Definition of God

[JoeyKnothead]

I won't name the source, cause it was offered in the spirit of explanation moreso than outright fact, but let's fuss on it all the same:

...
For a general definition of God, "the underlying source of all else which exists"...

For debate:

Please offer some means to confirm God is the underlying source of all else which exists.

Remember, the bible ain't considered authoritative in this section of the site .

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #33(Since for some reason this site keeps kicking me out of my login every time I try to post a detailed reply to this, I'm going to have to try a truncated version.)

You seem to assume that the Cosmos is simple enough not to have needed "creation". Even on the quantum level, isn't the Cosmos dazzlingly complex? Suppose that the quantum string idea is correct. What underlying force causes that multitude of strings to vibrate, at various frequencies, consistently? And what generates that force? At the same time, assuming that a "creator" wouldn't proceed from the material, on what basis can you assert that "God is neither simple, nor basic"?

Your assertion about "the innate 'energy' in nothing" seems off-base. A rock lying at the bottom of a pool is in the water, but it isn't innately of the water. Energy isn't "in" nothing; its existence prevents there from being nothing. Nothingness wouldn't have any "potential". It wouldn't have any anything. That's why it would be Nothing.

If----as we agree----causality applies to the Cosmos, then causality applies to energy. So if we start with energy, we leave causality unapplied.

Isn't it annoying when your login gets messed up? I've had that happen on a few sites. Perhaps ask the mods to look into the problem.

As to your post, you seem to be missing that the idea is to resolve or at least get around the problem of infinite regression, which is the problem of causality. A complex god has already failed to answer that question unless one ignores it and insists that a very complex intelligent being did not need to have any origin.

Again, it's not about regression......it's about reduction. Even if the material universe has always existed, there has to be something underlying its existence because, again.....it cannot be the cause of its own existence.

"How often have I told you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
--Sherlock Holmes

Since a 'something from nothing' hypothesis has to be 'cosmic stuff' as near nothing as makes no difference, any cosmic complexity is in the future and we have to propose the uttermost simplicity of nothingness, but with the potential to act like matter/energy of which quantum would be part of the physics that would form up after the energy/mass stared interacting.

Proposing the uttermost simplicity of nothingness "with the potential to act like matter/energy" is unrealistic. Nothingness would have no such potential. And it doesn't matter how "near" to nothing "cosmic stuff" is; if it's "stuff", then it's not nothing and cannot come from nothing.

I repeat that this is all speculative, but it is at least getting close to resolving the origins of matter in a way that a complex god without any origin doesn't. That is simply an improbable faith - claim that disregards plausibility.

And I also repeat that you are appealing to far later complexities of the substance and physics (quantum) of the Cosmos, though in fact you are talking of the Universe we know, not the larger cosmos of unknown 'stuff' which we don't. You can't debunk a hypothesis about the very basic stuff from which the universe was made by referring to the complexity of Our particular Universe (there may well be others) after it was made.

Actually you can, because stuff is stuff whether complex or simple. It's all subject to causality.

And I'm obliged to reiterate that this is really an academic question. Even if one conceded a creative cosmic mind, you would still be faced with 'Which God?' It is only to stop theist apologetics wangling the term 'God' into credibility that this needs to be debated at all.

Asking "Which God?" is merely limiting the choices to human concepts of God, all of which may be wrong and which are presumably incomplete. What we know or don't know about the nature of God has no direct bearing on the existence of God; the latter is cosmological, the former merely epistomological.

[Athetotheist]

Even on the quantum level, isn't the Cosmos dazzlingly complex?

Just because the limited minds of human beings cannot comprehend something doesn't mean that it is inherently complex. For some people, calculus is dazzlingly complex. it's all relative. The universe may operate on a perfectly natural and simplistic basis, but not by some way that we can necessarily comprehend.

The Cosmos is subject to causality, and just because the limited minds of human beings cannot comprehend what could cause the Cosmos doesn't mean that an extra-cosmic cause would have to be inherently complex.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #33(Since for some reason this site keeps kicking me out of my login every time I try to post a detailed reply to this, I'm going to have to try a truncated version.)

