This is a very good point. We know very well from from psychology research on eyewitness testimony that memories are not static, they change as our views change. Not only that, but memories and attitude can even shape how we perceive, which we know from research on implicit assumptions and stereotypes.

So our experience shapes our memory which shapes our perception which shapes our experience. Now that's profound.

So the concept of "experience" as a final arbiter of knowledge is dubious. It is certainly a source of knowledge, but to accept standards of evidence and testing seem equally important. Or in simpler terms, to let all the various steps (perception, memory, experience) challenge eachother.

I've read that memories are actually constructed on the spot which is why it's so easy for people to create false memories in situations that are a familiar context (like a dark night and a forbidding dangerous alleyway) and not in unfamiliar contexts (like I couldn't convince you that there was a purple elephant dancing in the middle of the floor in the kitchen last night while we were there).

Thanks Lucid for your post, appreciate that.

My wish is that I can engage in a rational and civil exchange with everyone here.

If you any folks here are not in any way happy with my writing here because it is not rational and/or civil, please let me know.



I have been repeating this concept of God as having been formulated by thinkers of mankind from since millennia ago back in man's thinking and writing.

Namely:

"God is the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning."

I really cannot comprehend how you can from the words above understand them to mean that everything then is God.

Please tell me how you get to understand the words, "God is the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning," to mean everything then is God?

It must be with some method of shall I say interpretation?

I have not read the posts coming after yours above, perhaps they might have the same understanding as yours, in which case I must find out what method of understanding words folks here use.

Forgive me, but if I were you and I possess English language comprehension (though I am not a native speaker of English), and this is a forum where people exchange ideas and explain why they think their ideas are correct and want to see whether folks here also see them to be correct, I would react with a yes, you are correct, or with a no, and explain why you are not correct.

But you right away go out of the words, namely: "God is the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning," to state that then everything is God.

To my thinking, you are going out of the words "God is the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning."

Suppose you do it this way:

First, you inform the author of those words whether you agree with that thought in those words;

and second, then offer additional thoughts confirming the thought in those words and further elaborating on them;

or third, if you don't accept the thought in those words, then you say so in so many words, and explain why;

and fourth, present words to tell the author what is the correct thought instead, or the 'truth' or the fact or the more correct opinion, etc.

Of course you don't have to follow my instructions above, because you have your own style of expressing your thinking, but it must be relevant -- that means that you keep to the topic of this thread, sticking to the original direction, which original direction is about:

1. The concept of God
2. The existence of God

and I add now explicitly what has always been in my mind, namely,

3. Explaining how from the concept of God man comes to the existence of God.

Thanks Masque for your post.



Suppose you have just 50 words to express what is wrong with my presentation of the concept of God as already formulated by thinkers from since millennia way back ago, namely:

"God is the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning."

Forgive me, I like to suggest to you that you think over what is for you the one most important comment you want to offer on the concept of God presented by me.

Thanks for your posts, even though I don't reply to everyone, nonetheless you are welcome to talk on what you like, even not to the development of the thread here



To Mightyboosh, on your reaction in Post #49:

You say the concept of God as "The creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning," is an assumption from me.

I say that is the concept formulated by thinkers from since millennia way back ago.

Suppose you just take it to mean their hypothesis, and then you also present your own self-thought out hypothesis of the concept of God which you hold to be better than theirs.

Okay?



To Well named on your thought in Post #48, I like for you to choose one of the items below:

1. The concept of God
2. The existence of God
3. Explanation how from the concept of God man comes to the existence of God.

My idea is to get us all to first work on the concept of God that is accepted by everyone to be the concept espoused by Christians, Muslims, and orthodox Jews.

What do you say, shouldn't we all first as is logical start with the example of the concept presented by yours truly as from thinkers millennia ago, namely:

God is the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning.

Or, what do you folks here think, you prefer to present your own self formulated concept of God?

Of course with atheists they don't accept the existence of God -- so just present what information you have of the concept of God you lack belief in, from among Christians, Muslims, and orthodox Jews.

The way you've defined God, there's no possibility there isn't one.

Wherever the universe came from and got its characteristics, that's God.

That calls for your critical thinking to examine and to report to this thread what you find out how the process is done, by which from the concept man like you come to the conclusion that God exists as creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning.

Now, I say repeatedly that the concept of God as the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning has been formulated by thinkers way way way back ago since millennia in the past to the present, do you accept that concept to be valid at all?

The concept of god is not something we are born with but something that a lot of people but not all develop through training. The need to believe in something or equivalently the tendency to self delusion is in general innate. Is that characteristic a side effect of human rationality or social nature of humans or (a side effect to) fear of dying as a result of our self-preservation instinct? Or is it a human characteristic in its own right perhaps complementary to rationality?

I'm sure many great scientists have been believers or even self-delusional. Didn't Darwin initially believe in his theory before being able to prove it? Didn't Gauss (probably) believe that he was the greatest mathematician (before proving that this was in fact true)? Whatever the role of "believing" is, there is no doubt that it is a very strong human need and also relatively easier to manipulate. And this has been the key strategy of religions: to take advantage of this human need and control people.

So the concept of god is a cross product of the innate human need to believe and the desire of elites to control the masses. It's not a coincidence that today modern states have more efficient ways to control which leads religion to decline to a degree that it will be probably extinct in the not so far future. However the human need to believe or self delude will still be there, ready to be taken advantage of.

Thanks for your posts, everyone here.


My idea is that there is a distinction between believing and knowing.

Now, in the concept of God as the creator and operator of the universe which concept I say to have been already since millennia formulated by the thinkers of mankind, it is not just a matter of believing, but that concept according to these thinkers in fact corresponds to an entity in the totality of existence Who is in fact the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning.




