Can a slug be God?

[robvalue]

I'm referring to the concept of god as it's presented to people. People generally don't come up with all this on their own, it will be a mixture of what their parents/community tell them and reading they have done.

I'm saying that parents can't tell their children that god is something that demonstrably doesn't exist. It has to be mysterious and untestable. And as science has been able to test more and more, so the concept has become less and less testable.

I'm not accusing you of becoming more vague, I'm talking about the history of the concept of god. Clearly 2000 years ago god was pretty much a humanoid, with obviously human emotions and desires, and he lived in Heaven which was "above" Earth while hell was below. That's a big generalization, but I'm pointing out that god was placed just outside the limits of exploration at the time. They thought the earth was flat, and that the sky was basically a route to the heavens. This last point especially has biblical support.

As it became clear the earth was round, there was no "under" the earth, and that heaven was nowhere to be found in the sky, everything become more ethereal. Heaven moves to another dimension; god, nowhere to be found either, now starts losing all his attributes (he's non-physical, timeless, formless, apart from this reality...)

I'm not accusing anyone in particular of anything, I'm noting the progression that the god concept has taken as compared to what science has learnt. Every time science reaches out a little further, so the god concept gets moved a little further away. Again, it has to, or else it would be falsified and the game would be up.

You couldn't tell, and here's why: If "one of these gods" was not involved with a particular reality, that reality would not exist. If that reality didn't exist, then there is no difference to observe because there is nothing to observe at all. If you are proposing that a reality might exist without involvement in the "act-of-existing", then I simply don't know what you mean.

I don't think you intend to, but this seems to be word games to me. You're working "god" into the definition of the universe and existence, so that it becomes necessary. Just calling god the "act of existence" is fine; but it's an equivocation fallacy to then suppose this tells you anything further, by association with the word "god". If god is merely the universe, or part of the universe, then it's nothing to do with any sort of deity. It's just renaming what we already have.

Even so, if you say reality cannot exist without a "god", then you are just assuming your conclusion. There is no failure criteria. If "god" is simply part of the definition, then you haven't demonstrated that "god" is anything we don't already know about.

If god is meant to be something other than just an aspect of the universe as we know it, then I would like to know what a reality without this thing would be like. If that's all god is though, then you get no argument from me. The universe exists. Your definition seems to be again unique to you; each theist has their own idea. That leaves the atheist with no clue as to what real thing everyone could possibly be referring to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qahB7mYhLxs