A practical definition for "God"

[robvalue]

As you know, I find "God" to be incredibly ill-defined to the point of being meaningless. However, I had a brainwave about how God could be described in real terms. It's probably far from original, but here I go anyway.

God is an unnecessary assumption.

It's an assumption because there is clearly no evidence such a thing exists, and it is carefully designed to be non-falsifiable. Therefor, belief in it amounts to an assumption.

It's unnecessary because it has no use or explanatory power. It becomes a placeholder for things we don't know instead of just admitting "I don't know", and it gets shoved in front of things we do know, to try and arbitrarily credit it. Either way, our understand of the universe is not in any way advanced by this assumption. Our practical models all work perfectly well without it, as does everyday life.

Some assumptions are necessary, such as the assumption that the world will still be here tomorrow and that the laws of nature will pretty much work the same way from one moment to the next. Without such assumptions, our ability to function sensibly would be impaired. Also, these assumptions are based on previous experience and evidence. However, removing the assumption that "God did it" or "God is doing it" in no way detracts from such function.

To go back to the laws of nature, I assume for example gravity will keep working. Why would I not? It always has. But as soon as I see evidence of gravity not working anymore like it used to, my assumption is challenged and must be altered. This is the crucial part. The assumption in God never gets challenged because it doesn't tell us anything. We wouldn't notice this assumption failing in the way an assumption about gravity suddenly fails, because it has no bearing on reality. This is, I believe, partly why the God belief persists. Reality does not challenge it.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

IRL as used in the assorted religious fairy tales gods were nothing more than men who imposed their own rules and religious rituals on their fellow yokels under then penalty of death for disobedience. The God of the Bible was simply the series of men who ruled the dominant empire in the Middle Eastern area and the Israelites/Hebrews/Jews were their vassals. The invisible sky deity doesn't get very much press coverage in the Bible. Crazy people think that the invisible sky deity went around holding detailed conversations with various nut cases in the distant past. Only humans can talk and the regional bigwigs were considered gods. The biblical God bit the dust when the last Babylonian emperor croaked. He isn't coming back.

There is no God creature in this solar system.

[houseofcantor]

Gwyneth Paltrow.

I know, I just came back, and there I go... 

[Lek]

I haven't conversed with you for a while, Rob.  I hope last weekend went well.  It sounds like a cause we can both agree upon.  This we can't agree upon.

If I knew Jesus when he walked the earth and I saw him heal the sick, raise the dead, and rise from the dead himself, then declare he was God, I would believe him.  In the same way I believe the written and oral testimony of those who did.  I also believe the testimonies of trusted people who profess to have had personal experiences with God.  This is not just based on wishful thinking or whatever.  Because these reasons are not good enough for you, doesn't mean they are not good reasons.

[brewer]

Hey Rob.

To me it's more than just an assumption. I prefer to think of it as a fantasy delusion. A simple google search gives these definitions:

Fantasy: the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable.

Delusion: an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument.

I think you can drop idiosyncratic as that alludes to individual(s) and the god fantasy delusion is not individual. It's a shared, taught, and group reinforced delusion. It is a herd mentality delusion. In fact, a theist made the following statement to me the other day: "If 98% of the world believes in a god(s) then how can your atheist position be correct? 98% of the world can't be wrong." In other words for this individual, thinking outside the herd mentality about this fantasy delusion is automatically in error.

Do I think that the delusion is innately bad or harmful, that depends on the particular specifics of the delusion but in general, NO. It's fairly innocuous. The majority of the people I deal with every day have it. It does them no harm. Them having it typically does no harm to me.

The harm of the delusion is when the individual or group try to force the delusion onto the people who choose not to believe in the delusion. Really harmful when the force applied is join or die. Annoying with attempts at conversion, when used as exclusion, and when closed to any rational discussion or tolerance.

Sorry theists, don't mean to offend, but this is my belief as much as you have your belief.

[Salacious B. Crumb]

Magnifique rob. Perfectly written, and spot on.

[Salacious B. Crumb]

I haven't conversed with you for a while, Rob.  I hope last weekend went well.  It sounds like a cause we can both agree upon.  This we can't agree upon.

If I knew Jesus when he walked the earth and I saw him heal the sick, raise the dead, and rise from the dead himself, then declare he was God, I would believe him.  In the same way I believe the written and oral testimony of those who did.  I also believe the testimonies of trusted people who profess to have had personal experiences with God.  This is not just based on wishful thinking or whatever.  Because these reasons are not good enough for you, doesn't mean they are not good reasons.

Actually, that’s what he’s saying Lek.

To go back to the laws of nature, I assume for example gravity will keep working. Why would I not? It always has. But as soon as I see evidence of gravity not working anymore like it used to, my assumption is challenged and must be altered. This is the crucial part. The assumption in God never gets challenged because it doesn't tell us anything. We wouldn't notice this assumption failing in the way an assumption about gravity suddenly fails, because it has no bearing on reality.

If, I, and many others saw all of those things jesus did in the gospels, that would be decent evidence to believe at least something supernatural was going on (after trying all we could do to disprove it). He’s saying that we don’t, and he would change his beliefs accordingly, if there was evidence to suggest that he was wrong. That’s called being intellectually honest, something many theists, when arguing for their religion, can’t say that they practice. That story is in a book. That’s not enough of evidence, period. That analogy could be used with his gravity bit. If he had seen gravity change in a way not observed by man ever, he would change his views on what he knows about gravity. If the world saw jesus come down and do all the things in the bible, we would actually have to change our views to where the evidence leads us. If, we thought it was something that could be debunked, we would have reasons to doubt the miracles. However, if the events happened repeatedly, couldn’t be explained, and were witnessed by many people in person, then we would change our views if the evidence was good enough. Something written in a book, with no evidence to support its claims, is just a story.

