Definition of God - one thread to rule them all

Discussion in 'Religion' started by James R, Apr 11, 2020.

  1. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    YES!
     
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  3. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    You asked for it.


    Just on the previous page:
    And page 28 of this thread:
    And your two aborted attempts at science in the "image of God" thread:


    All explaining your own sources and science you tout to you, because it's painfully clear that you don't comprehend any of it.
     
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  5. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Well, I can't say I didn't allow you the chance to be intellectually honest: https://www.google.com/search?q=paddo definition
    Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy? How fucking old are you?
     
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  7. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    I'm totally intellectually honest, quite the opposite of your own shenanigans. How old am I? 76 next Friday...why?
    I see you are hiding your profile and details...typical I suppose.
    Let me also add I'm rather proud to be 76 and still in pretty good health and comfortable well off....I'm there sonny, you have yet to get there!!

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    But best of luck in that endeavour.

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  8. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    You sound angry? Have I trod on your tootsies again?

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    Yes, I enjoyed the good old Westerns and the American cowboy, as entertainment....Thankfully, it did not instill any questionable quality in me, unlike yourself and it seems many other silly Americans, you see I saw it as just that...entertainment

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  9. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    QUOTE="Vociferous, post: 3642166, member: 287428"]You asked for it. [/quote] Rubbish! You call that a counter-argument? You have no clue what I was talking about.
    Rubbish! You call that a counter-argument? You have no clue what you are talking about.

    I'm sorry that you are unable to make a cogent argument or understand one when you see it.

    Any more examples of your futile unsupported arguments? Your still standing naked in the village square.....

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    Last edited: Jul 10, 2020
  10. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    I think the way they made it ok to kill Indians suggested something and you could think with that for entertainment kids over there probably grew up believing if you were white you were entitled to kill any human of any colour.


    Killing seems so acceptable in their culture and old mate carries a gun which indicates he is prepared to kill another human...unless it's just protection against wild animals...what I find odd is the way his type are so anti left..the left after all is about being decent to all humans when you think about it...the left never seems to advocate going to war ..I wonder what his thoughts would be on universal health care...why would you not want universal health care ...all I can think is there must be some part of the community that one does not wish to see get help...presumably the poorest demographic whoever they may be...I sometimes think opposition to universal health is somehow tied up with racism but that's probably wrong...I mean who is it that specifically anti universal health care folk don't want to help.

    Anyways I would not take V too seriously he is seemingly trolling ..he reminds me of Jan always seeming to crave to be the centre of attention...perhaps I am wrong there also...but his stand on a few things seem to be more to get a reaction as opposed to dealing with matters realistically.

    Maybe he is presenting as a red neck so to educate us how these people act, but he actually is a card carrying socialist..He sounds smart enough to be left and well certainly too smart to be a Trump supporter.
    Who knows? Who cares?
    Happy birthday mate.
    Alex
     
  11. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    At least we invent more than guns and bigger guns.https://www.australiangeographic.co...australian-inventions-that-changed-the-world/

    How would you like to manage life without the things on that list...maybe it is you who are ignorant of the world outside your fantasy and none of us here are ignorant of your determination to demonstrate your interesting if not somewhat selfish attitude suggesting your education came at the expense of no experience in the real world....your need for guns and god tells us everything ... With fear you must choose the right with out fear you see the need to help others given there is no god at the wheel.
    Alex
     
  12. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    The Fibonacci sequence is certainly interesting, but trying to suggest that it's the secret of the universe isn't very helpful or enlightening. Doing that does make it look like numerology. It's certainly metaphysics, however unformed and inchoate.

    I think that you are getting out of your depth there.

    There does seem to be something rational and orderly about it. One can (and many have) made an argument that the perceived rationality of the universe does suggest the essential rationality of whatever the universe's Source might be.

    I disagree with both halves of that. The argument that the order and rationality that the universe indicates that the universe's Source is itself rational and orderly probably shouldn't be called a scientific argument. (If you do that, you are conceding the ID proponents' argument.) And you have no way of knowing whether its conclusion is true or not, do you?

