It’s not.
I am a theist and I use “god” and “God” in different circumstances. In general, “god” is a reference to an unspecified supreme being that is not “God” or an entity within a pantheon (eg, Thor, Zeus).
I use the term “God” as the reference to what I believe in. I will also use it as a more generic reference to the creator, whether he matches my beliefs or in a more generic sense, whether or not the creator is a single entity or, within the context of divine purpose, it would reference the highest level of consciousness, whether that is specifically my beliefs, some other set of beliefs, the universe, collective human consciousness, or even my own mind, depending on the particular context. In reference to my own beliefs, I will use the term “God” with the deliberate purpose that the creator and divine purpose are the same, though the specifics of the nature of God is still something I’m working out and, at the same time, I’m not even really sure that it particularly matters.
By my definition, an alien could be a “god” but cannot be “God”. It is possible that a set of beliefs could designate an alien race as those who give us purpose, they may also believe that aliens created us or even our entire planet. However, it is impossible for an alien race to be “God”, because they would have to have created the universe of which they are only a part.
As for minimum requirements, they’re pretty simple. All it really takes to be a “god” is that someone’s belief structure holds that to be true. It doesn’t require any minimum specific set of powers or, in fact, even any powers. As for “God”, it depends on the context. For my own beliefs, it only requires that he created the universe and that there is some purpose or intent to it. I believe that, by virtue of being powerful enough to create the universe, he is also able to manipulate the physical laws within it by will, that either he doesn’t as it violates the fundamental property of omniscience. That is, from our perspective, if he’s changing his mind mid-stream, and form his perspective any “changes” God makes would be transparent to us in the sense that they’re changed for our Space-Time and all in which we exist are derived from those conditions.
As far as divine purpose, in this sense, “God” necessarily exists, but this is not in the context of theism vs atheism. If the creator exists, it would undoubtedly be the same. If, however, he does not, it is simply that to which we appeal for purpose, and it doesn’t even necessarily have to be specified exactly what it is if there is no creator. It could be the universe, it could be some collective consciousness, for a solipsist it could be one’s mind, or it could be even potentially derived to simple cold logic. Though, I very seldom use “God” in this context, at least here on the Dope, because that context isn’t something we discuss often.
Great question.
My definition is that a god should be able to violate actual natural laws. An alien might be able to violate natural laws as we understand them today, but if we became scientifically advanced we’d be able to violate them also - like in the TNG episode where Picard can reproduce all the miracles a reputed God could perform. We’d never be able to do things a real god can do.
Immortal, definitely. I’m not sure about most powerful, since that writes most of the gods in our past out of godhood.
I’m not sure about morality. I’d think a god would have access to exact and true answers to all moral questions - though the Greek gods were rather lax in this area.
Impossible. If you change the laws of physics you just create new laws.
Should be possible even for human science in the relatively near future[
Trivially possible, even for me and thee.
Impossible. Any entity can be long-lived, or even very long lived, but you will never be able to determine if it is immortal.
Trivially possible, even for me and thee.
Three out of five are not exclusively godlike, and the other two are logically impossible.
There’s the old story of uppity scientists telling God they can do anything he can do. So God grabs a handful of dirt and molds it into a living woman, then says “Do that!”
One scientist reaches down and starts scooping up some dirt, and God says “Hey, use your own dirt!”
Which only a God could do, as far as we know.
Undoubtedly. If I were composing this list in the near future, I’d take that into account.
It’s not about difficulty, it’s about having a conscious will. God as the universe itself or god as a force in nature fail this test.
The perils of determining what’s a god and what isn’t are many. Did someone say this was easy? Also, we’re not just talking about lifespan, there’s also the matter of mortality: can we kill it?
And yet it excludes some conceptions of god.
To your mind. I don’t see why a god couldn’t change the laws of physics, or be unkillable.
This has a lot of appeal to me. Of course, on a practical level, how do we tell what violates natural laws, as opposed to following other laws of which we are yet unaware?
Another tack would be one of the 3 big Os - ominscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent. Tho the matter of proof might be problemmatic.
I’m not sure how terribly much it matters to me, tho. If a sufficiently powerful alien made its presence known, and expressed a willingness to enforce his desires, I’d do what it wanted for sure.
Haven’t some folk suggested a time in the near future where for at least most purposes, there may be computers smart enough to be effectively indistinguishable from traditional gods?
Are Zeus and Odin Gods? They didn’t posess any infinite qualities, weren’t especially benevolent, and could be fought by other supernatural entities. For that matter Yahweh could be argued with and surprised in the Old testament.
My single definition is that a god is one that can create life. I don’t mean birthing - and not like cooking-up a Frankenstein’s monster - but able to take a planet w/o any life at all, and make it a “living, breathing” ecosphere. All this within the confines of time, physics, and chemistry as we (will) know it. I sincerely doubt that there is any entity that is not subject to the laws of the universe. Sure, we probably don’t know all the laws (or shortcuts) that exist in our cosmic cloud (yet), but whatever occurs in the universe will be limited to operate within those constraints. And, one day, i believe that man will meet this definition. There may be aliens that can already do this, and I would call them gods as well as aliens.
