If God is omnipotent, why would he need stages or stupid humans? He could just make the universe so that there was no need for experience and process to be wise, or evil to be good. He could make us immortal so fire doesn’t burn us and save himself the trouble of protecting us from fire, or change the nature of fire, or turn us all into beings of pure energy floating through the cosmos. Any of your above excuses completely break the most typical model of God as omnipotent. The only thing left is to say he’s also inscrutable, but that also leaves no compelling reason to serve him but fear of the biggest bully on the block.
Besides, even if there were irrefutable evidence for a being more powerful than us either on this plane or in a plane of existence above us, it does nothing to solve the Turtles All the Way Down problem. There’s as much evidence to suggest that God is himself a regular, non-theistic being in a higher place as there is to suggest that he is omnipresent through time and uncreated. (And if he were a regular being in a higher plane there’s nothing to say there isn’t a plane above that which the Uncreated Being manipulates…)
Actually, for me, the most logically consistent point of view is that there is some limitation to our philosophy or senses, and we either haven’t discovered or cannot discover the answer to the First Mover problem. (Some have suggested that the philosophy of causality could be just an artifact of evolution, human beings being hard-wired to look for causality since it helps us pass on our genes, and that it need not truly apply to the search for a First Mover, if causality need not exist in whatever the Universe “exists” in.)
Pretty much this. Any god for which there would be scientific evidence would not be the typical Abrahamic god. Once people try to pin god down based on the evidence he just seems to wither away into some kind of inconsequential “universal being” that has no relevance to anyone. And even if the Abrahamic god could prove he exists, it wouldn’t fundamentally change anything, since that god really isn’t worth worshiping.
For this atheist, you first have to define “God.”
What would be the fun in that? If you can’t fail victory has no taste. I’m not just saying that’d be boring for God. I’m saying it’d be boring for us. Human nature is built on the struggle to survive, understand, adapt and improve. Lose that and what’s left?
Think about it.
Also when did I say God was Omnipotent?
What would be the fun in that? If you can’t fail victory has no taste. I’m not just saying that’d be boring for God. I’m saying it’d be boring for us.
Think about it.
Also when did I say God would have to be Omnipotent?
What would be the fun in that? If you can’t fail victory has no taste. I’m not just saying that’d be boring for God. I’m saying it’d be boring for us. The struggle to adapt, survive, learn, and improve is what makes us human. Take away the need for that and what’s left?
Think about it.
Also when did I say God would have to be Omnipotent?
That’s why “God” needs to be defined. It means many things to many people. Why don’t you give it a go?
You personally might not have said that god is Omnipotent. But an Omnipotent God is pretty central to most Christian traditions and I believe most Islamic traditions as well. If you are going to redefine the words in a argument from the most common definitions you should explicitly state that.
You didn’t, which is why I said it took away most of the definitions actually in use by religionists. And you think about it: an omnipotent God could simply make it so it wasn’t boring without the struggle.
No; it just means that any such God is evil or amoral. If this is the best it could do, it shouldn’t have made a universe at all. Rather like pushing ahead on a hypothetical human cloning project if you know for a fact that they will be stupid, insane, deformed, live short lives and/or die in agony; or all of the above. And then go ahead and produce billions for some insane or evil reason.
I have. Life for the vast majority of humanity has been misery heaped upon agony, with no possible “victory” but to live to suffer another day. For most people, “boring” would have been a VAST improvement. Go tell someone a thousand years ago, dying of cancer, knowing her children will starve without her about how happy she should be for being “challenged”.
Quantum mechanics demonstrates that there is no such problem; quantum uncertainty serves as an uncaused cause, and does so all the time.
May I have a go at it?
A one dimensional universe can be infinite. A straight line along the x-axis coming from infinity and receding into infinity.
If we move up to presume a two dimensional universe then it can be represented by infinity squared, infinity along the x-axis and infinity along the y-axis.
If we move up again to presume a three dimensional universe, it becomes infinity cubed, represented by the x, y and z axis.
