I'm somewhere in the middle between atheist and agnostic. it depends on the day, really. usually lean atheist, but then if I have time to sit and think too much about how fucking big the universe is and how it got created and how and why and all that, I can't help but think there was some sort of manufacturer to all of this.
but the christian god I was taught about as a kid? NOPE.
pjsoul said:
So who manufactured the manufacturer?
the basic idea behind agnosticism is "I have no fucking clue".
Well, if I didn't know beforehand, I guess this is where we disagree.
The sleeper cells in Europe and the US have been inspired by faith. In this most recent incident, an English citizen just blew up his neighbours- his fellow countrymen- because of his religious beliefs (the only thing separating him from his soft targets). If the bomber had been from Afghanistan or Iraq and had navigated his way into the country to attack the parliamentary building... I'd be there with you.
ISIS typically takes the credit for these sensational events, but ISIS has nothing to do with many of them other than share a common ideology and vision.
I'm probably just making a comment on religious philosophy. Isis isn't Islamic, even if they claim they are. A parent who lets their kid die based on Christianity and thinking God will heal them also isn't Christian. Etc...
and around and around we go: yes,it is faith-based. what these fuckers believe is true islam.
let me say this: take the worst, most violent and terrible portions of the bible, you know, the ones they don't preach about in church because they aren't to be taken literally, not now anyway, and create a faction, let's call it CHRISIS, and have them perpetrating these atrocities across the globe.
Do you not think that peaceful, loving, modern Christians would be telling you that what CHRISIS is, is not true Christianity? And you'd have Christian haters out there calling them Christian terrorists. It would be the same damn thing. Cue the "no christian would ever do that" response.
Bomb the fuck out of Christian nations for decades, killing thousands and thousands of innocent civilians and calling it collateral damage and we'll see about that.
That is just one of the things I don't get about some religious folks (not you... or mostly not you. I think agnosticism is almost as odd as straight up religion, in a way). It seems that many religious people feel that the existence of the universe is proof of God, because they think something with a purpose, apparently, had to have created the universe. Even if they are willing to acknowledge the big bang theory, they feel that God had to have initiated the big bang at the very least, because something can't appear out of nothing.... I just don't understand why they think God had to have at least initiated the universe, but don't seem to consider who initiated God. And if they think nobody had to - that God had no beginning and comes from infinite roots - then why wouldn't that same idea be just as easily applicable to the universe? Doesn't make any sense. I just don't understand why people humour the idea of God at all, considering that none of it makes any sense. There is no rhyme or reason behind the belief in the existence of God, or in agnosticism either, IMO. But anyway, it's not like I think I'm going to recruit any Atheists here, lol. I'm just saying!
How about people figure out there is no omnipresent deity floating around somewhere, there is no afterlife, and learn to appreciate this life and how valuable it is for everyone getting an opportunity at it?
pjsoul said:
I personally don't think God or an an omnipresent deity or any higher power and the afterlife have anything to do with each other. I'm an Atheist, but I have no reason to completely discount some kind of afterlife simply because of the scientific fact that energy doesn't die. Given how little we know about consciousness, I am at least somewhat open to the idea that consciousness and energy could somehow be tied together, and we just don't know the science of it (yet). I very seriously doubt that there is an afterlife, but that is a completely separate topic from the existence of God for me, and not one that has anything to do with faith.
why would my personal philophy of saying "I don't know" be odd? You don't know. nobody does. theists purport to "know". my brother says he has a fucking relationship with god, but he can't articulate what that means, but somehow it's my fault for not being enlightened enough. so does his wife and their son. proving the existence or nonexistence of god is impossible. just like I can't prove the sun has a gooey nougat centre.
again, I don't believe in the christian god. I find that too implausible. not to mention fucked up. But I can't say for sure if there was some type of energy out there that did it all, whether it was by design or some crazy natural occurence, or we're all living in some fucking simulated video game.
as you said, of course it makes no sense. none of it does to our puny brains. a friend of mine in elementary school dared me to ask his mom how god got there. So I did. She said "he's always been there". I followed up with "but he must have arrived at some point", and she literally said the exact same thing again; "he's always been there". My friend was laughing. I felt like i was talking to a non-thinking robot, just spewing out the answer it was programmed to give.
that was literally the beginning of my journey away from organized religion.
thirty bills unpaid said: We decompose and make good soil for trees and stuff. We do not enter another dimension.