    That's your own metaphysical belief.

    Isn't ID what you are implicitly arguing for? Whether you want to call the reason inherent in reality 'mathematical functions' or whatever your phrase is, or whether somebody wants to attribute the reason inherent in reality to reality having a rational Source, doesn't seem to me to make a whole lot of difference. It's pretty much the same claim. In truth, nobody really knows.

    And given the OP in this thread, that's all that he needed to do. I for one don't really understand what he means by "agency", which is why I gave it my own spin with the "essence vs energies" theological post. But I don't actually know that Vociferous was thinking of that.

    Unfortunately, instead of inquiring into what he meant so as to understand it better, our atheists jumped all over him.

    Why does he need to be "scientifically correct"? JamesR wrote in the OP: "So believers, here's a dedicated thread where you can post your preferred definition of God." There's no requirement that it meet any "scientific" standard of "correctness" (whatever that means, perhaps a topic for another thread). It certainly doesn't mean that their definitions have to be persuasive to atheists (an impossible task when minds are closed so tight).

    You're misusing the word "prove" again. Proofs are found in mathematics and formal logic. What they mean is that if one accepts the premises of the proof as true, and the rules of logical inference as well, then the conclusion of the proof has to be true.

    Here's the outline of a valid proof of the existence of God (from my post # 439):

    If we go with natural theology and simply define God is as whatever the answer is to a set of metaphysical questions (getting us back to the topic of this thread) and if we accept the Principle of Sufficient Reason as a premise, then it's easy to construct a logical proof of the existence of God.

    1. The universe exists. (seemingly self-evident)

    2. For every x, if x exists, then a sufficient reason exists for why x exists (Principle of Sufficient Reason.)

    3. God is the universe's sufficient reason (by definition from natural theology)

    4. A sufficient reason for the universe exists (from 1 and 2)

    5. God exists (from 3 and 4)

    I'm not persuaded by it, but it does seem to be the beginnings of a valid logical proof. If it is, then the conclusion must be true if we accept the truth of 1, 2 and 3. (And all three premises seem to be plausible.)

    Law courts don't/can't rule on matters of philosophy and metaphysics. Judges can't hand down judgments on the ultimate nature of reality. In the case that I believe you are referring to, the the jury of 12 laypeople were being asked to rule on whether "ID" (or some version of it) was "science" in the sense of being a suitable part of a secondary school science syllabus. They weren't being asked to rule on whether it was true or false. I expect that none of the jurors had any special expertise in the matter and were just going off what a succession of "expert witnesses" told them. So, as is usually the case (including right here on Sciforums) when laypeople are asked to form judgments on technical or scholarly matters, they have little choice but to rely on arguments from authority.

    Maybe you need to learn some epistemology before you start talking about that particular distinction. Learn some metaphysics before you spout your highly peculiar mathematical functions ontology. Learn some philosophy of mind before you go off on microtubules and consciousness. Learn some philosophy of science before you pretend to be the voice of science. And learn some philosophy of religion and even some philosophical theology before you barge so dismissively into religion.

    Don't you? Humans, and presumably their minds as well, are all manifestations of your cosmic mathematical functions, right? If the structure, form and rationality of the cosmos is derived from the qualities of its hypothetical Source, then the very fact that you are a "rational animal" would seem to make you an "image" of God in some sense.
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2020
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  13. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    THERE is the arrogant, condescending supremacist we all know and love!
     
  14. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Sciforums is indeed infested with Australians -- JamesR, Bells, Paddoboy, Alex, Michael... Is W4U really an Australian?

    Whatever, I have a pretty good impression of Australians, truth be told. In analytic philosophy, Australia punches well above its 20 million people weight, having produced several of the world's more prominent philosophers. It seems to be rising up the charts in the sciences too.

    You have to be understanding of the antipodeans, Vociferous. They live on the butt-end of the earth, hanging upside down like bats by their toes presumably. And they drink inordinate amounts of beer. I don't know how they keep their grip so as not to fall into space or how they keep all that beer from going up their noses.
     
