If you are specifically referring to an afterlife, there is nothing about atheism that denies belief in an afterlife. Nor is there anything about theism that mandates belief in an afterlife.

I enjoy things. I want to continue being around the people I care about. I am interested in/curious about things.

I get to put bacon in my mouth and have the opportunity for sex, as Louis C.K. so succinctly put it.

Thanks everyone for your posts.

The title of the thread is "I like to talk with atheists philosophically."

So, what I mean is that we will talk on the concept of God and the existence of God, because atheists say there are no God, gods, goddesses, deities, divinities; and I am of the opposite persuasion.

And also I am of the submission that philosophy and science and math can lead us to the certainty that God exists.

Do you notice that I am not into the whole series of God, gods, goddesses, deities, divinities, but just into God, with a capital G.

Here is what I seek to achieve in this thread, and I already spelt that out in Post #6


Forgive me, at this point, allow me to direct your attention to two items which are the substance of this thread:

1. The concept of God
2. The evidence for God's existence

So, let us all focus on those two items.


To Mightyboosh, I have a reply for you in the following post.

And thanks for your welcome, need that.

I say that the concept of God as the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning has been already formulated by thinkers way back millennia ago.

I will show you why I say that.

Please read my posts tomorrow, I have to put my thoughts together, and right now I have got to do some home chores.

Thanks for your presence here, I hope we can talk together continually.

So you're only giving this idea credibility because people have in the past? I can easily think of many ideas that people had in the past that we consider ignorant and uninformed now, almost laughable, so why is your god concept any different to those ideas? Why are you not arguing that the earth is flat?

Perhaps you can address that when you reply.

Im not even sure what this means.


How does "extra" experience suddenly make our life worth something? worth something to who? Worth in what way?


It seems to me a true theist would commit suicide because life takes effort, it takes a lot of effort at that and there is a lot of suffering involved along the way, emotional and physical. Why is any of it worth it to a true theist to have an ultimately meaningless experience, when they know that this life is an infinitesimal meaningless part compared to the infinity that awaits them after death?

theism does not necessarily entail the belief that this life is meaningless and "life after death" is everything.

I know. Neither does atheism mean wot he said.

Sigh. Not all theists have an afterlife and not all atheists discount one.


Also why do so many theists seem to have hate for the universe/the material world that God created for them. Seems very unappreciative and as though you worship an afterlife over God as the ultimate meaning.

neeeeel: sorry I was skimming too much and missed the context of your comment. Reading comprehension is hard :P

no problem, looks like I forgot to quote the part that I was parodying anyway, so its understandable that you misread.

OK....well I am simply talking about a continued awareness of existence after "death of the body" My question would apply to any atheist or theist who didn't believe in the continuity of awareness of existence beyond that of the physical body/physical brain.

This however is a great question. Why do we continue the raping and pillaging of our own planet for our own material wealth and domination over every other species on the planet including some of our own species? How are we at such disharmony with the planet that gave us life?

I see great meaning in this existence as part of a whole overall experience within infinity.

What I am talking about is the discontinuity of existence after death. What is the point of this experience we call a life...10, 25, 50, 80 years....however long a life lasts for someone, that entire experience. What is it worth to an experiencer of this life who truly believes in no continuity of awareness of any existence for themselves beyond the physical world and physical death?

There is no experiencer of this life.

I notice you didnt answer my other questions?

You say:

Here is the concept of God formulated by thinkers from way back millennia ago:

The creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning.

Why is this God different from other Gods, gods, goddesses, deities, divinities?

All others are not as great as the God creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning.

If you don't accept that, then I invite you to present to me what God, Gods, gods, goddesses, deities, divinities you know about which are greater than the God creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning.

I agree with that in an abstract sense, however there is an awareness of existence within all of us that for arguments sake, can't leave the body while you are alive and has an experience that we call life.


How does "extra" experience suddenly make our life worth something? worth something to who? Worth in what way?

