What's wrong with this definition of God: maker of heaven and earth and everything?

[Mojo]

What sort of crackpot god would think that wisdom comes from abandoning all you have learned and accepting things you knew were bunk 50 years ago?

All of them.

 

[Mojo]

What is the concept of God with atheists?

We've been through this before: one of a number of imaginary beings.

 

[Mojo]

Your question is as meaningless as this one:

What is the concept of Voldemort and Harry Potter with Yrreg?

Actually, Yrreg's question is even more meaningless - at least your question specifies particular fictional characters.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Think of an entity greater than God in concept in the Christian faith as creator of the universe.



Yrreg

Everything that actually exists is greater than the Christian god. Spiderman wouldn't be defeated by iron chariots. Superman wouldn't get nailed to a cross.

Can you think of anything less powerful than the Christian god? Why didn't people make up a really powerful and intelligent god rather than the stumbling boob they have to apologize for now?

 

[RoboTimbo]

Well, I don't think you are thinking properly, when you say that the universe needs no creator, unless you insist that the universe is eternal and/or created itself, in which case the universe is God, it created the parts of Itself which are changeable and have a beginning and an ending.

What created god(s)? I'd like for you to actually think about your answer to that. If you choose not to think about it, then I'd rather you didn't answer it with anything foolish.

 

[Foster Zygote]

You received a number of answers which you failed to address. Why is that? You asked the question. Why didn't the answers merit an answer in return?

They went off-script.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Honestly, what I have seen so far with my present attempts to get atheists to think beyond their self-imposed delimitation of their mind's embrace is just insistence that they don't want to think, and period.

I do want to think. But your intellectually empty posts offer nothing to think about. You say that you believe your god to be "Father almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth". What is there to think about? I get it. I still see no evidence to conclude that your Catholic god exists any more than any other god exists. What now? How about introducing something to actually think about, such as an argument for the existence of your god.

But I like us all to think about the origins of the concept of God as creator of the universe, that concept has a long development until at the time when Genesis 1:1 was written, it has already arrived at the formulation that God is the creator of the universe, the heaven and the earth.

So the desert tribes that invented YHWH decided that this imaginary construct created the universe before they wrote this belief down? That's brilliant! You're certainly on to something now.

And in that connection to delve on what were the grounds for the ancient thinkers to come to such a formulation of God, namely, as creator of heaven and earth, or what I would say to be their totality of the universe.

Their imaginations.

 

[catsmate]

6 and a half years, and people are still trying to get Yrreg to come to the point.

Indeed. It's pointless trying to engage him in productive debate, but people still try. He's worse than a hard core truther in this regard.

He has too much ego invested in his god beliefs and his self-believed superiority because of them. He can't afford to accept even the possibility that he's wrong, it'd be too damaging to him.

I've seen you engage in a great deal of monologue, but to be brutally honest, I've never observed you to actually dialogue with anyone.

That's because others fail to read their parts from the script he's imagined.

Now please feel free to do your part: Ignore what I've written and respond according to the script that you created in your imagination prior to creating the OP that has since been merged with the other threads you've started regarding this same subject.

Hence the petunias.

Our last encounter was about evidence, and readers can look up our exchange if they care to read something about evidence from our thinking, which might be useful to them to determine whether the existence of God can be known and is known to Christians from evidence.

Yep. You utterly failed to show any evidence for your god or any reason to believe it exists.

I will just say here that it is the teaching of the Christian faith that God's existence is known from evidence in the existence of the material universe.

Religions are generally reluctant to do this because they know there is no such evidence.

That is for the atheists who deny the existence of any parts of the universe that are not material; for all other humans who admit the existence of other parts of the universe that are not material, then there is also evidence.

Will you be supplying some this time? And here's a hint, your unsupported beliefs aren't evidence.

I am at present trying to see who is the most thinking competent here; there might be several but I prefer to choose the one most of course on my observation most competent in thinking: one criterion of which is the habit of focusing on the topic and not going into irrelevancies.

I assume by "irrelevancies" you mean hard questions you're unable to answer?

Honestly, what I have seen so far with my present attempts to get atheists to think beyond their self-imposed delimitation of their mind's embrace is just insistence that they don't want to think, and period.

Perhaps someday you'll learn to think beyond your "god" and your ego-driven need for it.

But I like us all to think about the origins of the concept of God as creator of the universe, that concept has a long development until at the time when Genesis 1:1 was written, it has already arrived at the formulation that God is the creator of the universe, the heaven and the earth.

You mean some primitives, striving to understand the universe, made the concept up. No evidence remember?

This just in: God still not real; Generalissimo Franco still dead.

And the god botherers are still unable to accept this reality.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Well, I don't think you are thinking properly, when you say that the universe needs no creator, unless you insist that the universe is eternal and/or created itself,

Who are you to judge who is thinking properly?

Apparently, the universe is not eternal, since time is a property of the universe. Or, if you will, this imples that the universe has existed for all time.

in which case the universe is God, it created the parts of Itself which are changeable and have a beginning and an ending.

I suppose such a definition of god is workable, if somewhat superfluous.

