Define God

[LegendarySandwich]

I think religions we have today exist for a variety of reasons.

The first and obvious reason is an ignorance that people want to fill. Why are we here? Why are things the way they are? How do things work? This is how religion was started all that time ago.

The second is tied to the first -- the fear of the unknown. Why do you things happen? And then there's the biggest unknown of them all: death. So stories of the afterlife were born.

The third is tied to the second -- wanting good things to happen to them and bad things to happen to their enemies. We are the chosen people; our god(s) will help us win this war. After death, we will go to heaven and our enemies to hell.

The fourth is tied to the third -- an incentive for people to join the religion, and be good. Believe in our god and join our side, and go to heaven; don't, and go to hell. Be a good little boy, Johnny -- believe in God, go to church, eat your veggies, and you will go to heaven. Be bad and you'll go straight to Hell!

The fifth is the way memes/ideologies work. Parents pass their religion on to their kids, the religion gets implanted into their brain on a very core level, and, eventually, they pass it on to their kids. Add all the other reasons to this and the religion could become very popular and powerful. Since memes evolve, the religion can adapt to new situations, although it will resist -- and if it can't adapt, it will die. Thus why we have the religions we have today, just like the reason we have the animals we have today.

My theory could use quite a bit of refinement.

[dloubet]

Inevitable Droid wrote:

If theist, how do you define the nature of what you believe in; if atheist, the nature of what you don't?

It's not my job to come up with a nature of things I don't believe. The only thing in common about the things I don't believe is that there's currently not enough evidence for me to believe in them.

[Inevitable Droid]

Inevitable Droid wrote:

If theist, how do you define the nature of what you believe in; if atheist, the nature of what you don't?

It's not my job to come up with a nature of things I don't believe. The only thing in common about the things I don't believe is that there's currently not enough evidence for me to believe in them.

I've noticed this interesting not my job meme on the board lately. :blink:

If you know what it purports to be, you can answer reasonably.  If you look it up, you can answer reasonably.  But if you don't know what it purports to be and you don't look it up, you would have to answer no, you don't believe in it, which would be strictly accurate but not very reasonable, especially since life on Earth absolutely depends on what that thing purports to be.  You might as well say you don't believe in oxygen.

It's cool to put the burden of citing evidence on the person making a claim.  It's also cool to ignore the whole conversation.  But if you engage in the conversation, and want to be reasonable, you need to at least take the trouble to form an idea of what it is you're conversing about.

Do you believe in Omicron Eridani?

[elliebean]

Let's see if this helps at all:

url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/god]Dictionary.com[/url]"]
God
â€, â€,/gÉ'd/
â€"noun

1. the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.

2. the Supreme Being considered with reference to a particular attribute: the God of Islam.

3. ( lowercase ) one of several deities, esp. a male deity, presiding over some portion of worldly affairs.

4. ( often lowercase ) a supreme being according to some particular conception: the god of mercy.

5. Christian Science . the Supreme Being, understood as Life, Truth, love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Principle.

6. ( lowercase ) an image of a deity; an idol.

7. ( lowercase ) any deified person or object.

8. ( often lowercase ) Gods, Theater .

 a. the upper balcony in a theater.

 b. the spectators in this part of the balcony.

Looks like, to understand some of those concepts, we need a definition of "deity":

de·i·ty
â€, â€,/ˈdiɪti/ [dee-i-tee]
â€"noun, plural -ties.

1. a god or goddess.

eta: good lord.  :brick:

Oooookaaaaayyy...

di·vin·i·ty
â€, â€,/dɪˈvɪnɪti/[dih-vin-i-tee]
â€"noun, plural -ties.
1. the quality of being divine; divine nature.

2. deity; godhood.

3. a divine being; god.

4. the Divinity, ( sometimes lowercase ) the Deity.

5. a being having divine attributes, ranking below God but above humans: minor divinities.

6. the study or science of divine things; theology.

7. godlike character; supreme excellence.

8. Also called divinity fudge . a fluffy white or artificially tinted fudge made usually of sugar, corn syrup, egg whites, and flavoring, often with nuts.

So there we have it: a god is a deity, which is something divine; and divinity is something gods have, such as godlike characteristics, or deity. Makes perfect sense.  

Putting this all together so far, I'm still not sure there's any more unified, agreed-upon, or useful definition of "god" than "something that is called god".

[LegendarySandwich]

Putting this all together so far, I'm still not sure there's any more unified, agreed-upon, or useful definition of "god" than "something that is called god".

