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 .

[Diagoras]

And you keep referring to a cosmic mind as "complex", but what's the relationship between complexity and consciousness? The brain, the seat of our consciousness, is composed of individual neurons each of which individually is presumably unconscious.

Sounds rather like the Sorites_paradox, but in the case of the brain, consciousness is recognised as an emergent property.

Here's a nice little video about it:
https://youtu.be/H6u0VBqNBQ8

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #81

It is, of course, Just as the law of gravity is a law and Thermo 2/Entropy is a law - in the part or levels of the universe where they are relevant. But at quantum level and an open system like an infinite Cosmos, they are not. It's like saying that because the process of evolution doesn't obtain on a planet without life, it isn't a real process.

But the quantum level is where everything is energy, so that's where conservation has to make it or break it. If it isn't a law there, it really isn't a law anywhere.

Because there is far less that has to appear. The problem (for you) is that a complex thinking being has a lot of causality to explain. A nothing does not I understand perfectly your problem with a nothing that can form or innately ha the potential to produce energy. But the point is that it has almost made the infinite recession problem go away. A thinking being with no origin has a big causality -problem.

If nothing does something, it has to explain whatever it does.

And if a "nothing" could do something as phantasmagorical as producing a "something" from the nothing of its nothingness, why couldn't that "nothing" be a cosmic mind? What's the worst that could be? Counter-intuitive?

Quantum is where the laws break down. The problem has been reconciling the laws of Physics with the discoveries about Quantum.

And I have already explained that the problem (and there is one, I concede) with an uncreated 'nothing' that can become (rather than 'producing') something, it is less of a problem than a complex mind with no apparent origin. 'Nothing'does not need an origin.

Neither can nothing be an origin. And again, laws are just descriptions of the behavior of what's already there.

And you keep referring to a cosmic mind as "complex", but what's the relationship between complexity and consciousness? The brain, the seat of our consciousness, is composed of individual neurons each of which individually is presumably unconscious.

Of course physical laws describe what is already there - or the effect, and what it does, rather. That is irrelevant to observing that there are some places where the laws of physics don't seem to apply. To say that nothing cannot be an origin of something is too dismissive. One can't claim to know the properties of nothing an especially where we can't observe it - beyond the universe. And there are indications (in experiments) that it can produce an 'effect'(energy) even in this place. As I say, if not, the putting a god in place doesn't solve the problem, it just makes it worse.

Consciousness is a complex effect of energy and which is produced by a complex organ (the brain) as well. But (I had this discussion on my former board) I may say that a working consciousness without the support of a brain is not logically impossible. But it is more complex than energy that hasn't ordered itself into a disembodied mind, never mind one that order matter and energy around.

Like I say, a 'Mind' just makes the problem of causality worse.

[Bradskii]

Well, over 90 posts in and all we have so far is 'stuff can't have just happened on it's own'. Which might get us a discussion on deism. But no further. I'm not sure if the question is:

A: God exists. But did He actually create everything?

Or...

B: On the assumption that everything that exists was created, was it God who did it?

The first is nonsensical. And nobody seems to have directly addressed the second. At least, nobody seems to have made the connection.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 93:

Well, over 90 posts in and all we have so far is 'stuff can't have just happened on it's own'.

I'd save myself a whole lotta punishings if I could convince the pretty thing it does.

I notice the theist might insist a god doesn't need a beginning, but that the universe needs an explanation for a beginning. What we observe to be a 'big bang' might merely be the universe changing forms. I see no need to posit gods for such to occur.

A: God exists. But did He actually create everything?

Or...

B: On the assumption that everything that exists was created, was it God who did it?

The first is nonsensical. And nobody seems to have directly addressed the second. At least, nobody seems to have made the connection.

It seems that for some, "God did it" is a sufficient explanation, with little concern for the mechanisms involved. Where knowledge is lacking, insert God.

God is for folks who can't spell gap.

[TRANSPONDER]

Well, over 90 posts in and all we have so far is 'stuff can't have just happened on it's own'. Which might get us a discussion on deism. But no further. I'm not sure if the question is:

A: God exists. But did He actually create everything?

Or...

B: On the assumption that everything that exists was created, was it God who did it?

The first is nonsensical. And nobody seems to have directly addressed the second. At least, nobody seems to have made the connection.

Those points weren't addressed as such, but I touched on the point that, if a god had to create the stuff from which the BB event came, why not create everything else? The evidence rather supports a long evolutionary process. Which rather covers the 2nd point.

[Bradskii]

Those points weren't addressed as such, but I touched on the point that, if a god had to create the stuff from which the BB event came, why not create everything else? The evidence rather supports a long evolutionary process. Which rather covers the 2nd point.

Maybe the term 'god-like' would be more applicable if we're going to assume some intelligent entity was involved with the creation of this universe (and 'this' has been purposely included). Arthur C Clarke's point that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" springs to mind.

And omnipotence is definitely not a necessary characterisitc. So how do we get God into the picture?

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #92

To say that nothing cannot be an origin of something is too dismissive. One can't claim to know the properties of nothing an especially where we can't observe it - beyond the universe. And there are indications (in experiments) that it can produce an 'effect'(energy) even in this place. As I say, if not, the putting a god in place doesn't solve the problem, it just makes it worse.

Again, we've never had Nothing to experiment on [thanks to the ever-present zero-point energy field] so we certainly don't have any way of establishing what Nothing can supposedly do.