Any finite point or any finite segment can be expressed in one dimension. Any finite point or segment can be expressed in two dimensions but can also be expressed in an infinite manner of shapes. All of the above can be expressed in three dimensions with an additional infinite depth along the z-axis.
This is all very nice but all very static. There is no action, no physics, no interaction, just definitions. Multiply it by infinity again and there is an infinite range of interactions of any combinations of planes through time, for now let’s call it t.
So, if I have it right so far:
x=∞
x,y=∞^2
x,y,z=∞^3
x,y,z,t=∞^4.
Each successive dimension adds to the previous dimension by a power of ∞.
In order for any dimension to do anything “higher” requires another exponential power of ∞.
Several different theories postulate mathematically that there are many more dimensions, some theories only make sense if there are more. Various string theories, for example, presuppose anywhere from 10 - 21 dimensions, but there could be more.
So up the progression again. Anything finite exists within it’s own dimension but has dominion over all preceding dimensions. When we up the progression another level, let’s call it r, then:
x,y,z,t,r=∞^5
∞^5, if it exists, would be inaccessible to any of the lower dimensions. It would exist in it’s own reality with dominion over all previous dimensions. Time may be the end-all be-all to us and our perception of reality, but any perception above our dimension would view time as simply another infinite line to be manipulated. Any entity that lived in this reality could and probably would exist in all spaces and all times simultaneously, at least relative to our reality. There would be a whole new set of physics to describe this higher reality that are infinitely beyond our current physics.
The short line, any intelligence at ∞^5 would be God to us.
We can assign terms that apply to our reality like omniscient or omnipresent, but these fall short because we cannot accurately describe anything above our level of existence because we don’t know the physical laws and constraints of the higher dimentions, we can only theorize, postulate, attempt to describe with the only pandimensional tool we have - mathematics, and hope we get an answer that somehow makes sense.
Yes, it could carry on this way: ∞^6 would be God to all lower dimensions, as would ∞^7 and so on.
Perhaps, as our understanding of math portrays, it plays out some where or perhaps it doesn’t. Perhaps it is possible to have ∞^∞ as the ultimate dimension. Any intelligence existing within the reality of ∞^∞ would definitely be God.
We may be God to the lower three dimensions, but as we have no concrete understanding of anything dimensionally higher than us we cannot scientifically know or provide evidence for an upper dimensional intelligence.
The other short line: we can’t prove God and we can’t not prove God.
So?
Go ahead and tell me how much I have lost my freaking mind.
With respect, I disagree.
People have an incredible ability to find happiness.
A friend of mine spends every Summer in Ethiopia, and he says that while they obviously worry about food at times, mostly they have enough, and are actually extremely happy in life. He says that he always sees the difference between our lifestyles as being the difference between a long, complicated life with only small amount of happiness, our a short, simple life, with a happy contentment every day.
Even in situations which we would nowadays deplore, you can bet people laughed, made friends, and even loved. The idea that the majority of humanity spent most of their time suffering is tbh rubbish. People got sick, and died, and awful things happened, and they had to work hard, but you can bet they still found happiness.
Sounds like someone who either carefully avoided or ignored the people who were actually badly off.
And then the slavemaster dragged the person you loved off and sold them. Or something else awful happened.
I don’t believe that. Both the nations and the religions of the past found it necessary to strongly discourage suicide, by threatening the souls or families of people, in order to prevent depopulation. As far as I can tell, historically life was regarded as punishment and misery, and the idea that life is worth living a modern one.
I’ve got to tell you; if I’m standing outside one day and the heavens part and God descends from the sky, with people running and screaming all around me, and He lands right on my street, looks at me, and his voice booms, “Rick, I’m God, the Almighty, creator of the universe. Stop picking your nose and wiping it on other people’s furniture,” and then he rises back up into the heavens to the trumpeting of a thousand angels, and the next day every newspaper reads GOD DESCENDS FROM HEAVEN!, I’m going to believe God exists. If it’s proven, I’ll be good with that.
Yes, but atheism isn’t a matter of faith. It is an honest assessment of the evidence.
