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God, as We Know it, Debunked or Not?

Ikari said:
Yes. One of the greatest American authors. Anyway, the full quote is

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly
Man got to sit and wonder why why why
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land
Man got to tell himself he understand

It speaks to the fundamental. Humans think, our intelligence is what won evolution, it's what set us apart from everything else. You ask why is it that one has to ponder such profound questions, why do we need the answers, and it's because we're human. We have to think. We have to believe at the end of the day we understand, it's innate to our very nature.

In fact, it's why we have gods in the first place, as highlighted by your response.



At the end of the day, we have to believe we know. And gods provide for that. There are plenty of unknowns out there, and mankind cannot help but think of them and seek answers. But some of this stuff doesn't have answers right then and there, some may never have answers, others will take some time to figure out. And in the interim, we need to think we know. And thus gods were born. God did X, god know Y, whatever it is that we need to think that at the end of the day we know the answer.

Gods are an artifact of high-intelligence. We invented them because they make us feel better in the end. And that's also why you see the evolution of humanity's gods. They started as representations of the physical, of elements, and as we learn more and begin to know more, we refine our gods. They became less tangible, more magical as more and more measurement and science added to the collective knowledge of the race. And they'll continue to evolve as we learn more and more. But there's likely always going to be some unknown, so gods are likely to exist in some form for quite some time.
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That is an awesome explanation. +1
 
Mac77 said:
My belief is pretty simple

The miracle of life cannot be explained by godless humans who believe in nothing

This cannot all be the result of dumb luck

God created us for a purpose and without a Creator none of this would exist

I dont have to know more than that

Let Vonnegut sit around pondering the unknowable

I have better things to do with my life
Click to expand...

This can all, most certainly, be possible by just "dumb luck." A random burst of energy that set off the chain of events which resulted in all you see around you is actually more logical than sky daddy creating us in his own image.
 
calamity said:
Yeah...exactly. God created all that other stuff, then let it die off, only so that we could evolve from it and be like him.
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It was a wonderful plan, wasn't it? How much better than were it a Tralfamorian plot!
 
calamity said:
This can all, most certainly, be possible by just "dumb luck." A random burst of energy that set off the chain of events which resulted in all you see around you is actually more logical than sky daddy creating us in his own image.
Click to expand...

Nonsense

Life is too perfect to be a mete accident
 
joG said:
It was a wonderful plan, wasn't it? How much better than were it a Tralfamorian plot!
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Let's take it a bit further....did god create all those other galaxies with billions of stars and perhaps trillions of planets just for show? Or did he put dudes on a few billion of those just other planets so he could compare them? And, if so, which one are we, the real man created in his own image or just one of the billions in the control group?
 
Mac77 said:
Nonsense

Life is too perfect to be a mete accident
Click to expand...

Life is far from perfect. Until recently, most of the things alive were around just long enough to be eaten by something else. We suffer, we get hurt, we get sick, we die. Not exactly perfect, if you ask me.
 
calamity said:
Let's take it a bit further....did god create all those other galaxies with billions of stars and perhaps trillions of planets just for show? Or did he put dudes on a few billion of those just other planets so he could compare them? And, if so, which one are we, the real man created in his own image or just one of the billions in the control group?
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All that! He is a perfectionist that lives the way He looks! It was worth it.
 
God is a concept and as such only exists in our minds as an idea. Because everyone's concept of god is different, a definition of god can't be pinned down. Another problem occurs when people define god as something outside of their minds. But when we think god is something more than just an idea, then we rightly demand evidence of this god. Either way, we can't pin down god. We are better off with god as only an idea and not as something that exists independent of human concepts.
 