pjsoul said:
I know we decompose, but I don't understand how anyone can confidently say that there is no afterlife, since the possibility, however remote, of there being a scientific explanation for it does technically exist, theoretically. I'm only willing to write off things that I think are literally ludicrous and based on absolutely nothing, like the existence of God. But I won't completely write off possibilities if there is even a tiny sliver of a scientific basis for them, and the fact that energy has been proven to be eternal is that sliver when it comes to an afterlife (until they prove that 100% of the energy in a living being goes to the process of decomposition, anyway, and that no energy whatsoever exits the body after death) .... But you're probably right. I would like proof of there being no afterlife though. I would happily accept such proof.
ok, so we're splitting hairs here, but what you are describing as an afterlife is what some would call there being a god (like all our spirits, one energy, one with the universe, etc, is what some define as god). being agnostic isn't defined as not believing or not knowing if there is a christian or buddhist god, but just knowing that we don't know what, if, comes after we die.
No, what I'm describing cannot be called being a god. At all. Because a god, in any manifestation, cannot be a completely unconscious force without any purpose or reason. Those are necessary descriptors for the idea. Anyone trying to say otherwise is just an Atheist who doesn't understand semantics. God is not another word for scientific/natural processes. God is also not just another way to say that you don't know something. The idea of god or a higher power of any kind MUST be something other than that. Without applying the idea of some sort of conscious force or some kind of organized purpose in some form, "god" is just a word without any meaning at all.
BTW, there is no god in Buddhism. I don't even consider Buddhism a religion because of this. It is a philosophy.
I disagree. I've read alot about different belief systems. one person cannot corner the market on what constitutes the concept of god. if that's your definition, fine, but that's not THE definition.
there are many gods in buddhism, just none that are considered the creator of all things. but I know you what were meaning.
This isn't about one person cornering the market on what constitutes the concept of god. But what you are basically saying is that literally ANYTHING can be called god. Well, that necessarily makes the word or concept of god completely meaningless. The concept of god DOES have to be based on something. The origins and history of the concept do indeed lend themselves to some definition, however loose. I must say, it frustrates me a bit that some people try to literally remove all meaning from the word/concept. That is the same as just taking any word and telling someone that it can mean whatever the hell you want it to mean. Sorry, no. That is not how language or concepts work.
I'm not saying strip all meaning from it, nor did I say anything could be called god. it can mean higher power, or some type of energy, or the universe itself. whatever. I'm not saying you can call a spoon a god.
but a philosophical concept is fluid. a spoon is a spoon. a fork is a fork. those aren't concepts, those are facts. but a god can mean MANY things to many different people. many gods are passive, some are active. there has to be purpose or meaning? who says? I have never seen "god" as defined by those rules. it all seems a bit rigid to me.
I believe in God, I say my prayers everyday saying thank you while asking for forgiveness for my sins when I do (which are many cause we're all guilty). That's my concept.
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I agree that the concept of God stems from people not having answers to those two questions that you cite. 100%. Fear of the unknown is absolutely the source of the belief in god. Intellectually, I get that, even though I don't have that fear. And I might even get that emotionally, if it weren't for what the concept of God became: Religion. If it weren't for religion, I would probably be a lot more easy going when it comes to people's thoughts on the concept of god. But because of religion, even the arguments for the existence of god (or the possible existence of god) by the non-religious ultimately feed religion, whether they want it to or not (yes, OnWis97, the distinction between the exploiters, exploitees, and neither is an important one). That is why I'll always stand up strongly against the concept as well as the organization and manipulation of that concept.
However opposed I am to the concept and its manifestations, though, it certainly is the most fascinating topic of discussion in the history of the world.
Actually that would have to go to the cilantro debate. Or maybe Hellman's vs Miracle Whip.
Sorry, there is no cilantro debate. It's terrible. If there ever was a book that was the true word of God, "Cilantro sucks" would be chapter 1.
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I'm not saying strip all meaning from it, nor did I say anything could be called god. it can mean higher power, or some type of energy, or the universe itself. whatever. I'm not saying you can call a spoon a god.
but a philosophical concept is fluid. a spoon is a spoon. a fork is a fork. those aren't concepts, those are facts. but a god can mean MANY things to many different people. many gods are passive, some are active. there has to be purpose or meaning? who says? I have never seen "god" as defined by those rules. it all seems a bit rigid to me.