IMO, extra experience or continued awareness of this experience gives some ultimate purpose to this life. There is something to be learned and gained because the experience is not lost.

On the contrary if I have this life experience, then die and my awareness of existence stops..."everything goes dark" and there is nothing anymore, I fail to see the value overall in that experience. Sure, it may have been immense fun and joy while it lasted but afterwards if we go back to non-existence, it seems ultimately meaningless to me.

Thanks everyone for your posts.

Please keep to the topic of the thread which is about the concept of God and the existence of God.



Okay, guys here, thanks a lot for your posts, please however attend to the substance of this thread:

1. The concept of God
2. The evidence for God's existence

And I look forward to our enjoyment and camaraderie in this exercise of thinking philosophically, scientifically, and mathematically on the concept and existence of God.

I should have entitled this thread thus: "God, from concept to existence, by philosophy, science, and math."

Anyway, you get the thrust of my thinking, please react to it, okay?

It seems everyone is staying on course based on your original concept of God.


According to this concept....all idea, concepts, and matter is God so we could literally discuss World Series baseball and we would be talking about God.

I'm not trying to derail your thread into something like that, just pointing out that it doesn't seem to me that your thread is getting very far off track even in a relative sense to the concept you proposed.

Also not everyone will agree with your concept so inevitably this thread has the potential to go a lot of places with such an open concept...I don't think God can be contemplated in a more narrow sense tho so it's just the nature of the beast in such a discussion.

Thanks Lucid for your post.

Please give notice to the line in your post I put in bold, and think whether you are or are not going beyond what you should understand from my concept of god as:

The creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning.

Here is what I see very clearly that you are reading more than what you see in my words on the concept of god.

Concept of God presented:

The creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning.

Illegitimate excess reading of Lucid:

According to this concept....all idea, concepts, and matter is God.

Do you see that you have illegitimately read more than what the words of the concept of God are conveying?

That is not the way to do philosophy, science, and math.



I am very disappointed with you.

So you're saying ideas, concepts, and matter existed before God and then they were adopted into the reality which was created or that they are of God's creation but completely separate from God in some way?

I guess I don't follow your concept as well as I had thought. Or possibly I slightly disagree with your concept a bit more than I had originally thought.

Can you elaborate more please?

Alright, as long as the theists who dont believe in one have to kill themslefs too.

Again what is operator of the universe? What does this even mean? Is God operating your brain? Is God operating a wavefunction collapse in some measurement of a particle's spin? Is God interfering with the laws of nature or delivering all interactions?

The only thing here that makes sense is to imagine the universe itself as God because only the universe is responsible for itself and its development and pretty much for its entire history after Big Bang.

So who is this God exactly? Is God part of the universe? Is God someone external to our spacetime that starts the universe and then its on its own (take that to mean the "guy" that puts together the structure of natural law and the initial conditions). In what way is God a creator and operator?

The other funny thing about the typical notion of anthropocentric God of most religions is that "He" has to prexist and somehow a bunch of pretty much random effects in our solar system create a being like H. Sapiens that looks like Him with weaknesses and limitations. But guess what in the next 1000 years we will create superior beings to humans in many regards with more wisdom, skills, power and virtue etc. So the process is not ending and the concept of God must be following that process changing the properties of ancient God to fit the new ideal reality. It seems to me God is some idea of the most optimistic future of a life form that becomes wiser and wiser and more capable of delivering complicated tasks and showing wisdom etc. One is forced therefore to try to imagine God as something not related to humans (who are only one part of an ongoing process of creation of higher and higher complexity systems), something more general, universal, potential an asymptotic process of progress realization, much like a goal we have set for ourselves or higher complexity in general (pretty much a very advanced future civilization will be capable to do things that ancients would recognize as magical, miraculous etc).

