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God, as We Know it, Debunked or Not?

calamity said:
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?
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You're stuck in the loop of thinking of things as if they existed within time. Scientific consensus is that they do not. If there is no such thing as time in the way we think about it, then there is no difference between things that existed before, things that exist now, and things that will exist, they all exist simultaneously and there is no greater value to "now" than there is to "before".

calamity said:
That's not consistent with the observed reality.
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Sure it is. It's the best explanation we currently have for observed reality. This wasn't some wild idea that was thrown out there out of the blue. This was an idea that developed out of the work of Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and most recently Stephen Hawkin. It's the direct result of observing reality. The fact you don't have the physics or philosophy training to understand doesn't mean that if we observe reality we won't figure out that we are in a block universe; it just means you won't figure it out because you lack the training.
 
RAMOSS said:
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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No one has ever claimed there is an argument for.
 
CrabCake said:
No one has ever claimed there is an argument for.
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So, are you saying that you disavow your statement in post 38 that says

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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CrabCake said:
You're stuck in the loop of thinking of things as if they existed within time. Scientific consensus is that they do not. If there is no such thing as time in the way we think about it, then there is no difference between things that existed before, things that exist now, and things that will exist, they all exist simultaneously and there is no greater value to "now" than there is to "before".
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Macro events are locked in time. Particle physics perhaps not so much. You can't say time is irrelevant when discussing extinction events and evolution, unless you want to use it as some magical property to obfuscate observed reality.

Time is pretty solid when we examine fossils and measure our own lifespans. It is not possible to suspend it and, as a result, defeat father time...well, unless you are Tom Brady.



Sure it is. It's the best explanation we currently have for observed reality. This wasn't some wild idea that was thrown out there out of the blue. This was an idea that developed out of the work of Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and most recently Stephen Hawkin. It's the direct result of observing reality. The fact you don't have the physics or philosophy training to understand doesn't mean that if we observe reality we won't figure out that we are in a block universe; it just means you won't figure it out because you lack the training.
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Again you are confusing particle physics with macro events. If you run head long into a wall, you will bash your head. If you fire a gamma particle at it, it will pass right through.

I'm not saying that there is no god on some higher plane which is beyond time and space. There very well may be. I'm saying that kind of god is not really being discussed in this thread.
 
calamity said:
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.
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You missed the entire point with this response. My whole post was about how a man saying, "I am man and am capable of reason, thus I deduce the actions of God to make little sense, thus I can say the existence of God is unlikely" is itself unreasonable. I stated that an all-powerful God entity is by definition incomprehensible from our point of view due to its unlimited nature versus our very narrow and limited one. Then I said:
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.
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The first bold is key to our ability to reason among ourselves and with our environment. This human reason (your analogy, for instance) breaks down when trying to understand God in this manner because you are missing two variables. One, you can't perceive God and come to some truth like you would inspect an object or a person (you may know me, but you do not know God). Second, the lack of the first means you cannot put together the puzzle of 'your situation' between God and man. Conclusions cannot be made since the equation cannot be fulfilled.

This is why I downplayed this angle of disproving God. It is better to attack at the very origin of God existing instead of almost leading on and saying, "Well, assuming the all-powerful version of God exists, such and such that he does doesn't make much sense."
 
Envoy said:
You missed the entire point with this response. My whole post was about how a man saying, "I am man and am capable of reason, thus I deduce the actions of God to make little sense, thus I can say the existence of God is unlikely" is itself unreasonable. I stated that an all-powerful God entity is by definition incomprehensible from our point of view due to its unlimited nature versus our very narrow and limited one. Then I said:

The first bold is key to our ability to reason among ourselves and with our environment. This human reason (your analogy, for instance) breaks down when trying to understand God in this manner because you are missing two variables. One, you can't perceive God and come to some truth like you would inspect an object or a person (you may know me, but you do not know God). Second, the lack of the first means you cannot put together the puzzle of 'your situation' between God and man. Conclusions cannot be made since the equation cannot be fulfilled.

This is why I downplayed this angle of disproving God. It is better to attack at the very origin of God existing instead of almost leading on and saying, "Well, assuming the all-powerful version of God exists, such and such that he does doesn't make much sense."
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Best I can do is refer you to the last part of this post from a few hours ago.


calamity said:
...
I'm not saying that there is no god on some higher plane which is beyond time and space. There very well may be. I'm saying that kind of god is not really being discussed in this thread.
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And, here, in bold, is why we are not going there in this thread.
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 an pointless argument: some mysterious thing did mysterious things.
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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?
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Why do you think that you're the most important thing on the time line?
 