God as a philosophical concept? Is that what god is? I figure god either exists or doesn't exist (he doesn't ). If it's just a philosophical concept, then god really couldn't exist, right? He'd then just be an idea, not an actual thing that has some kind of impact on the universe outside of how the idea affects human actions. Yes, people can have all kinds of crazy ideas about what god might be or could be or should be ... but if he (I keep calling god he FFS... it seems so ludicrous, lol. But i guess it's just become common sexist vernacular)... so sorry, if it existed, it wouldn't exist in the form that whatever random person imagined it to exist. If god existed, there would be one truth for what god is and isn't. It's very nice for everyone to think of god as a completely fluid concept, but isn't that the same as admitting that god doesn't exist at all? Or is it more reasonable to people that god exists in every random form someone can imagine than it is for god not to exist?? If so, doesn't that seem rather delusional? Or, at best, simply an admission that god only lives in the imagination?
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
I agree that the concept of God stems from people not having answers to those two questions that you cite. 100%. Fear of the unknown is absolutely the source of the belief in god. Intellectually, I get that, even though I don't have that fear. And I might even get that emotionally, if it weren't for what the concept of God became: Religion. If it weren't for religion, I would probably be a lot more easy going when it comes to people's thoughts on the concept of god. But because of religion, even the arguments for the existence of god (or the possible existence of god) by the non-religious ultimately feed religion, whether they want it to or not (yes, OnWis97, the distinction between the exploiters, exploitees, and neither is an important one). That is why I'll always stand up strongly against the concept as well as the organization and manipulation of that concept.
However opposed I am to the concept and its manifestations, though, it certainly is the most fascinating topic of discussion in the history of the world.
Actually that would have to go to the cilantro debate. Or maybe Hellman's vs Miracle Whip.
Sorry, there is no cilantro debate. It's terrible. If there ever was a book that was the true word of God, "Cilantro sucks" would be chapter 1.
Agreed, and don't ever plant it in your garden, it bolts in a week and stinks to high heavens, 3 years later I still have cilantro coming up in my yard in early summer.
I agree that the concept of God stems from people not having answers to those two questions that you cite. 100%. Fear of the unknown is absolutely the source of the belief in god. Intellectually, I get that, even though I don't have that fear. And I might even get that emotionally, if it weren't for what the concept of God became: Religion. If it weren't for religion, I would probably be a lot more easy going when it comes to people's thoughts on the concept of god. But because of religion, even the arguments for the existence of god (or the possible existence of god) by the non-religious ultimately feed religion, whether they want it to or not (yes, OnWis97, the distinction between the exploiters, exploitees, and neither is an important one). That is why I'll always stand up strongly against the concept as well as the organization and manipulation of that concept.
However opposed I am to the concept and its manifestations, though, it certainly is the most fascinating topic of discussion in the history of the world.
Actually that would have to go to the cilantro debate. Or maybe Hellman's vs Miracle Whip.
Sorry, there is no cilantro debate. It's terrible. If there ever was a book that was the true word of God, "Cilantro sucks" would be chapter 1.
Agreed, and don't ever plant it in your garden, it bolts in a week and stinks to high heavens, 3 years later I still have cilantro coming up in my yard in early summer.
I like cilantro.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
I agree that the concept of God stems from people not having answers to those two questions that you cite. 100%. Fear of the unknown is absolutely the source of the belief in god. Intellectually, I get that, even though I don't have that fear. And I might even get that emotionally, if it weren't for what the concept of God became: Religion. If it weren't for religion, I would probably be a lot more easy going when it comes to people's thoughts on the concept of god. But because of religion, even the arguments for the existence of god (or the possible existence of god) by the non-religious ultimately feed religion, whether they want it to or not (yes, OnWis97, the distinction between the exploiters, exploitees, and neither is an important one). That is why I'll always stand up strongly against the concept as well as the organization and manipulation of that concept.
However opposed I am to the concept and its manifestations, though, it certainly is the most fascinating topic of discussion in the history of the world.
Actually that would have to go to the cilantro debate. Or maybe Hellman's vs Miracle Whip.
Sorry, there is no cilantro debate. It's terrible. If there ever was a book that was the true word of God, "Cilantro sucks" would be chapter 1.
Agreed, and don't ever plant it in your garden, it bolts in a week and stinks to high heavens, 3 years later I still have cilantro coming up in my yard in early summer.
I like cilantro.
You probably wouldn't after it bolts, the flavour essence is intensified and it gets ridiculously overpowering. I could smell it from almost an acre away!
