Definition of God - one thread to rule them all

Discussion in 'Religion' started by James R, Apr 11, 2020.

  1. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    No it hasn’t.
    Quantum fluctuations are still the stuff of the universe. So yes, you are saying the universe brought itself into being. Or if you want you could say it came nothing.
    No.
    Although I have no clue what you mean by magical sky daddy, it still seems far more plausible, than the idea of the universe just popping out of nothing (whatever that is).
    All that means is, you think you are replacing God, with “nothing”.
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2020
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  3. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Y'know, I'd shrug it off and say, James knows what I mean, but it's also true his faculties on that count are mysteriously unreliable, and while there remains a question whether it is fair to expect him to remember anything, it has to do with something he said, once, that is explicitly relevant to the topic setup. It also happens to be an example of why he fails.

    Sorry, Michael, if that part of reality fails to accommodate your extraordinary need, but that's the way life goes, sometimes.

    Meanwhile, should I tell you to learn to read, or would it be better if you could just tell us precisely what words you require people to say; I just don't see the utility in going out of your way to be worse than useless. If you're going to put on a pedantic show like that, literacy really is a prerequisite.

    No, really, if the idea isn't clear enough to accommodate your need in the one post, the second, as it happens, is entirely given over to that subject. Yes, even the third note, which attends the purpose and manner by which we seek to define God; remember where that note comes from:

    I never have understood what so confuses ostensibly enlightened people about the idea that if you disarm the device then it cannot continue to do its damage.

    Or, maybe I have.°° Disarming God, as I said, once upon a time, is a simple idea, but also becomes a fairly difficult social process. And rational discourse requires a certain amount of effort. It would be one thing to make the joke that we have discovered the problem, but, at the same time, there is also a viable question to what degree that such sloth is actually in effect.

    After all, if one suggests, meh, because "theists" don't deserve the effort or respect of attending the historical record°°°, it's true, we are actually looking at a functional problem, right there.


    (#132↑)

    Again, the purpose and manner by which we seek to define God. See, for instance, #3↑, above, and a response at #7↑, which proposes, "We need an idea of the kind of thing described before we can instantiate it, don't we?" and then goes on to offer two paragraphs of fallacious projection. This purpose and manner of seeking to define God is what it is, but, y'know, whatever. To the one, atheism is just a word that means, without God, and has nothing to do with being useful. To the other, if we go back to Bowser and James at #2↑ and #4↑, the latter's characterization of pantheism more suits political argumentation than any pursuit of truth, knowledge, &c.

    Toward that end, an insider tip is that sometimes people just say stuff because they know someone else will respond; these advocates aren't really advocates, but two-bit distractions easily gratified by those who either cannot tell the difference, or think there is some utility in playing up to insincerity. In this case, page one should have made a certain point.

    Nonetheless, toward your pretense, as well as #133↑, which recounts various relevant notes about the definition of God, including panentheism. Regardless of whether the discussion 'twixt Bowser and James actually went, we might take a moment to reflect on an evolving theological proposition. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains:

    “Panentheism” is a constructed word composed of the English equivalents of the Greek terms “pan”, meaning all, “en”, meaning in, and “theism”, meaning God. Panentheism considers God and the world to be inter-related with the world being in God and God being in the world. It offers an increasingly popular alternative to both traditional theism and pantheism. Panentheism seeks to avoid either isolating God from the world as traditional theism often does or identifying God with the world as pantheism does. Traditional theistic systems emphasize the difference between God and the world while panentheism stresses God's active presence in the world and the world's influence upon God. Pantheism emphasizes God's presence in the world but panentheism maintains the identity and significance of the non-divine. Anticipations of panentheistic understandings of God have occurred in both philosophical and theological writings throughout history (Hartshorne and Reese 1953; J. Cooper, 2006). However, a rich diversity of panentheistic understandings has developed in the past two centuries primarily in Christian traditions responding to scientific thought (Clayton and Peacocke 2004a). While panentheism generally emphasizes God's presence in the world without losing the distinct identity of either God or the world, specific forms of panenethism, drawing from different sources, explain the nature of the relationship of God to the world in a variety of ways and come to different conclusions about the nature of the significance of the world for the identity of God.

    (Culp↱)

    Also, a citation I used yesterday, in another thread↗ becomes relevant, here:

    Theological changes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also involved a shift in meaning for key concepts that operated in both religious and political life, for example, “freedom”, “justice”, “virtue”, and “vice”. For theology, the process at work was the same as Gordon Wood once described for intellectual developments more generally: “Although words and concepts may remain outwardly the same for centuries, their particular functions and meanings do not and could not remain static—not as long as individuals attempt to use them to explain new social circumstances and make meaningful new social behavior.” In America as much was happening in theology from new meanings given to old words as from the introduction of new vocabularies.

    (Noll, 4)

    The underlying fallacy of the instantiation this thread seeks is the expropriation and subordination of external iteration according to internal demand, to wit, not the living experience expressed in whatever frail and contextually-bound manner by someone the critic mistrusts a priori.

    There is a general question of whether a critical assessment can survive scrutiny according to its own standards; there are also times when history would expect that particular critiques cannot. If a functional question about the utility of engaging such arguments arises°, it can be set aside for another discussion. More particularly to the moment, fallacious expropriation and ossification, such as we see in #12↑—which responds to wandering insincerity in its own dubious context requiring ahistorical presupposition of both sincerity and cohesion—result in a fragile pretense that looks a lot like a straw man. Yet again: The purpose and manner by which we seek to define God.