You seem to assume that the Cosmos is simple enough not to have needed "creation". Even on the quantum level, isn't the Cosmos dazzlingly complex? Suppose that the quantum string idea is correct. What underlying force causes that multitude of strings to vibrate, at various frequencies, consistently? And what generates that force? At the same time, assuming that a "creator" wouldn't proceed from the material, on what basis can you assert that "God is neither simple, nor basic"?

Your assertion about "the innate 'energy' in nothing" seems off-base. A rock lying at the bottom of a pool is in the water, but it isn't innately of the water. Energy isn't "in" nothing; its existence prevents there from being nothing. Nothingness wouldn't have any "potential". It wouldn't have any anything. That's why it would be Nothing.

If----as we agree----causality applies to the Cosmos, then causality applies to energy. So if we start with energy, we leave causality unapplied.

Isn't it annoying when your login gets messed up? I've had that happen on a few sites. Perhaps ask the mods to look into the problem.

As to your post, you seem to be missing that the idea is to resolve or at least get around the problem of infinite regression, which is the problem of causality. A complex god has already failed to answer that question unless one ignores it and insists that a very complex intelligent being did not need to have any origin.

Again, it's not about regression......it's about reduction. Even if the material universe has always existed, there has to be something underlying its existence because, again.....it cannot be the cause of its own existence.

"How often have I told you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
--Sherlock Holmes

Since a 'something from nothing' hypothesis has to be 'cosmic stuff' as near nothing as makes no difference, any cosmic complexity is in the future and we have to propose the uttermost simplicity of nothingness, but with the potential to act like matter/energy of which quantum would be part of the physics that would form up after the energy/mass stared interacting.

Proposing the uttermost simplicity of nothingness "with the potential to act like matter/energy" is unrealistic. Nothingness would have no such potential. And it doesn't matter how "near" to nothing "cosmic stuff" is; if it's "stuff", then it's not nothing and cannot come from nothing.

I repeat that this is all speculative, but it is at least getting close to resolving the origins of matter in a way that a complex god without any origin doesn't. That is simply an improbable faith - claim that disregards plausibility.

And I also repeat that you are appealing to far later complexities of the substance and physics (quantum) of the Cosmos, though in fact you are talking of the Universe we know, not the larger cosmos of unknown 'stuff' which we don't. You can't debunk a hypothesis about the very basic stuff from which the universe was made by referring to the complexity of Our particular Universe (there may well be others) after it was made.

Actually you can, because stuff is stuff whether complex or simple. It's all subject to causality.

And I'm obliged to reiterate that this is really an academic question. Even if one conceded a creative cosmic mind, you would still be faced with 'Which God?' It is only to stop theist apologetics wangling the term 'God' into credibility that this needs to be debated at all.

Asking "Which God?" is merely limiting the choices to human concepts of God, all of which may be wrong and which are presumably incomplete. What we know or don't know about the nature of God has no direct bearing on the existence of God; the latter is cosmological, the former merely epistomological.

We seem to be going around in circles because you seem to confuse what seems counter -intuitive to you with what is impossible. Because you cannot comprehend that matter -energy is actually made of nothing acting like something (as though that isn't what 'god' actually in supposed to be) it is -to you - 'impossible'.

It is rather like the abiogenesis -denial of the Creationists. Though I concede that a something from nothing is not convincingly explainable as is life from non -life or even human consciousness from animal consciousness. But then 'Cosmic origins' has always been the best gap for God theists have.

But what it comes down to is at best 'we don't know'. It does not come down to 'a creator with the will to want it done and to do it, because that is also subject to causality.

And I already accepted that the cosmological argument is actually academic. I'm merely reminding you of why atheists bother to argue about itl because you asked why (if a non -religious creator isn't a problem for atheists) we argue about it at all, and I told you.

I might mention in passing that Creationists are (or were) 'post -Dover' (where IC/ID was deemed non -science and in fact Creationism and thus religion) trying to clam a creator as a non -religious concept just to try to get it under the legal radar. The leap of Faith from a non -specific creator (if they can wangle it onto the discussion - table) is a very real apologetic. In fact a pretty standard one.