I don't hate it, but it's an herb and needs to be used in moderation, some treat it like a staple and it drowns everything out.
Actually that would have to go to the cilantro debate. Or maybe Hellman's vs Miracle Whip.
Sorry, there is no cilantro debate. It's terrible. If there ever was a book that was the true word of God, "Cilantro sucks" would be chapter 1.
Agreed, and don't ever plant it in your garden, it bolts in a week and stinks to high heavens, 3 years later I still have cilantro coming up in my yard in early summer.
I like cilantro.
Heretic!
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul
I agree that the concept of God stems from people not having answers to those two questions that you cite. 100%. Fear of the unknown is absolutely the source of the belief in god. Intellectually, I get that, even though I don't have that fear. And I might even get that emotionally, if it weren't for what the concept of God became: Religion. If it weren't for religion, I would probably be a lot more easy going when it comes to people's thoughts on the concept of god. But because of religion, even the arguments for the existence of god (or the possible existence of god) by the non-religious ultimately feed religion, whether they want it to or not (yes, OnWis97, the distinction between the exploiters, exploitees, and neither is an important one). That is why I'll always stand up strongly against the concept as well as the organization and manipulation of that concept.
However opposed I am to the concept and its manifestations, though, it certainly is the most fascinating topic of discussion in the history of the world.
Actually that would have to go to the cilantro debate. Or maybe Hellman's vs Miracle Whip.
Sorry, there is no cilantro debate. It's terrible. If there ever was a book that was the true word of God, "Cilantro sucks" would be chapter 1.
Agreed, and don't ever plant it in your garden, it bolts in a week and stinks to high heavens, 3 years later I still have cilantro coming up in my yard in early summer.
I like cilantro.
I do, too, but I'm more interested in the little bouncing away guy.
my small self... like a book amongst the many on a shelf
Perhaps you are misunderstanding what I mean? I agree that god can mean MANY things... but it can't mean that it has no meaning, or no speck of some brand of intelligent design, or no hint of consciousness, or no spirit at all, or however you want to put it. And yes, it is defined by those rules. So I think that saying some people call scientific processes in of themselves "god" simply strips all meaning from the word god. "God", in whatever concept someone can come up with, has to have that quality of being some separate force outside of scientific processes, one way or another, however one's imagination can build it. Otherwise, you're simply not talking about god anymore. Erm, I would also say yeah, "god" has to at least have some kind of meaning. Without that there is just nothing. It would be a non-concept. I don't think me saying this is even close to rigid. It actually allows god to be basically anything other than nothing or something else altogether that already has a concrete explanation, lol. That seems to leave a LOT of room for what god could be. However, some people consider just about anything that hasn't yet been explained as possible evidence of God, which I also think is nuts.
I guess I just don't think it's reasonable for humans to believe they are able to put paramaters on something we have zero idea about. I'm guessing if there is anything like that in existence, it is wildly different from what we think it is. there's no way, in my opinion, that anything with that kind of power/ability is anything that humans would be able to conceptualize.
I've enjoyed your discussion hugh? and allison, and I'm going to have to take the lady's side here. God is a fairly well defined concept that can't just be ascribed to anything.
If you think that God is the universe or nature or love, or that God is the fact that there is a vague "higher power", you are just an atheist who is afraid to admit what you are lol
i'm not afraid to call myself an atheist. i always called myself that until i found out what agnostic was. while i don't believe in god, i'm open to the idea of it. that's all.
I'm not saying strip all meaning from it, nor did I say anything could be called god. it can mean higher power, or some type of energy, or the universe itself. whatever. I'm not saying you can call a spoon a god.
but a philosophical concept is fluid. a spoon is a spoon. a fork is a fork. those aren't concepts, those are facts. but a god can mean MANY things to many different people. many gods are passive, some are active. there has to be purpose or meaning? who says? I have never seen "god" as defined by those rules. it all seems a bit rigid to me.
God as a philosophical concept? Is that what god is? I figure god either exists or doesn't exist (he doesn't ). If it's just a philosophical concept, then god really couldn't exist, right? He'd then just be an idea, not an actual thing that has some kind of impact on the universe outside of how the idea affects human actions. Yes, people can have all kinds of crazy ideas about what god might be or could be or should be ... but if he (I keep calling god he FFS... it seems so ludicrous, lol. But i guess it's just become common sexist vernacular)... so sorry, if it existed, it wouldn't exist in the form that whatever random person imagined it to exist. If god existed, there would be one truth for what god is and isn't. It's very nice for everyone to think of god as a completely fluid concept, but isn't that the same as admitting that god doesn't exist at all? Or is it more reasonable to people that god exists in every random form someone can imagine than it is for god not to exist?? If so, doesn't that seem rather delusional? Or, at best, simply an admission that god only lives in the imagination?
