Surely this cannot be the first of the many messageboards where you posted your manifesto to address your logical errors. By now you must have developed boilerplate replies.
As far as which God the OP is talking about, can we all agree that he means “creator of the universe” so he won’t have to spend extra time working on the definition? He’s new here.
But the OP has already stated
, and I’m not seeing anything in this so-called “proof” that points specifically to a particularly Christian deity of any variety.
No, that contradicts what he already said. There are a lot of characteristics of the being called ‘God’ in the Bible that aren’t ‘creator of the universe’, and I don’t think the Bible actually says that God created the universe - it says he created the world, but he seemed to already be hanging around somewhere when he did it. Also, ‘creator of the universe’ is much simpler than what just about anyone means when they say ‘God’. Something that created the universe doesn’t need to have any abilities beyond creating the universe or any sense of right and wrong, praying to and worshiping something that is only the ‘creator of the universe’ with no other characteristics doesn’t make any sense.
“What exactly is this ‘God’ guy that you’re proving exists” is a perfectly legitimate question to ask of someone making a proof, even someone new.
Strictly speaking, it doesn’t even prove the existence of that deity, does it? I mean, you could – after growing an impressive Nietzsche-style mustache – declare that you believe a powerful deity created the universe and then, uh, died.
Sure, you could also postulate one who created this universe and then left to create other ones – or you could postulate an amoral entity who created the universe just to watch it for his own entertainment, plus maybe the occasional bit of sadism. But as far as I can tell, you can postulate a creator who used to exist and then stopped existing: like unto a computer programmer who committed suicide.
I’m not sure that’s entirely true … we have in hand a rigorous mathemagical proof of GR … plenty of demonstrations … it’s just a matter of explaining the counter-examples. For the most part that’s just a simple matter of combining QM into GR theory, or vise versa. We don’t normally say that either are conjecture.
Navier-Stokes equation is not so, we don’t have a rigorous mathemagical proof in hand. Again plenty of demonstrations and to date no counter-examples, but here we do use the word conjecture. Typically, it’s a hell of a bigger bug-a-boo to physicists that the math doesn’t work than to find a few counter-examples. Generally speaking, GR is proved, whereas N-S is not.
Michael Faraday’s explanation of electromagnetic “fields of force” was thought to be cute and endearing, but somewhat dismissed until James Maxwell came up with that math he done did come up with.
Obviously in the case of proving God, first we must come up with our sound proof … THEN provide a definition of God … that’s where the good money lies …
At least the OP didn’t break out the ontological argument which states that God is the greatest of everything, and existing is greater than not existing, therefore God exists. I love the counter-argument to it which is a God that exists and created the universe would indeed be great, but not as great as a God that created the universe while at the same time not existing, which would be a truly great deed indeed.
This is not correct. In Christianity, God is the creator. God may be defined differently, as may his activities, but all hold in common that “God” is the ultimate entity, the supreme being, the creator to whom one returns after their earthly adventure.
I’m going to get my back up if anyone tries to disprove the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I became a devout Pastafarian after I was touched by His noodly appendage.
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Maybe we are God, each of us, and We collectively created this universe. Seriously.
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Are you proposing that there was no universe prior to September 21st, 1957? Seriously?
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I think God wins the jackpot, then! Since the creation of the universe as we understand it involved the creation of space and time, there could be no concept of “existence” prior to its creation, since existence by definition has both spatial and temporal dimensions. So God is simultaneously both the greatest thing ever and also non-existent, which I guess is pretty cool.
It’s more plausible that we are a Fluke of the Universe: Deteriorata.
At the bottom of each page of this thread, there is an ad with a cute shiba inu making a silly face. I interpret this as a divine message that this debate is best resolved at the end of the day by a simple scratch on the tummy.
Actually there’s a workaround for this.
I’m an author. I wrote a book, in which a time span of two weeks or so occurs between its first and last pages. As it happens none of my characters realize that their universe initialized with the first page due to implanted memories (I’m a Descartian evil demon!), but it remains a fact that their universe, that within its own context contains both time and space, was created by an external creator not contained within the spacetime of the book’s story, and was created at an ‘external’ time that is unrelated to the passage of time within the story in the book.
This doesn’t prove that there’s a god, of course - though it does prove that you cannot possibly disprove the existence of an external creator, because you could be a character in a book yourself and not know it.
Fortunately for bored atheists who have nothing better to do (perhaps Nexflix is down), we can still pass the time by disproving specific gods. Like any supposedly omnibenevolent god. Clearly no such god like that exists, because bad things happen. Bye bye Christianity!
I think you skipped a step; the problem only really comes up if we postulate a god that’s both omnibenevolent and omnipotent, right? I mean, an omnibenevolent god who only has a power level somewhere around that of a comic-book superhero could presumably exist – especially, but not necessarily, if we postulate an evil archenemy with a power level somewhere around that of a comic-book supervillain.
Omnimax is a major problem. Omnipresence and omniscience are not that big a problem if the deity is extratemporal, but that seems to lead into determinism. Omnipotence is unsupportable, because the exercise of power must work in continuum, which means the omnipotent actor must act against itself. Omnibenevolence is, AFAICT, nonsensical.
One could postulate a non-omnimax deity, which could make sense. The deity might have a local domain that encompasses us and our nearby reality and have absolute power, knowledge and presence within its own domain – but, if it is consigning part of its constituency to eternal, or even just extensive, torture, omnibenevolence seems to not apply.
In any case, there must be a reason to infer the existence of god. Up to this point, there does not appear to be a sensible position for any deity to occupy along the path of our journey of discovery.
That’s essentially the multiverse hypothesis, and more specifically, something similar to the notion that the universe is all a simulation by higher-level beings. In which case “God” is the programmer of the simulation, or, more likely, the programmers work for a hyperuniverse equivalent of an intergalactic conglomerate and the simulation is being mass-produced and is a profitable hot seller. In which case our particular God is a pimple-faced alien teenager who got the simulation on sale and is currently running it in his basement, fiddling with the parameters to cause supernovas and global catastrophes here on earth until his Mom yells at him to shut that damn computer off and go to bed. This ought to be a satisfying hypothesis to all those who wonder why God isn’t benevolent.
Given that I was talking about an entity that creates and controls the entire universe with the authority and power of an author over his book, I’d say that omnipotence was pretty much a given.
And also I mentioned the Christian god, who either is pretty omnipotent, or a big fat liar.
Also, if the word “god” doesn’t mean “really way super powerful”, what’s it good for? I once had a styrofoam cup that I declared was a god - was I right? (It was even omniscient and omnibenevolent! You can’t prove it wasn’t!)
So I think my based were pretty well covered regarding the omnipotency thing.
Fair enough; I was just shooting for clarity.
I’m not sure?
Like I alluded to earlier, I often use the word “god” if I suddenly need to describe ‘Poseidon, god of oceans and earthquakes, who is the brother of Hades and the uncle of mighty Heracles’ – you know, as part of a whole pantheon of deities, where he created horses, but Athena created olive trees, and maybe neither of them could beat Zeus in a straight fight but maybe both of them plus Ares could manage it, or whatever; is ‘god’ the right word to use, there?
(For an entity that’s, uh, potent, but nowhere near omnipotent?)