Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn

[kareface]

All of you must accept the existence of Undefined Entity. I can't possibly tell you anything meaningful about Undefined Entity, because then it would not be Undefined Entity, but Undefined Entity must exist nonetheless.

Sold! I'll take two.

[BRP]

All of you must accept the existence of Undefined Entity. I can't possibly tell you anything meaningful about Undefined Entity, because then it would not be Undefined Entity, but Undefined Entity must exist nonetheless.

Is this a jab at me? Because you missed the part where Undefined Entity existing or not is also undefined.

[zoobernut]

All of you must accept the existence of Undefined Entity. I can't possibly tell you anything meaningful about Undefined Entity, because then it would not be Undefined Entity, but Undefined Entity must exist nonetheless.

You cannot say whether the undefined entity exists or not either. Our perception of existence would not apply to this entity and saying it exists is a piece of a definition which would inherently disprove its existence. Your post is a conundrum. You must look at the possibility for the undefined entity rather than the undefined entity itself and show its existence through inference.

The only certainty that you can tell people is the belief that there are properties of our universe and existence that we do not understand this is where the undefined entity would fit in. That leaves an opening for much more than we can perceive. This undefined entity could work on a completely different level of existence and because we could not perceive it we would never know anything about it.

There is so much intermingling between myth and the idea of stuff beyond our perception that people get very confused very fast. Organized religions are myth structures built around philosophical ideas. At their core though they are just ideas there is no absolution in what exists or does not exist outside of our own minds and even that is up for debate.

Edit: Shit beaten by BRP by two seconds. Took too long to type my post.

[Max™]

Show me some sort of observation which fits ANYTHING which is not explained by some facet of science?

Dark Matter? There are workable models, I've made one myself, same for Dark Energy.

Supersymmetric particles? Compactified higher dimensions? They haven't fit observations yet.

Prayer has 0 observational evidence suggesting it is tied to some unobserved phenomena, whatsoever.

You're conflating belief with the possible.

Is it possible? Yes, strictly speaking anything is possible within what we must assume is the infinite Ur-Space which this Universe is embedded within, because given the choice between a logically open postulate which provides more explanatory power than a logically closed one which provides less, even if your intuition suggests one option is the "simple" option, you should go for the model which better fits reality.

God creating a single Universe with the rather arbitrary conditions we find within it does not hold as a useful explanation, it is merely a somewhat comforting, if childlike simplification of an extremely complex and currently unknowable situation.

When you were a child, would you be more likely to think your parents created everything, or that some confluence of physical laws created everything?

God is simply projecting that childlike ignorance onto each unknown you find.

It lacks explanatory power, you grew up and realized your parents did not create the Universe, some people grow up and realize that the God assumption is an attempt to maintain that comforting illusion that someone out there is in control, and more importantly that they love you.

God does not care about me, I've outgrown the concept, I can think for myself and produce better answers now.

How about you?

[zoobernut]

Max I am not sure how to respond if you are talking about what I posted because that has nothing to do with what I said really. I was not talking about the mythological God at all or any of the "powers" that people believe said God possesses.

[Neosutra]

Yes, but an undefined premis has no place as an acceptable theory.

Thats like saying:

"Do you believe in the theory of quaqmare".

"What is the theory of quaqmare?"

"We dont know, but by not defining the theory, we keep it from being disproven, thus it is infallable!".

I dont think anyone in this thread actually believes in any sort of "god" as defined by humanity anyways, so this debate is moot.

[Max™]

I'm talking about the general concept as a whole.

As I'm fond of stating, God is a bad Hypothesis.

It lacks any explanatory power, it seems to me that it is nothing more than a childlike longing for the simplicity of youth.

If you can just point to God and say "he did it", you don't need to ask any harder questions, you can be happy and ignorant, just like your average 4 year old.

Hell, you can be like a cat.

My mom once told me "when a cat purrs, it is simply repeating it's name for God", and later I realized that in the eyes of a cat, it's mother is God.

They don't need to know any more than that, their mother created them, so obviously she created everything else, and has always existed.

[zoobernut]

Yes, but an undefined premis has no place as an acceptable theory.

Thats like saying:

"Do you believe in the theory of quaqmare".

"What is the theory of quaqmare?"

"We dont know, but by not defining the theory, we keep it from being disproven, thus it is infallable!".

I dont think anyone in this thread actually believes in any sort of "god" as defined by humanity anyways, so this debate is moot.

That is exactly the point. People have completely confused the argument of the existence of a mythological defined God from human society and organized religions with the argument that there may* exist an entity outside of our realm of understanding.

