I poise a question.

[FiniteImmortal]

Logically, God cannot be anything but good; he can't violate his own existence.

The question is, assuming this being 'God' exists, how do you know he's God?

The question you raised self-implodes on it self, because the context is invalid. Its like asking what happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object.

Strictly speaking (and ignoring the impossibility of those things given the way the world is), that "paradox" is solvable: The two things pass through each other. Thus, the Unstoppable Force isn't stopped and the Immovable Object isn't moved.

More to the point, you seemed to not have realized that no matter how you answer the question "Can God lie?" can be circumvented by a being who is omnipotent and omniscient. If the being who you call God shows up and says "I do not lie.", how do you know that's true, especially when given its capabilities it could easily fool you into thinking it doesn't.

Its like saying "God is all powerful and can do anything in existence, including not be ". God is bound by reality, just as we are. God cannot violate his own character or he would cease to be God. If God was "lying", such as us men do, then he couldn't be the standard for perfection and the absolute reference point for reality, as his infinite perfection would become finite an limited, and hence... not God.

You assume there is a being whom is the paradigm of goodness itself. That's just assuming what you're being asked to evidence.

God cannot be actually and wholly Evil. Evil cannot exist on its own, it can only exist as an aberration of good. This is actually the portrait scripture paints of Satan, who was once good but through his own freewill became corrupted and is called "the father of lies".

Not only is this an instance of you trying to shove your ethical ontology on us, but you're misunderstanding your own ontology. And this is a problem with Christian theology. Their ethical ontology is literally just a Platonism rip-off (in terms of how it's employed by apologists), they don't realize what that metaphysical view does to the rest of their metaphysics. Since under your view (which is an example of Platonist influence on Christian thought) ONLY God is good, you can't say anything else is good. They are just pale reflections of what is actually good on your view: God. So on your view, to say anything besides God is actually good is a contradiction in terms.

When I mention God, I hope it is clear I'm not referring to an invisible flying spaghetti monster, or Zeus, or any other arc-type construct of human kind, those invented transcendental gods (lower case) are obviously not contenders when trying to establish if there is a god or not, and trying to understand what conforms to reality as we know it.
I'm referring to the only God that could conceivably exist. It is between this God, or nothing at all, if we are to honest for a second. The God that could exist would have to still be anchored in reality, and not merely a magical wizard that waves his wand and makes cupcakes anytime he wants. If there is an infinite intelligence in our universe, he must be approached objectively and without silliness.
This God must needs have always existed; beyond time and space. It is far more likely that there should be nothing at all, no intelligence or self-awareness of intelligent life. If he exists eternally, and has infinite intelligence, and we are new creatures here, new to this life and we have the ability to conceptualize our existence, there must be a reason we are here and we know we are here.
When a finite being, such as a man, a fictional god story of zeus or other obvious man-made entities makes a statement, it is suspect. When a being that transcends us, (like the one infinite God) makes a statement, it is in a different context than that of a finite being's. The law of gravity can't lie, if the law of gravity had freedom to violate itself at will, the fabric of spacetime would have collapsed by now. Part of the description of gravitational phenomenon is that it is a certain way, and we rely on it being a certain way to travel to the moon without fail, we don't worry if its is going to drop us all of a sudden and without warning.
You are right, I'm framing the real God to be the measure and absolute standard of right and wrong; the horizon line and the only reference point to the universe. An attribute of who he is in his essence is goodness. As i said before, Duality, aka badness and goodness being equal but opposite forces doesn't stand to reason. Badness can't exist on its own, as goodness can. Badness is only goodness out of turn. You can't explain the normal from the deviant, you can explain the deviant form the normal. I think it is reasonable, that if this God exists (the only one worth entertaining and eligible for intelligent discussion), he is trustworthy in not violating his own existence. For him to do so would be supernatural and a form of wizardry I'm not familiar with.

I'm not trying to force any ontology on anyone, merely trying express my view of the question raised in the title of this thread.
Thanks for the reply.