  15. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Surely their ability is scientific proof of evolution right there!

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    It's a shame this thread has deteriorated into just slagging off one's nationality, though.
     
  16. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    25 million.
    Some may, not all. And we also have our share of pretentious religious ratbags, although gun toting is pretty rare.
     
  17. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, that one also bothers me, although we also have the few nut bags in our own country that think the same way. The thought of some of their taxes going to help some less fortunate soul, below their social standing, abhors them.
    It's that selfish self navel gazing "F^%$ you, I'm alright Jack" mentality methinks.
    No, you have a point there. There is that other argument of course, that everyone that is well off and successful, is all through hard work and ingenuity on there part, and those that didn't make it, failed because of their own inherited laziness. While that maybe partly true in some cases, luck and good fortune can also play a part. Facts are, some are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and others are stuck firmly behind the eight ball.
    Not sure if you saw the story I told a week or so ago, about this old shabby looking tramp sitting against the shop fronts begging for some spare cash.....also next door to a pub as it happens...

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    Anyway I did feel for him, but was worried he may spend it on alcohol, so I bought him a burger, chips and coke and gave it to him...
    Thanks Alex! Celebrating it with 7 other old farts and ex school mates on Friday, at Easts Leagues at Bondi and the Mrs and Son taking me out for another feed and few beers on the Saturday, at the Yarra Bay Sailing club. Keeping my fingers crossed that the isolation requirements due to coronavirus have not been reinstalled due to any second wave.
     
  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    No, the Fibonacci sequence is not the secret of anything. It's a logical mathematical exponential function. It's metaphysical in the sense that is an "essence" of spacetime configuration and possibly even independent from any physical object. David Bohm calls it a "guiding equation". What is demonstrable is that all physics are based on relative values and mathematical processes in accordance to this mathematical guiding equation.
    If you want to call this an image of God then God becomes a mathematical object, and Agency goes out the window....
    Quite the opposite. Mathematics is a most simple elegant solution to the question how the universe evolved into what it has become.
    Tegmark's hypothesis of a Mathematical Universe requires only 32 relative values and a dozen (+) equations, in order to unlock all the mysteries of the Universe.
    (highlight mine)
    Yes, we know that mathematics exist. But it does not seem dependend on a source at all. It's a universal constant, a timeless law of logic in the way things work. It is what gradually ordered the universal physics.
    Why should that not be a scientific argument? I would argue the opposite. The universe is demonstrable orderly and rational throughout its "known" entirety. This is scientific proof of its functionality.
    No, it is demonstrably true!
    I would say there is an entire "reality" of difference, to wit;
    ID is a belief in an extra-ordinary intelligent motivated Agency . Motivated to do what? Are we trying to dabble in the affairs of gods? On what grounds? Because we are made in their image?
    OTOH, belief in a mathematically ordered universe, is an ordinary self-referential quasi-intelligent functional mathematical Order. Simple, clear, transparent and "FUNCTIONAL"!
    Per Occam, the latter would be the preferred hypothesis.
    IOW, Vociferous' assertion of (motivated) Agency left you confused as to what he was defining? Does the assertion of a fundamental mathematical essence to physics leave you confused?
    "Agency" does not define change, it defines "Will". Question do we know God's will? His Will be done?
    That same assertion can be made about Vociferous. He has a penchant for jumping over all atheists as being ignorant, uninformed , mentally retarded, and unable to form cogent arguments by his superior estimation.
    OK, if definitions of God need not be scientifically correct, but rests on mythology, I agree with that definition. Just don't try to sell it to me as "Truth" which obtainable only through "belief". Agency?
    Right, mathematics are the "function" (and human tool) by which proofs are obtained and recorded. I should be able to rest my case on that alone.
    Well, that might satisfy the Principle of Sufficient Reason, but it does not satisfy the Principle of "Necessity and Sufficiency". There is no demonstrable volition necessary present other than Necessity itself.
    Not, unless you are willing to make an assumption of an a priori intelligent Agency, the one thing you cannot logically do without evidence, direct or indirect.