It makes one wonder about some polytheistic, flawed variations of gods. However, the god being discussed is God, a singular omnipotent deity, then there is no problem. Time is ruled by an all-powerful God. Such power it not merely manipulation of some entity (like we would say a human could manipulate time, and perhaps existence, through time travel). Instead, all things (time, physics, everything) pour forth from the entity we call God. Seeking a flaw in the reasoning of such a being is beyond any comprehension; flawed reasoning by God really cannot be used as evidence against God's existence. For instance, you may know yourself, you may know me, know our situation, and therefore use reason to claim something about the situation to be right or wrong. In this case, your knowing me is important because it also informs you of our situation. But, recalling the incomprehension of God, this means that you cannot know the situation between you and God, or man and God, as it pertains to you.

It is better to debate the existence of God from angles other than this one.
 
Envoy said:
It makes one wonder about some polytheistic, flawed variations of gods. However, the god being discussed is God, a singular omnipotent deity, then there is no problem. Time is ruled by an all-powerful God. Such power it not merely manipulation of some entity (like we would say a human could manipulate time, and perhaps existence, through time travel). Instead, all things (time, physics, everything) pour forth from the entity we call God. Seeking a flaw in the reasoning of such a being is beyond any comprehension; flawed reasoning by God really cannot be used as evidence against God's existence. For instance, you may know yourself, you may know me, know our situation, and therefore use reason to claim something about the situation to be right or wrong. In this case, your knowing me is important because it also informs you of our situation. But, recalling the incomprehension of God, this means that you cannot know the situation between you and God, or man and God, as it pertains to you.

It is better to debate the existence of God from angles other than this one.
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Even if God did not operate linearly, it still makes no sense to put all his eggs in the basket of Man, who has only been around for 5 minutes of the 14-year old universe analogy. It makes even less sense after we look at the relevance of earth in the vast cosmos, if we consider that God balanced all those eggs on a single grain of sand when there is an entire beach of nearly infinite shoreline.
 
calamity said:
It seems to me that a common theme comes up every time we discuss the "there is a god; no there is not, well maybe there is or maybe not" issue in this forum. What the hell do we really mean by "God"?

So, let's start by a rough definition of the commonly accepted God in today's vernacular. God is the creator of the universe. Sticking to the monotheist version, it is also commonly accepted that God is it, the ultimate power in the universe. There is no other--although the Christians seem to have this Jesus thing, which I guess needs to be slipped into the conversation somewhere. But, I'm not sure where exactly.

For now, I think we can agree that the common definition of God also puts man on a pretty high pedestal. God, after all, created man in his image, they say. So, God is the almighty, creator of all with a special affinity for man. Do I have that right?

Ok, now let's look at that. The universe is 14 Billion years old. Earth is 4 Billion years old. Life, beyond single cell bacteria and other extremely simple forms of it, has been around for roughly a Billion, with most of what we really understand life to be existing for maybe 500 million, post Cambrian Explosion. Since then there have been 5 mass extinctions which wiped out all the creatures that once dominated the planet, and roughly 2 million years ago, the first signs of anything even close to man finally emerged. Real man emerged maybe 50,000 years ago and civilization less than 10,000.

For those who have a hard time with big numbers: figure that if the universe were 14 years old, Earth would be five, life about a year, and man as we know him has been around for about 5 minutes, give or take. Dinosaurs died out about a month ago, to give you some perspective.

Well, that leaves the obvious question. If God made all of this empty space for us--and, lordy lordy the universe is full of a whole lot of empty dead space, at least that is all we know of it so far judging by the lifeless planets and moons in our solar system--why did he wait so long to plop man into the game? What gives? Was God practicing with Dinosaurs, Pelycosaurs, Archosaurs, Therapsids, and Synapsids?

I guess my question is, and what can be debated here is, does this time-lag not debunk the existence of "god" as we defined it?
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no it just makes that kind of god a bit odd and unlikely seeming
 
calamity said:
Well, that leaves the obvious question. If God made all of this empty space for us--and, lordy lordy the universe is full of a whole lot of empty dead space, at least that is all we know of it so far judging by the lifeless planets and moons in our solar system--why did he wait so long to plop man into the game? What gives? Was God practicing with Dinosaurs, Pelycosaurs, Archosaurs, Therapsids, and Synapsids?
Click to expand...

