•  m_f   ( @m_f@midwest.social ) 
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      228 months ago

      The argument I’ve heard is “It must stop somewhere, and whatever it stops at, we’ll call that god”. It’s not a good argument, because it then hopes that you conflate the Judeo-Christian deity with that label and make a whole bunch of assumptions.

      It’s often paired with woo that falls down to simply asking “Why?”, such as “Nothing could possibly be simpler than my deity”

      • Agreed, the big issue with their argument here is that “god” implies sentience, which isn’t something we have any reason to assume exists for whatever’s at the “stop somewhere” point. If energy was the starting point for example, I doubt these people would be down with calling heat a god

        • On the contrary, I’d argue energy mostly meets many of the philosophical criteria for God.
          Omnipotence: It literally is what drives stuff to happen.
          Omnipresence: It is present to some degree in all things everywhere for all time, though you could argue about vacuum.
          Omniscience: See omnipresence, although having knowledge implies some level of consciousness, which is pretty debatable. My psychedelic phase tells me that it’s totally a thing, but I’ll be the first to admit that’s not a rational argument.
          Omnibenevolence: I don’t understand why God needs to be good.

          • I mean your argument stumbles at the exact point of my original comment. We have no reason to think it has any form of consciousness, and therefore no reason to believe it’s omniscient. On top of that, even if it was conscious, arguing it’s omniscient because it’s omnipresent assumes that it isn’t a collection of distinct consciousnesses and is instead one giant being, which we also have no reason to believe one possibility over the other.

      •  Knusper   ( @Knusper@feddit.de ) 
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        28 months ago

        It’s also a bad argument, because the concept of things being ‘created’ is an entirely human one. It’s us who decided that if a pile of pre-existing atoms are moved into the shape of a chair, we’ll say that chair was ‘created’.

        Aside from this conceptual creation, nothing is ever created in the universe, as far as we know. Atoms don’t ever just pop into existence out of thin air.

        I have heard the argument that the universe was just as well ‘created’ in the conceptual sense, so everything existed beforehand, it was just moved into a shape that we recognize as ‘universe’ today.
        But that would still mean there’s no argument for a creator and of course, this is simply not what most people mean when they talk about the creation of the universe.

  •  Johanno   ( @Johanno@feddit.de ) 
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    48 months ago

    The question should be shifted.

    If there is a god, does it matter?

    Ok so now let’s assume a god like sentient creature formed our universe. Maybe they even intentionally created us.

    We have no indication that they even once interacted with us in over 2000 or rather several million years.

    Let’s go further and assume the god like creature is indeed the Christian God.

    We have an immortal, allknowing and allmighty God who doesn’t care about innocent dying, suffering and other cruelties. So if the Christian God exists he is an asshole!

  •  dope   ( @dope@lemm.ee ) 
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    8 months ago

    Via a difficult method you observe something strange.

    For conversation’s sake you call what you observed, “gob”.

    Overhearing the conversation, people, who never practiced the method (because it is difficult), discuss “gob”.

    In time the method is forgotten. But the discussion continues.

    That baseless, insubstantial discussion.