Positing meaninglessly vague concepts as the fundamental characteristics which define a proposed entity doesn’t get us very far, I’m afraid. 
In any case, please see the OP re the relevance of purely individual opinions of God to this thread. I can’t stop you, but…
Ok, here’s what I glean so far. Pretty basic stuff, but that’s good.
Fundamental characteristics of God which the vast majority of monotheists would agree with:
[ul]
[li]Creator and sustainer of the Universe[/li][li]Omniscient[/li][li]Omnipotent[/li][li]Corrollary to 2 & 3: Necessarily implies some sort of self-awareness, a type of consciousness (even if we’re using that phrase rather metaphorically)[/li][/ul]
How’s that?
Bear in mind that if we reach some consensus here, we can dispense w/ wrangling over the issue of whether lack of any fundamental characteristics gives atheists the higher ground or makes disbelief in God something other than opinion.
I’d be worried that neithe omnisciense or omnipotence is well defined. The reason I metioned most powerful and most wise is because some of the attempted deffinitions of omnisciense and omnipotence are logical impossibilities.
I’m actually not too worried about apparent logical impossibilities on the surface. These sometimes turn out to be relics of the limitations of the human mind.
A lot of physics seems absurd at first. Planck himself was reticent to introduce his early ideas, despite experimental verification, because they seemed so absurd. And who was it – Bohr? – who said that anyone who isn’t shocked by quantum mechanics hasn’t understood it?
Can you expand on that some, Bippy?
I’m assuming you’re not refering to pseudo-conundrums like “If God is all-powerful, can he make a rock so big that He Himself can’t lift it?”
Actually, the concept of “supreme” isn’t too poorly defined in the proofs. However, “supreme” rests on a different definition of supreme than most people use (as well as “being”.)
However, his post can be viewed as a data point in what Theists believe to be God. Now, if it can be shown that many others also believe that (which they don’t,) it can be put in the list of what a poster can be reasonably assumed to be talking about when they talk about God’s existence.
Sample — I recommend you take a look at the book Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer. As an anthropologist, he surveys and summarizes a number of faiths from around the world, and he comes up with a few basic “rules” for what makes a good supervising deity.
The most fundamental of these is “perfect knowledge.” It is assumed by believers that the god (or God, if you prefer) knows everything about everything. However, in practice, this knowledge tends to what Boyer calls socially strategic information, which is to say information about moral and ethical transgressions. One of his examples centers on a hypothetical theft of a fifty-dollar bill. Presumably, God knows which pocket you stuck the bill in when you stole it, and whether it was an old-style fifty or one of the new colorful ones, and so on, but when believers are questioned it becomes clear that they assume God doesn’t particularly care about this type of knowledge. The theft itself is the critical thing: the social crime is what God “really” cares about, as the believers conceive their God.
Boyer’s hypothesis is primarily about ontological categorization, and the way our minds group things into conceptually related spheres. With respect to the above, we know that because we cannot read one anothers’ minds, we do not know for absolute certain what anybody else is thinking or feeling, and thus our social interactions assume imperfect knowledge: We all make decisions based on the information we have available, which is by definition incomplete. The concept of God as a sentient actor violates this ontological assumption in that God is said to have perfect knowledge of all things at all times.
If you’re interested in this subject, I strongly recommend the book. It’s hardly perfect (his treatment of the universality of human skeeviness around the dead is superficial and unsatisfying, for example), but there’s a lot more good in it than not.
(I could explain about Bohr, but I don’t think that is what you want:) )
It is when omnipotence is defined to include the ability to do impossible things, and omnisciense the ability to know unknowable things that are often used which cause all sorts of logical problems (including the big rock) that makes me wary of using those terms, or terms like infinitely powerful, infinitely knowlegeable.
If Omnisciense means knowing every knowable thing. And omnipotence means able to do every possible thing. Then they seem safe to use as assignable aspects to something that we are calling God.
If omnipotense means the power to create impossible things, like four sided triangles. Then saying God is omnipotent, is like saying God is bright black in colour.
is the god of which we speak meant to be worshipped? it may follow from the other characteristics that “he” ought to be, so it might not be fundamental, but i’m not sure what is worth worship, so i’d find that a difficult proposition to prove based on any other axioms.
The links I posted earlier list the many interpretations of Omniscient and Omnipotent by people of different faiths and even people within the same faith.
I don’t think any real progress can be made until the specifics of those terms are agreed upon.
Does (1) mean we humans can’t rule out God, or that the ‘actual essence’ of the universe can accomodate “God”?
What does the consequence in (2) mean: “necessarily”?
Is your referent ‘God’ applicable to all popular traditional notions: Hindu/Buddhist Brahman, Judeo-Christian deity, Ancient Greek/Roman deities, or does it favour some notions over others?
You’re mistaken on two counts: (1) the definition I have given you is absolutely precise, and perfectly suited for logical analysis, and (2) it is not my individual opinion, but the opinion of quite many important modern philosophers, theologians, and logicians. If your mind is already closed, say so.
To be technically precise (I sense that you appreciate precision), it means that there must be at least one semantic world in which the proposition “God exists” is true; or, put another way, it is not necessary that God does not exist.
Necessity obtains in all possible semantic worlds. For example, “A is A” is necessarily true.
It is an ontological statement only. Therefore, it may accomodate everyone from Muslims to pantheists.
But God is undefined as such, so ‘God’ may be a synonym for IPU?
So I can define the Universe as God? If so, to sum up, your statement doesn’t seem to select between atheists, theists and deists. What’s its utility?
OK, here’s my cross-religion definition of a god:
A god is an entity which, by “believing” in it, makes someone a better person.
The word “believing”, as I am using it, can mean, in addition to simply accepting the god’s existence, that the person accepts and follows the laws and teachings of the religion or belief system associated with that god.
Whether someone is a better person or not as a result of their belief in a god obviously depends on perspective. As such, my definition clearly leads to the idea of “false gods” - ones which you believe do not affect their believers positively.
However, I also believe that, if you think someone is a good or better person as a result of their beliefs, then my definition should lead to a tolerance of their god and beliefs.
My definition does not encompass traditional vengeful or wrathful “gods” which must only be appeased - deliberately.
There are definitions, and there are propositions. Premises are one, but not the other.
Sorry for being dense. I can make literal sense of the above statement, but can’t quite figure how it answers my earlier questions.
I kind of like this, coupled with (ramanujan’s, I believe) the notion of a being that should be worhsipped. This kind of definition is a “mom”-like definition. It means everyone agrees on what “god” means, but not that the term necessarily picks out a singular concept/entity/etc for every individual that uses it (there are a lot of moms!). I think this works so long as we don’t make too much of the word “makes” in “makes someone a better person.” Or “better,” for that matter. But the more universal we demand our definitions be, the more ambiguities must creep in like that.
Your questions were about definitions: “But God is **undefined ** as such…”, and “So I can define the Universe as God…”, but what I had given you were not definitions, but propositions. A definition is not a truth bearer. If you have a question about the propositions, please ask it. If you have a question about the definition of God, your question will address “Supreme Being” or “Necessary Existence”, not premises 1 and 2.
Ok. In your logical argument, the referent ‘God’ is just a variable?
So, I could do the following:
In your proof, you define God as Supreme Being, and you linked to a dictionary definition which just loops back onto the referent. Could the universe be a Supreme Being?
Again…Heresy.
Creator/=Created.