tergiversant

Taffy Lewis:
Define "personal being" if you may. Also, I am unclear on the concept of necessary existence, as I mentioned in my post just above.

tergiversant@OklahomaAtheists.org

<a href="http://www.OklahomaAtheists.org" target="_blank">ATHEISTS of OKLAHOMA</a>

"Atheists are OK."

tergiversant

Thanks for your reply, Tercel. It was as enjoyable as it was thoughtful.

I am hoping to address the original question with some degree of depth and precision, and I certainly did not expect the thread to be hijacked by a rabid preacher and those who would think her ravings worth answering. Certainly the latter folk are welcome, but the preacher in question is adding little to nothing to this discussion, as a few have already pointed out. Unless she deigns to attempt to define “God,” as you have, I see little point in responding to her ranting.

It is not, per se, a challenge which only applies to theists. It was, however, specifically directed at theists just for the sake of “deliberate confrontation,” as it were, to stir things up.

I lack belief in “backward pole vaulting brightly-large happy queries,” but this does not mean that I find this phrase to convey a coherent idea.

Would the essential/accidental dichotomy even apply in this case? I tend to think of it as a matter unique to universals, not applicable than particulars.

Necessary and sufficient criteria. Excellent setup, let us have at it…

Honestly, I cannot make sense of this. Both “result” in the first sentence as well as “begin” and “later” in the second are inherently temporal concepts, and thus your criterion appears to presume that God exists within time and contingently thereupon. Perhaps instead you mean to imply that God does not exist contingently in any way? Given my understanding of science, this may well be true of the universe itself.

I take it “power” here refers to the ability to change states of affairs? Carry out one’s will? Something else?

If Stephen Hawking et. al. are correct about time being finite and unbounded, then our universe exists necessarily without cause. This gibes with the (relativistic) notion that space and time do not exist apart from our universe.

My mind subjectively experiences spatiotemporal reality over time. What does God’s mind do?

My sense of purposiveness is inherently temporal as well, as regarding future goals.

tergiversant@OklahomaAtheists.org

<a href="http://www.OklahomaAtheists.org" target="_blank">ATHEISTS of OKLAHOMA</a>

"Atheists are OK."

[ June 06, 2002: Message edited by: tergiversant ]</p>

tergiversant

You are not being ignored by me. I just happen to agree with you so much that I've little to add. <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

BTW, I would answer in the negative to both of your above queries.

tergiversant@OklahomaAtheists.org

<a href="http://www.OklahomaAtheists.org" target="_blank">ATHEISTS of OKLAHOMA</a>

"Atheists are OK."

[ June 06, 2002: Message edited by: tergiversant ]</p>

tergiversant

For some thing to be created means either that it was deliberately put together by some purposive entity, e.g. "the Bluejay creates a nest for her eggs" or else simply temporally caused, e.g. "this chemical reaction creates highly toxic fumes." I take it then that you are saying that God may be created in the latter sense, but not in the former sense?

It seems awfully strange to me to claim that God may have been created by the machinations of blind forces but that it may not have been created by intelligent beings which were in turn created by blind, mechanistic forces. It seems to me that, if indeed your idea of God is entirely naturalistic, either method could do the trick.

Finally, your first criterion above seemed to state that God was atemporal as well as being temporally and (onto)logically non-contingent. This caused me some confusion and more than a bit of surprise when you explained your definition in further detail. Evidently, you meant to imply “any intelligent being” rather than merely “any being” which would denote any existents whatsoever.

tergiversant@OklahomaAtheists.org

<a href="http://www.OklahomaAtheists.org" target="_blank">ATHEISTS of OKLAHOMA</a>

"Atheists are OK."

Samhain

Tercel:

This is what I was alluding to. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

ShottleBop

By drawing these parameters, you make it impossible to define "God," except as an entity that exists within space/time and consists of matter/energy--i.e., because we currently have no dispositive evidence that there exists anything outside of our frame of reference, it is impossible to define anything that exists outside that frame of reference.

Ron Singh

Let me reitterate my stance.

God's definition:
Creator.

~your freidly neighborhood 15yr old Sikh

Philosoft

No. "God is the creator" is the same as "God created." Neither identifies the specific being alleged to have done the creating; both statements assume a prior definition of God.

Ron Singh

Thanks philisoft.
What would be an adequate definition of anything? What are the benchmarks?

~Your friendly neighborhood 15yr old Sikh

Tercel

"result" relates to cause-effect, not time necessarily. (You may of course believe that cause-effect requires time and causes always temporally precede their effects, however I deliberately avoided building such assumptions into the definition)
"begin" and "later" I specifically allowed as being any/all of "temporally, logically, ontologically, or causally" (I thought that pretty much covered all the possibilities!). For any of those words which you find coherent or meaningful to you, imagine I had said the sentence with only them in it.
Since you seem to only find "temporally" meaningful out of the lot, I suggest you read:
"God did not begin to exist temporally later than any being who does not also satisfy the definition of God."

I carefully phrased the sentence in the negative to avoid any statement of whether or not God was "in time" or not. The restriction is to the effect that if he was in time, then he was the first being.

Again the negative phrasing left it open. God may or may not be contingent. But if he is contingent then he is not contingent upon an intelligent being who is not also a God. (Again I leave open the potential possibility of a God creating another God)

Sounds about right.

How do you derive this... most interesting... conclusion? Are you simply equivating "time" and "causation" again?

My mind seems to do similiar.

I don't know. It is possible that God exists in a 2nd dimension of time which allows him to do the equivalent of infinite thinking at once, it is possible God's method of thinking is little different to ours, it is possible that God's method of thinking is so completely different to ours that we cannot detail it other than to say that he thinks.
Who knows? I deliberately left the definition wide open on purpose.

Tercel