Click to spin, including database error on triangle.
Compare:
"God is whatever it was that caused the universe to begin"
"God is the transcendental cause of the universe"
Those look pretty much the same to me, only the second one makes an additional assumption about the nature of the cause. The second definition comes from a self-declared theist, by the way. You might know him.
Word games.
It's your turn:
Define, "transcendental". It makes a difference as to whether or not those two statements are pretty much the same.
Another difference, James, is that the first much more apparently leads to a definition of God that you disdain for being harder to judge because it isn't as particular, or easy and condemn, as you need. There's a reason why Jan would be surprised to hear that definition comes from a theist. And the thing is, within the bounds of what passes muster for argument, as such, all he really needs to do is pay attention.
After all, what if he's wrong? What if there's something he missed along the way? Okay, I suppose that would make your word game even more ridiculous than it already is, but that's the thing, he's gambling on what he thinks he already knows. He paid attention to something; the question about his line would seem to be if he missed anything along the way.°
But he's challenging the word game underpinning your pretense.
Oh, and, by the way, "tinkering alien computer programmer creating a virtual world on a whim", would not, as such, qualify as God. So we come back to the question of what you think you know, to the one, and word games, to the other.
Think of it this way, James: What you don't want to discuss is the point you raise in general. What you do want to discuss is your religious—
e.g. biblical—demands. When challenged, you play a word game that points right back to what you don't want to discuss.
Now, complain all you want about theists, or even Jan, Jan, Jan. Been there, heard that, even done some of it. After this long, I would have otherwise expected people capable of coping with the fact of evangelists like Jan Ardena, and maybe even to have learned a thing or three about how to deal with him.
Okay, but a turtle can also do all those things too, and we humans don't seem to have been created in the image of a turtle.
Or is it that turtles and humans are both created in the image of God?
Anyway, I guess it's pointless asking you. Obviously you can't provide an answer.
Or, maybe not.
Here, pay attention.
• • •
God can...
See
Hear
Walk
Talk
Think
Will
Feel
Does that answer your question?
There is what
Andy and Johnette↱ said:
I told the priest, don't count on any Second Coming; God got his ass kicked the first time he came down here, slumming; he had the balls to come, the gall to die, and then forgive us. No, I don't wonder why; I wonder what He thought it would get us. Hey, hey! Good-bye! Tomorrow, Wendy is going to die.
Only God says, "Jump!" but I set the time; 'cause if He ever saw it, it was through these eyes of mine. And if He ever suffered, it was me who did His crying: Hey, hey! Good-bye! Tomorrow, Wendy is going to die.
It is because, as
Yazata↗ reminded, "that God needs to be
Divine, God needs to be
Holy", and it's not like you don't already know that.
Maybe they need you to be their Devil. That you are so obliging is what it is, and says what it will in whatever context. You know, kind of like how they're supposed to be the smart ones, you're supposed to be the virtuous one. True, setting such presuppositions and expectations to rest would probably be helpful, but himog is not malamati even if malamati can be himog. Akin to what
I told↗ Yazata: Sometimes, whirling about in dizzied pursuit of ecstasy until accidentally figuring out what one is missing isn't the worst idea in the world. Because, there are also days when it might simply be a better gig.
____________________
Notes:
° For some sort of quasi-formal sake, we should note it is at least possible you both missed something along the way, but that seems rather a futile path at the moment.