[Owlix]

So I guess if I choose to or are compelled to believe in GC's God, I should thank Him. If I chose belief to reason, I would thank God for many things. I should thank Him I'm not dead, right? Or should I not, because that mean's I'm not yet eternally alive, for I have that mortal death still to contend with. I should also thank God that my father died when I was but 2 years or less. I should thank Him for a mother still, I suppose. I should thank this God that I believe in for making it through school, because apparently without my God there is no mind within me. My education is but a shell without His guidance and reliance. I should also not forget to thank God for getting my license, for without Him I am as nothing and clearly capable of exactly fuck all. Also I must thank God for letting my mother become addicted to meth, because without that, I would be a weak person and unable to deal with what God (life?) throws my way. And of course, there is naught but God to thank for the violently abusive boyfriend I found myself ensnared with for too many years. For without that encounter, and God by my side, I may have avoided a broken nose, countless black eyes and much else besides. But for it God has made me stronger.
(At what point do you give YOURSELF credit, instead of God?)


OR

Everything that happened to me was my own fault or simply just unavoidable without drastic consequences, and in both cases events that I broke from just as soon as I was able. I am ultimately responsible for my life, GC, not anyone or anything else. Least of all some higher being or power or God or gods.

[MindForgedManacle]

When I mention God, I hope it is clear I'm not referring to an invisible flying spaghetti monster, or Zeus, or any other arc-type construct of human kind, those invented transcendental gods (lower case) are obviously not contenders when trying to establish if there is a god or not, and trying to understand what conforms to reality as we know it.

And that's a rather unjustifiable arrogance. The reason those "aren't contenders" are 1) Because two of the world's major religions are monotheistic and 2) Only your narrow experience and ignors Hinduism (which has 1 billion+ adherents), which has both a sort of Supreme Being and lesser gods (it's really diverse from what I gather).

I'm referring to the only God that could conceivably exist. It is between this God, or nothing at all, if we are to honest for a second. The God that could exist would have to still be anchored in reality, and not merely a magical wizard that waves his wand and makes cupcakes anytime he wants. If there is an infinite intelligence in our universe, he must be approached objectively and without silliness.

"The only god that could conceivably exist...", what? I can conceive of lots of kinds of gods existing. Since nothing in the concept of 'Zeus' is logically incoherent, I can conceive of him.
Further, if you hold to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, you do have to think that God is a magical hand waiving wizard, hence 'Let there be light', and thus it happened.

Funnily enough, you bringing up other gods misses my point entirely. Assuming there even is a god in the first place, and that this god is at least omnipotent and omniscient, HOW do you know it is wholly good? I can clearly imagine a god (assuming omnipotence and omniscience aren't incoherent) that is wholly evil.

This God must needs have always existed; beyond time and space. It is far more likely that there should be nothing at all, no intelligence or self-awareness of intelligent life. If he exists eternally, and has infinite intelligence, and we are new creatures here, new to this life and we have the ability to conceptualize our existence, there must be a reason we are here and we know we are here.

Why is it 'far more likely that there should be nothing at all'? There is no possible way to draw that probabilistic conclusion, because there is necessarily only a sample set of one with regards to reality: either something exists or nothing does.

And we can explain why we are here; that's what science is for. You're impugning purpose onto it without explaining why. And in fact, given that essentially everything we know of that exists goes through some kind of evolutionary process (development of languages, development of musical styles, development of life, etc.), it is an exponentially better inference to explain our existence in those terms. And all you have in return is 'If this, that and the other thing are assumed to be true, then...".

When a finite being, such as a man, a fictional god story of zeus or other obvious man-made entities makes a statement, it is suspect. When a being that transcends us, (like the one infinite God) makes a statement, it is in a different context than that of a finite being's. The law of gravity can't lie, if the law of gravity had freedom to violate itself at will, the fabric of spacetime would have collapsed by now. Part of the description of gravitational phenomenon is that it is a certain way, and we rely on it being a certain way to travel to the moon without fail, we don't worry if its is going to drop us all of a sudden and without warning.

