Ask a Radical Atheist

[Piggy]

You still don't get it.

The Eastern perception of God is fundamentally different from the Western. You apply Western thinking to Eastern ideas. That's where you go wrong.

If "God is the universe", what makes "God is the universe" different from "God is what science explains"?

In fact I do "get it" -- I simply disagree with the conclusions you draw. It's not that I fail to understand them.

As to the question... nothing. I don't see any difference.

The problem is that we could, under that scheme, also say that God is a cheese sandwich.

We know the universe exists. We know people's emotions exist. We know about the physical laws. Tacking a "God" label onto them without any additional attributes is simply the assertion of an empty definition of God.

And it is not reasonable to demand that anyone must admit that a thing with an empty definition can be said to somehow "exist" in any sense.

 

[Piggy]

But they are claims for something. They are claims for a particular relation to the universe -- that we should feel reverence before it. That is how I take Einstein, Spinoza and Martin Gardner's view of the matter. Sure, they are not ontological claims for some separate entity, but they are claims for something. It is just a different "thing".

And again, this renders God empty. It has not qualities beyond the qualities of that which is not God.

And again, it is unresonable for anyone to demand that we must admit that a thing with no independent qualities of its own may possibly "exist" or be "real".

 

[Limbo]

You seem to think this is some sort of trick.

But it's not, of course -- it's a fundamental problem with God theory.

No it is "some sort of trick". A fundamentalist trick. A psychological defense mechanism on your part. You avoid, you twist, you shift, you evade, you cover your ass. Typical fundie behavior.

Because all possible definitions of God are fatally flawed...

How the hell do you know? You can't. You would need to see all possibilities. You would need to be a God. But you are "on Ralphs side of the island". Your glasses are broken. You can't see ****. You are a scared and blind child, metaphorically speaking.

This is not some treachery on my part.

Maybe not conscious treachery. Maybe it's unconscious and you lack the introspection to know it. But either way, yes you are treacherous as all fundies are.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

That's right, I do.

Emotions aren't God. If you say that emotions are God, then obviously God exists, but it's a trivial definition. Emotions are emotions. Calling them God adds nothing.

And when you take a historical perspective, it's obvious that this is a mere ploy, removing all qualities from the deity which make it distinguishable from mundane reality.

The claim "God exists" under this scenario becomes equivalent to "emotions exist", which is trivial.

But, that isn't the claim. The claim is not that emotions are god, but that the universe is god. By calling it god we are merely admitting a particular type of relationship to the universe, nothing more.

Trivial or not, what difference does that make? Its triviality can only exist if you have some other end in mind -- otherwise, it simply *is*.

I have not said that others should do the same.

In fact, I've said that God-thought is likely built into our brains, and if you somehow expunged all reference to religion from the world overnight, it would be quickly reinvented out of whole cloth.

As for the question there, just listen to yourself for a moment.

"We cannot know what idea X actually means -- so you must admit that it may be a correct idea."

Nope.

OK, then God exists. God is the universe. So, it doesn't make any sense to claim that God cannot exist.

Trivial or not, who cares? The claim is refuted.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

And again, this renders God empty. It has not qualities beyond the qualities of that which is not God.

And again, it is unresonable for anyone to demand that we must admit that a thing with no independent qualities of its own may possibly "exist" or be "real".

Once again, God-talk is not necessarily an ontologic claim for all cultures. This issue only arises when it is cast as an ontologic claim.

There are, again, claims that do make sense. To say that God is a multi-dimensional being clearly gives God qualities beyond those of the universe. The universe that we speak of is merely a 3-dimensional portion of that greater being. I have no reason to suppose that such a being exists, but I have no way of deciding that it doesn't either.

 

[Piggy]

But, that isn't the claim. The claim is not that emotions are god, but that the universe is god. By calling it god we are merely admitting a particular type of relationship to the universe, nothing more.

Trivial or not, what difference does that make? Its triviality can only exist if you have some other end in mind -- otherwise, it simply *is*.

Ok, let's consider this claim that God is the universe.

Are you really talking about a thing, in that case?

Not if you leave it at that, you aren't.

Suppose I say to you that woogle exists.

You ask me what it is. I say it's the universe.

So, you say, "woogle" is just another word for "universe"?

If it is, then "woogle" is merely a word, another word for "universe", it is not a thing. It's a mere label for something we already know to exist.

If it's not, then I must be prepared to say what its qualities are, other than merely being the universe.

Same for God. No special exemptions.