Incidentally, the 'Holmes dictum' is a passage in a story - book, not a logical rule. Whether it works or not depends on whether all the parameters are known. Take for instance opening a drawer and seeing that it's empty. Concluding that there is no banana in there is thus justified. A claim that an invisible banana there is not disprovable (note our pal JW's demand that atheists must disprove the ability of God to fake up a world without any evidence for a Flood) but is non -falsifiable and thus logically worthless. It is for the claimant of the invisible banana to prove there is such a thing, not for the non believer to prove that there are no invisible bananas. Thus while one can't be 100% certain, that is irrelevant. The default hypothesis is that the drawer is empty.

But to claim that there is no banana in this or that house is impossible because one does not know. That is, the parameters of that house are not known so the existence of a banana cannot be ruled out as impossible and there is no way of knowing what is the truth - until a minute examination is made and then (like the empty drawer) one can be more and more sure there is no banana (if none is found).

And when we get to a city of houses we are less sure and the dictum is rather 'absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence'. It depends on the parameters - how completely they are known.

That is why the 'Have you looked everywhere in the universe' apologetic is a nonsense - apologetic. A god somewhere in the universe is irrelevant. It is a god that interacts with us here on earth that is relevant, and that is a house we have searched pretty thoroughly and the believer has not been able to show us a banana. Other than an invisible one.

[historia]

Since for some reason this site keeps kicking me out of my login every time I try to post a detailed reply to this, I'm going to have to try a truncated version.

Isn't it annoying when your login gets messed up? I've had that happen on a few sites. Perhaps ask the mods to look into the problem.

A word to the wise: Always write your reply in a text document.

Just copy-and-paste the post you are responding to into a text document, write your response and make your edits there, and then copy-and-paste the final text back into the form on the website.

In that way, you don't have to worry about your session timing out and losing the post, since you still have the text document.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #44"We seem to be going around in circles because you seem to confuse what seems counter -intuitive to you with what is impossible. Because you cannot comprehend that matter -energy is actually made of nothing acting like something (as though that isn't what 'god' actually in supposed to be) it is -to you - 'impossible'."


It's been said that the invisible looks a lot like the nonexistent.

Have you ever noticed how much the "counter-intuitive" looks like the mystical?

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #44"We seem to be going around in circles because you seem to confuse what seems counter -intuitive to you with what is impossible. Because you cannot comprehend that matter -energy is actually made of nothing acting like something (as though that isn't what 'god' actually in supposed to be) it is -to you - 'impossible'."


It's been said that the invisible looks a lot like the nonexistent.

Have you ever noticed how much the "counter-intuitive" looks like the mystical?

The invisible can indeed look like the nonexistent. But that only means that one doesn't know whether it exists or not. But it illogical to claim that it exists before the existence has been demonstrated. Otherwise one is investing Faith in a pet theory (hypothesis). The mystical, religions and pseudo - science being examples of this irrationality.

I was going to say that I can't say I have; rather it looks like explanation for (often scientific) questions that don't seem reasonable. The Heliocentric system, the round earth, relativity, black holes and quantum/indeterminacy are example of the counter - intuitive that turned out to be validated by science.

But yes, I can see the point. I'm thinking of instinct. How on earth do animals (including us) do things without being taught to? It looked frankly mystical and those who thought that 'God' was too easy and unsubstantiated opted for 'we don't know - yet'. Then DNA answered the question of innate behaviour. It's the same with things like cosmic origins, origins of life and Consciousness. We don't know - yet, and the temptation is to put the Mystical (god) in as an easy answer. But it's not a valid one.

[JoeyKnothead]

"How often have I told you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
--Sherlock Holmes

I've always called this "Sherlock's Razor", owing to it's closeness to dear old Occam.

It fails because where we lack sufficient data to draw reliable conclusions, it'd insert a conclusion based solely on how simple -a relative term- that conclusion may be.

"Wimmins, how we gonna figure em out?"

"Well, they's wimmins".

The conclusion there, though powerfully telling, fails to show how come the pretty thing demands I put my britches on to sit at the dinner table I own, in the chair I own, in the house I own, on the land I own, to sup on the groceries I either grew myself, or bought with my own cabbage.

Simple explanations ain't always correct.

"Wimmins, how we gonna figure em out?"

"Well, they's wimmins".

Now there's a complex answer that fits.

[TRANSPONDER]

"How often have I told you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
--Sherlock Holmes

I've always called this "Sherlock's Razor", owing to it's closeness to dear old Occam.

