What Makes A God?

Discussion in 'Philosophy and Religion' started by AceK, Jul 11, 2015.

  1. Tyrsonswood

    Tyrsonswood Senior Moment Lifetime Supporter

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    A Goddess, of course.
     
  2. rambleON

    rambleON Coup

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    A god u serve is not nesscaily real. God means judge, ruler, strong hand etc. there is the almighty true God and their are also gods over the people, some even make inatimate objects their God. Money comes to mind.
     
  3. Bud D

    Bud D Member

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    I think people are confused between lord and God. Lord is a ruler. God is a generic term for the highest humans can imagine. In fact a fruitless tree that only produces fruits (fruity people).
     
  4. MeatyMushroom

    MeatyMushroom Juggle Tings Proppuh

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    A fruitless tree that only produces fruits doesn't make it a fruitless tree.

    Who's the fruit in this instance?
     
  5. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    We are all fruitcakes.
     
    2 people like this.
  6. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    if we knew what makes a god, perhaps we would be one. one part, perhaps the most important part, is that it IS beyond our knowledge, that of anything human.
     
  7. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    powerful, mostly harmless, invisible, and completely unknown to anything human.
    none of which makes it or they infallible, at war with anything, or have very much to do with anything,
    least of all the statistical process by which WE collectively create the conditions we individually experience.
     
  8. Mr.Writer

    Mr.Writer Senior Member

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    I see a flaw in defining god to be so beyond the realm of human understanding and then being sure we have defined it correctly in such a way :)

    if "god" is this thing that is beyond anything we can imagine . . . why even "god"? seems like a literally empty concept
     
  9. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    ^
    How empty or not this concept is depends on the person having it. That it may appear empty to an antitheist anyway seems logical but does not make it so.

    Asserting certainty to an abstract concept can be a setup for failure indeed but then again it all depends on the details.
     
  10. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    I think he means empty concept in the sense that it was described as "completely unknown to anything human... beyond human knowledge", then asserted to have particular qualities. There is nothing those qualities point to based on the quoted parts. It's more to do with a consistent logical approach rather than how a theist or antitheist might feel about it.
     
  11. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    Double post
     
  12. NoxiousGas

    NoxiousGas Old Fart

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    Mr. Writer putting horse before cart again.
    You forget most things have been/are beyond human understanding and that is by virtue of our limited sensory apparatus and computing power.
    The only way things have been taken from the realm of "being beyond human knowledge" have been done so thanks to our tools that extend our senses.
    Do you honestly think that we have exhausted all there is know to the point of making such proclamations concerning the existence of "God" that you often do?
    Have you ever considered it is our limited abilities that hinder us and that we define things as best we can relative to those hindrances?
    At times your human arrogance is astounding.

    But don't we do exactly that in many areas and generally accept it without question?
    Man has always taken what little info we are able to glean from our environment via our senses and than extrapolate beyond "human knowledge" and make predictions, proclamations and "laws", both social and scientific.
    The electro-magnetic spectrum is an example of something "beyond (direct) human knowledge" yet we took what was available to us and extrapolated and assigned particular qualities to aspects of it beyond our direct knowledge.
    Black holes are another. We do number crunching and think/predict based on that computation that black holes exist and THEN we set out to try to discover one and haven't actually found one yet, if they can even actually be "found" or studied because by definition, both are nigh unto impossible, kinda like the idea of God.
    Black holes are generally accepted as true and real even though, beyond the math that predicts they could exist, and a few light anomalies, we have not confirmed their existence as of yet.

    so don't be so arrogant to think that religion or God have a corner on defining and assigning properties to things that have little confirmation in our experience/reality.
    Seems to simply be part of human nature.
     
  13. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    I actually considered dark matter when I wrote my response, as that is the closest example I can think of to that type of description. However in that case, science is generally saying something along the lines of "We don't currently know what this stuff is but based on these testable observations of other known phenomena we think it likely to exist." Black holes and the like are even more concrete examples I'd say.
     
  14. Mr.Writer

    Mr.Writer Senior Member

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    Two errors here; one, I don't see how being against organized religion bears any relevance to my critique against the concept of "god" spoken of in this thread. My critique stands on its own, whether I am an antitheist, or a vegan, or a skater.

