It really scares me.

[pocaracas]

Indeed... god keeps hiding in the gaps of scientific knowledge... and when the gaps grow too tight, the concept of god changes accordingly.

God doesn't explain anything he just provides the context in which everything that exists can be explained. That way God is not only compatible with science but provides the basis in which science operates. We live in a rationally understandable universe which is the product of a rational intelligence so we can use our own reason and understanding to harness the power of the natural world. Therefore we have technology, medicine, space rockets to the moon and whatever else.

You remind me of Statler waldorf...
You guys must come from the same school of thought...

Are you saying that god could be some natural entity?

God created what we understand to be the natural world so therefore he is beyond it but he can certainly be within the natural he created as well as beyond it the Bible does seem to make this point throughout. You have immanence and transcendence two qualities of God.

And just how did you (or anyone else) come across all this information, in order to write it down?

Some natural society of entities that evolved to become what they are, starting at their own version of a big bang? Or with no start at all....

Well you will need to start somewhere. A rock rolling down a mountainside was at rest at the summit before a force external to it pushed it into motion. Once its in motion it will stay in motion until it reaches the bottom you can see the universe as something like that.

How do you know there was an external force that created the universe?

Are you saying we should accept science fiction as reality and live life like that?

If God is real then God would be the supreme reality and belief in God will bring you closer to this ultimate reality and the reality of your own life and the world the creation of God. Yes there's a chance God isn't real and doesn't exist but there's a chance of almost anything, there's a technically a chance that Mormon underwear is what need to wear there's no why to know. So that's why it's good to get into the apologetic s of a faith. If it doesn't hold up to reason and criticism it can be safely discounted.

If god is real and it wants me to acknowledge its existence, then it should make it known. Painfully obvious. Instead.... faith is required. Faith in what you or others tell me.
No thanks.
I smell snake oil a mile away!

Why not?! Because there's no evidence for the existence of such an entity!

There's evidence you're not accepting as valid in your own opinion for the reasons you have.

No, there's no evidence.
If there was, you'd have presented it... instead, you ramble on about how I refuse to accept it as evidence.

There's no scientific proof for God but that's impossible to obtain by his very definition.

"his very definition"?
Who defined god?

He's beyond the natural world we can actually observe.

Then how would anyone know about the guy?

Even if you want to bring up miracles they could easily be caused by something that isn't God, say for example advanced interdimensional aliens.

Say, for example a constantly floating rock... generate an hexagonal grid some 1km at the side that covers the whole planet. On each vertex, put a floating rock and keep it there, by magic. Gravity doesn't work on the rock. No other force is acting on it.
And top it of by appearing to everyone and imparting some of that timeless wisdom, while claiming to be the reason for the floating rocks. Repeat this every few years so you can catch up with everyone.

Would that be too above your definition of god?

Instead... we get a book written by people who may or may not have witnessed extraordinary things, and a lot of hearsay...

There is no way to know. So it's best to look at the evidence and the arguments and come to the rational conclusion.

The rational conclusion is: Everywhere we've peeked, we've found nothing but nature. Nature holds some weird stuff, but nothing that can be pinned to any god. There are places we haven't peeked yet... there are places we may never be able to peek at... I will not fill in those places with an imaginary magical entity, just to make my life easier. That's being dishonest.... the very opposite of rational.

The conclusion being that God exists in reality ideally but you can make up your own mind, that's why God gave freedom of will.

freedom of will... oh you...

Any evidence you may think you have can be attributed to faulty psychology, or a vivid imagination, or outright lies.

It could be yes and Joesph Smith could be a real prophet of the Mormon God on the planet Kolob or the Norse gods could exist and be the guys to worship or L Ron Hubbard could have been right about the aliens in the volcanoes. What matter is what you yourself find to be true based on the evidence and the reasoned arguments not what "can be" possible.

Oh, you want mental masturbation?
"what can be possible"?!!
I can do that.. -extra-sci-fi is my specialty!
On a 20-D environment, a 5th grade kid decides to draw a 3+1-D picture. It started out as a few dots, very close together, and then BANG! Just let it run and voilá, eventually Earth... eventually humans...eventually gods...oops!

