Evidence for God being "a superior being" ?

[tackattack]

True, but as far as we are concerned there is free will, and we are held liable to those actions since we're not a)eternal or b)omnipotent. Our perspective, for now, is the best we have to go off of until we find sentient life or AI.
I can see your point about the personificaions and I agree that the concept of God is a man-made concept. Just as the concept of black or chair is a man made concept. One is materialistic by nature another is not. I do actually believe that God's Love isn't a man made construct other than our interpretation of it. It's listed as an attributable noun in the Bible, "God is Love" . The parts where the Bible says God loves you or God is a loving God I dismiss as much as I do any other personification by adjective not proper identifier. I think our understanding of God has progreesed over years, albeit slowly and with the help of the scientific process. Using science to find "God" I believe Fr0d0 would say is an idotic excercise, but I think the scientific process can be useful in our approach to how God interacts wih the physical universe as we know it and helps define our ocncept of God.

[Rwandrall]

True, but as far as we are concerned there is free will, and we are held liable to those actions since we're not a)eternal or b)omnipotent. Our perspective, for now, is the best we have to go off of until we find sentient life or AI.
I can see your point about the personificaions and I agree that the concept of God is a man-made concept. Just as the concept of black or chair is a man made concept. One is materialistic by nature another is not. I do actually believe that God's Love isn't a man made construct other than our interpretation of it. It's listed as an attributable noun in the Bible, "God is Love" . The parts where the Bible says God loves you or God is a loving God I dismiss as much as I do any other personification by adjective not proper identifier. I think our understanding of God has progreesed over years, albeit slowly and with the help of the scientific process. Using science to find "God" I believe Fr0d0 would say is an idotic excercise, but I think the scientific process can be useful in our approach to how God interacts wih the physical universe as we know it and helps define our ocncept of God.

Yes the choice is still ours. Your statement would be valid if God had no control over our choices, however he made us that way. He created us as sinners, knows when and how we will sin, and then condemns us to Hell when we sin ? this is sadistic, illogical, and certainly not what i would call "love".

Also, the concept of God is nothing like "black" or "chair". These are concepts that everyone can understand. You can ask two people with completely opposite views on every subject and they would still agree on what black or a chair is. What you describe is unique to you and many theists i know would disagree with your perception of God.

[tavarish]

So God is not understandable because he says he is LOL

Humans had to work out what God is. Start from anywhere and you pretty quickly come to the conclusion that you can't know everything. God, to be God, has to be bigger. As humans we are only able to think of God in human terms. God is bigger than that of course, so we think we can give him some of our attributes that we could see fitting with a divine nature.

God can't lie. It isn't in our logical construct of him. & we can know for sure that our logical construct of 'God' is perfect. If it isn't, we need to improve it.

I'll entertain this for a second, for the sake of argument.

Not only are his attributes made up by humans, he has things he can't do, but can create beings who can.

Let's think about that for a second.

An all-powerful being can't do something because he is subject to and bound by a nature, but he can make something NOT bound by that same nature (not being able to lie). How does that make any sense...at all?

It's like saying "God can do anything except for the infinite amount of things outside his nature". Hardly something you want to assert about an infinite being.

---

True, but as far as we are concerned there is free will, and we are held liable to those actions since we're not a)eternal or b)omnipotent. Our perspective, for now, is the best we have to go off of until we find sentient life or AI.
I can see your point about the personificaions and I agree that the concept of God is a man-made concept. Just as the concept of black or chair is a man made concept. One is materialistic by nature another is not. I do actually believe that God's Love isn't a man made construct other than our interpretation of it. It's listed as an attributable noun in the Bible, "God is Love" . The parts where the Bible says God loves you or God is a loving God I dismiss as much as I do any other personification by adjective not proper identifier. I think our understanding of God has progreesed over years, albeit slowly and with the help of the scientific process. Using science to find "God" I believe Fr0d0 would say is an idotic excercise, but I think the scientific process can be useful in our approach to how God interacts wih the physical universe as we know it and helps define our ocncept of God.

Yes the choice is still ours. Your statement would be valid if God had no control over our choices, however he made us that way. He created us as sinners, knows when and how we will sin, and then condemns us to Hell when we sin ? this is sadistic, illogical, and certainly not what i would call "love".

Also, the concept of God is nothing like "black" or "chair". These are concepts that everyone can understand. You can ask two people with completely opposite views on every subject and they would still agree on what black or a chair is. What you describe is unique to you and many theists i know would disagree with your perception of God.

One problem with God is that there is absolutely no consensus on the term. It means different things to different people, which is understandable when you put it into the context that he is only a concept.

[Welsh cake]

Completely the opposite. God was and is a pure concept.

