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 .

[Tcg]

Logically, the ultimate source of material existence cannot lie within the material itself...

Why not?

I explained why not.

Vague claims of circular something or other are not an explanation.

Of course the term "ultimate source" would need to be defined before one could answer my question. What have you got?

I'd say that "ultimate source" is fairly self-explanatory.

If it were, I'd not be asking you to explain what you haven't explained.

What have you got?

What have I got about what?


Tcg

[TRANSPONDER]

The point about 'nothing' and whether - if it can have a potential to become something - is 'true nothing' or not isn't really the point, is it? It is more whether it needs to be created.

It's really not about whether it needs to be created; it's about what it needs to exist, even if it has existed forever.

If a fully formed intelligent invisible being that can do anything didn't need to be created, then a nothing that has the potential to act like Something doesn't.

On the other hand....

If we ask, "Where did God come from?" or "What made God?", that question itself supposes---at least for the sake of argument----that God exists. So if we're going to apply causality to God if God exists, then to be intellectually honest we have to apply causality to the Universe since the Universe undeniably exists.

If you throw over a fully formed intelligent invisible being that can do anything for a nothing that has the potential to act like Something, you're just trading one miraculous phenomenon for another, which is hardly much of a promotion for materialism.

Validating a Creator only leads to 'Which god?'

It's not as simple as that. I don't typically refer to Christian sources, but have you ever read "The Blind Men and the Elephant"?

The assumption that validating a Creator automatically collapses the range of theological thought down into a small, rigid handful of God-concepts fails to explain how each Deist has a unique, personal take on a Creator.

You may not accept that the atheists hold all the cards on this one, but we do.

You may not hold as many cards as you think you do. You've attributed existence to physics, but physics is merely a description of the ways in which physical forces interact. Thus "physics" is contingent upon the physical and not the other way around. Logically, the ultimate source of material existence cannot lie within the material itself because that leaves us with an explanation which is part of what has to be explained, and circular thinking gets nowhere.

Stout fella. You put fair or at least honestly intended points. I can't agree about what needs to exist. The debate is about whether it is more reasonable to suppose an uncreated god or a uncreated 'potential' since infinite regression doesn't seem an optional explanation for anyone. And, yes, the same question of causality applies to both. God or 'Cosmos', since the creation of Our universe is no longer the debate. Since a causality demands a cause, (and infinite regression isn't acceptable) something that feasibly could have been uncreated is the more more intuitively attractive hypothesis. The simpler and more basic it has to be, the less one has to flog credibility to imagine it needed no creation. God is neither simple, nor basic

And the innate 'energy' in nothing has been shown by experiment, remember. Like biogenesis, some indirect evidence is available. There is none that is really valid for a creative deity..

Yes, I am familiar with the blind men and the elephant, and the idea that all religions are talking about the same god but imposing their own beliefs onto a 'deist 'god'. I have said before that atheism doesn't mind a desist god. It is religion that is the problem and the analogy discredits religion as the idea that God is protruding a different character for each savant or see is less logically parsimonious than they are all making it up.

It's a chicken and egg situation with 'potential/ innate energy (in 'nothing'). Arguably we start with the energy and it interacts and rules (permanent/ repeatable actions) emerge. So the physics seems to depend on what the physics acts upon. Even without proper explanations, I suggest it still trumps a complex creative deity which has no origin. I think atheism still takes that trick. In the end, 'we don't know' (and neither do the theists) is the answer, not 'god' as a default.

[TRANSPONDER]

because theists used the cosmic origins (or origins of Life) arguments to try to make a case for Theism and intended to debunk atheism. Atheism has to defuse this apologetic on the grounds that Goddunnit is Not a more persuasive or compelling hypothesis than a natural and unplanned origin, cause or creation.

While a proven Mind behind it all would indeed debunk atheism (we goddless would then default to irreligious theists) it would not actually change us much because it is organised religion that gets us posting on places like this, not a possible Deist -god -mind, about which we don't care one way of the other.

It isn't a Cosmic mind we are concerned with but organised religion, which is what the debate is really about; and a Creator is only a way for theist apologists to get a god of some sort on the table as credible. Since it really isn't, we of course have to put the counter - argument.

Seconded.

And skewing the topic a bit...
Foremost among the reasons I debate here and elsewhere is in specific response to those who'd restrict the rights and freedoms of others based on their opinion of a god they can't show exists to have him an opinion they can't show he does.

Those Christians who promote a loving god, who speak for the rights of the oppressed, are not my enemy. Indeed, I've come to love me a good bunch of em.

I agree with that. At least that such Christians are not a Problem. And yet the truth is important and (if logic and evidence counts for anything), the truth is that Christianity is not. That must be told, even if there is no harm and even good in believing in Christianity.

[TRANSPONDER]

Logically, the ultimate source of material existence cannot lie within the material itself...

Why not?

I explained why not.

Of course the term "ultimate source" would need to be defined before one could answer my question. What have you got?

I'd say that "ultimate source" is fairly self-explanatory.

What have you got?

What we (atheists) have is the more logically parsimonious (is preferred b Occam's razor) hypothesis. It doesn't need an entity with intelligence or creative abilities.

[brunumb]

When you are defining God you are trying to define an idea. You are not defining something that is tangible with any demonstrable attributes. You have to fill all of that in based on what your conception of God should include. When you use your God to explain any phenomenon, you are really just inventing answers rather than providing substantiated answers. When they don't work properly it is just a simple matter of tweaking your God until it fits how you want. Why does the universe, which by the way is tangible and observable, need any explanation beyond that it exists somehow.

[TRANSPONDER]

True. There is only negative evidence here (no real demonstrable evidence of a god) and negative evidence is actually of value (ask any archaeologist).

For the rest, 'god' -claims are mind -experiments and what we do is test them logically and against the scientific evidence (which is the only kind with factual validity). If the logic or evidence favours one hypothesis rather than another, that's the one that really demands more credibility, even if there is no real and valid way of testing it.

[nobspeople]

... inanimate materials are assembled and become active and living.

Please give one example?

The man called Adam was created when God “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7).
Assuming dust from the ground is inanimate material.
But I'm sure there will be some word contorting with something like 'God's breath means it wasn't inanimate' or some such excuse.
Or maybe, the bible isn't appropriate to use an example - this time?

Sorry, I thought you meant that such things would happen without God’s influence. I was asking is there any example of such thing happening without God.

The universe is one at this time (though given enough time, humans might find out how it exactly formed) as there's no proof any deity had anything to do with it past what some dead men claimed in a book. Fact is, many religious have their own creation story. The only reason why christians think their story is 'correct' is because of arrogance and being told it's right, while, many times, 'suggesting' other religions are wrong.

[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.

[brunumb]

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.