    The concept of an quasi-intelligent (mathematical) order is not only demonstrable, it is essential to fundamental knowledge of the mathematical/physical universe and its expression in our reality.

    IMO, cognition of a mathematical self-ordering universe is the hypothesis to beat. And no one has as yet offered any demonstrable evidence of an "unnaturally motivated" Agency.
    Not quite correct,
    I agree, but that was not the case here.
    The judge relied on the testimony of "expert witnesses" on both sides and found that the concept of Intelligent Design is tantamount to concept of a God as commonly defined. He ruled on the merits and found the ID argument wanting for "lack of proof". He therefore found that the teaching of ID is in violation of the "Establishment Clause".
    Because they barge so dismissively into science, as the Kitzmiller trial demonstrates.

    I don't know if you noticed, I like David Bohm not only as a physicist but also as philosopher.
    I provided a link of his conversations with Krishnamurti. If you care to watch the video, you'll get a pretty good idea where my mind dwells and the depth of my "understanding".
    No, I am a result of a mathematically evolved biological pattern. Other than the animal world there is no such specific pattern evident (or necessary) in the rest of visible universe, it requires biology....and mathematics.... such as the Fibonacci sequence....which is an expression or "image" (pattern) of the mathematical nature of the universe, not an expression of Agency.
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2020
  19. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Wow, how embarrassing to be 76 and posting like a 14 year old.

    Nah, the profanity was out of shock. I never cared for westerns. Maybe that's why you have no clue about America...watching to many westerns.


    I see a lot of bare assertion but zero refute of any of those posts. See, when I say you're ignorant, I support that with facts and citations. When you try...nothing but empty bluster. You didn't even have the nerve to quote the links I gave you. God forfend anyone go see your ignorance on full display for themselves.

    All evidence indicates that you're not competent to judge your own citations, much less the coherence of any argument involving them.


    That's not a pissing contest you would win. Hell, just number 1 (black box flight recorder) relies on there first being manned flight (Wright brothers).


    Nah, just observations of an admittedly small sample. But those same Aussies have repeatedly claimed themselves superior to people, like US southerners, with much less personal interaction.


    Until very recently, I thought James was a pretty solid thinker. Hopefully he's only temporarily slid into some bad habits/presumptions. W4U isn't, according to his profile. But the rest seem to be a good fraction of the trolls around here.

    Yeah, some concessions should be made for prison colony stock. Can't really expect much.
     
  20. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Calling a spade a spade, and calling out an obvious religiously fanatical gun toting racist redneck, is not acting like a 14 year old...still, would except that sort of reply of someone as vociferously embalmed as yourself.
     
  21. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    I would really be more concerned over your apparent support for an obvious religiously fanatical gun toting racist redneck, then your rather poor attempts at disparaging Aussies. Or was that your poor attempt at humour?
    Not really surprising.

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    In fact expected from someone whose vociferous loud mouthed, attitude has had no effect on bullying others opposed to his nonsense.
     
  22. dumbest man on earth Real Eyes Realize Real Lies Valued Senior Member

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    Seavy Harcasm opined that at least nothing along those lines ever occured in Australia :
    https://www.theguardian.com/austral...-of-aboriginal-people-australia-must-confront
    https://www.culturalsurvival.org/pu...an-aborigine#:~:text=After European settlers%
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_of_Indigenous_Australians

    But, that is all probably just made-up stories an unfounded Rumour, eh?
    https://english.khamenei.ir/news/3638/Australia-s-sanitized-genocide-against-Aborigines-in-the-21st :
    "When we mention the word genocide, one of the first countries that comes to mind is Australia."
     
  23. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    Don't be ridiculous, I win every competition because I am a decent and kind human and the only reason I don't crush you is because I like you but you need to stop getting underfoot.

    I tolerate your arrogance because I realise that it is your only tool to manage your debilitating inferiority complex and inability to accept reality and leave the house without at least one gun.

    I wonder if the first powered flight would have been even thought of if not for the pioneers of flight in Australia.

    https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/lawrence-hargraves-first-flight


    Alex
     

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