Now, you will say that I am admitting the existence of a pantheistic God, everything is God.

Well, everything is God for coming from God, but in that everything there is a God that is Himself not a part of anything but everything else comes forth from Him.

That does not really make sense, does it?

So, if you just attend to that God Who is the author of everything else that is not Himself, then you have got to God in His concept as the creator of the universe.

From that it follows that if the universe created itself, god does not exist.

Honestly, in this new thread but merged with an old one by the powers that be here, I am into asking atheists with that question, The Concept of God with Atheists, namely, what do you have in substitute for God?

Nothing. Why would we need a substitute for god?

So, your answer is that the universe has always been around; I can take that but with my explanation above, and then I don't have to deal with scientists who tell us that the universe has a beginning.

Since time does not exist outside the universe, the universe existed for all times. That does not mean it cannot be finite, however.

If this is too complex for you, I suggest you stick with your god figure.

Hans

 

[catsmate]

Think of an entity greater than God in concept in the Christian faith as creator of the universe.Yrreg

• The entity that created you god.
• The entity that created the multiverse of which your (putative) god's universe is a infinitesimal element.
• The entity that backed the forces that defeated your god's "Chosen People" so many times in your babble.

There's three.

 

[Tony99]

Start with God as engineer who built the universe: men in antiquity know that if there are houses and there are (primitive) machines), there are men who built them.

So, analogically there are superior entities builders of the universe, and eventually they come to the concept of one builder and that is the God creator of the universe, the cosmic house and cosmic machine of everything that exists and operates and has a beginning and an ending.

Yrreg

How and why would one "eventually" come to the concept of "one" builder/creator? Multiple builders, engineers and creators satisfies the same imaginary nonsense just fine.

 

[Foster Zygote]

There is just the same what I submit to be the common knowledge of mankind, even though different cultures think differently in concrete particulars of explaining an experience of life.

But of course that also depends on the kinds of experience different cultures have come across, different persons have gone through.

Sorry, Gerry, but the incredible variety of gods and cosmologies created throughout human history doesn't support your assertion that these are all the result of there being a real god. It certainly doesn't support a god as specific as your Christian god.

Now, you emphasize that it is anthropomorphical for Christians to address God as Father, that is analogical.

It's "anthropomorphic", not "anthropomorphical". And yes, your god, like most all gods, is an anthropomorphic construct created by people attempting to understand how the universe works by attributing to it the sorts of thoughts and motivations that they could understand.

As I said we all have experiences and on the basis of our experiences we come to explanation on what things are and how things come about and who brought them about.

Good. Let's talk about these experiences that led people all over the world to conclude that many different gods exist.

God is the creator of heaven and earth, meaning the universe: heaven and earth cover everything that is experienced by man: but there are many many things not covered by the experience of man, ever.

Now you're just asserting things. Let's talk about the experiences that led people to believe in the Aten, Zeus, Ahura Mazda, Huitzilopitchli, Jesus, Marduk, Ma Zu, Bathala, etcetera.

Power is experienced by man from his father.

Wherefore analogically man addresses God the creator of the universe as also father, but not all completely and restrictively as like his biological father.

So what? Many cultures created gods with female aspects as well. Many cultures were ruled by kings and imagined their gods to be kings. What is your point?

You prefer to dwell on your self-delimited way of thinking so as not to go above and beyond what you call anthropomorphical way of knowing, but that is human knowing and it is the only one we have, and still man can go beyond that but still analogical to that.

In other words, you are upset that I, and others, will not accept your assertions about your god without any evidence to back them up. We first need to pretend that your god is real in order to believe in it. You are right. I do delimit my model of the universe to those things for which there is evidence. I reserve judgement and lack belief in things for which there is no evidence, such as leprechauns, fairies and your god.

 

[Mojo]

I am at present trying to see who is the most thinking competent here...

Well, I don't think you are thinking properly...

http://people.psych.cornell.edu/~dunning/publications/pdf/unskilledandunaware.pdf

 

[Foster Zygote]

The concept of God with atheists is that they get it all wrong and miss it.

Take this mantra of atheists who always insist that they are against all gods, goddesses, deities, divinities, whatever spaghettis, invisible pink unicorns, celestial teapots, tooth fairies, Santas, sky daddies, they just don't believe them, etc.

That is certainly not to come to the correct concept of God, specially in the Christian faith, namely, God the creator of the universe.

You still have no evidence for your "correct" concept of God. That is why we lack belief in it. We understand that you believe that your god is the creator of the universe (You've only repeated it like a thousand times, like a mantra). We also understand that you can't offer any evidence that this god exists.

And they don't even have any awareness that they are into irrelevancies although they feel that they are very smart.

It is not irrelevant that there are many other versions of gods that differ greatly from your "correct" version. Many other gods are regarded as the "correct" gods by their worshippers. You are like a defense attorney trying to claim that the fact that your client's version of events is contradicted by the testimony of others is irrelevant.

By the way, just as a bit of advice, when you start asserting that others are trying to seem very smart simply because they counter your arguments, it suggests that you may be the one to whom it is very important to seem smart.