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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Your first question is a good one that leads directly to ignosticism, which is part of how I tend to identify my philosophical opinion on the matter these days.

It is only Abrahamic followers who have the OP-given definition of god. And admittedly there's a lot of them, but there's still about half of the planet who believes in something else. And even amongst those who are Abrahamic, not all of them accept our common Western definition of god (Thomas Jefferson is an interesting example from America's history).

But anyway, your particular question doesn't necessarily disprove the given definition of god. God might have wasted that much time and space for many reasons, or no reason at all; nothing in canon necessarily says this god is rational. In fact, all accounts suggests he is exactly the opposite.

But there *are* a lot of things that tend to run counter to the possibility of his existence. The mutual exclusivity of his described properties (he is somehow all-knowing, grants free will, and benevolent, but life on earth plainly suggests that at least one of those things must be false), the fallaciousness of the given account of how he has shaped the universe (i.e. we know for a fact that everything in the creation story is false), etc.

We can say with fair certainty that the commonly-described Abrahamic god, at least how we in the West tend to hear it, doesn't exist.

But that still leaves about a billion other gods unaccounted for, which seem to occupy varying levels of possibility of existence depending on your subjective criteria for what counts as "sacred."
 
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Grand Mal said:
Why do you think that you're the most important thing on the time line?
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Says so in the bible; it's implied in the Koran, and seems to be the theme in the Talmud.

1 God created man in his image
2 Allah is God; Mohammed his prophet
3 Entirely man-centric literature
 
SmokeAndMirrors said:
Your first question is a good one that leads directly to ignosticism, which is part of how I tend to identify my philosophical opinion on the matter these days.

It is only Abrahamic followers who have the OP-given definition of god. And admittedly there's a lot of them, but there's still about half of the planet who believes in something else. And even amongst those who are Abrahamic, not all of them accept our common Western definition of god (Thomas Jefferson is an interesting example from America's history).

But anyway, your particular question doesn't necessarily disprove the given definition of god. God might have wasted that much time and space for many reasons, or no reason at all; nothing in canon necessarily says this god is rational. In fact, all accounts suggests he is exactly the opposite.

But there *are* a lot of things that tend to run counter to the possibility of his existence. The mutual exclusivity of his described properties (he is somehow all-knowing, grants free will, and benevolent, but life on earth plainly suggests that at least one of those things must be false), the fallaciousness of the given account of how he has shaped the universe (i.e. we know for a fact that everything in the creation story is false), etc.

We can say with fair certainty that the commonly-described Abrahamic god, at least how we in the West tend to hear it, doesn't exist.

But that still leaves about a billion other gods unaccounted for, which seem to occupy varying levels of possibility of existence depending on your subjective criteria for what counts as "sacred."
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Yes, I intentionally left out all the other gods in the op because that opened up a can of worms which would have required writing many more paragraphs to an already long post. We can discuss them though. I believe the Hindu heirarchy of gods especially are an intersting topic which warrants further exploration in this context, for example.
 
calamity said:
Says so in the bible; it's implied in the Koran, and seems to be the theme in the Talmud.

1 God created man in his image
2 Allah is God; Mohammed his prophet
3 Entirely man-centric literature
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While I like the creation myth in the Semitic monogamies, the idea that man is an image of God always seemed like hubris to me. If we're talking about a universal being, I see no reason to suppose that God is even aware of man's existance. If we're not, then of course man is an image of God, or should we say vice versa?
The question is, was man created or evolved? Another question, if man evolved can we still believe in God if God has no relationship to us? I think so. I can't be an atheist any more than I can be a Christian.
Maybe I'm roundabout agreeing with you that God as defined is debunked but I say it's the definition part that's debunked, not the God part.
 
Grand Mal said:
While I like the creation myth in the Semitic monogamies, the idea that man is an image of God always seemed like hubris to me. If we're talking about a universal being, I see no reason to suppose that God is even aware of man's existance. If we're not, then of course man is an image of God, or should we say vice versa?
The question is, was man created or evolved? Another question, if man evolved can we still believe in God if God has no relationship to us? I think so. I can't be an atheist any more than I can be a Christian.
Maybe I'm roundabout agreeing with you that God as defined is debunked but I say it's the definition part that's debunked, not the God part.
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There is always that viewpoint that God created (molded) man through the process of evolution.
 
