A pantheistic argument.

[IATIA]

If I'm defining the universe as a deity and believing it, yes. But I'm not, I'm defining god as the universe and unless you're saying the universe is a deity, I don't believe in deities.

Then what you are suggesting is that the universe is an unintelligent, unaware creator?

[The Grand Nudger]

LOL, no. He's trying to sub one word for another and then draw a conclusion from that.

A simpler way of putting it would be

"Red is a unicorn, if you don't believe in unicorns you don't believe in red. If you believe in red you believe in unicorns."

Like I said, trouble with the concept of identity..which is endemic to pantheism.

(hey, pro-tip, you know why they call it pantheism as opposed to panatheism? Because there is a god involved, you know, making it a specific type of theism.....)

[Brian37]

LOL, no. He's trying to sub one word for another and then draw a conclusion from that.

A simpler way of putting it would be

"Red is a unicorn, if you don't believe in unicorns you don't believe in red. If you believe in red you believe in unicorns."

Like I said, trouble with the concept of identity..which is endemic to pantheism.

(hey, pro-tip, you know why they call it pantheism as opposed to panatheism? Because there is a god involved, you know, making it a specific type of theism.....)

Still mental masturbation. Just skip the crap and simply stick to stating the obvious that we know, not what we believe. We know the universe is a thing. We know that it is big, really gigantic. So stick with that.

Playing word games is why people end up with the falllacies stated above.

[IATIA]

Or he said god designed another god. Which then begs the question, "which god is greater?". Can this new god create another god?

[Edwardo Piet]

A physically blind person whould have more reason to "believe" in the universe than you do.

Why?

You don't have to "believe" in the universe anymore than you have to believe in the floor below you or the ground your house sits on.

I agree.

It is emperical and does not need any type of "believing".

You either believe it exists or you don't.

---

So I guess my final thoughts on the matter would be that you are incapable of providing any justification for the assumption at the start (specifically that you have assumed god, and that influence is the qualifier), and you aren't willing to stick to your conclusion (or even admit that you said it).

I am willing to stick to my conclusion, I am just saying that to take my conclusion out of context and say I'm merely saying "the universe is god" is wrong.

How many times do I have to explain that I never said that my assumption was logically sound? And that I have repeatedly explained and quoted myself explaining that my purpose for the assumption is not based on logic but is rather pragmatic? It's just an experiment, I wanted to create this thread for reasons separate to logical soundness. The purpose of the thread was validity, not soundness. But you have denied my validity too.

Also, since you don't believe this (as per the response above), I suppose you aren't a pantheist either.

If god is the universe then I believe in god because otherwise I'd be denying the universe. If god is supernatural then I don't believe in god because I don't believe in anything supernatural.

If the only reason that you proposed this was to show how meaningless the terms atheism and theism are[...]

I wasn't showing that they're all meaningless, I was showing how one particular sense of theism and the atheism in response to that particular sense of theism is meaningless: Since we know that most atheists believe in the universe then that means that if god is the universe then there is a logical contradiction so that particular sense of theism and atheism is meaningless.

---

LOL, no. He's trying to sub one word for another and then draw a conclusion from that.

I'm trying to make an argument that I see as valid. You have explained why you think the argument is not sound but I never argued for its soundness in the first place. I started with a hypothetical, so soundness need not apply, I'm just saying that if the premise is true, do you agree that the conclusion is valid?

A simpler way of putting it would be

"Red is a unicorn, if you don't believe in unicorns you don't believe in red. If you believe in red you believe in unicorns."

""Red" is a unicorn" doesn't mean "a unicorn" is "red". If "red" is a unicorn then "red" is no longer a colour it is a mythical beast that we call "a unicorn". If "a unicorn" is "red" then that means that what we normally would call the mythical beast that is "a unicorn" actually means the colour that we call "red".

Like I said, trouble with the concept of identity..which is endemic to pantheism.

You are confusing the concept of identity I reckon, not me. Because you are confusing the meaning of "god is the universe" and "the universe is god" and "red is a unicorn" and "a unicorn is red" with each other.