If you say God is the universe, but add no other qualities, then "God" is simply a word for our mundane reality, and we don't need another word for that. If you say it's not empty or redundant, you need to provide some qualities.

You're either talking about nothing, or talking about something. If you're talking about something, then it must have at least one quality of its own.

OK, then God exists. God is the universe. So, it doesn't make any sense to claim that God cannot exist.

Trivial or not, who cares? The claim is refuted.

That's either humpty-dumptyism or an empty claim.

Either way, it refutes nothing.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Piggy,

This is all about how words are used.

To use the word God to refer to the universe needn't entail new aspects for God. It isn't a new way of defining God. It simply is not a Western way of doing it.

What it amounts to is an entirely different way of looking at the same issue. It does not make a separate ontological claim for God, so that way of dealing with the issue is not subject to the analysis you are subjecting it. You are analyzing based on new ontological claims. Any way of looking at "god" that does not make an ontological claim can't be touched in that way.

What you are saying is that this sort of speech -- calling God the universe -- cannot create some new ontological entity that can be used in some new way. I don't think anyone disputes that -- except for the woos who try to get airplay out of it and equivocate over the idea of God. I fully agree that it doesn't provide anything new under the sun. But I don't think that is a valid critique of those Eastern ways of looking at the issue, since they are not concerned with God being something else (again, except for the common practices where there are gods and demons all over the place, but they are another concern).

ETA:

Sorry, forgot to address this part -- yes, if you only rename the universe 'god', then the process consists only of a renaming. Woogle works fine too. But that isn't what is at play. The difference is that the word 'god' denotes a type of relationship that someone has to the universe. So, it concerns not a new entity, but one's relationship to the same entity. I may feel cold about the universe, but feel all warm and fuzzy and bunny-lovey about 'god as the universe'.

 

[Apathia]

Piggy,

I notice that you continue to frame all usage of the word "God," as Theist.
And when it's not Theist, it's dismissed as "Humpty-Dumptyism," ie meaningless.

For example, your reply to the concept that God is the Universe or the transcendent totality of reality, is that this is empty because it defines God as what God isn't. In your definition God can't be the Universe, because God is outside/apart from the Universe. This is an assumption of Theism.

And you do a slam bang job on Theism. Bravo to that.

Bur you make a very shallow dismissal of Non-Theistic God language.
You've done little to address God as
The Rational Logos (Augustine, Spinoza, Einstein)
The Ground of Being (Eckhart, Tillich)
The Eternal You (Buber)
and other Non-Theistic views.

It's not that I'm a propnent of these, but I do respect them for their reach toward transcendence and a reality at large that we must relate to as personal beings, but do not have the language or the equipment in our skulls to comprehend.

 

[AkuManiMani]

In fact, I go perhaps a bit farther than Mr. Adams in that I would not even use the word "opinion". By my reckoning, we know enough now to say definitively not only that God does not exist, but that God cannot exist.

That would, ofcourse, depend on what you mean by "God"... *giggles*

Piggy,

I notice that you continue to frame all usage of the word "God," as Theist.
And when it's not Theist, it's dismissed as "Humpty-Dumptyism," ie meaningless.

For example, your reply to the concept that God is the Universe or the transcendent totality of reality, is that this is empty because it defines God as what God isn't. In your definition God can't be the Universe, because God is outside/apart from the Universe. This is an assumption of Theism.

And you do a slam bang job on Theism. Bravo to that.

Bur you make a very shallow dismissal of Non-Theistic God language.
You've done little to address God as
The Rational Logos (Augustine, Spinoza, Einstein)
The Ground of Being (Eckhart, Tillich)
The Eternal You (Buber)
and other Non-Theistic views.

It's not that I'm a propnent of these, but I do respect them for their reach toward transcendence and a reality at large that we must relate to as personal beings, but do not have the language or the equipment in our skulls to comprehend.

If you know anything about Piggy you'll know that he doesn't much care for delving too deeply into all that philosophical "nonsense". To him philosophy is meaningless and more self-referential than a dictionary.

 

[Limbo]

If you know anything about Piggy you'll know that he doesn't much care for delving too deeply into all that philosophical "nonsense". To him philosophy is meaningless and more self-referential than a dictionary.

That explains a lot.

 

[CFLarsen]

I'm not the one who misunderstands skepticism. I'm not the one indulging in dogma.

Shermer, Randi, Plait, Gardner, Dawkins, Wiseman, Nickell, Radford, Sagan.

You think that they misunderstand skepticism - while you don't?

O RLY?

I am skeptical of leprechauns, and after careful consideration, I conclude "they ain't, and can't be".

