I am a Christian theist, and I have this idea that if I can get atheists to have the correct information of the concept of God, then we can set forth in the universe to locate God’s presence, and thereby is the proof of God’s existence.
Susma
Hallo Susma. I agree that it is crucially important to have a clear understanding of a thing before one can reasonably discuss it. Even more so when the thing is a bit ethereal, and we have no intuitive concept of it. If we are talking about a chair, for instance, we can get away with a slightly sloppy definition, or most often none at all, because everyone’s concept of a chair is almost certainly the same. But when discussing an immaterial object, like “God”, “love” or “jealousy”, we really need it to be very, very well defined so that we are all on the same page.
Often one launches into discussions about God without bothering to explain what is meant by it. Some people talk about “God” as if he has properties identical to those that others would simply assign to “nature”. To me, this makes the idea of God pretty general and his purported magical capabilities massively watered down.
In any case, I applaud your ostensibly systematic approach - in my experience most Christians don’t bother. I, and others, are yet to encounter a coherent definition of “God” and look forward to reading your version.
Rigil
Welcome to the forum.
atheists to have the correct information of the concept of GodThe correct information according to? First off, what or whose god are we talking about? Even the believers of the same god can not agree on who or what he/she/it is - why are there so many different denominations? Then you have to convince me that nature needs a god. I think you have a long way to go here but please try.
Hello Susma, and welcome to the forum.
I think we all agree that a coherent and functional definition of “god” is essential before any fruitful discussion is possible.
As a self-professed “Christian theist,” your definition of “god” must, at the very minimum, refer to a supernatural being that is ostensibly all-knowing, all-good and all-powerful, who created the universe with man as the pinnacle of his/her creation whom s/he gave an anthology of his/her word (i.e. The Bible), who occasionally intervenes in his/her creation’s ordinary runnings, and with whom you have a personal one-on-one relationship. Moreover, this being produced an earthly son (itself incarnate?) whom s/he sacrificed so that mankind could be saved from its own iniquities.
Please elaborate on the above and correct any errors, omissions or misapprehensions you feel it contains. More detail is needed to sharpen the focus.
'Luthon64
Thanks everyone for your civil reactions to my thread.
All of you are concerned with what is the concept of God I have.
And that is precisely what I like to discuss with you about, and also that when we have concurred on the concept of God, then we can proceed to look for Him in the whole realm of existence whatsoever that is objective, meaning outside our mind, so that whether we exist or are thinking about God, or not, He exists.
How shall we go about working together to come to concurrence on the concept of God?
As I am a Christian theist: first a theist then a Christian, I do have a concept of God; so, it is sensible that I will propose to you what is my concept of God and why I have such a concept of God.
The way I see into my own knowing and thinking:
God is the creator of the universe and everything else whatever that is not He Himself.
Here is why I have such a concept of God: Because the universe did not make itself.
Let me read your reactions.
Susma
That’s not really a useful definition because you can substitute any creator entity you like for “God.” That is, this definition is too unspecific and tells us nothing that could be tested or validated. Besides, there are things that spontaneously spring into existence without the help of any detectable agent or cause, in a sense creating themselves, however briefly they may exist. Also, when you write “and everything else whatever that is not He Himself,” that would presumably include manufactured items like ice cream, chairs and cuckoo clocks, as well as the progeny of all organisms, which means that “God” is doing creation continuously without anyone seeing it. I’m afraid that’s a rather big chunk to swallow.
How can you make this claim? Can you prove, for example, that our usual intuitive/scientific conception of “cause” applies equally outside any universe (whatever that may mean) in the particular case of making universes? And which of Aristotle’s four causes do you mean when you speak about making a universe? Are you aware of current scientific thinking regarding the origin of our universe?
'Luthon64
As usual, Mefiante says it far better than I can, but please read “A Universe from Nothing” by Lawrence M Krauss.
Indeed. and of course the presumably Christian God or Jehovah/Yahweh you seem to be referring to Susma, created him/her/itself also from nothing? ??? I trust you will be able to lead us to the verifiable evidence of such entity.
Thanks for your civil reactions.
I am in the Philippines, it is as I write 0618 hours time, 8 hours in advance of Greenwich; date is Dec. 31, 2013, Tuesday.
Happy New Year!
Please, someone, you in South Africa, tell me when you write, what time and date and day of the week it is with you in your actual location, just my curiosity – amazing, we must be thousands of miles apart and belonging to different time zones, but we are in ‘real time’ connected.
Now, about the concept of God from my own knowing and thinking, I say that God is the creator of the universe and everything that is not God Himself, and my reason is because the universe did not make itself.
