steamer

His true nature is merely this, he doesn't exist except as an idea. Whatever anyone says about god is necessarily true. No matter how convoluted the ideology, if someone thinks this about thier god then it is true of their god.

If I say that my god hates Christians and all Christians will fry in hell for their arrogance. Then it is true that this is what my god will do, even if proven to be stupid or contradictory. It is his "nature", because his nature is whatever I imagine it to be.

911

You are missing something here. It is not what one wants to imagine it to be.

Belief and Faith are different from imagination.

That to me is the tragic error that atheists make.

Only an atheist can bring up the example of the invisible pink unicorn.

steamer

The evidence suggests otherwise. Though it may not be your imagination, gods derive their existence from someone's imagination. It could be that you merely believe their story, but that isn't significantly differrent from creating it yourself as far as I can see. God isn't falsifiable so any attribute I wish to give him is also not falsifiable. If I say my god likes to wear funny hats, then he likes to wear funny hats and that is that.

I've heard this and there are even some arguments that this is true, but your belief and your faith can still be based on someone else's imagined god.

Your faith and your belief is based on a story and that story is quite likely fictional. You may truly believe the story and claim that it is not just you imaigining it to be true. There is a subtle difference. At the root of all your beliefs you will find your own fallible self picking and choosing what you firmly believe and what you don't. Choose wisely grasshopper.

The reason the IPU exists is as a counterpoint to the god belief. We have as much reason to believe in one entity as having a non-imagined reality as we do the other.

mknomad5

I am speaking of God the creator as the personification of qualities of the universe; which is where the whole idea of God comes from. My argument intends to operate within the parameters laid out by common theistic appraisal of these qualities of God. To simply state God does not exist (and subsequently providing the accompanying proving statements) is not as desirable to me as attempting to point out flaws by addressing them utilizing the existing framework of the theistic argument. IOW, I am speaking figuratively in assumption of a creator, mostly in attempt to boil it down to deism, and from there to Gnosticism (or vice versa), because that is where I am currently at in my definitions, not being convinced that the universe is not created.

So, how does all that figure in? Change anything?

What is IPU btw?

John A. Broussard

Invisible Pink Unicorn.

For the record, so far as I'm concerned, the universe could have been kick-started by a god, by the IPU or may simply have been spontaneous.

What difference does it make as long as it has since been running on its own?

911

You cannot believe how much of what you post here I agree with! Not now though, I cannot; give me some time to respond.

mknomad5

Since you asked so succinctly, I would like to take the opportunity to say exactly why it makes a difference.

If the universe were a solution in a test tube, would you want to know? I would. Now, why wouldn’t you want to know if the universe is a creation? It would certainly clear up a few things. Why do you want to know anything that does not (apparently) have a direct bearing on your life, for that matter? Isn't the presumption that knowing would make no difference? That is a statement which, for me, could not be much further from the truth. Perhaps there are contextual qualifiers to this reasoning which make it more sensible.

Thanks for the IPU explanation - hehe.

steamer

I think the god-idea stems from the poor night-vision of men. Things go bump in the night and we can't see what they are so we make up stories to satisfy our curiosity about things we can hear but can't see. I don't really see any reason to personify the universe or its beginning we have language that is descriptive and precise for that sort of thing.

My view is that we don't know the exact mechanism for the beginning of time and that this mechansim may not be knowable with any certainty. What we should do is admit our ignorance instead of creating unprovable fantasy. The one exception I would hold is that our physics and our mathematics may be able to describe some precursers to time and space, but that's about it.

Not for me, myself I'd be happy to believe in a creator-god should that god present some evidence that he exists. This creator if he exists sounds like an nearly infinitely complex being. Which seems more likely, that a nearly infinitely complex being existed without itself being created or some mindless blob of proto-universe just happening to exist. The simplest thing to believe is that some simple mechanism exists from which this universe derived it's existence.

John A. Broussard

Nope. I still don't see why it would make a difference.

A solution in a test tube might be a vaccine that could save my life, but the IPU or the FSM being responsible for starting the universe on its way makes no difference to me at all, since I've already posited that it makes no difference.

Knowing that Homer didn't write the Illiad, but that it was someone else named Homer who did, makes about the same kind of difference to me.

Ulrich

I was unable to find a good Online Hebrew to English translator, the one I did find is on a Christian site (crosswalk.com) and does not support PPs assertion that "achor" was the word actually use in this verse. According to the translator, "achor" means trouble or disturbance, and the word is used 3 times in Joshua, and once each in both Isaiah and Hosea, no mention of it being used in Exodus. Of course the spelling may be off, as the Yiddish-English translator I found online had "toches" as Yiddish for buttocks, but does not give any information on which language the word is derived from.

I am sure someone in BC&H would be able to provide more information if anyone is that interested.