Who says he waited? To assume that he waited is to assume that time existed prior to God rather than time being something God created and/or that God is a temporal (time-bound) being.

Christians have believed God existed outside of time since Augustine and Boethius developed Eternalism in the 5th century. A millennia and a half later, the work: of Einstein, Feynman, and Hawkins has given us the "block universe model" which now allows us to better understand how this might be possible. Most physicists now believe that the universe is not a three dimensional space within which things occur, but rather a static four (or more) dimensional space within which nothing happens. Time, like Einstein said is "a stubborn illusion". Thus we can at least somewhat conceive of God as able to look into our block universe and see it all at once, in all 4 (or more) dimensions. There is no such thing as time for him. Thus the idea that he waited is nonsensical.

This link goes into theological views on eternity: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/eternity/#EteVie
This one addresses scientific views: The Illusion of Time: What's Real?

Interestingly enough, here's how the article on the science of time concludes:Opinion is divided, but many physicists and philosophers now suspect that time is not fundamental; rather, time emerges out of something more fundamental — something nontemporal, something altogether different (perhaps something discreet, quantized, not continuous, smooth).

So it seems that, rather than the passage of time debunking the existence of God, it may actually point to him.
 
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calamity said:
It seems to me that a common theme comes up every time we discuss the "there is a god; no there is not, well maybe there is or maybe not" issue in this forum. What the hell do we really mean by "God"?

So, let's start by a rough definition of the commonly accepted God in today's vernacular. God is the creator of the universe. Sticking to the monotheist version, it is also commonly accepted that God is it, the ultimate power in the universe. There is no other--although the Christians seem to have this Jesus thing, which I guess needs to be slipped into the conversation somewhere. But, I'm not sure where exactly.

For now, I think we can agree that the common definition of God also puts man on a pretty high pedestal. God, after all, created man in his image, they say. So, God is the almighty, creator of all with a special affinity for man. Do I have that right?

Ok, now let's look at that. The universe is 14 Billion years old. Earth is 4 Billion years old. Life, beyond single cell bacteria and other extremely simple forms of it, has been around for roughly a Billion, with most of what we really understand life to be existing for maybe 500 million, post Cambrian Explosion. Since then there have been 5 mass extinctions which wiped out all the creatures that once dominated the planet, and roughly 2 million years ago, the first signs of anything even close to man finally emerged. Real man emerged maybe 50,000 years ago and civilization less than 10,000.

For those who have a hard time with big numbers: figure that if the universe were 14 years old, Earth would be five, life about a year, and man as we know him has been around for about 5 minutes, give or take. Dinosaurs died out about a month ago, to give you some perspective.

Well, that leaves the obvious question. If God made all of this empty space for us--and, lordy lordy the universe is full of a whole lot of empty dead space, at least that is all we know of it so far judging by the lifeless planets and moons in our solar system--why did he wait so long to plop man into the game? What gives? Was God practicing with Dinosaurs, Pelycosaurs, Archosaurs, Therapsids, and Synapsids?

I guess my question is, and what can be debated here is, does this time-lag not debunk the existence of "god" as we defined it?
Click to expand...

You have to be careful with using 'God', 'god' and 'gods' because Christians tend to claim the word 'God' for their own; They tend to use the capital to indicate a proper noun.

I believe that there is no intellectually honest way to use the terms 'god' or 'gods' without the clarifications which immediately debunks many definitions. However, to clarify further...

If we put all definitions or instances of gods into a set called 'gods' then we have a mess, they can't all exist for reasons of logic therefore I consider that using the term 'god' or 'gods' on it's own in any kind of general way is very problematic. If you go in any direction from here, theists end up with a problem.

If you go specific such as 'god' is exactly as described as the Norse god Thor then there is the obvious problem that we know that thunder is not caused by a huge hammer; Thor cannot exist as defined. To make specific 'gods' meaningful you have to assign meaningful attributes to them and these attributes tend to mean an interaction with the Universe or a logical contradiction that we can debunk. The sub-set of 'impossible gods' increases in direct proportion to the number of 'gods' you can imagine and describe which is apparently infinite and will keep theists and atheists busy for some time; this is where the apologetics business tends to ply most of it's trade.