No sir, there is no such thing as a "pure concept", whether you apply it to supernatural god(s), vampires, ghosts or anything else for that matter.

You seem to view it as something greater but the opposite of a mental concept or idea is an empirical object/entity that is demonstrable, something that actually exists and, this is your stumbling block here, can be demonstrated to exist. The mental conceptualisation of god like anything that exists only within the mind, without a material or physical object in reality to correlate to, is merely abstraction; therefore God is an abstract concept, not a "pure concept".

Fools came along thinking that science offered the same explanations when in reality it was a different subject. some people still hold on to such stupid notions. Only idiots replace God with Science, and vice versa.

But I guess that's why many wise theists often substitute the label "god" for the universe huh? The god/creator idea is an attempt to explain reality. It proposes a deity either intentionally/unintentionally created the universe as we know it. Science is humanity's tireless endeavour to gather knowledge and investigate reality which by corollary considers god and other logically impossible/unknowable products of myth to be utterly irrelevant in that context since there is no empirical evidence for it.

I do actually believe that God's Love isn't a man made construct other than our interpretation of it. It's listed as an attributable noun in the Bible, "God is Love" . The parts where the Bible says God loves you or God is a loving God I dismiss as much as I do any other personification by adjective not proper identifier.

You might want to reword your entire response here because that's a terrible analogy tack. You hold a position that god can be viewed as a man-made concept yet somehow his love isn't? You do realise that love is an abstract concept as well right?

I think our understanding of God has progreesed over years, albeit slowly and with the help of the scientific process. Using science to find "God" I believe Fr0d0 would say is an idotic excercise, but I think the scientific process can be useful in our approach to how God interacts wih the physical universe as we know it and helps define our ocncept of God.

Except the scientific method thrives on skepticism and new ways of thinking - religious beliefs crumble under any moderate scrutiny, and no, fr0d0 mentioned nothing about scientific study being applied to identify a god/deity existing, he stated that science doesn't hold the same kind of explanatory power as sky daddy does, which I would agree with. ^^

[fr0d0]

Let's think about that for a second.

FAIL!

[tavarish]

Let's think about that for a second.

FAIL!

I'm pretty convinced you are in fact in possession of a serious mental disorder.

[fr0d0]

I read your thoughts and thought exactly the same thing tav. Certainly not worthy of proper response. More like: WTF!?

[Caecilian]

So fr0d0 seems to think the following:

1. God is omnipotent.

and

2. God cannot do various things (lie, commit evil) that humans can do.

This is not a coherent description of god. If god is infinitely powerful then by definition he can do anything that a finitely powerful entity, such as a human, can do. If god is limited to only doing good stuff, then he can't be omnipotent.

Now fr0d0 may say something like this: 'GOD is incapable of doing anything that is disallowed by the nature of HIS logical construction'. Okay, if thats the case then it simply means that the logical construction of god rules out his being omnipotent.

Lets do a little thought experiment. Zog is an entity which can do absolutely nothing. This is definitional- Zog is defined as that entity which has no causal powers at all, ever, under any circumstances. Now common sense and logic (not to mention sanity) would tell us that Zog is in no sense omnipotent- quite the opposite.

However, he is able to do everything and anything that is consistent with his logical structure- to wit, precisely nothing. So if being omnipotent is purely a matter of being able to do anything that is consistent with logical structure, then Zog is clearly omnipotent.

As well as being totally powerless.

Which is obviously silly.

[fr0d0]

So fr0d0 seems to think the following:

1. God is omnipotent.

and

2. God cannot do various things (lie, commit evil) that humans can do.

Well that would be wrong. But then you insist on looking at something logical illogically, I don't know why.

The statement is fallatious.

Omnipotent, all powerful (from the Latin: Omni Potens: "all power") - is the draining of/ the taking away of power also power? It seems you require this to be so. But that doesn't make it so does it?

So... an all powerful being can only be powerful, and not anti powerful, as that would be contradictory. If you care to think about the construct of the god idea you may notice that it is entirely positive. Obviously omnimax does not entail self destruction.

[tavarish]

We're not talking about something of a conundrum, it's about you giving an account for WHY God necessarily has attributes he cannot go against - why he has a nature he is BOUND by.

Not only that, he can make things that don't abide by that nature. If he is the author of natural laws and he is omnipotent, there should be absolutely nothing stopping him from making a squared circle or acting against his nature.

However, in the sense you're describing, these laws prescribe God's actions rather than describe actions - by strictly giving him necessary attributes, something which you cannot do with an infinitely powerful being.

Omnipotent means he has the power to do absolutely anything, in any context. How is it at all possible for him not to be able to act in a certain way?