An atheistic self existent kind of universe that somehow just made itself from itself is technically kind of possible if you want to believe that. In such a universe I think you can forget about any objective foundation to morality or your own freewill though. Without freewill you won't be capable of coming to a rational conclusion about anything just what your neural activity and chemical reactions tell you to do. The physical process of the universe would control you and not the other way around.

You are so oblivious of the complexity that is neural activity that you can't understand that everything that you think of is generated right there, in your brain.
You're a deterministic machine, with the illusion of free will.
You cannot say that, at any time in your life, you would have made anything different than what you did.

Well... you then want me to think that god has a god of its own that created its consciousness, and the god of god has its own god that created its consciousness... and this god of god of god has its own god that created its consciousness... and I think you get the infinite loop in here...

If you have God with a capital G you avoid all this by having one single ultimate starting point which everything and all consciousness is derived which is eternally existent being beyond time, space, energy, matter and all the rest of it.

Or maybe, I can use Universe with a capital U and remove the god non-sense.
If that god is external to all that, how would you or anyone have come to know about it?

Complex, yes.
Unlikely, yes... look around the astronomical vicinity and you find no more life...

I wouldn't be so sure there is a good chance that there is life elsewhere in our own solar system. Microbial life this case but that would demonstrate how widespread life could be throughout the universe. It would be widespread if the universe was created with life in mind.

Ah... how nice it would be to know about other life forms looking up at the stars and wondering if they are alone in this vastness...
Oh, vastness.... you know how close the nearest star is? 4-light years... that's 4 years moving at the speed of light. Now imagine a sphere with that radius. On the inside of that sphere, you have nothing but this tiny dot with water on its surface and life.

Faith is wishful thinking.
I merely remove my wishful thinking cap and play with what reality gives me. And reality has, so far, given no god whatsoever... It has given me a lot of "faith claims" concerning such beings, but not the beings themselves.

A little philosophy takes you away from God and a lot of philosophy brings you closer to God.

That's why you hear us say that "man made god".

Something that has a footprint on reality just like the teapot's is as equally defining of reality as the teapot.

The footprint in reality is there certainly if you know where to look for it. Not just the physical construction and fine tuning of the universe as a whole

There you go with the fine tuning thing again... Don't. Research into the thing and you'll find there's no fine tuning.

but the impact God has had in human life and the universality of belief speaks for itself.

Aye, just look at the impact god has had in human life, why don't you?...
C.r.u.s.a.d.e.s.... want more?
H.o.l.y..I.n.q.u.i.s.i.t.i.o.n....

So it's a game of personal preference, huh?

It's the same game you're playing. You're playing the naturalism/materialism card and I've countered that card with a different alternative. A very real alternative. Whether you want to accept the alternative is up to you though but you can see the arguments from the other side.

I can see the arguments, but they all seem either like wishful thinking or plain delusion.
Sorry, I see no reason to believe in what the other side is claiming.

Oh really?
Why is it that I've been asking for that lot for years and none has surfaced?

Perhaps you weren't looking in the right place?

The other side claims it's everywhere...

Care to present this lot to me?
Do bear in mind that dreams, visions, delusions, psychological abnormalities and other mind-based events will be ignored completely.

You labelled these experiences and accounts of God as delusions and madness to begin with and then you have ignored them all because of what you already presumed to be true. There are rational arguments beyond the subject and revelation though you will tend to end up with some kind of deism if you don't allow for God to interact with his creation and his creatures.

No, I am open to reality.... just not open to being deceived.
And because I'm aware of all these venues by which humans can be deceived, I refuse to accept them.
Think of it like a computer's firewall. I know there are bugs out there that exploit certain ports in my system, so I just close them.
Honest communication is still available, because many many ports are open. It's just those ones that are known to be used deceptively/dishonestly that are closed.

So, again, it's a personal preference thing, if you're on one camp or the other... right?

You want the organ grinder not the monkey. Therefore you will want a faith based on the ultimate God of all gods the ultimate foundation of everything and the creator of all existence. You can see why you wouldn't want to be messing about with Zeus or the philosophy of man when you have something a lot a better.

I want no faith.
I want knowledge. Information.