Grand Mal said:
While I like the creation myth in the Semitic monogamies, the idea that man is an image of God always seemed like hubris to me. If we're talking about a universal being, I see no reason to suppose that God is even aware of man's existance. If we're not, then of course man is an image of God, or should we say vice versa?
The question is, was man created or evolved? Another question, if man evolved can we still believe in God if God has no relationship to us? I think so. I can't be an atheist any more than I can be a Christian.
Maybe I'm roundabout agreeing with you that God as defined is debunked but I say it's the definition part that's debunked, not the God part.
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To late to edit- can't believe I wrote 'monogamies' instead of 'monotheisms'!
 
RAMOSS said:
There is always that viewpoint that God created (molded) man through the process of evolution.
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Yeah, but that takes the gamble out of it if the cow'rin tim'rous beastie who got lucky from the meteoric dinosauricide was destined to become Donald Trump. Also makes the possibility of intelligence elsewhere kind of complicated.
 
RAMOSS said:
So, are you saying that you disavow your statement in post 38 that says
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You consider that an argument for? Notice that rather than presenting any evidence or building a case I merely said that if anything, studying this issue may instead point us to God. I didn't try to establish that it actually does.
 
CrabCake said:
You consider that an argument for? Notice that rather than presenting any evidence or building a case I merely said that if anything, studying this issue may instead point us to God. I didn't try to establish that it actually does.
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I am saying , no , it does not point to God, nor does it point away from God. It has nothing to do with God, as we know it , or not.
 
calamity said:
Macro events are locked in time. Particle physics perhaps not so much. You can't say time is irrelevant when discussing extinction events and evolution, unless you want to use it as some magical property to obfuscate observed reality.

Time is pretty solid when we examine fossils and measure our own lifespans. It is not possible to suspend it and, as a result, defeat father time...well, unless you are Tom Brady.




Again you are confusing particle physics with macro events. If you run head long into a wall, you will bash your head. If you fire a gamma particle at it, it will pass right through.

I'm not saying that there is no god on some higher plane which is beyond time and space. There very well may be. I'm saying that kind of god is not really being discussed in this thread.
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I'm not sure you understand block universe theory.

I can't find good articles on it online so this will have to suffice:
Does time pass? | MIT News

My point is that, if block universe theory is correct, and even Stephen Hawkins seems to think it is, then God is the being who can see the whole block all at once. The extinction of a species is meaningful to you because you experience time in the way you do. To God, on the other hand, time is just another dimension of space-time like "left", "right", "up", or "down" is to us. To someone like that, the idea that something has become extinct doesn't make much sense because to them, it isn't extinct, it's right there and clearly visible. Complaining about something no longer existing is akin to complaining that there is a different painting on the western wall than the painting on the eastern wall; why can't that painting be everywhere?!
 
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Grand Mal said:
While I like the creation myth in the Semitic monogamies, the idea that man is an image of God always seemed like hubris to me. If we're talking about a universal being, I see no reason to suppose that God is even aware of man's existance. If we're not, then of course man is an image of God, or should we say vice versa?
The question is, was man created or evolved? Another question, if man evolved can we still believe in God if God has no relationship to us? I think so. I can't be an atheist any more than I can be a Christian.
Maybe I'm roundabout agreeing with you that God as defined is debunked but I say it's the definition part that's debunked, not the God part.
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That makes the most sense. We guess what god is, and observed evidence shows us that our guesses are horribly off base.

Now, if we want to say god is this mysterious thing that does mysterious things, I see no way we can debunk that. But, in many ways, it's also a pointless assertion. Nonetheless, there is no way to say it is right or wrong.
 
CrabCake said:
I'm not sure you understand block universe theory.