Philosophy (from Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia, literally "love of wisdom") is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.
so yes, i'd call god a philosophical concept.
the concept of god being fluid is not the same at all as admitting it doesn't exist. it is admitting that no one knows the true meaning of whatever god is, or isn't. that's the fluidity. i would imagine most christians or jews or hindus would say it's not a fluid concept, because they learn one general concept of what god is. but to me, they don't 'know' what god is.
just don't tell them that. i have. it ain't pretty.
i don't think anything is delusional when it comes to existential or theological thought processes.
I've enjoyed your discussion hugh? and allison, and I'm going to have to take the lady's side here. God is a fairly well defined concept that can't just be ascribed to anything.
If you think that God is the universe or nature or love, or that God is the fact that there is a vague "higher power", you are just an atheist who is afraid to admit what you are lol
can someone point me in the direction of something that says god has to be this specific set of details that the two of you have mapped out?
Comments
Well, if I didn't know beforehand, I guess this is where we disagree.
The sleeper cells in Europe and the US have been inspired by faith. In this most recent incident, an English citizen just blew up his neighbours- his fellow countrymen- because of his religious beliefs (the only thing separating him from his soft targets). If the bomber had been from Afghanistan or Iraq and had navigated his way into the country to attack the parliamentary building... I'd be there with you.
ISIS typically takes the credit for these sensational events, but ISIS has nothing to do with many of them other than share a common ideology and vision.
I'm probably just making a comment on religious philosophy. Isis isn't Islamic, even if they claim they are. A parent who lets their kid die based on Christianity and thinking God will heal them also isn't Christian. Etc...
let me say this: take the worst, most violent and terrible portions of the bible, you know, the ones they don't preach about in church because they aren't to be taken literally, not now anyway, and create a faction, let's call it CHRISIS, and have them perpetrating these atrocities across the globe.
Do you not think that peaceful, loving, modern Christians would be telling you that what CHRISIS is, is not true Christianity? And you'd have Christian haters out there calling them Christian terrorists. It would be the same damn thing. Cue the "no christian would ever do that" response.
Bomb the fuck out of Christian nations for decades, killing thousands and thousands of innocent civilians and calling it collateral damage and we'll see about that.
That is just one of the things I don't get about some religious folks (not you... or mostly not you. I think agnosticism is almost as odd as straight up religion, in a way). It seems that many religious people feel that the existence of the universe is proof of God, because they think something with a purpose, apparently, had to have created the universe. Even if they are willing to acknowledge the big bang theory, they feel that God had to have initiated the big bang at the very least, because something can't appear out of nothing.... I just don't understand why they think God had to have at least initiated the universe, but don't seem to consider who initiated God. And if they think nobody had to - that God had no beginning and comes from infinite roots - then why wouldn't that same idea be just as easily applicable to the universe? Doesn't make any sense. I just don't understand why people humour the idea of God at all, considering that none of it makes any sense. There is no rhyme or reason behind the belief in the existence of God, or in agnosticism either, IMO. But anyway, it's not like I think I'm going to recruit any Atheists here, lol. I'm just saying!
How about no religion at all?
How about people figure out there is no omnipresent deity floating around somewhere, there is no afterlife, and learn to appreciate this life and how valuable it is for everyone getting an opportunity at it?
pjsoul said:
I personally don't think God or an an omnipresent deity or any higher power and the afterlife have anything to do with each other. I'm an Atheist, but I have no reason to completely discount some kind of afterlife simply because of the scientific fact that energy doesn't die. Given how little we know about consciousness, I am at least somewhat open to the idea that consciousness and energy could somehow be tied together, and we just don't know the science of it (yet). I very seriously doubt that there is an afterlife, but that is a completely separate topic from the existence of God for me, and not one that has anything to do with faith.