If you go general such as, 'god' is simply a 'creator' or worse a 'creative force' then you as a minimum have the prime mover problem but more than that, I am not aware of any single advocate for 'gods' that stops at this proposition. There are people who will stop at this definition for purposes of argument but, all they are doing is defining 'gods' to win an argument, it has no real meaning beyond that.
 
Discussing someone's faith, or faith in a deity, is akin to discussing what might be funny to someone.

I laugh my ass off at Robot Chicken, Archer, Squidbillies, Family Guy, American Dad, and Big bang Theory.

My wife only likes BBT, tolerates Family Guy, and thinks I am INSANE for liking the others.

Faith, like humor, is a highly individual characteristic.

I grew up reading MAD magazine, so that is a logical explanation for some of my humor, but I was not brought up in any church, and discovered my faith on my own when I was 15 and knew nothing about it, other than I felt it was right.

I feel blessed that I still have both.

I have observed one thing though....
Those that are waaay over the scaled in religion have almost no sense of wonderment or humor, as do those waaay on the other side of the scale that have ZERO faith in anything and just as dismal a sense of humor.

Neither are very nice people to be around.
 
blarg said:
no it just makes that kind of god a bit odd and unlikely seeming
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I certainly feel that way. If there is a god, I would be confident saying it is not that god.
 
CrabCake said:
Who says he waited? To assume that he waited is to assume that time existed prior to God rather than time being something God created and/or that God is a temporal (time-bound) being.

Christians have believed God existed outside of time since Augustine and Boethius developed Eternalism in the 5th century. A millennia and a half later, the work: of Einstein, Feynman, and Hawkins has given us the "block universe model" which now allows us to better understand how this might be possible. Most physicists now believe that the universe is not a three dimensional space within which things occur, but rather a static four (or more) dimensional space within which nothing happens. Time, like Einstein said is "a stubborn illusion". Thus we can at least somewhat conceive of God as able to look into our block universe and see it all at once, in all 4 (or more) dimensions. There is no such thing as time for him. Thus the idea that he waited is nonsensical.

This link goes into theological views on eternity: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/eternity/#EteVie
This one addresses scientific views: The Illusion of Time: What's Real?

Interestingly enough, here's how the article on the science of time concludes:Opinion is divided, but many physicists and philosophers now suspect that time is not fundamental; rather, time emerges out of something more fundamental — something nontemporal, something altogether different (perhaps something discreet, quantized, not continuous, smooth).

So it seems that, rather than the passage of time debunking the existence of God, it may actually point to him.
Click to expand...

Even if we take time out of the equation in the sequences I laid out. We still have a world where roughly 99,99% of all things that ever were are now extinct. What gives with that? God creates things that go extinct. Who does that?
 
William Rea said:
You have to be careful with using 'God', 'god' and 'gods' because Christians tend to claim the word 'God' for their own; They tend to use the capital to indicate a proper noun.

I believe that there is no intellectually honest way to use the terms 'god' or 'gods' without the clarifications which immediately debunks many definitions. However, to clarify further...

If we put all definitions or instances of gods into a set called 'gods' then we have a mess, they can't all exist for reasons of logic therefore I consider that using the term 'god' or 'gods' on it's own in any kind of general way is very problematic. If you go in any direction from here, theists end up with a problem.

If you go specific such as 'god' is exactly as described as the Norse god Thor then there is the obvious problem that we know that thunder is not caused by a huge hammer; Thor cannot exist as defined. To make specific 'gods' meaningful you have to assign meaningful attributes to them and these attributes tend to mean an interaction with the Universe or a logical contradiction that we can debunk. The sub-set of 'impossible gods' increases in direct proportion to the number of 'gods' you can imagine and describe which is apparently infinite and will keep theists and atheists busy for some time; this is where the apologetics business tends to ply most of it's trade.