I can't find good articles on it online so this will have to suffice:
Does time pass? | MIT News

My point is that, if block universe theory is correct, and even Stephen Hawkins seems to think it is, then God is the being who can see the whole block all at once. The extinction of a species is meaningful to you because you experience time in the way you do. To God, on the other hand, time is just another dimension of space-time like "left", "right", "up", or "down" is to us. To someone like that, the idea that something has become extinct doesn't make much sense because to them, it isn't extinct, it's right there and clearly visible. Complaining about something no longer existing is akin to complaining that there is a different painting on the western wall than the painting on the eastern wall; why can't that painting be everywhere?!
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I understand the concept. But, it's not relevant on the physical level. Fossils are found in chronologically laid layers. Time passes in our reality. It is what it is. Once we say, "but time does not exist," we have entered into the mystical. And, my intent here is not to delve into the mystical, just the hard reality.
 
calamity said:
I understand the concept. But, it's not relevant on the physical level. Fossils are found in chronologically laid layers. Time passes in our reality. It is what it is. Once we say, "but time does not exist," we have entered into the mystical. And, my intent here is not to delve into the mystical, just the hard reality.
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If you are unwilling to consider the true nature of reality in your question, then you aren't truly willing to deal with this question in an honest manner.

The fact is that if God does exist, he does not exist within time like we do. That's what Christians have believed since at least the 5th century. So, if your arguments against God hinge on time...you failed. We can't just try to pretend that God exists within time and then argue against him that way.

If your argument requires that we believe God must exist within time in order for your argument to debunk him, then your argument is not applicable to the Christian conception of God. Furthermore, if your argument relies on us pretending that time flows, then your argument isn't even applicable to the real universe we live in.
 
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CrabCake said:
If you are unwilling to consider the true nature of reality in your question, then you aren't truly willing to deal with this question in an honest manner.

The fact is that if God does exist, he does not exist within time like we do. That's what Christians have believed since at least the 5th century. So, if your arguments against God hinge on time...you failed. We can't just try to pretend that God exists within time and then argue against him that way.

If your argument requires that we believe God must exist within time in order for your argument to debunk him, then your argument is not applicable to the Christian conception of God. Furthermore, if your argument relies on us pretending that time flows, then your argument isn't even applicable to the real universe we live in.
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hmm a timeliness god would constantly and eternaly have us around true but it would have another dimension of empty space that it seems to adore
 
CrabCake said:
If you are unwilling to consider the true nature of reality in your question, then you aren't truly willing to deal with this question in an honest manner.

The fact is that if God does exist, he does not exist within time like we do. That's what Christians have believed since at least the 5th century. So, if your arguments against God hinge on time...you failed. We can't just try to pretend that God exists within time and then argue against him that way.

If your argument requires that we believe God must exist within time in order for your argument to debunk him, then your argument is not applicable to the Christian conception of God. Furthermore, if your argument relies on us pretending that time flows, then your argument isn't even applicable to the real universe we live in.
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One of the reasons I am not religious but also not dismissive of faith, in and of itself, is because religions get lost in their dogma and narrowly defined views of what god is and how we should follow it. I hate that part of religion. Faith, otoh, is much more wide open to interpretation. In it's purest form, it is free of dogma, rules of engagement and the definition of god remains nice and fluid.

When god becomes some mysterious being who does things we cannot understand, then it cannot be proven to exist or not. We can only have faith, one way or the other, or have no belief about it at all. And, that is kind of nice, IMO. I'd rather that be our god than some narrowly defined tribal nonsense that can easily be disproven or shown to be the result of bias and brainwashing. So, when it comes to your argument, I cannot say I disagree, but it's not what we are talking about in this thread.

This thread is focused exclusively on narrowly defined gods, what they supposedly did and do in our observed reality. Timeless gods that see everything at once and blah blah blah is not something I chose to debate. Why? Because it's a pointless debate. It's saying, "Yes the fossil record shows dinosaurs to have gone extinct 65 million years ago, but god doesn't operate on a time schedule. From his perspective, dinosaurs are still very much alive and walking side by side with us. We just do not see them because our brains work differently than god's."

And, that is simply not a debatable topic.
 
calamity said:
This thread is focused exclusively on narrowly defined gods, what they supposedly did and do in our observed reality. Timeless gods that see everything at once and blah blah blah is not something I chose to debate.
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The three major monotheistic religions in the world all believe in a God that transcends time and space. So, I suppose you may have some fun debating the worshipers of Kamuy or Marduk, but it seems you have chosen not to debate against the worshipers of any of the gods people in America generally believe in.
 
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CrabCake said:
The three major monotheistic religions in the world all believe in a God that transcends time and space. So, I suppose you may have some fun debating the worshipers of Kamuy or Marduk, but it seems you have chosen not to debate against any of the gods people in America generally believe in.
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They are apparently not very consistent because the first several pages of their books are extremely chronological. Now, if those books said, "Whoosh! And, then all that is and ever was came to be." We'd have some consistency.
 
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