    Second, the meaning of words is not something wholly personal; words only work because their meaning is widely shared and understood. If "Cat" meant something so different between you and I that we could not agree that a Tabby was a "cat", then we have failed at language.

    What I am arguing is that there is a fundamental error in having, within the very definition of a concept, the fact that the concept is undefinable, not understandable, and wholly outside the realm of human cognition. It would be like defining a new shape, a "Niklon", wherein it contains no faces, no lines, no angles, no surfaces, is subject to no mathematical behaviors, etc, etc. What does it mean to then wish to cut a piece of paper into the shape of a Niklon?


    I make no pretense at having anything more than a human understanding.

    It is completely disingenuous to compare something like "God" to something like "black holes".

    1) Math tells us that there could be something we will call a singularity in nature

    2) We look into it and find some evidence that points strongly to a singularity (gravitational lensing, orbital perturbations, energetics in the milky way's centre, etc)

    3) We conclude that the evidence is strong that black holes exist; they are permitted by our theories, they are predicted by our theories, circumstantial evidence dots the universe, etc

    What is the equivalent list for the "god" concept?

    First, how do you define it? What makes you think it could or should exist? Where is your evidence for it actually existing?

    I submit that the god concept is a non-starter on all three of these questions; in particular, it fails at being even properly defined.

    It's literally an empty word in this discussion; you certainly don't mean that "god" is the name of a super person named Jehovah who created our earth 6,000 years ago, so then what is god?

    It's really dishonest to say that because our senses are limited, and we must always come to know the universe through them as filters, that therefore the answer to the question "is there god" is a "yes".

    The EM Spectrum, beyond visible light, is invisible to our senses, yes; but not invisible to our senses when we enhance our senses with technology. That's why we can say "EM exists". What is the equivalent situation with "God"? Again, my entire point is, if you define "God" to be in principle something that is unknowable, invisible, etc, I submit that you are pointing at empty space, and dreaming up an entity or a reality for which you not only have zero evidence (by your own definition!), and which isn't required to explain a single thing in all of existence, but which also does not even make sense as a concept on paper.
     
  15. Mr.Writer

    Mr.Writer Senior Member

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    "What makes a god" . . . pffft . . . what makes a YOU?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQVmkDUkZT4
     
  16. If a pair of eyes the size of galaxy clusters blinked and opened up in outer space, it would be like the universe came to life, and we'd call that God. So why is it that when pairs of tiny eyes open up we don't call that God?
     
  17. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    If a pair of large noodles and meatballs the size of stars moved around the cosmos we'd call that the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so why is it we don't call the pasta at the Italian Restaurant the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
     
  18. False analogy. Flying spaghetti monster has eyes.

    But if a giant plate of spaghetti did appear in outer space, surely we would not think of our tiny plates of spaghetti in the same way. We'd be wondering what our plates of spaghetti mean.

    I'm trying to make an honest assessment of what it means that the universe has eyeballs, though. I know it's a little unseemly to assert that the universe having eyeballs means that it is God, but it certainly is weird enough to be God.

    [​IMG]
     
  19. Mr.Writer

    Mr.Writer Senior Member

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    You might call it god, I wouldn't. Just like I wouldn't call the next thunder I hear, "the sound of Thor beating his hammer". If the universe opened eyes and blinked, I would keep calling it the universe, and you should already know that the universe is alive in some fundamental sense. When we open our eyes and blink, that is the universe blinking, we are universe.

    I don't see anything called "god" or the need to call anything "god" yet. What is this word, how are you defining it, that it seems to replace all other words for things once those things reach an arbitrary level of subjective awesomeness?
     
  20. Kiprat

    Kiprat ophidiophobe

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    To be honest, I've NEVER felt so against the idea there is anything sentient, kind or worthwhile behind the World as I have the last 2 days.

    The people I've known, and gullibly believed in the past, I am sure only used their "God" talk to deceive me, manipulate and use me.
    I really hate to say that, but sadly I have no choice after all the evidence mounted up.
    I really feel like what some little kid must feel after he's been abused by some sick uncle or whatever.

    I really feel the whole World is utterly Godless right now. And sadly, I feel the most Godless people are actually the ones who talk about God so vehemently.
     
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