There's that ridiculous arrogance again. I don't see your god as being any less obviously man-made that Zeus, especially given the historical development of Christianity and it's predecessor Judaism. Worse, I think your god is logically incoherent, unlike Zeus.

No it isn't. If God makes the statement "The law of non-contradiction is false.", I can evaluate it the same way I do any other being, and demonstrate God is wrong. The scope of a mind does not change the fact that the mind could be wrong or have ulterior motives.

You are right, I'm framing the real God to be the measure and absolute standard of right and wrong; the horizon line and the only reference point to the universe. An attribute of who he is in his essence is goodness. As i said before, Duality, aka badness and goodness being equal but opposite forces doesn't stand to reason. Badness can't exist on its own, as goodness can. Badness is only goodness out of turn. You can't explain the normal from the deviant, you can explain the deviant form the normal. I think it is reasonable, that if this God exists (the only one worth entertaining and eligible for intelligent discussion), he is trustworthy in not violating his own existence. For him to do so would be supernatural and a form of wizardry I'm not familiar with.

Which is another example of you assuming your god exists and is as you believe it to be. And of course 'badness' can be explained cogently by someone not taking your view. In fact, one of the problems with your 'evil is a privation of good' belief is that it cannot allow for the existence of non-moral actions. I picked up a glass. That action under your view must be considered as evil, since only God is good and anything else is by definition evil. My ontology of ethical values can actually coherently and unabsurbly allow for non-moral actions, and have the added bonus of being intuitively friendly, while not depending on that for its cogency. The short of it is you can view things on a scale, with what is moral being on a spectrum. The closer to the middle of that spectrum an action gets, the less it has moral significance, and upon getting to the middle it becomes non-moral.

And you exhibit more 'my god has a bigger dick and is thus the only one worth discussing' arrogance.

I'm not trying to force any ontology on anyone, merely trying express my view of the question raised in the title of this thread.
Thanks for the reply.

When you make blanket assertions ("evil has no existence of its own", "my god is the only one worth discussing", etc.), you are trying to force your ontology on others, especially if you have to ignore the existence of contrary ontologies to do so.

Thanks for the reply to my reply.

[Lion IRC]

I'm not trying to force any ontology on anyone, merely trying express my view of the question raised in the title of this thread.
Thanks for the reply.

When you make blanket assertions ("evil has no existence of its own", "my god is the only one worth discussing", etc.), you are trying to force your ontology on others, especially if you have to ignore the existence of contrary ontologies to do so.

Nothing gets 'forced' on anyone around here - let alone ontology.

I understand what you mean FiniteImmortal.

[Minimalist]

When I mention God, I hope it is clear I'm not referring to an invisible flying spaghetti monster, or Zeus, or any other arc-type construct of human kind, those invented transcendental gods (lower case) are obviously not contenders when trying to establish if there is a god or not, and trying to understand what conforms to reality as we know it.
I'm referring to the only God that could conceivably exist. It is between this God, or nothing at all, if we are to honest for a second.

And I bet this god just happens to be the one YOU think is real, right?

[MindForgedManacle]

If you aren't going to see the context or even try to understand Lion IRC, why should we listen to you? And you don't seem to understand 'forced' in this context. FiniteImmortal has been waiving around assertions with no justification: "My god is the only one worth discussing", "Evil has no existence of its own, just an absense of good", "it is far more likely that nothing should exist". But where the 'forcing' comes in is the fact that he constantly assumes these are true. If I can give a more compelling account to the ontology of what is moral and what is immoral, why should I not call him out on assuming his position?

[Lion IRC]

Excellent demonstration of my point about the extent to which you have NOT been forced to accept something you personally find untenable.

[FiniteImmortal]

And that's a rather unjustifiable arrogance. The reason those "aren't contenders" are 1) Because two of the world's major religions are monotheistic and 2) Only your narrow experience and ignors Hinduism (which has 1 billion+ adherents), which has both a sort of Supreme Being and lesser gods (it's really diverse from what I gather).