“Faith” means to believe without evidence. To believe there is no God is to believe something that IS supported by the evidence.
Fair enough. How about sentient force able to define various aspects of reality?
The point I was trying to make with that is a “God” of the universe probably wouldn’t be like we expect. Our morality is something that’s for us. We’re a social species and it helps us live together. Nature doesn’t have to obey it. Hurricanes feel no remorse when they level a town. Predators don’t empathize with their pray. Pyroclastic flows don’t stop so little old ladies with babies can get out of the way.
Logically a God that follows human morals wouldn’t create the world as we know it. It’s too brutal. Therefore if there’s a God that God wouldn’t fall under our morality. A different set of rules maybe.
Are hurricanes evil or just forces of nature? Are wolves serial murders or just animals doing what they do? If our morality doesn’t apply to forces of nature, or even other mammals why would it apply to something as far removed as a God?
What does this mean? There are plenty of things we didn’t used to be able to manipulate that now we can. If some sentient being has discovered a way to manipulate something we can’t, does that make it a god? Also, your definition in no way accords with a god as described by any religion I’ve ever heard of. Their gods tend to have many more features.
My recollection is that every GD where the “what is a god” question is posed ends up being more like an IMHO: everyone just states their own version and while there are similiarities there are also major differences. There is no agreed definition, even on a US board where most theists are of one particular strand of religion.
So there is no clear definition of what a god is, and without that it is hard to start in on what you would need to do to prove one’s existence. In “is there a god” threads, many theists argue that their god is outside of knowledge. Many gods have features that make them basically impossible to prove or disprove. They tend to have no behaviours that they presently exercise that are distinguishable from the null hypothesis, and no physical features.
Or maybe we should just hold him to the proper standards and condemn him.
As for human standards not applying, it’s ridiculous for people to talk about how God’s wonderful and we should worship him and follow him and so forth, and then turn around and claim we can’t judge him because he’s so inhuman. If he’s so inhuman that we can’t judge him, then why should anyone follow him, or consider him admirable in any way ? It seems like it’s perfectly all right to apply human terms to God, as long as they are compliments. :rolleyes:
And there isn’t much of a distinction as a practical matter between something that’s evil, and between something incomprehensible that just ACTS evil, anyway.
Morality applies to all of those things if there is a God, because then they are not the results of a mindless nature. If there is a creator-God, there IS no such thing as a force of nature; and if God didn’t create the world but is omnipotent & omniscient or close to it ( typical attributes given to him ), then there are no accidents. A hurricane killing people in the event of God existing is just as evil as devastating the same city with bombers.
Nor, if a god created the world are the appetites of wolves morally neutral; God’s to blame. Nor is cancer, or infectious disease, or any other destructive or unpleasant part of the natural world morally neutral. And all of the innumerable flaws built into humans that we spend so much often futile efforts trying to overcome ? God’s fault. Your bad back ? God’s fault. That urge you get to kill your annoying neighbor ? God’s fault. Pain ? God’s fault. Your little brother is stupid ? That’s God’s fault too.
If we live in a manufactured universe like the believers like to claim, the manufacturer did a BAD JOB. Either God’s incompetent, or amoral, or evil.
Depending on what the word’God’ means, where was God before he had a place to be? Is God also Place? If he had no place to be, he would be nowhere.
Monavis
Maybe, depends on the abilities. Some religions believe you can achieve a god-like state. Buddahism for example, and I could certainly argue a sufficiently advance society would have god like abilities.
Lets rephrase it to “a sentient force able to control various aspects of reality that baryonic matter based organisms can not”
Great. So what definition would work that includes all those features? The problem I have is you’re asking me to define something I don’t even know if it exists, and have no way to test the nature of if it does. My belief based on nature is if there is a god that god doesn’t share our sense of morality. Heck our ancestors didn’t either. They had different ideas about right and wrong. So may our decedents some day. Even different parts of the world have vastly different ideas.
The point I’m trying to make is human morality isn’t a universal constant. If there’s a god it must play by different rules.
Okay so the amoral option means you’re getting part of my point I think.