Searching for GOD...

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlunderer,

Translation: "I Vlad cannot begin to offer a counter-argument, so I'll just throw insults like "bollocks" or "hand waving" at it in the hope that no-one will notice".

OK, so you've finally thrown in the towel then.

Fair enough - even for you your relentless trolling was getting unsustainable I guess.

Throwing in the towel? Good gracious no..........Just handing the pleasure of keeping the chimps occupied...........or to put it in your own language.....eee eeee ee eeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlunderer,

Throwing in the towel? Good gracious no..........Just handing the pleasure of keeping the chimps occupied...........or to put it in your own language.....eee eeee ee eeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

That you're not aware that you've thrown in the towel doesn't change the fact, just as your ignorance of having your position "destroyed" does not mean that it hasn't been - consistently so in fact.

Deal with it.

[floo]

BAD MANNERS... make it insulting... Because you don't know and cannot prove what the other person says as being wrong.
Good grace would allow for benefit of the doubt. There are no bad arguments or good arguments when it comes to different opinion. The fact is YOU cannot disprove or prove God to anyone. Just as the believer cannot do themselves to YOU.
But there is no way you can disprove the believers knows and experiences something you do not.

However, the bible tells you how to find God, if you really seek him truthfully and sincerely.
It is fair to say you don't seek him and don't want to know if he is really there.
The buck stops with you. Because you are the only person keeping yourself from knowing God, both you and all the others...

The Bible says a lot of things not all of them true or credible by any means!

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlunderer,

That you're not aware that you've thrown in the towel doesn't change the fact, just as your ignorance of having your position "destroyed" does not mean that it hasn't been - consistently so in fact.

Deal with it.

Just keep repeating your mantra Hillside.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Blue,

No, all I'm asking for is an argument for "god" that isn't hopeless.

Boy oh boy!! where does a God botherer start.

Are we back at definitions again, it is quite apt that this is on a Searching for God thread.

I need a starting point, the only thing I can come up with at the moment ( because it has been clanging about in my head for ages ) God is persistent, God, the idea of God has been around since we first stepped out of the cave, or maybe when we first stepped into a cave.

Sorry too many questions bouncing about in the old grey matter, do dolphins or monkeys have any concept of God, one question I can answer, neither you nor me can wipe from our brains every definition we have ever heard about God, if we could, wipe the slate clean, would we ponder on that question, God.

For me, and it could be my confirmation bias stepping in ( we all suffer from this ) science says yes, we are a mean seeking animal, coupled with the scientific theory/hypothesis that we are born believers, not born believing in God, just born believing in something greater, actually that is not a bad start, it is human nature to believe, 90% of the planet can't be wrong, well can they! yes the old ad populum ( is that how you spell it ) argument, and just for arguments sake, what if just 1% of that 90% has it right

Gonnagle.

[Alan Burns]

If, for instance, we take the hard problem of consciousness, which science has no answer to at the present moment

The problem I have with any material description of conscious awareness is the lack of any definition of a recipient of all the information which comprises awareness.  For awareness to exist, there must be a single entity which can perceive the physical content of many millions of brain cells at any instant of time.  Some people confuse reaction with perception.  A computer can react to the content of millions of silicon chips, but nowhere in the computer is anything which can actually perceive the content of those chips.  A reaction merely induces more molecular activity, but there is still nothing to actually perceive this activity in material terms.  Conscious awareness must comprise of some entity which can simultaneously perceive the content of many individual brain cells.  This is just my interpretation of one of the functions of our spiritual soul.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Hi Gonners,

Boy oh boy!! where does a God botherer start.

Are we back at definitions again, it is quite apt that this is on a Searching for God thread.

I need a starting point, the only thing I can come up with at the moment ( because it has been clanging about in my head for ages ) God is persistent, God, the idea of God has been around since we first stepped out of the cave, or maybe when we first stepped into a cave.

Sorry too many questions bouncing about in the old grey matter, do dolphins or monkeys have any concept of God, one question I can answer, neither you nor me can wipe from our brains every definition we have ever heard about God, if we could, wipe the slate clean, would we ponder on that question, God.

For me, and it could be my confirmation bias stepping in ( we all suffer from this ) science says yes, we are a mean seeking animal, coupled with the scientific theory/hypothesis that we are born believers, not born believing in God, just born believing in something greater, actually that is not a bad start, it is human nature to believe, 90% of the planet can't be wrong, well can they! yes the old ad populum ( is that how you spell it ) argument, and just for arguments sake, what if just 1% of that 90% has it right

Seems to me that we're a species that's evolved to look for patterns, for explanations for the phenomena we perceive. It's served us well - we can fly rockets to the moon but chimps can't - but its legacy is that a conspiracy is better than no answer at all. That's what you're describing - countless peoples over the millennia have sought a higher causal agency, and so have come up with many, many supernatural "somethings" to fill the gap. This is actually an argument against your god speciically rather than for it. 

We also as children have the habit of ascribing agency to inanimate objects - "that branch smacked me", "that step tripped me up" etc - and we often see that from theists here; take AB's rather sweetly naive ascribing of cause when someone unexpectedly turns up at his church for example.

Anyways, yes a definition rather than a CV for "god" would indeed be a good place to start - it always strikes me as odd when people say that "god is beyond definition" or some such, then confidently go on to tell us what this undefined god thinks and wants. Once we have it that would at least be a starting point, after which finally perhaps we could try to identify a coherent argument for why this god exists at all other than as an entirely subjective belief of the person who believes in it.       