I don't see the need to get too deep in analyzing what may be a candidate for an existing god when it comes to failing meaningful criteria prima facsia. I don't need to bother with an god that hasn't made a truth claim, and hasn't claimed to have created me, or hasn't attempted to describe me in a coherent way that conforms to reality as I know it. There may be someone who had a dream that there was a god of hurricanes of Jupiter. Whether there is or isn't, has no bearing on me and is wholly irelevant to me or our lives here on earth. The only God that is worth exploring it one that has relevance to reality. Such as, has compelling answers for the 4 main questions that fuel our lives. 1) Origin. 2) Meaning. 3) Morality. 4) Destiny. Any worldview worth entertaining must have meaning answers or at least interaction in a coherent way concerning all these simultaneously. And each idea answer must be logically consistent, empirically adequate, and be existentially relevant.

I have explored panthiesm, and it fails to me in that, a real God must be infinite in nature (in order to be God) and so a an infinite being swallows up an finite number of gods. If there are an infinite amount of Gods, thats the same as an infinite God. You can't multiply infinity times infinity, contrary to my childhood arguing games with my sister.

"The only god that could conceivably exist...", what? I can conceive of lots of kinds of gods existing. Since nothing in the concept of 'Zeus' is logically incoherent, I can conceive of him.
Further, if you hold to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, you do have to think that God is a magical hand waiving wizard, hence 'Let there be light', and thus it happened.
Funnily enough, you bringing up other gods misses my point entirely. Assuming there even is a god in the first place, and that this god is at least omnipotent and omniscient, HOW do you know it is wholly good? I can clearly imagine a god (assuming omnipotence and omniscience aren't incoherent) that is wholly evil.

I don't see how the Big Bang is any different or less supernatural of a beginning that God speaking matter and time into existence. From Nothing comes everything, from an infinitesimally small singularity, expanding to the unknown depths of the universe... Seems equally explosive and awe-inspiring to me. Maybe two desciptions of the same event?
About imagining a God who is wholly evil, how does that work? If there really was a God that is behind all this that is wholly evil, would the world look the way it does? How would you define love? It slipped by the evil God while he was tying his shoes? People love to indite God by saying if a loving God existed, there would be no evil in the world. This is a moral pronouncement that has implications of ought. The world ought to be better, people ought to respect and love eachother, but alas, we make selfish choices and do henious things to eachother. We push God out of every facet of our lives, then when 9-11 or a Tsunami hits we wonder when the coward is hiding. We want it both ways. Moral pronouncements require a moral framework, it can only come in two flavors: Humanist, or Transcendent.

Why is it 'far more likely that there should be nothing at all'? There is no possible way to draw that probabilistic conclusion, because there is necessarily only a sample set of one with regards to reality: either something exists or nothing does.

And we can explain why we are here; that's what science is for. You're impugning purpose onto it without explaining why. And in fact, given that essentially everything we know of that exists goes through some kind of evolutionary process (development of languages, development of musical styles, development of life, etc.), it is an exponentially better inference to explain our existence in those terms. And all you have in return is 'If this, that and the other thing are assumed to be true, then...".

Everything does in fact go through an evolutionary process, and everything in nature as well as convention that has ever been observed has been by guided means. Look at cars, phones, weapons, aircraft etc., every change was brought about by reason and engineering as more streamlined design. Micro-evolution in nature is, of course irrefutable. Making the leap from primordial soup to a bangle tiger is still at best, an interesting, though problem-ridden theory. The destruction of pieces of information in a DNA chain by radiation over time has never been demonstrated to produce more increasingly complex organisms.

There's that ridiculous arrogance again. I don't see your god as being any less obviously man-made that Zeus, especially given the historical development of Christianity and it's predecessor Judaism. Worse, I think your god is logically incoherent, unlike Zeus.

No it isn't. If God makes the statement "The law of non-contradiction is false.", I can evaluate it the same way I do any other being, and demonstrate God is wrong. The scope of a mind does not change the fact that the mind could be wrong or have ulterior motives.