There are certain things that simply are not going to be proven wrong. A thoughtful skeptic will accept this.

That's where you are wrong.

It is not ever going to be proven wrong that, in our everyday lives, if you have 2 of something, and you get 2 more, you'll have 4 instead of 5.

But you can't separate "our everyday lives" from the full picture.

It is not ever going to be proven wrong that the earth is shaped more like a beach ball than like a frisbee.

O RLY?

This, my friend, is a beach ball frisbee.

In the case of God, however, I can be proven wrong.

You said the opposite before, but...

How?

That's right, I do.

Emotions aren't God. If you say that emotions are God, then obviously God exists, but it's a trivial definition. Emotions are emotions. Calling them God adds nothing.

It adds meaningfullness.

Do you recognize that it does?

"We cannot know what idea X actually means -- so you must admit that it may be a correct idea."

Nope.

You just denied science.

In fact I do "get it" -- I simply disagree with the conclusions you draw. It's not that I fail to understand them.

As to the question... nothing. I don't see any difference.

The problem is that we could, under that scheme, also say that God is a cheese sandwich.

No, because a cheese sandwich does not encompass everything.

We know the universe exists. We know people's emotions exist. We know about the physical laws. Tacking a "God" label onto them without any additional attributes is simply the assertion of an empty definition of God.

And it is not reasonable to demand that anyone must admit that a thing with an empty definition can be said to somehow "exist" in any sense.

But we don't know everything about the universe. We don't know everything about people's emotions. We don't know everything about the physical laws.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

If you know anything about Piggy you'll know that he doesn't much care for delving too deeply into all that philosophical "nonsense". To him philosophy is meaningless and more self-referential than a dictionary.

Well, frankly, about that, I think he's mostly right. Most of philosophy just consists of word games.

That is, after all, what most of this thread concerns.

 

[roger]

Piggy, excuse me if I missed this, but it is a long thread with a lot of side discussions.

What is your response to the theistic argument that a powerful God started the universe and then stepped away? Clearly we have no evidence for this, and leaves more questions than what we started with. I find it very unsatisfactory as a premise. But that does not mean that the idea must be untrue. You state in the opening post "not only that God does not exist, but that God cannot exist."

Why is it the God described above cannot exist?

Brilliant thread, btw.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Well, frankly, about that, I think he's mostly right. Most of philosophy just consists of word games.

That is, after all, what most of this thread concerns.

Seeing as how semantics is the basis of rational thought I wouldn't write it off as irrelevant or "meaningless" [irony ]. If a person's reasoning is based upon a flawed semantic/conceptual framework then their thinking will be flawed. Philosophy is comparable to engineering except what is being engineered are the conceptual and linguistic frameworks thru which we understand and relate to the world around us.

I think that a large part of Piggy's mistrust of the discipline comes from the fact that it doesn't seem to have a direct empirical or practical basis [which is what hes all about] and many alleged "philosophers" hes encountered actually make a living spouting incoherent nonsense.

 

[Jekyll]

Everyone keeps saying that this is a new definition of god. But it isn't. These are very old definitions of god in other traditions.

Vacant or not, it is a venerable view of God.

I cannot see it as a non-statement. It represents a particular relation to this 'object' -- the universe.

Which religions? If you're thinking about Taoist influenced ones you really can't translate Tao as God it just doesn't make sense.

Anyway, it's a vacant statement in the sense that it tells us nothing about the universe.

When you say "The universe is God" you don't mean to tell us anything about the universe. You don't want us thinking that the universe is all knowing, all powerful, sentient,compassionate, or that it decides what will happen to us. You just want to tell us that you worship the universe.

That might be nice for you, but it is still a vacant statement about the universe. It only tells us about you.

Sorry for derailing your thread, Piggy.

 

[thaiboxerken]

To use the word God to refer to the universe needn't entail new aspects for God. It isn't a new way of defining God. It simply is not a Western way of doing it.

I've been to Japan quite a few times and have never heard any Japanese refer to the universe as "god." I know many Chinese, Thai and Filipinno as well that don't. Who are you talking about?

What it amounts to is an entirely different way of looking at the same issue.

Not really. If "god" simply is the universe, why pray to it? If you're not praying to it because it's simply silly to pray to the universe, why call it god?

It does not make a separate ontological claim for God, so that way of dealing with the issue is not subject to the analysis you are subjecting it. You are analyzing based on new ontological claims. Any way of looking at "god" that does not make an ontological claim can't be touched in that way.

Eastern religions have had deities and gods for a very long time, I don't see where you're coming up with this "god is the universe" stuff.