If you go general such as, 'god' is simply a 'creator' or worse a 'creative force' then you as a minimum have the prime mover problem but more than that, I am not aware of any single advocate for 'gods' that stops at this proposition. There are people who will stop at this definition for purposes of argument but, all they are doing is defining 'gods' to win an argument, it has no real meaning beyond that.
Click to expand...

It does seem to me to be a paradoxical problem. If we define god, we end up with an unsustainable argument which does not measure up to observation. If we allow god to remain undefined, we end up with an pointless argument: some mysterious thing did mysterious things.
 
RetiredNSmilin said:
Discussing someone's faith, or faith in a deity, is akin to discussing what might be funny to someone.

I laugh my ass off at Robot Chicken, Archer, Squidbillies, Family Guy, American Dad, and Big bang Theory.

My wife only likes BBT, tolerates Family Guy, and thinks I am INSANE for liking the others.

Faith, like humor, is a highly individual characteristic.

I grew up reading MAD magazine, so that is a logical explanation for some of my humor, but I was not brought up in any church, and discovered my faith on my own when I was 15 and knew nothing about it, other than I felt it was right.

I feel blessed that I still have both.

I have observed one thing though....
Those that are waaay over the scaled in religion have almost no sense of wonderment or humor, as do those waaay on the other side of the scale that have ZERO faith in anything and just as dismal a sense of humor.

Neither are very nice people to be around.
Click to expand...

I subscribe to the quoted poem someone wrote above:

Tiger hunt, bird fly
Man tries to reason why...
 
CrabCake said:
Who says he waited? To assume that he waited is to assume that time existed prior to God rather than time being something God created and/or that God is a temporal (time-bound) being.

Christians have believed God existed outside of time since Augustine and Boethius developed Eternalism in the 5th century. A millennia and a half later, the work: of Einstein, Feynman, and Hawkins has given us the "block universe model" which now allows us to better understand how this might be possible. Most physicists now believe that the universe is not a three dimensional space within which things occur, but rather a static four (or more) dimensional space within which nothing happens. Time, like Einstein said is "a stubborn illusion". Thus we can at least somewhat conceive of God as able to look into our block universe and see it all at once, in all 4 (or more) dimensions. There is no such thing as time for him. Thus the idea that he waited is nonsensical.

This link goes into theological views on eternity: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/eternity/#EteVie
This one addresses scientific views: The Illusion of Time: What's Real?

Interestingly enough, here's how the article on the science of time concludes:Opinion is divided, but many physicists and philosophers now suspect that time is not fundamental; rather, time emerges out of something more fundamental — something nontemporal, something altogether different (perhaps something discreet, quantized, not continuous, smooth).

So it seems that, rather than the passage of time debunking the existence of God, it may actually point to him.
Click to expand...


I don't see how that would be evidence either for or against God what so ever.
 
calamity said:
Even if we take time out of the equation in the sequences I laid out. We still have a world where roughly 99,99% of all things that ever were are now extinct. What gives with that? God creates things that go extinct. Who does that?
Click to expand...

It sounds like this argument boils down to: "God must not exist because I wouldn't do things that way if I were God". That's not exactly a strong argument.

But since we delved into the block universe already anyway, might as well stay on it. Given that time is an illusion, from God's point of view nothing has ever gone extinct. If you could admire all four dimensions of our reality at once, the way God can, you would see everything that ever was and everything that ever will be all at once in this beautiful static mosaic. Things only seem extinct to temporal creatures; creatures like us who are forced to experience time as a series of events rather than being able to step back and see it all at once the way God could.

The idea that something has gone extinct is a big deal to you because you experience time the way you do. But if you were not a time-bound being, whether something is in the past or present is no different from asking whether it's to the right or left. There would be no baggage attached to being towards the left or right; it's just a point in a space.
RAMOSS said:
I don't see how that would be evidence either for or against God what so ever.
Click to expand...