First, why bring in so many gods, goddesses, deities, divinities, spaghettis, unicorns, etc., like small town kung-ful fighters who boast they can beat any and all other fighters: when they don't even know who is the #1 champion in their days unless they travel far and wide instead of keeping to their meager village.

Because the great variety of gods, supernatural beings and cosmologies throughout human history points to these things being imaginary creations of many different cultures. You can't ignore this fact.

Then you don't really think hard to examine God in concept as the creator of the universe.

Start with God as engineer who built the universe: men in antiquity know that if there are houses and there are (primitive) machines), there are men who built them.

So, analogically there are superior entities builders of the universe, and eventually they come to the concept of one builder and that is the God creator of the universe, the cosmic house and cosmic machine of everything that exists and operates and has a beginning and an ending.

And here we go with William Paley's watchmaker argument. Paley was quite bright, but he lacked the information that has become available to us over the last two centuries. We now understand the natural mechanisms that lead to the accretion of greater complexity from simpler origins. No conscious designer is needed to explain what we observe. And the universe may well be finite and unbounded in space/time, without any creation. If your "correct" god can exist uncreated, then why can't the universe?

The reality of the bottom up generation of complexity that we see in nature is counterintuitive, but then so are many other important discoveries about nature. By imposing your intuition on nature you are once again attempting to anthropomorphize it.

Now, I don't reply to every post transmitted and published here, because as I said time and again, if it is not relevant although it seems smart and flippant, I am not investing time and labor in it: because I want to learn from real thinkers the first sign of real thinking is relevancy, not smartness and flippancy.

Then address the very relevant fact that gods and supernatural cosmologies have been invented in huge varieties.

 

[AvalonXQ]

I think "the creator of the physical universe" is not a bad definition for capital-G God.

It makes the question "Does God exist?" equivalent to the question "Is there a Creator?"

 

[Foster Zygote]

Okay, you don't accept some entity built the universe, then what is your ultimate explanation for the existence of the -- now this is not irrelevant, the nose in your face?

Here's one possible hypothesis that conforms with what we know of natural laws:

The universe was not created. There is no "before the Big Bang". Space/time is boundless yet finite, like the surface of a sphere. Along the time dimension, energy and matter arrange themselves according to natural laws to generate greater complexity. Stars process hydrogen into the elements that we know. Thermodynamics eventually results in self reproducing polymers that evolve by the process of natural selection until noses result. One of these nosed species eventually produces someone who looks at his nose and concludes that an imaginary authority figure created it.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Think of an entity greater than God in concept in the Christian faith as creator of the universe.



Yrreg

That's easy! The Christian god is appallingly inept. It can't even get its creations right. It keeps blaming them for their own imperfections and smashing them, then insisting that it will get them right in the future and that this is "all part of the plan".

 

[Mojo]

The concept of God with atheists is that they get it all wrong and miss it.

Take this mantra of atheists who always insist that they are against all gods, goddesses, deities, divinities, whatever spaghettis, invisible pink unicorns, celestial teapots, tooth fairies, Santas, sky daddies, they just don't believe them, etc.

That is certainly not to come to the correct concept of God, specially in the Christian faith, namely, God the creator of the universe.

You have provided no evidence that the concept of God in the Christian faith is any more valid than the concepts of any other "gods, goddesses, deities, divinities, whatever spaghettis, invisible pink unicorns, celestial teapots, tooth fairies, Santas, [or] sky daddies". That is the whole point.

How do you know that the Christian concept of God is "the correct concept of God"?

Why should all these other supernatural entities be rejected in favour of your own personal concept of "God"?

 

[Foster Zygote]

The explanation of Dawkins is not complete and ultimate, and he does not see it.

He is like the blind swordsman of Chinese kung-fu movies, but unlike the blind swordsman Dawkins does not himself woe to him see what he should be driving, thrusting his sword at, above and beyond his contention that science explains everything.

Ask Dawkins and also Hawking where the laws of nature or physics come from, and also in re evolution where does the original rise of life come from; but of course he Dawkins will insist that evolution is not about the rise of life from the very beginning but only the rise of new species from old species.

Well, still the totally mentally blind swordsman, completely unaware of what he should be directing his sword at.



Yrreg

They would insist so because it would be a correct objection. If the inability to explain the existence of the universe invalidates evolutionary biology, then it also invalidates every other field of human science. Is chemistry invalid because it doesn't explain the existence of the universe? Scientists say "we don't yet know" while you pretend to understand.

 

[Hokulele]

I think "the creator of the physical universe" is not a bad definition for capital-G God.

It makes the question "Does God exist?" equivalent to the question "Is there a Creator?"

Eh, all that does is push the messy questions back one level. Instead of asking "Who created the universe?", you are left with "Who created God?". Or "If God doesn't need a creator, why does the universe?"

My personal favorite is the argument "God answers the question of why there is something rather than nothing." If this is true, what answers the question of why there is God and not no-God? Gerry talks about infinite regress, but why stop at the level of his God? Why not one or two levels higher? Why not be parsimonious and say that the universe, like yrreg's God, is uncreated? "God" doesn't really answer any of the big questions, and yrreg's God is simply a tautology.