You seem to be in unison in effect that God is not needed because the universe created itself from nothing.
But science tells us that the universe does have a beginning some 13.8 billion years ago.
So, as we take science to be a reliable source of information, then the universe had need of a cause to get into existence from nothing; on the other hand, nothing cannot create anything unless we are talking outside of logic.
Tell me, and forgive me, I say that from my knowing and thinking, etc., do you talk from your own knowing and thinking, for example, knowing and thinking from the fact established by science that the universe has a beginning some 13.8 billion years ago?
Again, HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Glad so much to be able to talk with you folks in South Africa, so far away still just one click away by means of our computers.
And I trust that we can and will continue to interact in all civility, and look forward to messages from each other.
Susma
Philippines time zone is UTC+8 and South Africa is UTC+2 which means that you are 6 hours ahead of us and local South African time is just after 9 a.m. on 31 December 2013.
Thank you, a happy and prosperous 2014 to you too.
Back to matters at hand. Please explain (1) how our ordinary ideas about causation are applicable to the “creation” of a universe, and (2) how your posited “creator” is exempt from them.
When you have done the above, please sharpen up the focus of your definition of “God” so that it includes some attributes or properties or details that are testable.
'Luthon64
Please forgive me, but the principle of causality, namely, that everything with a beginning has a cause, that is an absolutely binding rule of our knowing and thinking; if we do not ascribe to it but question it, how can we at all be able to get any knowing and thinking done at all?
And all sciences aside from philosophy and simply talking at all among sane and reasoning humans are founded upon that rule of causality, namely:
Anything with a beginning has a cause.
Now, you are asking why God should be exempted from this rule, that is a legitimate question but founded upon a wrong concept of God, namely, your concept of God is that God has a beginning.
I am a theist and I know that the concept of God for being the creator of the universe is of an entity without a beginning, He is outside time and space but also within: because He creates continuously the universe and operates it continuously – outside means without, not that He is not inside also time and space.
Do you notice that your instinct is to question every principle of logical knowing and thinking, and wanting us to prove or disprove the force of the rule, in that way you expect to disprove God’s existence as the creator of the universe?
That is the skeptic’s instinct but it is a wrong instinct when the principle or rule of logic is from the part of the skeptic himself being observed and enforced when he speaks as to be understood intelligently by his listeners.
So, are you challenging the principle that everything with a beginning has a cause?
And also you want me to explain to you and thus by explanation prove to you that God is a being without any beginning, i.e., eternal, i.e., outside time but still within time and space as the creator of the universe and its operator.
Let us we two first work to concur on this principle and rule of logic, everything with a beginning has a cause, then we will work together to come to understand why God is a being ‘always’ and ‘everywhere’ existing, with no beginning and no ending and not enclosed in any space or time whatever, which time and space He also creates and maintains and are the milieu of His creation, the universe.
Please forgive me, but I notice time and again this strategy of atheists which I know are repeated endlessly by their best selling authors, namely, to question every principle of logic and thus topple all possibility at all of knowing and thinking, as to come to the concept of God and therefrom to look for Him in the universe.
You read this kind of a false challenge again and again and again in the writings of your best selling authors.
Here is one also pseudo challenge, which is that we cannot even prove that we exist; and atheists repeat that with – forgive me, hubris and ‘absolute’ certainty, thus voila, no need for God.
Susma
Simply asserting repeatedly one of the premisses of William Lane Craig’s Kalām cosmological argument doesn’t make it either true or credible. You have yet to put forward an argument for how you can claim that the “anything with a beginning has a cause” principle applies to the universe as a whole, now requested for the third time. That principle is an empirical one that seems to be valid for certain classes of events that we can study within the universe. This does not mean that it can be extrapolated to the whole of the universe and beyond to hypothetical pre-universe primordial conditions. In fact, doing so seems to be an unwarranted leap, a fallacy of composition, because in addition to space, energy and matter, several current scientific models of cosmogony suggest that time doesn’t exist “outside” the universe (Google “B-theory of time” and “Hartle–Hawking state”) and therefore our usual notions about causation, being a temporally ordered linear sequence of events, become very difficult to sustain where there is no time, such as is likely the case “outside” the confines of our universe.
Moreover and as pointed out before, there are certain observable events within our universe that appear to violate this principle, so even within our universe, its validity is not as firmly and ubiquitously established as you would have people believe.
Without some form of compelling reason, I think you are quite seriously overstepping what can legitimately be said with regard to any supposed cause that began our universe.
