isn't, so it can't.
Not at all. There are thousands of gods that exist as fictional constructs. Fictional characters are not an uncommon phenomenon, and many of them are gods, or wizards, or superheroes, who can (within their stories) do things that are impossible in reality.
None of this is problematic in any way to any of the atheists in this thread.
It's certainly not a cause for grief amongst us. Though it appears to be giving you plenty.
DrZoidberg
Contributor
I don't think that holds up. An entity is a type of object. It has to have distinct features. We have to be able to talk about some quality or qualities of it and we immediately know what you are referring to. Can you think of any quality of God that is universal for all definitions of it? I can't, apart from the fact that it's the focus of worship. But God itself seems to be an empty concept.
I think Habermas formulated God better than anybody. God is what we call our hopes and dreams. It's the symbol that gets to encompass it. He saw God as an empty container or surface upon which we project onto. It means that God is us. It also means that we create God. As in that God only exists in our heads. Anyway, that's why God is different things to different people and why theists struggle to agree on what God is. Because different people will have different hopes and dreams.
Politesse
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Immanence is much deeper than that; it sees material existence itself as an emanation or manifestation of the will of God; the universe and God are not separate entities, but neither is this pantheism; the material universe and god are like, say, the sun and the light of the sun. Matter cannot exist without the other as its source, but we also have matter alone with which to perceive the otherwise inacessible (to us) workings of God. The whole of creation is, in this sense, a manifestation of God just like the Scriptures; these are all signposts meant to point the mind in the direction of the Source which has always been accessible to us, given that we are made of the same stuff as everything else. As the prologue of John's Gospel puts it, "In the beginning was the Logos (ie, the principle ordering force of the material universe, see Philo of Alexandria) and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. It was with God in the beginning. Through it all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In it was life, and that life was the light of all mankind."
There is no "whole Christian thing" when it comes to metaphysics, any more than there is a "whole Muslim thing" or a "whole Western secular philosophy thing" or a "whole particle phycisist thing". Any intellectual tradition is going to bear diverse fruits and the occasional argument; this is how we learn.
DrZoidberg
Contributor
Meh. These are all metaphors for vague stuff. The secret sauce of all religions is maintaining mystery around God.
When I did logic, my logic professor said, just because you have a logically consistent model, doesn't make it true. These theological models are all untestable. Each is as good an explanation as any other. What that tells us is that no theologian knows what they are talking about. It's all just word salad. While interesting in a purely logical/mathematical sense, it shouldn't be interesting to anybody outside that sphere. These concepts shouldn't be all that fun to play around with for laypeople.