All of the arguments so far despite what people try to claim are directly tied to the idea of God as defined by people.

Edit: @ Max I agree with your last post. I think that you can discuss the idea of a god entity or an undefined entity IF you can separate the idea that this entity somehow has super control over the universe and somehow is responsible for things that we know how they work. If there is a "god" it is not what we would define it as and it probably has a completely different interaction with the world.

[Neosutra]

I would go so far as to say it isnt even a Hypothesis. A hypothesis at least requires a defined premis. "god" is just a poorly thought idea, it doesnt it make it to the lvl of hypothesis so it can be tested to be a bad/good theory.

And to zoober, no one is arguing that nothing outside our realm of understanding can exist, we are saying it is illogical that gods as we define them exist (like you said).

To carry the word "god", some specific qualities have to follow, and -any- of these qualities go against experimental observation.

You have to change to debate from "lol no god", to "lol maybe something exists we dont know about that doesnt fit any of the criteria of being a god that humans have ever come up with".

[zoobernut]

At this current time the existence of a super entity or god is a very poor hypothesis because it cannot be disproved or proven.

At some point in the future our technology and physics and ideas of how the universe may get us to a point where we see something we did not expect and it could open the door for existence beyond what we can observe right now.

From our position right now it is irrational to think that if there was a super entity that it would have control over our observable universe and would have the effects that people think it has.

[Max™]

Observation: The Universe exists in a state which suggests it had a defined origin.
Postulate: Something made it.
Hypothesis: God deliberately made the Universe, for whatever fucked up reasons you wish to posit, and included all sorts of fucked up confusion shit to justify whatever the fuck version you want to claim is the real one. He is outside of the Universe, and interacts with it in ways which are unobserved and possibly unobservable.
Experiment: ???
Result: Profit!

Yeah, that's basically why I said it's a bad hypothesis, Neo. Perhaps I was being too generous.

All of the arguments so far despite what people try to claim are directly tied to the idea of God as defined by people.

No, I am strictly arguing from the simplest version: God as the initial cause.

NOTHING else matters to my point, only the attempt to explain the Universe by some willful act.

[Neosutra]

Observation: The Universe exists in a state which suggests it had a defined origin.
Postulate: Something made it.
Hypothesis: God deliberately made the Universe, for whatever fucked up reasons you wish to posit, and included all sorts of fucked up confusion shit to justify whatever the fuck version you want to claim is the real one. He is outside of the Universe, and interacts with it in ways which are unobserved and possibly unobservable.
Experiment: ???
Result: Profit!

Yeah, that's basically why I said it's a bad hypothesis, Neo. Perhaps I was being too generous.



No, I am strictly arguing from the simplest version: God as the initial cause.

NOTHING else matters to my point, only the attempt to explain the Universe by some willful act.

I say "God made it" isnt a hypothesis because you dont specify what god is. It is the exact same thing as saying "i dont know what made it", which isnt a premis. Since you dont know what "god" is, or at least cant provide a definition of what god may be.

He/She/it simply "is" by the theist definition, and thus fails as an acceptable premis.

And yes Zoober, any "definition" of god can easily be disproven. It is only when people pull their god back into the realm of undefined that we sit back and /sigh. "god" is a word, that means specific capabilities and interactions, all of which are measurable with observation and experiment. There is no definition of god that doesnt violate the scientific method or experimental observation. It is incorrect to say that "god" cannot be disproven, as it is just a word defining a concept, and is not above analysis.

[zoobernut]

But the idea that "God" is the initial cause is inherently tied to the religious and social definitions of God.

Hypothetically:

I believe in the possibility that a god or super entity exists in the universe that we do not know about.

I also believe that it has no control over the universe, the universe was created by the big bang or whatever the latest science theory is.

I also believe that it has no control or care of our lives or how we live them.

My point is that no matter how irrational the belief in god is, it is equally irrational to think that you can prove that there is no room for the possibility of the existence of a god. This is outside of our understanding of the known universe. Now again I am not making any claims about what this god has done or can do, it has no connection to whether or not this super entity created the universe or was created with it or if it has control over our lives or gives a damn or anything.

[BerenTebogo]

Nonsense. God exists; the fact that He doesn't prove to us He exists just goes to show that He works in mysterious ways. And using the idea that He works in ways we can't understand as a way to explain any fallacies in arguments for His existence is by no means a cop-out. Nope. Not one bit. Don't you know you're supposed to believe proof-less arguments or else you will spend an eternity burning in Hell? God save you, sir!

That is your OPINION that you are entitled to! Thank you GOODBYE!