As for the explanation you offer regarding how your god himself is supposedly exempt from the causal chain, it is merely another unsupported and untestable flat assertion that assumes far more than can reasonably be admitted, this time one carrying the tang of unintelligible postmodern sophistry: “a being without any beginning, i.e., eternal, i.e., outside time but still within time and space as the creator of the universe and its operator.” Even if we accept that there was some cause (in the way we normally understand that word) for the universe to come about — and I don’t accept that we can say that for the reasons outlined above, but even if we did — the most we can justifiably claim is that the potential for the universe’s beginning existence has existed “forever” and that this potential came to be realised through some unknown and possibly unknowable cause.
And for the sake of civil debate, I urge you to refrain from saying things like “this strategy/false challenge of atheists/skeptics … repeated endlessly by their best selling authors.” The points raised earlier are legitimate objections that need to be addressed rather than dismissed by hand waving, flat assertions, repetition and appeals to (probably) false analogies if you hope to persuade atheists and sceptics “to have the correct information of the concept of God.”
'Luthon64
Dumbstruck?
I know I would be. 
Hi Susma
I hope I’m not to late to this thread and it’s still on going.
Today many scientist/programmer are running universe simulators, they usually do stuff like how stars and early galaxy’s formed.
but now imagine there is the raw computer power to run a simulation that so identical to our own universe including beings that might
act and look like they are aware about there own existence.
So lets say we find our selves in this virtual reality, and those scientist/programmers created us, we should call them the creators of
our universe.
We now have two very different ideas about the creator(s) of our universe and neither of us a way to say which is right.
What I find strange here is not the usual baseless assertions being flung about, but the inherent contradiction in the plan of action being put forth.
It would seem Susma is keen on us establishing that god does not need to comply to the rules of this universe, even weirder the assertion is that “outside” our universe those same rules DO apply. With no reason given as to why.
So not only does god defy the rules of our universe, but every universe, and even “outside” every universe. Then… (s)he wants us to look for and find god. However, if god needs not obey any laws neither inside nor outside our universe… then we would have no means to prove or disprove his existence (Find him) since no criteria we could construct, being bound by these laws, would apply to god at all. So how would you know you’d found him if he’s entirely incomprehensible in every possible universe AND absence of a universe? The persuit is absolutely futile, given we could agree on what god was in the first place (and that seems unlikely).
I am a grompcthopet. What is that you ask? Well, everything that’s not a grompcthopet is not a grompcthopet, and everything that is a grompcthopet is a grompcthopet. Hope that clears things up.
Lets assume a creator of this universe,
lets even assume his the ultimate causer and no other cause beyond him.
We now have a creator that is outside of this universe, and as you may well know
anything outside our universe is unknowable. So to give this creator any properties
is just projecting our own wants and desires.
In the end this leaves us again nowhere meaningful.
Also making the jump from said creator to christian theology or any theology for that matter is a
huge leap and I say nearly impossible.
Our knowledge of logic and in particular the principle that everything with a beginning has a cause is founded on our experience.
Have you ever or mankind ever had an experience where something with a beginning does not have a cause?
Susma
Forgive me, but let us all not go into simulation at all, because we are living in the universe which scientists tell us has a beginning some 13.8 billion years ago.
So, forgive me, no need to bring in simulation, that would be an investment in imagination that is not going to change the reality of the universe and the reality of our existence as part of the universe; and we are into keeping in reality, not at all into simulation whatever.
Forgive me, but that is one way of folks to digress from the matter at hand, going into simulation, imagination of all kinds, when the reality we exist in and also the universe we exist in and are part of, they are absolutely nothing of any simulation.
Susma
Our knowledge is founded on our experience.
Do you or mankind at all ever had any experience where something with a beginning has no cause?
Now, about the existence of the creator of the universe, science tells us that the universe has a beginning some 13.8 billion years ago.
So, the universe has need of a cause which we call creator.
You will ask the question, and why does God not need a cause?
The answer is because God has no beginning, He always exists, even before time and space at all began to exist – from His creation.
So, what exactly is your difficulty with the concept of a being that has no beginning but exists, period, and is the cause of everything with a beginning?
Tell me, is the concept of a being without a beginning an invalid concept?
This is now an examination of what is a valid concept as opposed to an invalid concept.
A valid concept is one that can have a corresponding object outside our mind; I say can have, meaning it is not impossible for it to have existence.
An invalid concept is one that cannot exist because it is composed of self-contradictory features, like for example, a married bachelor.
Now, a being with a beginning, that is a valid concept, and we are all includinig the universe beings with a beginning.
What about a being without a beginning, is that a valid concept?
You cannot accept that concept to be a valid concept, a being without a beginning?
Pray tell me why.
Susma