I'd like to see a quote from God that has been proven to be false, or in any way spurious. He claims to be truth. He either is, or isn't.. and if he isn't he isn't God.

Which is another example of you assuming your god exists and is as you believe it to be. And of course 'badness' can be explained cogently by someone not taking your view. In fact, one of the problems with your 'evil is a privation of good' belief is that it cannot allow for the existence of non-moral actions. I picked up a glass. That action under your view must be considered as evil, since only God is good and anything else is by definition evil. My ontology of ethical values can actually coherently and unabsurbly allow for non-moral actions, and have the added bonus of being intuitively friendly, while not depending on that for its cogency. The short of it is you can view things on a scale, with what is moral being on a spectrum. The closer to the middle of that spectrum an action gets, the less it has moral significance, and upon getting to the middle it becomes non-moral.

And you exhibit more 'my god has a bigger dick and is thus the only one worth discussing' arrogance.

I agree, to a point. Complexity multiplies morality. A cow can't be very good or bad. A Dog, a little more one one or the other. A child even more. An average man, capable of much good or bad as history shows, a genius; the devil incarnate or a righteous and noble hero. (think Hitler vs. Gandhi).

When you make blanket assertions ("evil has no existence of its own", "my god is the only one worth discussing", etc.), you are trying to force your ontology on others, especially if you have to ignore the existence of contrary ontologies to do so.

Thanks for the reply to my reply.

I hope this thoughtful discussion could be relocated to neither one of us forcing anything, merely trying to interact point/counter point politely. Thanks for writing.

---

---

When I mention God, I hope it is clear I'm not referring to an invisible flying spaghetti monster, or Zeus, or any other arc-type construct of human kind, those invented transcendental gods (lower case) are obviously not contenders when trying to establish if there is a god or not, and trying to understand what conforms to reality as we know it.
I'm referring to the only God that could conceivably exist. It is between this God, or nothing at all, if we are to honest for a second.

And I bet this god just happens to be the one YOU think is real, right?

Of course, I believe the God I'm talking about is real, or I wouldn't have wasted an hour pin-typing like a moron to stimulate thoughtful discussion. I'm sure you believe your god is real too, it would be silly if you didn't (the god of humanism). Now, i will admit, in this day and age there are a growing number of churchianity followers and other watered down fan clubs that don't really believe their god exists, its just feel-good medicine one day a week.
I care if my beliefs are actually true, and I think they are. I feel they provide me a more accurate portrait of reality than atheism, no offence. If atheism is actually true, I would have to concede and convert, if I'm being honest and actually seeking truth. I hope anyone else would state the same if they are willing to purse a more accurate portrayal of reality, and be willing to put pride aside and follow the rabbit hole to the bottom.

[Optimistic Mysanthrope]

There may be someone who had a dream that there was a god of hurricanes of Jupiter. Whether there is or isn't, has no bearing on me and is wholly irelevant to me or our lives here on earth.

I completely agree. Although I also extend that view to include volcano gods.

I have explored panthiesm, and it fails to me in that, a real God must be infinite in nature (in order to be God)

Why?

and so a an infinite being swallows up an finite number of gods. If there are an infinite amount of Gods, thats the same as an infinite God.

Why?

I don't see how the Big Bang is any different or less supernatural of a beginning that God speaking matter and time into existence.

It's the same difference that separates Niels Bohr and Gandalf the Grey

About imagining a God who is wholly evil, how does that work? If there really was a God that is behind all this that is wholly evil, would the world look the way it does? How would you define love? It slipped by the evil God while he was tying his shoes?

How about this: The Almighty One created the universe and all life within to be His personal playground, filled with a self replenishing supply of potential victims to torture, mutilate and generally fuck with. He created us in His own image, that we might emulate His nature and inflict His abominable will upon each other. He gave us rules that we might break them. He gave us guilt that we might torture ourselves and He made us love so that we feel loss all the more. Diseases were created to plague us. He then created religions and set them against each another, all so that we might kill, maim, torture, persecute and oppress one another, while dedicating our lives to the worship of the Great Infernal One; billions of souls, crying out in a sycophantic exaltation of a God that doesn't love you and a world that doesn't care.

