Shia Islamic Argument for the existence of God

[Mudhammam]

You can call it whatever you want. You can call it God (with a capital G) if you feel like it (the word "God" is, after all, pretty vague in its meaning). Personally, I just call it a deity. I like to say "the DOTV proves the existence of a deity with such and such qualities (the aforementioned qualities that were traced by Ibn Sina)." You can also call it Allah. The Arabic word "Allah" predates Islam, and it literally means "the awe-inspiring" (or, according to others, "the deity"). Since I find this entity to be the only deity known, and I also find it awe-inspiring, I can call it Allah (I do, after all, speak Urdu and Arabic and such vocabulary would come naturally to me).

But unless by deity you mean a person in a sense that entails, albeit equivocally, cognition and/or intentionality, then you're being disingenuous, and particularly so if you're arguing for something which you call Allah--knowing that your definition bears only a superficial resemblance to what has been traditionally associated with the name--which gives unwarranted cover to obviously false and even patently absurd ideas about the nature of this substance and its relation to human beings. I find the term Nature to be a far more honest and accurate representation of the qualities that, you have argued, must apply to our reality, and not this wholly distinct substance implied by the idea of God.

You cannot just say, "Well, if you want to call this weather event a thunderstorm, or simply 'the wrath of the gods,' it makes no difference. I mean the latter is pretty vague anyway." No, words have meaning.