Or one could say the translation for the word’ God’ could be existence. Even the universe had to have a place to exist.What isn’t in existence doesn’t exist!
If God the father is a spirit, and holy, then why need a Holy Spirit as a separate being?
I could dispute that, I don’t go to a Church, I am in my 80’s and my doctor tells me I am in better health than many of her much younger patients.
[QUOTE=Abraham Lincoln]
Q: How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?
A: Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
[/QUOTE]
Redefining the word that much is just playing word games.
This kind of argument is totally irrelevant anyway. Lord of the Rings fans might be healthier and happier than non-fans, but that does not mean Frodo ever lived. Theists who use it as justification for their beliefs are showing a bit of desperation. It is the same as claiming that evolution is not correct because the concept has been misused.
Equating God with existence or the universe as a whole strikes me as the ultimate case of Stockholm syndrome. Benevolent Gods were created as alternative realities to the cold, existential conditions of the universe, and conflating the two is like conferring good intentions on a heartless, uncaring captor.
Well, theology itself is nothing but word games. The point was, it is possible (in theological terms) that God is the cosmos, and thus God is existence. i.e., it is entirely feasible for some religious sect to hold this view as their foundational dogma.
Exactly! What does the doctrine offer, in explanatory terms, that makes it better than non-Trinitarian doctrine? Why should we prefer one over the other? It’s all just word games!
OK, I’ll agree to that… provided that such theists swear to **never **then claim that their god cares about whether I wear poly-cotton, eat lobster, or sleep with someone of the same sex. (And so forth… it’ll be a long list…)
We have a word for existence, and that word is “existence”. Likewise, we have words for “cosmos” and “universe”, so why do we have to bother with the word “God” at all if the definition is already covered by an already existing word?
…which would explain why pchaos wants to make an atheist church! He just wants us to be healthier, is all. How nice of him.
Because if “God” and “existence” are the same, and if God has a mind, then “existence” would have a mind, something not implied by the word “existence” as we currently use it.
(Just as, if your sofa had a mind, we’d want to move on from calling it “furniture” anymore.)
(Hey, my old office chair tried to kill me once; the idea of it having a mind isn’t all that far-fetched!)
Because “existence” has 9 letters and 3 syllables, whilst “god” only has 3 letters and 1 syllable – much easier for people who are inclined toward monosyllabism. Though, I suppose “Og” would be even easier, and it has that nice heavy-brow-ridge sound to it.
Plus it is a quite smashing name.
If anything, or being, is in existence, then doesn’t existence precede evrything? If it isn’t in existence then it doesn’t exist.
If anything, or being, is in existence, then doesn’t existence precede eveything? If it isn’t in existence then it doesn’t exist.
Well, no… The word “precede” is the problem here. How can existence precede everything, if existence is everything? Existence precedes itself? Something came before everything?
It is entirely possible (in metaphysical terms) that “everything” and “existence” came into being at the same time. It’s might have been sudden, or it might have been gradual. A big bang…or a slow dissolve. It might have been piece-wise: a big chunk of “everything” over yonder might have come into existence before all the other big chunks. Or it might have been all-at-once, with everything coming into existence at the same time. Who can know? I’m not completely sure the terms here even have definable meanings!
I admit it doesn’t solve any problems, really. IMHO, nothing solves the “why is there anything at all?” problem.
My understanding is limited, but we do know that the rules predict that the rules don’t apply in a singularity. (Well, some rules don’t apply.) I’m interested in case anyone can shed any light on whether entropy is preserved in a singularity. To some extent it is (it defines the event horizon of a black hole, for example.)
I don’t think my common sense has much to bear on the subject. We already know that common sense doesn’t hold for even simple mathematical properties of infinity – at least until infinities are studied well enough that we learn a new common sense about them. IMHO that’s a much simpler subject than the origin of the universe.
But, for quantum fluctuations to cause something, there has to be space (or something to “hold” the physical laws) for it to happen. This leads to infinite regress, which is either a problem or isn’t. I doubt we’ll have any high-confidence answers to these questions in my lifetime.
A very wise person once wrote on a bathroom wall, “The 1st Law of the Universe is ‘Things Happen’, and all other Laws stem from this 1st Law. Even if there WAS absolutely nothing, something would happen anyway.”
As a life long atheist I have to admit that there has been an increase in atheists who proselytize. After 9/11, you could count me as one of them. Didn’t really care what you and others believed in before that, but it seemed to me that religious people needed sanity.
Perhaps that explains why there are more atheists on youtube and what have you.
As to your second point. Why does the lack of knowledge require a deity?
So we can’t explain how matter came out of nothing, and therefore there must be a God? Even one that does not answer prayers?
“We don’t know yet” works for me. Don’t need the tooth fairy to take the place of my ignorance. I am happy and comfortable with don’t have a clue.
I realize I’ve come very late to the debate, but wanted to point out my POV, as an atheist.
This is the one that it all keeps coming back to. Where, then, did the deity come from?
If an “uncaused cosmos” is hard to grasp, why is an “uncaused intelligent entity” any more comforting? How is it a better explanation?
Which is the simpler explanation: A blortload of hot gas came out of nowhere, or a conscious, thinking, intelligent, moral entity with volition and immeasureable power came out of nowhere?
What advantage is there in the second explanation?
I’ll forgive the people in less sophisticated times for the “pocket watch” argument; at first glance, the world does appear to be remarkably well designed. If you don’t have advanced observational skills, nature does look like it is “intelligent” in origin. There is no sin in our grandfathers for thinking that deism was a good explanation.
It was the efforts of a few generations of naturalists – Darwin prominent among them – that showed that this explanation is less to be preferred, because it fails to explain things which the evolutionary explanation explains clearly.
In cosmology, we’re at or beyond that same turning point.