What the God debate is really about

[Mystic]

From a philosophical point of view, disregarding the anthropomorphic gods of legend, I think the question of "god" in the broadest sense (at which point I'd prefer to drop the whole term "god" from our vocabulary completely) comes down to this:

Does a conscious observer emerge from a self-organizing reality or does a self-organizing reality emerge from a conscious observer?

I don't think it comes down to just this question, although it can. For example, if it was possible for conscious observers to emerge from a self-organizing reality, we would not necessarily know it did. So while we can discover it's possible, we may not discover it did. Then there comes other ways of knowing aside from this question. The self organizing reality emerging from an conscious observer maybe a possibility or it maybe that reality needs a constant act of creation. That the small units in the universe are being constantly created and the laws are constantly being put in place to maintain the universe by a higher power and that an independent universe is impossible to be created.