But I don't think that is a valid critique of those Eastern ways of looking at the issue, since they are not concerned with God being something else (again, except for the common practices where there are gods and demons all over the place, but they are another concern).

It doesn't matter if it's a new or old way of looking at "god", either way, it renders the term as meaningless as saying "god" is a cheese sandwich.

The difference is that the word 'god' denotes a type of relationship that someone has to the universe.

In what way?

 

[Piscivore]

I'd like to pose my definition of god and see what you make of it, Piggy. Some of the posters thusfar have flirted with it, but never really gotten close.

"God", like our conciousness, is not a "thing", not an entity, it is an emergent property- an emergent property of that conciousness. I'll illustrate what I mean with a couple of similar examples.

"America" is one of these sorts of emergent properties. "America" is not the bit of land between Canada and Mexico. It is not the Constitution, the Government, the flag, or the Statue of Liberty - these things are artifacts, defined and/or created by people that create and define "America" in an ongoing process. "America" is created by the minds of those who think about it, those that call themselves "Americans" and those that do not. We can pinpoint when "America" was created, and how it has changed. In several real, meaningful ways, "America" exists.

"Love" is another. What you are calling "love" is not a thing or an entity unto itself, it is an emergent property of a combination of physical attraction, familiarity, and/or a history of positive social interactions. Love is an event, and it results in art, poetry, marriage, and breeding. While the creation of the idea of "love" is lost to prehistory, we can see, as you say, that it exists, even if it may have different meanings to different people.

"God" is just like this. God is created when "two or more gather in my name", whatever that name may happen to be. It is an emergent property of the people that believe in it. It was created by man, it changes, it is completely subjective, but it does exist.

What do you think of this?

 

[thaiboxerken]

I can't speak for Piggy, but I'll say that the "emergent property" definition of all of those terms you've used is nonsense. America, for most US citizens, is simply a short way of saying United States of America. Love is an emotion. God is a deity.

 

[Piggy]

Piggy,

I notice that you continue to frame all usage of the word "God," as Theist.
And when it's not Theist, it's dismissed as "Humpty-Dumptyism," ie meaningless.

A non-theistic definition of God is like a non-mammalian definition of man.

For example, your reply to the concept that God is the Universe or the transcendent totality of reality, is that this is empty because it defines God as what God isn't. In your definition God can't be the Universe, because God is outside/apart from the Universe. This is an assumption of Theism.

That's not actually my objection.

If you say that "God is the universe", what have you said?

Either you're saying that God is God, and God is also the universe, or you're saying that "God" is simply a synonym for "universe".

If it's the latter, then God has no qualities in and of itself.

The universe is the universe, and we know it exists, and we can consider the universe as the universe, with all the qualities we can verify, without ever touching on the topic of God.

So if you say that "God is the universe" but has no independent qualities, then this becomes one of those cases in which God is merely equivalent to something which, considered on its own, is not God.

So it is one of those cases in which we're asked to believe that God may exist under conditions in which God and not-God are indistinguishable.

And it is unreasonable to demand that anyone accept such conditions. Under those conditions, "God exists" becomes a totally meaningless statement.

But that doesn't have to be the case. For instance, I can say that George is my father, and George is my mother's husband. If they divorce and my mother remarries, George is still my father, but he is not my mother's husband.

George is my father because I have half his DNA. He's my mother's husband because my mother is married to him.

So "God is the universe" could be a statement like "My father is my mother's husband". If that is the case, then we need to know what qualities God has other than being the universe. Otherwise, God remains undefined, and claims about undefined entities are meaningless.

Bur you make a very shallow dismissal of Non-Theistic God language.
You've done little to address God as
The Rational Logos (Augustine, Spinoza, Einstein)
The Ground of Being (Eckhart, Tillich)
The Eternal You (Buber)
and other Non-Theistic views.

It's not that I'm a propnent of these, but I do respect them for their reach toward transcendence and a reality at large that we must relate to as personal beings, but do not have the language or the equipment in our skulls to comprehend.

Care to describe what these are and see if they're not empty, nonsensical, or contrary to fact?

 

[Piscivore]

I can't speak for Piggy, but I'll say that the "emergent property" definition of all of those terms you've used is nonsense. America, for most US citizens, is simply a short way of saying United States of America.

That's just tautology. You can substitute "United States of America" in what I said and get the same meaning. It is more than just the land or the artifacts.

Love is an emotion.

Just an emotion?

God is a deity.

That's your definition, not mine. I'm offering mine for Piggy's analysis.