[Angrboda]

I haven't read the thread, so I don't know if it's been pointed out or not, but I found the Wikipedia entries for pantheism and panentheism fascinating. More than meets the eye.


(ChadWooters was a panentheist if I remember rightly, as was a recent drive-by spammer. The question of whether I am co-existent with God in the flesh or not, has some implications
for arguments from God's greatness. Can God be me and me still be me? If not, anything that I am, God is not, and diminishes him. If God is that than which there can be no greater,
logically everything must be God, or there is no God; everything God is not is something more it could be. [simplistically of course; more nuanced, adding me may not qualitatively improve
God, but that just points up the flaws in Godel's conception of the Ontological argument, which, I must confess surprises me for him. To paraphrase Elvis Costello, I guess it's true that
you never see the lies that you believe. [I believe Dennett makes similar errors of familiarity in his later work on free will; and Dennett and Godel are two of my heroes, at that])

[Edwardo Piet]

Then what you are suggesting is that the universe is an unintelligent, unaware creator?

My definition has nothing to do with intelligence, awareness or something being a creator.

[The Grand Nudger]

""Red" is a unicorn" doesn't mean "a unicorn" is "red". If "red" is a unicorn then "red" is no longer a colour it is a mythical beast that we call "a unicorn". If "a unicorn" is "red" then that means that what we normally would call the mythical beast that is "a unicorn" actually means the colour that we call "red".

Oh no no no no, you misunderstand, red is unicorn, nothing else....so, if to be a believer in fairy tales you mean "to believe in red" then I am a believer in fairy tales but if by believer in fairy tales you mean "believes in magical beasties" then I am not

You are confusing the concept of identity I reckon, not me. Because you are confusing the meaning of "god is the universe" and "the universe is god" and "red is a unicorn" and "a unicorn is red" with each other.

LOL, the troubles with identity that pantheism has are only marginally apparent in your argument, granted. Everything is god, collectively, but you probably wouldn't consider yourself god. It's a part/whole relationship thing. Mereological ontological argument stuff.

The general criticism of ontological arguments for the existence of a god is that they beg the question Doubt, that has been the general objection since the beginning of ontological arguments. Which is why I keep sking you why I (a reasonable person and atheist) would accept the premise that "a god exists and is the most influential thing"...and why it is unsurprising that you have concluded the universe is god when you began with god in the first place. Now, depending on the argument, (yours being loosely mereological) other criticisms arise. Your argument, for example, seems to be an argument for the existence of the universe...which you then label god for no discernable reason.....(I know I know, you hope to establish an ancillary point by this but you must first make the argument compelling before that point can be established...don't you think?) If you removed the assumption that god exists from the premise would you be able to conclude that the universe is god? Give that a try.

(I did use the same argument structure to conclude that my plate was god btw, which conflicts with your notion that the universe is god, can we both be correct? We both assumed that there was a god in our premise, and gave a definition for what it was, which is a very sneaky way of loading the premise with everything you hope to establish about a god in the first place, then you only have to plug in the thing whose definition or attributes you co-opted in the conclusion-by this line of reasoning god can be anything, including nothing....and that's troubling for the concept of identity..if an argument can give two conclusions for identity that are directly contradictory IE: "everything/not everything - just my plate-, something/nothing. Perhaps an even stranger idea, if I simply accept the criteria of influence could I not choose to ascribe something other than the universe as "the most influential thing" depending on my definition of influence? Ambiguity seems to come as a standard feature in these arguments, top to bottom.)

[Edwardo Piet]

Oh no no no no, you misunderstand, red is unicorn, nothing else....so, if to be a believer in fairy tales you mean "to believe in red" then I am a believer in fairy tales but if by believer in fairy tales you mean "believes in magical beasties" then I am not [...]

In that case we agree with the validity of the argument. So I don't see where there's a misunderstanding. But then I don't see why you don't also recognize the logic that if god is the universe and you believe in the universe then you believe in god. I don't see why you decide to disagree in that case when the logic is still clearly tautologically valid.

LOL, the troubles with identity that pantheism has are only marginally apparent in your argument, granted. Everything is god, collectively, but you probably wouldn't consider yourself god. It's a part/whole relationship thing. Mereological ontological argument stuff.