When you say God you have to define the term otherwise we are not talking about anything really. Once however you define God as most religions do (they most definitely do not stop at creator of the universe) you start having a ton of problems... So start the definition in some solid terms and then lets discuss if such definition is possible to make sense.


Right now the only thing that makes some limited sense to me is to imagine that our universe exists because of some external event that gave it its properties (assuming its not self consistency that fixes them and you have no choice). The notion of God most ancient societies have created could fit the notion of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization that interfered and even assisted in the creation of life on earth (eg abiogenesis) or even the entire universe (like a programmer does with a simulation). The ideas of all major religions of a God that judges people and sends them to hell or paradise after death is extremely simplistic and not well defined (good and evil are hard to define at times without a proper system of values in place and even then you run into very ambiguous situations quickly, plus how do you design that system of values?).

Science has no way to eliminate yet the possibility that life on earth was created with the assistance of an external intelligent agent. This is because we have not delivered yet a process of abiogenesis that can be tested (replicated etc) and so we cannot quantify well how plausible what happened on earth is usually across the universe (ie to see how special we are). So it is still possible that something special here is the result of an external agent but so far pretty much most of the development of the universe and of life on earth is understood and fits models well and require no such external agent. Nature itself is the architect of all complexity seen, ie natural phenomena and time that enables processes with significant probability to be realized eventually which lead to more and more elaborate structure, with a few unanswered questions of course but which tend to get more and more restricted and refined ie we pretty much understand most of evolution of life past a few points and the history of the universe since eg baryogenesis. I am confident Biology will have abiogenesis understood this century. Then God will have to be restricted to the possibility of an external agent (who doesnt create life on earth for example or even the solar system/galaxy etc) who creates natural law or sets the initial conditions of our universe. (If its not self consistency itself that does it).

It is of course possible that a correct megaverse theory can be developed that still doesnt even need that kind of God (ie God who assists in the initial conditions of our universe or the creation of natural law used to then evolve it to present form) and will push the concept even further in the corner of possibilities or even eliminate it as possibility . That last thing can be done for example if one can produce a physics theory that explains everything and even its own laws structure. We do not have such thing yet and may never (open question if its doable) so this is why the notion of God is not eliminated yet, even if it is constantly restricted away from what ancients imagined it to be, so the retreat in process witnessed across all religions is philosophically left only with symbolic terms of its definition ie not creator of earth or life but the Big Bang etc, much like a failing theory that tries to survive somehow by redefining the game. This is why i cant dare call myself atheist by the way. It would be a similar logical crime to claiming God exists defacto without any evidence. Clearly atheists do not have a proof that a concept of God is completely impossible in the absence of a much better theory about the universe (eg Physics or even abiogenesis)

My point is that the notion of God as most religions imagined it that you want to use here is continuously being restricted and refined as if in a retreating manner. This is why i asked you to define the term a better way that can survive scrutiny. And this is why to me it seems like a man-made concept not something of which we have evidence yet. I did however offer for you a possibility for the term to still have some meaning.

But you really need to use your own definitions clearly in order to go somewhere. Just calling it creator and operator tells me nothing. Obviously you have no such evidence to make such statement and you havent even defined yet what operator of the universe is.

I'm sure there are lots of ways to criticize step 1 in OPs two part plan and I'm fairly sure I disagree with his approach

But I'm also imagining a presentation of the evidence he has in mind to support the "concept" as stated would be more interesting than nailing down definitions.

So I vote for that

You didn't answer my question and you're making an assumption here, that there are actually any gods. So I'm back to asking you why'd you make that assumption.

I said:

Can you address that?

This is assuming that 1) the awareness is within a body and 2) that awareness is the experiencer.

Awareness is not the experiencer. there is not an experience "over there" and an awareness of the experience "over here"



What do you mean, experience is not lost? It already IS lost, in the moment that the experience happened, it is gone, forever. There may be memories of the experience, but they are not the experience, and are , in themselves, just experiences in the present moment.

Value to whom? meaningless to whom? value in what way?