You are as justified in your beliefs just as much as anyone else practicing any other religion. It’s a guess at best. You’re taking a story at face value, instead of questioning it. We’re going by reality, and what we’ve observed throughout life. Rob and I would change our views for good reasons, you do everything you possibly can to stick with your beliefs against all reason, logic, and evidence.

[robvalue]

Thanks very much for the comments everyone

Wyrd:

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Sure, I have no doubt that "God" and "leader" we're pretty much interchangeable at one point. If I remember right, the Christians got labelled atheists (a very different use of the word in that time) for not accepting Caeser as their God. I'm not too informed about who exactly the bible God may represent, but you may well be right there. It's something I should look into, it's interesting.

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Cantor: Hi there! Yeah, I agree

Salacious: Thanks very much, I appreciate it! Your commentary is spot on. I didn't know if I was going to get any responses here! I'm glad you're on my wavelength

Brewer:

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For sure. I meant the God idea starts off as an unnecessary assumption in its deistic form, or perhaps a generic active God. It then certainly does develop into fantasy, very deep delusions and randomly attributing normal events to magic. My comments are meant to be just an observation rather than a criticism; this is what the God belief amounts to. We all probably make unnecessary assumptions; those of us sceptically minded try to identify and remove them as much as possible.

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Lek:

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Hi my friend, good to talk to you. I hope you're OK? I was worried by what you said in the rapture thread. Are you really sitting around worrying about it happening? I'm very concerned for you if so

Thanks, the hike was brilliant and I appreciate the support! I'll be posting some pictures about it soon. I'm glad you agree with the cause!

Sure, I respect that the way you think about this subject is entirely different to me. But to an outside observer, Salacious has it right, you're choosing to accept a particular set of religious stories at face value where you would reject all other religious stories which have just as much verifiable evidence (none). I've spend a long time looking into the Jesus stories, and objectively it is almost certainly a fictional character. Possibly entirely fictional. At best it's loosely based on a real person. I can share some resources about this is you are interested.

Also, the gospel authors didn't see anything. They wrote the stories based entirely on hearsay, if they even meant what they wrote to be taken literally at all which is highly in question. They were going on rumours, just as you are. They are not eye witness accounts.

Even if you did see him do a bunch of "magic" stuff, to just believe everything else he said after that I call the "wow" fallacy. If you get to a point with someone that they have impressed you so much with what they have done that you'll believe whatever else they say, you've put yourself in the position of literally believing anything at all. That's very dangerous.

But I respect all of this probably doesn't mean much to you as your approach is entirely different and you're entitled to believe what you like.

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[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I haven't conversed with you for a while, Rob.  I hope last weekend went well.  It sounds like a cause we can both agree upon.  This we can't agree upon.

If I knew Jesus when he walked the earth and I saw him heal the sick, raise the dead, and rise from the dead himself, then declare he was God, I would believe him.  In the same way I believe the written and oral testimony of those who did.  I also believe the testimonies of trusted people who profess to have had personal experiences with God.  This is not just based on wishful thinking or whatever.  Because these reasons are not good enough for you, doesn't mean they are not good reasons.

I think you've fallen into special pleading, here.  You say that if you saw Jesus, you would believe him.  You also say that you believe the testimony of people who make claims about Jesus.  Those aren't two equivalent cases.  If I were to see a water buffalo in my kitchen, standing and thoughtfully chewing, making water buffalo noises and emitting water buffalo smells, I would be justified in believing that I have a water buffalo in my kitchen.  If I make the claim to you that I have a water buffalo in my kitchen, it would be reasonable for you to doubt me, as a kitchen in a small town in New Zealand is an unlikely habitat for a water buffalo.

I've never seen anyone - anyone at all - walk on water, wither a fig tree with a word, heal lepers with a touch, turn water into wine, bring a dead person back to life, calm a storm, or feed thousands with a handful of bread and fish.  All of these are such extraordinarily unlikely events that it's perfectly fair of me to not accept the testimony of alleged witnesses whom I cannot interview (because they're all, like, dead and stuff).

Jesus is your water-buffalo-in-the-kitchen.  You believe the stories to be true because you want the stories to be true.  This is the very essence of '...wishful thinking or whatever'.  God is your unnecessary assumption.

Boru

[robvalue]

Exactly right. Why would you assume these stories are any different from other stories? What makes these special and somehow true? Especially since they aren't even eye witness accounts. It is entirely special pleading. A bit of crappy references to what people believed back then from Josephus is about as strong evidence as Harry Potter book 2 referencing Harry Potter book 1. Worse, since it's plagued with forgery.

Sure, reasons people have to believe things are good reasons to them. That doesn't mean they are objectively good reasons. If they were, then we would be able to understand them at least to some degree.

To demonstrate this, I guarantee to find at least one logical fallacy in any non-trivial religious argument. I have a thread exactly for this purpose here.

The reasons, when it comes down to it, tend to amount to either simple special pleading/indoctrination, or else a "personal experience". People generally don't even want to discuss their personal experiences here. I don't know why not, if they thought these really did represent good reasons. You have two scenarios:

(1) The ultimate creator of the entire universe came specifically to this galaxy, this solar system, this planet and personally to you, to give you a bizarre one-off experience but leaving you no evidence at all to show anyone it happened. He made sure that describing this experience to other people would sound indistinguishable from misinterpreting events, or a mind glitch.

(2) You misinterpreted events / your mind glitched.

Which is objectively most likely? Consider the fact that what these experiences "prove" from one person to the next contradict each other, and almost always just happens to involve the mythology they have been soaked in since birth. Anything that proves all religions proves nothing.