Since I don't believe in any gods and even if any exist, they're most likely irrelevant to me, I'm fine with this definition. Theists may want to get their act together and actually come up with a useful definition, though.

[Sophus]

My definition depends on the believer's.

[Inevitable Droid]

Putting this all together so far, I'm still not sure there's any more unified, agreed-upon, or useful definition of "god" than "something that is called god".

The very first usage includes the words, "creator and ruler of the universe."  That's two of the four that most of us put forward.  The word "worshipped" doesn't appear in any of the usages, which I find odd, but "revered as a god" appears, which is close enough to "worshipped" to satisfy me, at least, so that's three of the four.  The only one of our big four that doesn't show up is, "explanatory."

I really don't think the argument that the word is meaningless gets us anywhere.  The word isn't meaningless.  It has content.  Creator, ruler, worshipped, explanatory - one or some combination of those four is always meant.  Individualism is demonstrated by which of the four is (are) selected and, if multiple, which is (are) held to be crucial.

If I insist the word God is meaningless, then when I say I don't believe in God, I have to acknowledge that I haven't communicated at all, that my own sentence is meaningless.  I guess it could be amusing to mock the theist's statement of belief as meaningless, but the sword in this instance cuts both ways, and most theists aren't such morons as to be unable to offer, "creator and ruler of the universe."  I know the (scriptural) theists on this message board (at least lately) have a weird tendency to run off at the mouth and say very little, but real believers in the real world will quickly answer, "creator and ruler of the universe," if asked.  I understand what those words mean.  I don't believe they signify anything real, but I know what they mean, just as I know what leprechaun means.

[Smarmy Of One]

God is ego.

[Asmodean]

God is ego.

Are you..? Really..? Can you conjure me a bag of donuts..? Prayer-free to secure my repeat customs..?  

[dloubet]

Inevitable Droid wrote:

How do you evaluate the evidence for X if you don't know what X purports to be?

By evaluating the evidence. Do I really need X if I have the evidence for it? I don't know what gravity is, (In other words I don't know exactly how it works.) but I see plenty of evidence for it and really accurate descriptions of its effects.

Do you believe in RUBISCO?

Until I know what it is, I lack belief in it. The only alternative is to say I do believe in it before I even know what it is, and that would really be stupid.

But if you don't know what it purports to be and you don't look it up, you would have to answer no, you don't believe in it, which would be strictly accurate but not very reasonable, especially since life on Earth absolutely depends on what that thing purports to be.

Not very reasonable? The only alternative is to say you do believe in it when you don't even know what it is. That's definitely not reasonable!

I'll be happy to re-evaluate my state of belief once my state of knowledge is adjusted. But until then I have to relegate my lack of belief in RUBISCO with the infinity of things I am similarly ignorant of. Especially of ending a sentence with a preposition.

It's cool to put the burden of citing evidence on the person making a claim. It's also cool to ignore the whole conversation. But if you engage in the conversation, and want to be reasonable, you need to at least take the trouble to form an idea of what it is you're conversing about.

That's what the conversation, and the burden of proof, is FOR. To allow you to form an idea of what they're talking about, and evaluate it. How else would you form the idea of what they're talking about? Not all people I have conversations with have written books that I can study in advance about what they're talking about. We know that every Christian seems to have a different interpretation of what their book says, so what good would it be to study the bible, and any given concept of god, knowing that we're just going to be forced to ask the theist his personal interpretation anyway? That's what this whole forum demonstrates over and over and over.

My conversational sequence of events is something like this:
The theist comes up with a version of god. We have a conversation about it so that I understand what he's talking about. I determine if the evidence he's presented is sufficient for me to agree with his version. So far, no sale.

What's your conversational sequence of events?

[TheJackel]

It's simple people.. The concept of a god is inherently so vague and undefined that its of pure concept of opinion, and title. Thus since opinions and concepts based on opinions such as this with infinite number or qualifiers and non-qualifiers  become worthless in a world of other opinions. It becomes 100% =/= 100% argument on the existence and non-existence of anything that might exist to which you may or may not consider a "GOD".  And under this argument, anything can be considered a GOD by virtue of opinion alone! Thus all things are GODS, or there are no GODS at all!

Example:

I may as well worship the dust bunnies on my desktop as GODS of sneezing! I will later sacrifice my neighbors virgin daughter to appease the sneeze GOD!

Example 2:

I can simply disqualify anything from being a GOD simply because Existence itself can not be created when such entities are salve to require it. This includes the very fact that it takes more cause to support consciousness than it does to support unconsciousness.