So God is not a superior being? And a mere being that is omnipotent to us could not have created itself or the universe?
Uh hold the phone and back up a tad. Created itself? That seems a bit Oximoron, at odds and opposing polar impossible. To create itself it must exist already in at least some state of being, so it could not have created itself, only manifested itself. Which is still not exactly Godly, just highly talented. How about it just uses God as a name like Bob, Sam or Joe.
OK, that’s true, subject to definition of “deity.” It’s pretty clear that you have an idea in your mind as to the meaning of this word, but you should recognize that the term is not, in universal usage, crisply defined.
Incorrect. I both do and do not believe in God. Or rather, I don’t believe in the gods, but I do worship them.
Well, that’s what YOU mean by it. But it’s not what everyone means.
The statement “God exists” can either be true or false. I’m not talking about the perception of God, as that would be subjective for everyone. I’m talking about the actual existence of God. Either God exists and is responsible for all those things denoted by God, or God does not exist.
No, I go by what the definition of God is. I don’t go by who you call God. You can call your dad God, for all I know. Personally I call bud, God occasionally, but that’s not important. I’m going by what God denotes.
God - creator of everything, self-creating, self-sustaining, all knowing–omnipotent. It is this concept that I base my argument upon. I don’t base it on who you personally refer to as God.
Kriswest,
The only thing in the universe that can be omnipotent is God. There can be beings in the universe with the ability to create whole galaxies, life, and whatnot, but they’re not THE God. Only THE god can be responsible for creating Itself, being by definition fully omnipotent.
It created itself? Again I ask how can this be so? It may manifest itself into a different state but, Create itself?, No way, no how, not even on faith can something create its own existence. Not even a God or The God. It must come to exist by some other means.
To believe that it created itself well ,That much blind faith is truly blind faith. I wish you all the luck ,happiness and wellness it can bring you, for your sake I hope it will be your truth and true to you.
The reason it’s not true, is because we mean by “exist” certain things – such as being amenable to objective observation – that have no relevance to God. God is not amenable to objective observation; God has no mass (or else has the mass of the universe), no energy (or else the energy of the universe), no form (or all forms); God may not be induced from observation of phenomena, nor deduced from prior knowledge. What’s more, any idea we have about God that is intelligible to our limited brains is automatically wrong. God therefore does not exist. Yet the experience that leads to the concept of God is compelling, and more subjectively real than many other experiences that refer to phenomena that do pass all those tests. So God DOES exist.
He/She/It both exists and does not exist, at the same time.
Please see above. God is not something for which the phrase “actual existence” has any meaning.
There is no such thing as THE definition of what God is.
What’s this all about? I’ll settle it, something has always existed if you believe in causality. I even wonder without the belief in causality if uncause is cause.
As I think Kris said, as even Aquinas wrote, a cause cannot create itself because it would have to exist prior to itself to do so.
O- This seems more like an appeal to agnosticism rather than atheism.
Let us first attack solipcism. The regularity of events is what on the contrary makes our conception of the real emerge. It is when we are surprised by events that we indeed believed that we must have imagined it or dreamed it. Never being wrong is not as a consequence to make us incredulous of reality because it is the quality by which our “selves” exist. The “I” is possible by it’s very uniformity and lack of surprise.
Secondly, let us evaluate the theology that emerges. I agree with you that God, if He did exists, was under any necessity or compulsion to…say…make us happy; or keep being good to us, or listen to our prayers, or forgive us when we ask. He might become a real prick.
But if that is the truth, then what do you tell the congregation on Sunday mass?
“You think that God must answer your puny prayers? That he must make an exception for your dying granny?”
" God is who He decides to be not what you would want Him to be and He therefore might piss you off and in the end might not save any of us. What? Can’t God change His mind? If so then your God is nothing but an idea in your own head, while my God is real."
