TomboyMom

or deism?
In a conversation with a thoughtful Unitarian. On the subject of Existence of God, she said:
I believe in something. I can take all the ingredients for a living being and mix them together, and not get a living being. The difference between those ingredients and Life..that's what I think of as God.
Thoughts?

Rene

Spenser

I don't think they really told you anything. Just labeled something they can't quite explain...

hinduwoman

Sounds more like the Jedi Force to me.

Jinto

I can take two moles of hydrogen and one mole of oxygen and mix them up as much as I want, and still not get water. Does she therefore think of the difference between my hydrogen-oxygen mixture and water as God?

diana

Sounds like she's saying God is Life. This is just as reasonable, I suppose, as saying God is Love.

That is, it's wordplay, but doesn't get us anywhere. If God is Life, then one of the pair is superfluous, I figure. If not, then "God is Life" isn't quite what she means, after all.

I think she's saying she can't create life and is assuming it was created. She doesn't understand how it might work otherwise, so she's decided to label her awe/lack of understanding God.

A lot of people call this "god of the gaps."

d

njhartsh

To be a Unitarian Universalist is to be constantly running into this kind of definition of "God." Many UUs (indeed, many people in the Western world) are uncomfortable with supernaturalist silliness yet find that entirely scientific explanations of life, the universe and everything sound cold and meaningless. Liberal notions of "God," I think, are an attempt to split the difference by retaining some feeling of mystery and wonder without actually believing in a supernatural daddy with a white beard sitting on top of the clouds.

I'm not a fan of such notions, but I think that, in context, they aren't really all that bad. If everyone who spoke or wrote the word "God" meant the same thing as TomboyMom's interlocutor (or if they meant "the ground of being" or "that which is greater than all and yet present in each" or "the interconnected web of human relationships"--I can go on), I don't think theism would be anything worth complaining about.

As the world actually is, of course--well, I leave that criticism as an exercise to the reader.

- Nathan, atheist UU

CX

A)Fallacy of Argument from Ignorance. I don't know how to generate life from nonlife so god is in there somewhere.

B)One is of course free to define god however one chooses, but I concur with Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg who said that a god so defined is essentially meaningless and serves no other purpose than to avoid the accusation of having no god.

My biggest issue with a Deistic concept of god is that if there is no evidence of god's existence in the material world and he is not currently intervening in human affairs, the fact that said god got things started is totally irrelevant and operationally no different than there being no god to begin with such that one is left "multiplying entities" unnecessarily. Furthermore the question of such a god's exist is itself insoluable owing to the unfalsifiability of his alleged nature.

lpetrich

(CX on problems with a deist god...)

So a deist god becomes much like Carl Sagan's example of an invisible dragon in one's garage.

lpetrich

This is almost too easy. I can take the ingredients of a house together and mix them together, and not get a house.

So what's the difference between a house and a big pile of lumber, nails, plaster, paint, etc.?

Organization. All those pieces have to be arranged in a certain way to make a house. No special "houseness" needs to be added to make that big pile a house.

conkermaniac

I totally agree with you, njhartsh. UU seems to be at the far left of the Christianity spectrum. It's only those on the right (conservatives) that have promoted the spread of atheism.