And since we have no way of knowing what conditions exist outside the known universe, it's pointless to make any hard claims about them. We can, however, speculate that consciousness might exist on a macro scale beyond our ability to observe (can an individual neuron contemplate the brain of which it's a part?), which I find more plausible than nothing being able to produce something. I may seem to have a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, but I'd say that makes more sense than trying to get the same rabbit out of the same hat starting out with no magician, no rabbit and no hat. It's been referred to as the "cosmic bootstrap principle", likening it to someone pulling themselves up by their own boot straps, and naming it after a principle which doesn't work says a lot.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #92

To say that nothing cannot be an origin of something is too dismissive. One can't claim to know the properties of nothing an especially where we can't observe it - beyond the universe. And there are indications (in experiments) that it can produce an 'effect'(energy) even in this place. As I say, if not, the putting a god in place doesn't solve the problem, it just makes it worse.

Again, we've never had Nothing to experiment on [thanks to the ever-present zero-point energy field] so we certainly don't have any way of establishing what Nothing can supposedly do.

And since we have no way of knowing what conditions exist outside the known universe, it's pointless to make any hard claims about them. We can, however, speculate that consciousness might exist on a macro scale beyond our ability to observe (can an individual neuron contemplate the brain of which it's a part?), which I find more plausible than nothing being able to produce something. I may seem to have a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, but I'd say that makes more sense than trying to get the same rabbit out of the same hat starting out with no magician, no rabbit and no hat. It's been referred to as the "cosmic bootstrap principle", likening it to someone pulling themselves up by their own boot straps, and naming it after a principle which doesn't work says a lot.

Very good, but I think you're making a couple of errors there. One is obvious: I'm not the one making the hard claim; you are (that a nothing may have the potential to act like matter/energy is impossible). It's the same fallacy as theists use to argue against abiogenesis 'Life cannot come from non -life'. Except there mechanisms are in place that plausibly explain how it can. So far no real mechanism is proposed to show how 'nothing' can produce Something. It is just a suggestion that can't be ruled out as impossible. Plus the interesting experiment of a box empties of everything (leaving nothing) that could still manifest quantum/energy).

The other is a bit less obvious and a bit complicated. In fact so much that I won't go into some of the ramifications like 'misuse of analogy as evidence'. But I'll keep it simple. If you are going to use analogy as evidence (positing a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat merely asks where the rabbit came from - which you apply to hat and magician, too) then (to make the analogy an exact model of the argument - the only way that can work) pulling a rabbit from a hat (as real magic) your analogy goes: 'Since you can't explain how a rabbit came to be in the hat (since rabbits don't magically appear in hats) the only possible answer is that there has to be a rabbit warren in the hat' The warren requires far more explanation than a rabbit. It is more complex than a single rabbit just as a cosmic mind (even positing a disembodied interaction - web of energy) is more complex than the very basics of energy.

[JoeyKnothead]

Again, we've never had Nothing to experiment on [thanks to the ever-present zero-point energy field] so we certainly don't have any way of establishing what Nothing can supposedly do.

Who am I, but I think you've done well this far in your argumentations, but...

And since we have no way of knowing what conditions exist outside the known universe, it's pointless to make any hard claims about them. We can, however, speculate...

Speculation is fine and all, but in this matter you're fixing to speculate on something that's outside the known universe, namely a consciousness (god), that'd have something to do with creating the universe (if ya don't explicitly say it as such). While you're obviously correct in the we can't know about outside the universe, you're ostensibly trying to say we can.

...that consciousness might exist on a macro scale beyond our ability to observe (can an individual neuron contemplate the brain of which it's a part?),...

"Might". Only through such "might" will this "macro scale consciousness" be shown to exist.

...which I find more plausible than nothing being able to produce something.

Plausibility is a poor means of finding truth or fact.

I may seem to have a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat,...

I don't think it's a hat from which this rabbit's getting pulled.

but I'd say that makes more sense than trying to get the same rabbit out of the same hat starting out with no magician, no rabbit and no hat.

What "makes sense" ain't always what makes truth.

It's been referred to as the "cosmic bootstrap principle", likening it to someone pulling themselves up by their own boot straps, and naming it after a principle which doesn't work says a lot.

I refer to this "macro consciousness" angle as bovinely utile lofty language short having intelligent thought.

The problem with this "macro consciousness" angle is the same as for the alledged creation of the universe, it introduces 'facts' (my term) that ain't in evidence.

You're allowing for this consciousness to have either always existed, or to have came into existence prior to, so outside the universe, so by your own reckoning above, we can't know us nothing about it. Beyond speculation, which is no better'n the speculations of your opponents.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #98

I'm not the one making the hard claim; you are (that a nothing may have the potential to act like matter/energy is impossible). It's the same fallacy as theists use to argue against abiogenesis 'Life cannot come from non -life'. Except there mechanisms are in place that plausibly explain how it can. So far no real mechanism is proposed to show how 'nothing' can produce Something. It is just a suggestion that can't be ruled out as impossible. Plus the interesting experiment of a box empties of everything (leaving nothing) that could still manifest quantum/energy).

Nowhere have I argued against abiogenesis, and indeed it's not the same argument at all. In abiogenesis, you have something to start with.

And the box experiment isn't all that interesting. Just because all the air is taken out of the box, leaving vaccuum, doesn't mean that all the energy is taken out. The zero-point field, which presumably permeates the known universe, is still there; all the box experiment does is show that the zero-point energy is still there.

The warren requires far more explanation than a rabbit. It is more complex than a single rabbit

And a single rabbit is more complex than nothing, which would have no complexity, but you entertain the notion of the latter somehow generating the former.