It fails because where we lack sufficient data to draw reliable conclusions, it'd insert a conclusion based solely on how simple -a relative term- that conclusion may be.

"Wimmins, how we gonna figure em out?"

"Well, they's wimmins".

The conclusion there, though powerfully telling, fails to show how come the pretty thing demands I put my britches on to sit at the dinner table I own, in the chair I own, in the house I own, on the land I own, to sup on the groceries I either grew myself, or bought with my own cabbage.

Simple explanations ain't always correct.

"Wimmins, how we gonna figure em out?"

"Well, they's wimmins".

Now there's a complex answer that fits.

The Holmes dictum isn't really like Occam's razor. Rather the logically sound and evidence - based methods of deduction have Occam's razor as a buffer against a string of far -fetched possible alternative explanations that can't be disproved and are usually unfalsifiable. They have to be left in the 'unproven' bin until they have some evidence to make them serious contenders. The liking for clinging to some belief as valid because nobody can disprove it is not logical, which is why faith -claims are irrational.

The comment on figuring out women 'theys wimmin' gets us nowhere and appears to be no more that 'I don't understand 'em'. It doesn't fit, it evades.

[JoeyKnothead]

"How often have I told you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
--Sherlock Holmes

I've always called this "Sherlock's Razor", owing to it's closeness to dear old Occam.

It fails because where we lack sufficient data to draw reliable conclusions, it'd insert a conclusion based solely on how simple -a relative term- that conclusion may be.

"Wimmins, how we gonna figure em out?"

"Well, they's wimmins".

The conclusion there, though powerfully telling, fails to show how come the pretty thing demands I put my britches on to sit at the dinner table I own, in the chair I own, in the house I own, on the land I own, to sup on the groceries I either grew myself, or bought with my own cabbage.

Simple explanations ain't always correct.

"Wimmins, how we gonna figure em out?"

"Well, they's wimmins".

Now there's a complex answer that fits.

The Holmes dictum isn't really like Occam's razor. Rather the logically sound and evidence - based methods of deduction have Occam's razor as a buffer against a string of far -fetched possible alternative explanations that can't be disproved and are usually unfalsifiable. They have to be left in the 'unproven' bin until they have some evidence to make them serious contenders. The liking for clinging to some belief as valid because nobody can disprove it is not logical, which is why faith -claims are irrational.

I still consider em closely related concepts.

The comment on figuring out women 'theys wimmin' gets us nowhere and appears to be no more that 'I don't understand 'em'. It doesn't fit, it evades.

My point was in the subjective nature of using such terms as "simple", or "complex".

Wimmins are simple to figure out, if we understand how complex they are.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #44"We seem to be going around in circles because you seem to confuse what seems counter -intuitive to you with what is impossible. Because you cannot comprehend that matter -energy is actually made of nothing acting like something (as though that isn't what 'god' actually in supposed to be) it is -to you - 'impossible'."


It's been said that the invisible looks a lot like the nonexistent.

Have you ever noticed how much the "counter-intuitive" looks like the mystical?

The invisible can indeed look like the nonexistent. But that only means that one doesn't know whether it exists or not. But it illogical to claim that it exists before the existence has been demonstrated. Otherwise one is investing Faith in a pet theory (hypothesis). The mystical, religions and pseudo - science being examples of this irrationality.

I was going to say that I can't say I have; rather it looks like explanation for (often scientific) questions that don't seem reasonable. The Heliocentric system, the round earth, relativity, black holes and quantum/indeterminacy are example of the counter - intuitive that turned out to be validated by science.

But yes, I can see the point. I'm thinking of instinct. How on earth do animals (including us) do things without being taught to? It looked frankly mystical and those who thought that 'God' was too easy and unsubstantiated opted for 'we don't know - yet'. Then DNA answered the question of innate behaviour. It's the same with things like cosmic origins, origins of life and Consciousness. We don't know - yet, and the temptation is to put the Mystical (god) in as an easy answer. But it's not a valid one.

Then in the interest of eliminating the impossible, let's take it a step further. If, as you stated earlier, Nothing is able to behave like Something, is it able to do so without Anything to give it the ability? And if it is, in which direction does that move things: toward the material, or toward the mystical?