    If the purpose is personal satisfaction, whatever; a roomful of zealots slinging fallacies about religious belief is a roomful of religious zealots.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    ° For example, a question of how one reads others compared to presents oneself. This isn't a question of temperament and heated dispute unless it happens to be on any given occasion; rather, if one reads for the worst in others, seeking the most controversial—even if extraordinarily rarefied—interpretation possible, there arises a question of what others are to think if one's own expression, in its less charitable interpretation, happens to fit with the rest of what one is arguing, and the more charitable interpretation would make the statement an outlier inconsistent with the rest of an argument. There are days when such questions are irrelevant or, at least, overstated; but sometimes the real answer is discrediting, or even disqualifying.​

    Culp, John. "Panentheism". 2008. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Rev. 3 June 2017. Plato.Stanford.edu. 15 April 2020. https://stanford.io/2Vv4y4n

    Noll, Mark. America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
     
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  5. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Dude!
    You should write a book.
     
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  7. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    8,502
    Now you really are on the money.
    I am so flattered to be the author of a post to which you refer.
    I would love to see you write a technical manual of some kind even directions to assemble slab furniture.
    You would make a great Judge in high end legal proceedings with your style. Maybe the reason I enjoy reading your posts is because it reminds me of the many hours reading judgements and trying to extract exactly what the ruling boiled down to...or to a time where I would receive pages of notes from the judge and convert same into orders of the court.
    Nice...a high compliment for many reasons worthy of an essay as to why , the original meaning of the word it use and fall from favour and final adoption by those who know all that and able to recognise it's appeal to cool folk.
    Alex
     
  8. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,502
    Now you really are on the money.
    I am so flattered to be the author of a post to which you refer.
    I would love to see you write a technical manual of some kind even directions to assemble slab furniture.
    You would make a great Judge in high end legal proceedings with your style. Maybe the reason I enjoy reading your posts is because it reminds me of the many hours reading judgements and trying to extract exactly what the ruling boiled down to...or to a time where I would receive pages of notes from the judge and convert same into orders of the court.
    Nice...a high compliment for many reasons worthy of an essay as to why , the original meaning of the word it use and fall from favour and final adoption by those who know all that and able to recognise it's appeal to cool folk.
    Alex
     
  9. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    27,543
    Yes it has, many times.
    Good, I'll accept that! Except of course as yet, science/cosmology cannot be sure of the methodology. We can only go back as far as t+10-43 seconds with any scientific confidence.
    And of course as Professor Krauss has inferred, the quantum foam, maybe as close to nothing as is possible to get. Afterall, we also often once referred to "empty"space as nothing.
    Yes you do. Your magical sky daddy is a term of derision [similar to how you deride science] used to illustrate the ancient myth of some form of creator that has existed forever. A sky daddy that is all powerful, omnipotent etc etc, a complicated scenario in anyone's language. Far far more complicated then any quantum foam that for all intents and purposes, is actually nothing...you know, like we thought of empty space as nothing.
    I'm saying that science/cosmology has made any mythical god as superfluous and not needed, when we have a far simpler scenario.
     
  10. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    8,502
    I see opportunity for an extention of the non science of intelligent design to propose that only an intelligent designer could have designed the quantum foam in a desperate effort to keep sky daddy in the game

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    but without being un scientific to name in public sky daddy as the designer.
    Alex
     
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  11. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    That’s statement is not in your favour.
    Oh I get you now.
    So now you refer to God as “nothing”, and “sky daddy”.
    This is how I know you’re a phoney.
    You’re not for science.

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  12. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Knowing your "qualities" exhibited in the other thread now closed, I would expect you to again put your own definition on it.
    If only!

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    When will you get it right? I do not refer to god or any sky daddy, other then pointing out such unsupported ideas are myth and the result of ignorance.

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    Understand how such facts may upset you and deflate your protective bubble, but facts are facts...like Darwinism and evolution, and like your sky daddy being nothing more then a comforting idea, based on ancient myth.

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  13. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Don’t forget “nothing”.
    ...”nothing”!
    Can’t forget that one!

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    So now God is “god”, “sky daddy”, and “nothing”.
     
  14. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Nothing being the quantum foam as speculated.
    Your obvious false bravado is fooling no one Jan.

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    You can call your myth whatever you like...it remains an unscientific superfluous myth, borne as a result of ancient man's ignorance, and carried on by those that need to keep that warm cuddly comforting feeling, and shielding themselves from the finality of death.
     
  15. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    The transcendental origin of everything is not a myth.
    You said so yourself.
     
  16. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    So the universe brought itself into being?
     
  17. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    27,543
    No, as you were shown to be in the other thread, that is a redefining of words to suit your agenda, or a lie. You have been shown to indulge in both.
     
  18. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    27,543
    As you have been told many times, our knowledge only goes back to t=10-43 seconds, then we apply educated scientific speculation. Your spagehtti monster is not a scientifically derived solution, and simply an ancient myth fabricated by ancient ignorant men, and carried on by gullible imressionable people.

    And of course any nothing as per the quantum foam, is at least a scientific explanation, unlike your unscientific myth.
     
  19. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    13,968
    Stop lying Paddo.
    No one has shown anything, and I’m not redefining anything. It is simply a g-to line used because of your inability to have a real discussion on your religion, and God.
    This is a thread about the definition of God. The definition of God is, or amounts to the transcendental origin of everything.
    You agree there is an origin of everything. You’re just in denial about God.
     
  20. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    13,968
    So far your definitions of God are...
    god
    sky daddy
    nothing
    spaghetti monster
    Then I take it you can explain how it is the universe burst into existence from “nothing”.
    I’m not talking about “almost nothing”.
     
  21. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Got it

    Burn all dictionaries so no consensus on meanings

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  22. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    Did you miss mine?
    Alex
     
  23. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    8,502
    The reality you can not define God given there are thousands of them unless you offer the equivalent thousands of definitions.
    Alex
     

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