Now tell how that differs from reality.

I'd like to see a quote from God that has been proven to be false, or in any way spurious. He claims to be truth. He either is, or isn't.. and if he isn't he isn't God.

(emphasis added)

"But in the fourth generation they [Abraham's descendants] shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full"

Moses was 6 generations removed from Abraham, not 4. Moses didn't even make it back.

Welcome to atheism.

[FiniteImmortal]

There may be someone who had a dream that there was a god of hurricanes of Jupiter. Whether there is or isn't, has no bearing on me and is wholly irelevant to me or our lives here on earth.

I completely agree. Although I also extend that view to include volcano gods.


There are actually an endless list of cartoon gods, golf course gods, and reality-show gods I find particularly boring, so i omitted them from this discussion. Motorcycle gods, and a few others i find more interesting, but alas, they don't make the cut for real God candidacy at this time. So far, only one seems logical.

I have explored panthiesm, and it fails to me in that, a real God must be infinite in nature (in order to be God)

Why?


Because, If god exists in the universe, but dwells in another dimension (which physics describes 11 or so dimensions according to sting theory, if i remember correctly) and is timeless, ie., claims to know the beginning from and the end, and has always existed, that by definition is an infinite being. Physics also accounts for things that exist with no physical mass, such as photons, which move at the speed of light, which from their perspective (if they had one) would be of infinite time. To be omni-present and all-knowing, infinity would be an obvious prerequisite.

and so a an infinite being swallows up an finite number of gods. If there are an infinite amount of Gods, thats the same as an infinite God.

Why?


Again, an infinite God encompasses all the God-needs of the universe, there need not be any other applications. The position has been filled.

I don't see how the Big Bang is any different or less supernatural of a beginning that God speaking matter and time into existence.

It's the same difference that separates Niels Bohr and Gandalf the Grey


While I admire Niels Bohr's contributions to humanity, he only described the mechanical process of what we observe. He didn't actually do it. Gandalf, even in his younger years couldn't have pulled it off, I'm talking about the cool Gandalf from the book, not Peter Jackson's abortion.

About imagining a God who is wholly evil, how does that work? If there really was a God that is behind all this that is wholly evil, would the world look the way it does? How would you define love? It slipped by the evil God while he was tying his shoes?

How about this: The Almighty One created the universe and all life within to be His personal playground, filled with a self replenishing supply of potential victims to torture, mutilate and generally fuck with. He created us in His own image, that we might emulate His nature and inflict His abominable will upon each other. He gave us rules that we might break them. He gave us guilt that we might torture ourselves and He made us love so that we feel loss all the more. Diseases were created to plague us. He then created religions and set them against each another, all so that we might kill, maim, torture, persecute and oppress one another, while dedicating our lives to the worship of the Great Infernal One; billions of souls, crying out in a sycophantic exaltation of a God that doesn't love you and a world that doesn't care.

Now tell how that differs from reality.


While even on my most trying days, my view of the world isn't quite that dismal, the world does seem to frequently make me wonder how much further we can veer of track before our wagon goes sailing off the sidewalk. Yes, we as humans are nasty turds. We only can declare ourselves as nasty turds because we can imagine what it should have been. We always compare our situations to the unspoken moral law that exists, and has always existed within us. But, we're not supposed to admit that, because it brings in a host of complicated ramifications. We know innately when we do a dirty thing to someone. Guilt is an inseparable thing hardwired into us to remind us we are falling short of what we innately know to have been true and right. If we think divorcing ourselves from guilt will ease our troubled minds, it won't work. The world doesn't go away when we close our eyes. When we start deleting parts of the societal operating system, the thing will crash. And when things crash hard in this modern age, the Astrodome post- Katrina would look like a nice vacation getaway. When removing a fence, it is a good idea to find out why it was put there in the first place. We are blindly following in our poor ole Roman ancestor's footsteps towards an utter failure of epic magnitude.
Glad to keep the discussion light.