I’m not concerned w/ “perfection”, the supernatural, omnipotence, or omniscience. To be a god, you must simply be (loosely-fitting terms) an architect, a constructor, and a provider, even as an absentee to the system that you’ve created.
Also as a humorous aside, i’m sure my hound sees me as divine. I control and provide almost every aspect of his environment, as a benevolent god in his eyes. (I realize that wasn’t the question :))
I guess it depends on the consequences of worship and your objectives. Or can you not conceive of a junior god who acts more favourably to humans than a more senior god, given the proper incantations?
It’s possible that there will be maximally intelligent creations from our standpoint within our lifetimes, if the Singularity occurs (which is more possible than many people think, considering that we are within a few Moore’s Law cycles of creating a computer which could simulate a human brain if we knew how to build the simulator.)
However, whether it would be a god would be up for debate. As the phrase is used currently in this culture, I wouldn’t say so, considering it wouldn’t be omniscient due to limitations on the laws of the universe. It may or may not seem like it is able to break physical laws, but we don’t know if it would be able to because we don’t know what those laws are 
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If you change the laws of physics you just create new laws.
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Which only a God could do, as far as we know.
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If the laws of physics can be changed, that itself establishes a law (that the laws are mutable). You are welcome to consider that an entity that can access this capacity is a god, but there may be an arbitrary number of such entities. For all we know, all intelligent entities in the universe except humans might have this capacity - does that make them all gods? What if these gods can only change the laws in a minor way, so that the difference is barely noticeable?
That makes sense; I see your point.
However if the only gods that exist in our universe are not conscious, are we to disregard them as substandard? It would be a pity to discover that gods exist, yet are not sufficiently human-like to fit our preconceptions.
If we fail in all our attempts to kill a particular entity, that does not make it immortal. We might succeed on our next attempt. In any case, it seems impolite to define a god by the ability to survive our best attempts at murder.
Agreed, the presence of one god-like being in no way rules out the existence of others. We are limited to what we can observe and understand, and revise this over time.
As for minor powers of god-hood, that’s a bit of a grey area. Certainly, the flashier the results, the more impressive the claim of god-hood. The further removed an entity is from our abilities, the more god-like it seems.
I don’t know about substandard, but they wouldn’t be gods as the term is normally used. As I said, some people use “God” to mean “the source of all love”, “everything we don’t understand”, “nature”, “the universe”, and so forth. This is a very distinct concept from the gods of the major religions, will have a will, a consciousness, and express a deep interest in humanity and our choices and worship. Thus, the same word shouldn’t be used for both ideas.
All the criteria I mentioned are subject to the limits of our capacity to understand, measure, and observe the entity in question. When dealing with gods, that’s a given. How can we tell the difference between “omnipotent” and “really, really powerful”? Frankly, we can’t.
Polite or not, since every living being we are aware of can be killed, one that survives (and if’s a god, it shouldn’t mind the attempt) efforts to kill it is, again, removed from our own abilities, and closer to godhood. Ultimately, god-ness is relative to human-ness, since it’s humans who thought up the concept.
ETA: These are the problems that crop up when we define god before encountering and observing one.
That’s a pretty good question, particularly since the terms may mean something different depending on what culture you come from.
I’ve always thought it was interesting how both Muslims and Christians believe that they are monotheists who believe in only one God, yet both also believe in Satan who comes across in both their traditions as very much of a God. An evil God who is less powerful than the God of Abraham, but still a God.
We’d have to ask. But there are plenty of laws which are solid enough so that it is unlikely that new discoveries would change them - at least not under normal conditions.
They are mutually contradictory, so it is impossible for a deity to be both given that it is bound by the laws of logic.
We can already do far more interesting miracles than most of what God does in the OT. Manna from heaven? Airdrop food. Sodom and Gomorrah - no problem. Stop the sun? Not per se, but big spotlights would make it seem that way.
I think “god” is just a generic term for any sort of supernatural being. Angels and demons and genies are usually just called “spirits”, while only the more powerful beings of the Greek and Egyptian pantheons are often actually called “gods”, but there is no intrinsic difference between them.
God with a capital G has another meaning entirely.
Natural laws are commonly considered to be bound up in the very nature of the universe. That’s why I think being able to violate them at will (without changing them) is enough. But an entity that could scribble on natural law is definitely more powerful than one who can only violate them.
I can see that if multiple entities could change natural laws there could be multiple gods. But I don’t think there are - otherwise the Universe would look like Microsoft Windows, and we’d be getting BSODs in the sky on a regular basis.
So, that’s all the Norse pantheon out of contention then?
Do you submit your expense claims to the CFO?
Or, perhaps less facetiously, while Jupiter might well have more power, he’s likely deluged with prayers, so if I have a problem with my door hinge I might be advised to offer up a prayer to Cardea; St. Augustine’s attitude to little gods notwithstanding.
My opinion is that omnipotence is the calling card of a true diety. Everything else is window dressing. Said god may or may not be a dick - to me, that doesn’t determine godhood.
Presumably there are laws that the gods themselves can’t violate, since there is no observational evidence for such violations.