We decompose and make good soil for trees and stuff. We do not enter another dimension.
again, I don't believe in the christian god. I find that too implausible. not to mention fucked up. But I can't say for sure if there was some type of energy out there that did it all, whether it was by design or some crazy natural occurence, or we're all living in some fucking simulated video game.
as you said, of course it makes no sense. none of it does to our puny brains. a friend of mine in elementary school dared me to ask his mom how god got there. So I did. She said "he's always been there". I followed up with "but he must have arrived at some point", and she literally said the exact same thing again; "he's always been there". My friend was laughing. I felt like i was talking to a non-thinking robot, just spewing out the answer it was programmed to give.
that was literally the beginning of my journey away from organized religion.
I know we decompose, but I don't understand how anyone can confidently say that there is no afterlife, since the possibility, however remote, of there being a scientific explanation for it does technically exist, theoretically. I'm only willing to write off things that I think are literally ludicrous and based on absolutely nothing, like the existence of God. But I won't completely write off possibilities if there is even a tiny sliver of a scientific basis for them, and the fact that energy has been proven to be eternal is that sliver when it comes to an afterlife (until they prove that 100% of the energy in a living being goes to the process of decomposition, anyway, and that no energy whatsoever exits the body after death) .... But you're probably right. I would like proof of there being no afterlife though. I would happily accept such proof.
No, what I'm describing cannot be called being a god. At all. Because a god, in any manifestation, cannot be a completely unconscious force without any purpose or reason. Those are necessary descriptors for the idea. Anyone trying to say otherwise is just an Atheist who doesn't understand semantics. God is not another word for scientific/natural processes. God is also not just another way to say that you don't know something. The idea of god or a higher power of any kind MUST be something other than that. Without applying the idea of some sort of conscious force or some kind of organized purpose in some form, "god" is just a word without any meaning at all.
BTW, there is no god in Buddhism. I don't even consider Buddhism a religion because of this. It is a philosophy.
there are many gods in buddhism, just none that are considered the creator of all things. but I know you what were meaning.
This isn't about one person cornering the market on what constitutes the concept of god. But what you are basically saying is that literally ANYTHING can be called god. Well, that necessarily makes the word or concept of god completely meaningless. The concept of god DOES have to be based on something. The origins and history of the concept do indeed lend themselves to some definition, however loose. I must say, it frustrates me a bit that some people try to literally remove all meaning from the word/concept. That is the same as just taking any word and telling someone that it can mean whatever the hell you want it to mean. Sorry, no. That is not how language or concepts work.
but a philosophical concept is fluid. a spoon is a spoon. a fork is a fork. those aren't concepts, those are facts. but a god can mean MANY things to many different people. many gods are passive, some are active. there has to be purpose or meaning? who says? I have never seen "god" as defined by those rules. it all seems a bit rigid to me.
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2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston
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I don't hate it, but it's an herb and needs to be used in moderation, some treat it like a staple and it drowns everything out.
1998 Alpine, Alpine
2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston
2004 Boston, Boston
2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty)
2011 Alpine, Alpine
2013 Wrigley
2014 St. Paul
Perhaps you are misunderstanding what I mean? I agree that god can mean MANY things... but it can't mean that it has no meaning, or no speck of some brand of intelligent design, or no hint of consciousness, or no spirit at all, or however you want to put it. And yes, it is defined by those rules. So I think that saying some people call scientific processes in of themselves "god" simply strips all meaning from the word god. "God", in whatever concept someone can come up with, has to have that quality of being some separate force outside of scientific processes, one way or another, however one's imagination can build it. Otherwise, you're simply not talking about god anymore. Erm, I would also say yeah, "god" has to at least have some kind of meaning. Without that there is just nothing. It would be a non-concept. I don't think me saying this is even close to rigid. It actually allows god to be basically anything other than nothing or something else altogether that already has a concrete explanation, lol. That seems to leave a LOT of room for what god could be. However, some people consider just about anything that hasn't yet been explained as possible evidence of God, which I also think is nuts.
I've enjoyed your discussion hugh? and allison, and I'm going to have to take the lady's side here.
God is a fairly well defined concept that can't just be ascribed to anything.
If you think that God is the universe or nature or love, or that God is the fact that there is a vague "higher power", you are just an atheist who is afraid to admit what you are lol
so yes, i'd call god a philosophical concept.
the concept of god being fluid is not the same at all as admitting it doesn't exist. it is admitting that no one knows the true meaning of whatever god is, or isn't. that's the fluidity. i would imagine most christians or jews or hindus would say it's not a fluid concept, because they learn one general concept of what god is. but to me, they don't 'know' what god is.
just don't tell them that. i have. it ain't pretty.
i don't think anything is delusional when it comes to existential or theological thought processes.