Well by the universe I mean "all of absolutely everything that exists". So if god is the universe then that means god is "all of absolutely everything that exists". I'm taking the meaning of "god" and defining it as "the universe" I'm not taking the meaning of "the universe" and defining it as "god". That's the difference, and that's what you seemed to be confusing.

The general criticism of ontological arguments for the existence of a god is that they beg the question Doubt,

I'm not saying that god exists. I'm saying that if god is something that we already know exists - the universe - then god exists.

Of course this begs the question of the soundness of the argument, but as I have said, I'm trying to demonstrate the validity of the argument, not the soundness.

[...]Which is why I keep sking you why I (a reasonable person and atheist)[...]

Because I'm in no way asking you to agree with the premise and I'm not arguing that it is sound. I'm arguing that my argument is valid, I'm not arguing that it is sound: and yet when I begin to express the validity of the argument, after a while you fall back on questioning its soundness again. You don't seem to succeed at actually demonstrating that it is invalid. And I'm only expecting my argument to be valid..

(I did use the same argument structure to conclude that my plate was god btw, which conflicts with your notion that the universe is god, can we both be correct?

(I'll edit my post here when I see where you posted that).

Edited:

I missed this post of yours that you posted a lot earlier, apologies:

[An argument that you claim to be valid but you don't claim that it is sound:]Assume that there is one god, and that this god is the waffliest possible thing
My plate has more waffles than any other plate, it is in fact made of waffles with waffles piled on top
Therefore my plate is god.

This argument is invalid because you didn't imply that there couldn't be something else more waffley than a plate. But I'll change "waffiliest possible thing" to "waffiliest possible plate" for the sake of argument. Then it would be logically valid that your plate is god because it is the waffiliest possible plate and god is the waffiliest possible plate.

You then would have made a logically valid argument. The soundness is irrelevant since it was supposed to be a relevant analogy to my argument and my argument's purpose was validity not soundness.

We both assumed that there was a god in our premise, and gave a definition for what it was, which is a very sneaky way of loading the premise with everything you hope to establish about a god in the first place,

This is still irrelevant to the validity of my argument, again.

[The Grand Nudger]

You must have missed the jerkoff emoticon...lol. It is precisely because you beg the question that the validity of the argument means nothing to me...and this is why your ancillary point falls on the term you yourself have chosen.

If I cannot use the terms "universe" and "god" interchangeably after you have labored to make them so then we have a problem with identity. If to say "I do not believe in god" is taken to mean "I do not believe in the universe" directly then they are interchangeable..and again, you have labored to make this so, so why resist the parity you yourself created? I'm not confused, you have created a confused equivalence between the terms which I do not agree with (but refuse to own it).

The soundness of the argument is required to make your ancillary (or main..depending) point.

Arguments that beg the question can often be valid, but it is a trivial distinction.

If i said "waffliest possible plate" that would exclude all things that weren't plates...I wanted to avoid calling god a plate in my premise and stating that god was a plate in the conclusion.....the reasons should be obvious. I didn't want to define god as a plate and then conclude god was a plate. If I should have added "plate" to my premise shouldn't you have added "universe" to yours?

So..depending on whats being criticized, you are either arguing some point about atheism (and it's relationship to theism) or the validity of your argument...I don't think there's going to be any resolution to this. This is very, very simple...belief in god is required for theism. It is a disqualifier for atheism. What you label as god is unimportant (a point which we share in completely divergent ways) that you label it god -is all that matters-. Ergo pantheist..not panatheist. I understand that is important to you to stress that your definition for god is different from some other definition (and as I've said..get in line) but that doesn't change the fact that you are professing belief in god (as a pantheist). The distinction between the two, even in our case, is still meaningful, in that I do not consider the universe god, or god the universe. God is not present in my beliefs (an empty place all around), not the term, not the baggage, not at all. If you wish for this concept of god, however you define it, to be present in your beliefs...it makes little sense to claim a position of atheism (or to claim that there is no meaningful distinction between the two..when the only meaningful distinction there ever was to begin with, was the "god" bit).