I wasn't arguing for or against the existence of God, I was showing why time-based arguments against the existence of God are nonsensical. Such arguments require we pretend God exists within time, something few contemporary religions (if any) believe.
 
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CrabCake said:
It sounds like this argument boils down to: "God must not exist because I wouldn't do things that way if I were God". That's not exactly a strong argument.

But since we delved into the block universe already anyway, might as well stay on it. Given that time is an illusion, from God's point of view nothing has ever gone extinct. If you could admire all four dimensions of our reality at once, the way God can, you would see everything that ever was and everything that ever will be all at once in this beautiful static mosaic. Things only seem extinct to temporal creatures; creatures like us who are forced to experience time as a series of events rather than being able to step back and see it all at once the way God could.

The idea that something has gone extinct is a big deal to you because you experience time the way you do. But if you were not a time-bound being, whether something is in the past or present is no different from asking whether it's to the right or left. There would be no baggage attached to being towards the left or right; it's just a point in a space.


I wasn't arguing for or against the existence of God, I was showing why time-based arguments against the existence of God are nonsensical. Such arguments require we pretend God exists within time, something few contemporary religions (if any) believe.
Click to expand...

Well, I don't see any evidence that either argument , either for or against is valid, particularly since there is no evidence there is a 'non-temporal' state.
 
CrabCake said:
It sounds like this argument boils down to: "God must not exist because I wouldn't do things that way if I were God". That's not exactly a strong argument.
Click to expand...
Actually it is a solid argument. It really makes no sense for an all-knowing, all-powerful perfect being to create things which eventually all die out. Seriously. What would be the point of that?

If this god actually had control of everything, he wouldn't need all these do-overs. He'd build it and then let it stand. It's almost like god does things so that we don't suspect that he does things. Kind of like a shadow god.

...or one that we created in our own image.


But since we delved into the block universe already anyway, might as well stay on it. Given that time is an illusion, from God's point of view nothing has ever gone extinct. If you could admire all four dimensions of our reality at once, the way God can, you would see everything that ever was and everything that ever will be all at once in this beautiful static mosaic. Things only seem extinct to temporal creatures; creatures like us who are forced to experience time as a series of events rather than being able to step back and see it all at once the way God could.
Click to expand...
That's not consistent with the observed reality. Hence, it falls into the realm of, "Well, God does things in mysterious ways. We cannot possibly understand God."

Once we begin barking up that tree, we can throw anything out there, including the notion that god put fossils in the ground to confuse us and test our faith. Discussing a god and his actions which are so far out on its own plateau that we can no longer define them per our observed reality is not the objective of this thread.

The idea that something has gone extinct is a big deal to you because you experience time the way you do. But if you were not a time-bound being, whether something is in the past or present is no different from asking whether it's to the right or left. There would be no baggage attached to being towards the left or right; it's just a point in a space.


I wasn't arguing for or against the existence of God, I was showing why time-based arguments against the existence of God are nonsensical. Such arguments require we pretend God exists within time, something few contemporary religions (if any) believe.
Click to expand...
I am not arguing for or the existence of "god" either in this thread. I am arguing for or against the existence of the god(s) which we have currently on the table, the ones we have already narrowly defined. Once we throw the nebulous moving target god out there, it becomes an unknown which cannot really be discussed using reason and knwon evidence. The following post of mine touches on that.




calamity said:
It does seem to me to be a paradoxical problem. If we define god, we end up with an unsustainable argument which does not measure up to observation. If we allow god to remain undefined, we end up with a pointless argument: some mysterious thing did mysterious things.
Click to expand...
 
RAMOSS said:
Well, I don't see any evidence that either argument , either for or against is valid, particularly since there is no evidence there is a 'non-temporal' state.
Click to expand...

No one has made an argument for.

The argument against was debunked.
 
CrabCake said:
No one has made an argument for.

The argument against was debunked.
Click to expand...

I would say I would agree that the argument against is debunked.. but so is the argument for. It is just a bad argument all around.
 
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