[Shaker]

Seems to me that we're a species that's evolved to look for patterns, for explanations for the phenomena we perceive. It's served us well - we can fly rockets to the moon but chimps can't - but its legacy is that a conspiracy is better than no answer at all. That's what you're describing - countless peoples over the millennia have sought a higher causal agency, and so have come up with many, many supernatural "somethings" to fill the gap. This is actually an argument against your god speciically rather than for it. 

We also as children have the habit of ascribing agency to inanimate objects - "that branch smacked me", "that step tripped me up" etc - and we often see that from theists here; take AB's rather sweetly naive ascribing of cause when someone unexpectedly turns up at his church for example.

Anyways, yes a definition rather than a CV for "god" would indeed be a good place to start - it always strikes me as odd when people say that "god is beyond definition" or some such, then confidently go on to tell us what this undefined god thinks and wants. Once we have it that would at least be a starting point, after which finally perhaps we could try to identify a coherent argument for why this god exists at all other than as an entirely subjective belief of the person who believes in it.     

A superb post, as ever. We are a, and perhaps the, pattern-seeking animal. Where no such pattern exists, we gladly fill in the blanks and create one, if we are not rigorously logical and rational about these things. We see human faces and other familiar things in random phenomena such as flickering flames, smoke and cumulus clouds. Random rock formations look like the profile of dead US presidents. This can be to our advantage at times (and an evolutionary panadaptationist would say that it must be, or the trait would not have persisted down to today), but it can also lead us astray in seeing what's not really there.

[jeremyp]

Total bollocks as expected.

Well at least you are now using words you probably understand.

[Alan Burns]

definition rather than a CV for "god" would indeed be a good place to start

How about "That which exists"
(and not of this universe)

[Shaker]

How about "That which exists"
(and not of this universe)

Spectacularly bad.

What is "that which exists" which isn't of this universe, Alan?

[Alan Burns]

Spectacularly bad.

What is "that which exists" which isn't of this universe, Alan?

It is whatever brought this universe into being.

(and it is spectacularly naive to assume that nothing else exists apart from our universe)

[Shaker]

It is whatever brought this universe into being.

Did something bring this universe into being, then? That's news to me. What do you know that I don't? (Remember I said know, not believe, Alan  ).

(and it is spectacularly naive to assume that nothing else exists apart from our universe)

Why is it?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Did something bring this universe into being, then? That's news to me. What do you know that I don't? (Remember I said know, not believe, Alan  ).
Why is it?

We are back to the uncaused again.......the miracle begged by naturalism.

[BeRational]

We are back to the uncaused again.......the miracle begged by naturalism.

What caused your God to exist.

Remember you too have to bootstrap a God from nothing.

At least we can see the universe and we do not need the extra step

[Shaker]

What caused your God to exist.

Remember you too have to bootstrap a God from nothing.

Vlad will do what theists have been doing since for ever and dodge the issue by asserting that his god doesn't need a cause because of thingummy whatsit reasons, and that's that because 

[Leonard James]

Dear Blue,

Boy oh boy!! where does a God botherer start.

Are we back at definitions again, it is quite apt that this is on a Searching for God thread.

I need a starting point, the only thing I can come up with at the moment ( because it has been clanging about in my head for ages ) God is persistent, God, the idea of God has been around since we first stepped out of the cave, or maybe when we first stepped into a cave.

Sorry too many questions bouncing about in the old grey matter, do dolphins or monkeys have any concept of God, one question I can answer, neither you nor me can wipe from our brains every definition we have ever heard about God, if we could, wipe the slate clean, would we ponder on that question, God.

For me, and it could be my confirmation bias stepping in ( we all suffer from this ) science says yes, we are a mean seeking animal, coupled with the scientific theory/hypothesis that we are born believers, not born believing in God, just born believing in something greater, actually that is not a bad start, it is human nature to believe, 90% of the planet can't be wrong, well can they! yes the old ad populum ( is that how you spell it ) argument, and just for arguments sake, what if just 1% of that 90% has it right

Gonnagle.

No Gonners, I don't think for one moment we are born believers. We learn ideas about "God" as we grow through childhood.

As primitive man evolved, he developed awareness of his fate ... he saw that all living things die and disintegrate. It was not an enormous step from that awareness to invent a means of escaping it. Enter gods.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

What caused your God to exist.

Remember you too have to bootstrap a God from nothing.

At least we can see the universe and we do not need the extra step

I am allowed an uncaused. Naturalism isn't because it is about cause and effect.
Yet it begs an uncaused.
The trouble is...the universe at present looks like it had a beginning.
Theism though existed quite happily when the steady state universe  theory predominated because there is always the question why something and not nothing?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

No Gonners, I don't think for one moment we are born believers. We learn ideas about "God" as we grow through childhood.

As primitive man evolved, he developed awareness of his fate ... he saw that all living things die and disintegrate. It was not an enormous step from that awareness to invent a means of escaping it. Enter gods.

Yes and in the secular environment what we learn is that God is an embarrassment one must be agnostic out of polity and real believers are somewhat odd.

There are anti theists who are angry at being marginalised by cultural Christianity and one has sympathy with them but not The middle class well healed sophisticate trying to be !bad boys!

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad will do what theists have been doing since for ever and dodge the issue by asserting that his god doesn't need a cause because of thingummy whatsit reasons, and that's that because 

And yet for all your bluster about God needing a cause you are claiming an uncaused universe.

[Shaker]

And yet for all your bluster about God needing a cause you are claiming an uncaused universe.

News to me - where did I claim that?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

News to me - where did I claim that?

Ok so now you are saying it has a cause

[Shaker]

Ok so now you are saying it has a cause

Nope.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Nope.

So you are saying it is uncaused.

[Shaker]

So you are saying it is uncaused.

Nope.