(Yet, ironically, the latter might as well be without God since he has no resorce to affect God. There is no point in worshiping, in prayer, or even in our behaviour. This is the effect that renders such rational ideal, contradictory and acid to one’s religion)
Other than that, as rational as a Calvinistic argument.
The reason people believe in God, is not because the idea serves some useful purpose (although that may be why some people want OTHER people to believe in God). It’s because of religious experience, which seems to suggest an indwelling presence in the world, a consciousness larger than the limited being we normally call the self. And in the depths of that experience we sense a communion with the rest of reality, as if the rest of reality were a Person, or as if there were a Person behind it all.
The experience is real and compelling, and there is some kind of Reality behind it. But that Reality is not something the human intellect can grasp. And I don’t just mean the scientific intellect, I mean the theological or philosophical intellect, too.
All the religious teachings, all the theologies and tapestries of thought about what God is, are at best only metaphors for something the mind isn’t big enough to encompass.
When you say “God exists” or “God does not exist,” you have a definite idea in mind of what God is (or would be). And that definite idea is wrong. ANY definite idea about what God is, is wrong – THAT God does not exist.
But there is SOMETHING there, that underlies the religious experience, and that the idea of God is vaguely pointing towards. And THAT God does exist. But I can’t tell you what It is, because my own mind is as limited as everyone else’s. And even if it weren’t, human language doesn’t have the words to explain it.
And that is what I mean when I say that God both does exist, and does not.
You’re an atheist. You don’t believe in God. For you, He’s a carrot on a stick, but only because you don’t believe in Him yourself, you just want OTHER people to believe in him, for reasons of promoting public morality.
God is never a carrot on a stick with reference to one’s own belief in Him/Her/It, only with reference to the beliefs of others. And let’s not forget that the usefulness of the carrot on a stick lies in fooling a dumb horse. Using an idea such as God for the purpose shows respect neither for the idea nor for the ones you would use it on.
The horse doesn’t run faster after the carrot on a stick because he wants to work harder. Nor would he do it if there were no such thing as a real carrot, or if he had never tasted one.
So according to you Tristan, its your way or the highway? A person must believe as you do or they are atheists?
This is not an insult to religions but, in reference to God/s as a carrot stick, that is way off base. God/s is more of a pacifier for the soul, not an elusive reward.
Lets define God. The God, that is, not zeus, apollo, hades, etcetera. The omnipotent god.
either:
God is responsible for the creation of everything including himself.
God is not responsible for the creation of everything, therefore he’s not God; he’s not omnipotent, and in high probability does not really exist.
God can take other forms, but they’re all irrelevant. God(not really god, but the thought of God) can be a sedative, inspiration for hate/love, can be a reason for borders, et cetera. If god makes you feel good, then who am I to stop it. I am merely pointing out that he doesn’t exist, or that he can’t exist in the foxhole he’s been put this week.
I hate to quote myself but:
There is no reason to believe that god exists, except maybe the actual possibility that god COULD exist becoming reason enough to believe that god MIGHT exist. [insert regurgitated Santa Clause\unicorn\Flying Spaghetti Monster analogy here] Neither is want of god reason enough for the manifestation of god into existence.
So you’re arguing that because most people have a hunch a greater power exists, it does. Could the same be said about the majority having a hunch the earth is the center of the universe? And since when did hunches or feelings have any relevance to truth? Such a belief is one of the most deceptive our world has ever come across.
I’m arguing that the religious experience (which is not a “hunch” by the way) requires that there be SOME reality underlying it that does not trivialize it. I’m also saying that this reality is something the human mind cannot grasp.
Which means that any idea of that reality which can be put in words more definite than the ones I used above (such as “higher power”) is incorrect. At best, such ideas are metaphors for the truth. God, understood literally as Tristan is trying to do, does not exist, but understood as a metaphor for that Something, He does.
Atheists and dogmatic theists make the same mistake about God: they try to define Him. Can’t be done. Any God that’s defined does not exist. But Something is definitely there.