[Eratosthenes]

You cannot say whether the undefined entity exists or not either. Our perception of existence would not apply to this entity and saying it exists is a piece of a definition which would inherently disprove its existenceYou must look at the possibility for the undefined entity rather than the undefined entity itself and show its existence through inference.. Your post is a conundrum.

That was the point. A thing needs to be defined before its existence can be evaluated. Saying that "cannot be known" is a definition is a contradiction.

If your rebuttal to "God doesn't exist" is "God can't be known, so you can't know that he doesn't exist", it means you haven't agreed to the definition of God in the first argument, and that equivocation is what seems to have turned this thread into what it is.

[Max™]

Sath, I think you just wooshed me with your woosh?

I will say that is so far beyond unlikely for there to be a super-entity existing within the Universe that is undiscovered, yet is of any importance, that it is a non-issue.

As for the initial cause, it is fairly clear that the Universe has not always been in this state, that is a trivial observation.

You could just say that God is something outside of the Universe, which didn't actually create the Universe, nor is involved with it in anyway, but that is utterly useless. It offers no explanatory power whatsoever, so it should be discarded to the trashbin: a.k.a. Philosophy 101 courses.

Could there be such a thing?

I did posit that the infinite ensemble of Universes would technically require it, and while it is logically open, it provides an explanation for the state of the Universe.

I can think of others, acausal time loops, where the Universe exists because it created itself. It isn't very comforting, but it is not at all impossible that we simply find ourselves in one portion of a circle which appears to be a ray because of it's scale.

I can conceive of descriptions where the Universe is not something which possesses the type of Time we perceive, that our seeming awareness of motion through Time is caused by our limited ability to actually observe the Universe as a whole, and in fact it simply "is", needing no cause.

I could just shrug off all those hard questions and say "God did it", and omit the new questions "Then what is God?" and "What made God?". That is unsatisfactory to me, perhaps you can see why an answer posing new questions appears as some sort of mental illness?

[Jefe]

That was the point. A thing needs to be defined before its existence can be evaluated. Saying that "cannot be known" is a definition is a contradiction.

If your rebuttal to "God doesn't exist" is "God can't be known, so you can't know that he doesn't exist", it means you haven't agreed to the definition of God in the first argument, and that equivocation is what seems to have turned this thread into what it is.

That's the point, a god is beyond any human understanding. Trying to prove the existence or nonexistence just as we try to prove the existence of something tangible, then it wouldn't be a god. For god is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Therefore, god is the greatest conceivable being.

[zoobernut]

That's the point, a god is beyond any human understanding. Trying to prove the existence or nonexistence just as we try to prove the existence of something tangible, then it wouldn't be a god. For god is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Therefore, god is the greatest conceivable being.

How can god be all that AND be conceivable. You contradicted yourself in your post.

[Max™]

There are branches of mathematics devoted specifically to the study of infinities, and while I think those guys are nucking futs, it is definitely within the realm of humans to conceive of and apparently even understand those things on some level.

The whole "omni-this/that/the other, so you can't say otherwise" argument is literally just saying "nuh uh! my god can beat up your god, so there!", which smacks of "oh yeah, my dad can beat up your dad!", bringing us back to my point that God is just the ultimate attempt to avoid fully maturing. As a person, and as a species.

[BerenTebogo]

Sath, I think you just wooshed me with your woosh?

I will say that is so far beyond unlikely for there to be a super-entity existing within the Universe that is undiscovered, yet is of any importance, that it is a non-issue.

As for the initial cause, it is fairly clear that the Universe has not always been in this state, that is a trivial observation.

You could just say that God is something outside of the Universe, which didn't actually create the Universe, nor is involved with it in anyway, but that is utterly useless. It offers no explanatory power whatsoever, so it should be discarded to the trashbin: a.k.a. Philosophy 101 courses.

Could there be such a thing?

I did posit that the infinite ensemble of Universes would technically require it, and while it is logically open, it provides an explanation for the state of the Universe.

I can think of others, acausal time loops, where the Universe exists because it created itself. It isn't very comforting, but it is not at all impossible that we simply find ourselves in one portion of a circle which appears to be a ray because of it's scale.

I can conceive of descriptions where the Universe is not something which possesses the type of Time we perceive, that our seeming awareness of motion through Time is caused by our limited ability to actually observe the Universe as a whole, and in fact it simply "is", needing no cause.

I could just shrug off all those hard questions and say "God did it", and omit the new questions "Then what is God?" and "What made God?". That is unsatisfactory to me, perhaps you can see why an answer posing new questions appears as some sort of mental illness?

Double woosh is extra wooshie.