Do you have any serious idea of the distinction between believing and knowing, and any serious explanation why you say that God in concept as the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning is just a matter of believing?

The thinkers of mankind??? LOL. Thousands of years ago (tribal) "thinkers" without access to modern science and math (not even able to know how old earth was, not even able to be 1000x wrong ,try 500000x wrong, about how old it was ie 4.5 bil years vs 10k at best? ) are to be used as reference! Great job!


Answer the question please, what is operator of the universe?

Ok you can avoid defining further the creator thing (but not the operator) because you like all others can hide behind Big Bang and its origin or the nature of Physical law (the last castle left) and claim no access to its details yet - hence inability to describe God better- because you comfortably know that science cant deal with it for now and its a great hiding place, although you clearly know all those great past "thinkers" were talking about creation of the planet and the stars and the life on earth etc (not just the Big Bang) that has so far shown to be self created with natural processes (with mostly only abiogenesis the missing link). So ok we can skip defining God further after the simple basic generic creator claim. But i can ask what supports the existence of a creator though? Why cant a system evolve on its own. How have we ruled that out?

But what is operator of the universe?


So do you define God as the creator of the universe and the other thing (operator, define it or i cant use it). Are these the only properties?

Like is it similar to the creator of a simulation or a lab experiment that you put microbes in some interaction with drugs and you are the "God" of that system that put it together in that set up? Are you interfering with that system now changing its temperature or adding chemicals to it? Is this what God does to our Universe? Can you do that without being part of that universe or a greater system (the lab system for example not the Petri dish)? How? Remotely?



Look if you are honestly interested to put science and philosophy to it why dont you ask this instead;

Is the existence of a creator justified by any argument? Do all systems need a creator? If there is a creator who creates the creator? If the creator doesnt need a creator why cant the universe share the same property (to not need one) or why cant we claim that the creator is the universe itself? Besides if the answer is yes, can we derive any properties for such creator? Can any of these properties have any logical connection with what ancient religions claimed for thousands of years? Is any of these claims supported by anything logical and self consistent?

I have actually never seen that formulation before. Do you have any references to anyone in history ever making that formulation?

In any case, since it doesn't really matter who formulated it, can you for the sake of discussion stop repeating the "thinkers of mankind" rigmarole? I find it disingenuous.

It is not evident to me that I must propose or endorse a concept of God. A popular modern definition of "atheist" is someone who lacks a belief in any gods (with a minor caveat). That means an atheist has never heard a god concept they found sufficiently compelling to believe it is true.

On the other hand, I don't see any reason why a reasonable person can't start by observing and modeling the universe, and simply wait and see if any gods present themselves.

Try this: swap out the word "god" with something else. For example, flower. Would a person need to define what a flower is a priori in order to find/observe flowers in nature? I think not. I think after finding flowers, if you ever ran into someone else talking about them, you'd know what they were talking about, and you'd have common ground to discuss them.

I have lots of ideas of concepts of gods that are different from the one above. But why present them? I'm not aware of any persuasive evidence that any of them are anything more than concepts.

If you think there is convincing evidence for some concept of god existing, don't hold back, I'm sure we'd all love to hear it.

For the sake of starting this conversation, I give your proposed god concept two thumbs up. Let's discuss it!

So on the one hand you want to start with broad concepts and come to a consensus on a definition for god before we even start discussing whether it exists, but on the other hand you are already smuggling in some theology.

If you have reasons to believe that there is a God, and also that there are not gods, please present them.

Good philosophical discussions typically place the burden of proof on the party making positive claims. So stating that your concept of god is the best unless someone can prove you wrong is not a great starting point.

However, it is trivial to create something greater than your god concept.

The creator and operator of the universe and everything with or without a beginning.

Three seems redundant. If we have a conversation in which we agree on step 1 and work out step 2, won't we necessarily have established step 3 along the way?

I'm repeating myself, but if you are having a conversation with atheists, why do you expect them to have a god hypothesis that is "better" than some other one? Just strikes me as a strange request.

Are you claiming that Christians, Muslims, and orthodox Jews all believe in the same god?

Are you suggesting that the god they believe in is the one you have described over and over with the "operator" phrase?

Just want clarification.

The validity of that concept will really be borne out by what shape hole you try to hammer it through. For example, we (humanity, astrophysicists, etc.) do not know if the universe had a beginning. So if somewhere down the road you are going to claim that the universe did have a beginning, and that is evidence that your god exits, then you've got something that is not valid. Because we simply do not know if the universe had a beginning. We may never know.

My understanding is that neuroscience is showing us that believing and knowing are actually not distinct, but rather that they are merely different levels of certitude on the spectrum of "stuff we think is true."

I don't know if the verdict is in, but it seems there is at least good reason to question whether your idea is correct or not.

No access to modern science or math. Don't even know how old the earth is. Yet still, these "tribal thinkers" have written books that are still bestsellers, read and discussed widely, and still controversial, relevant and important.


When he says "operator," I think he means "operating system." If God is the creator of all that is, then everything exists within God's creative realm. Everything is God, in a way. Every atom and every action exists within God's creative sphere. You cannot get outside of God's creative territory.

I could be wrong. Maybe instead, he sees God as a grand orchestrator, actively and consciously dividing every cell.

And, as far as I know, stars don't exactly create themselves out of thin air.

If everything is God then nothing is God. If God is so undefined that he encompasses everything then you might as well refer to him as 'everything' instead of 'God'.

I've also observed in this thread that the theists are conflating atheism with the notion that - we are certain there is no God. That's not atheism. We don't deny the possibility of God's existence, but to us, it is just that....a possibility - an unlikely one at that: until evidence otherwise.

The same way that it is unlikely that there is an invisible and undetectable tea-pot orbiting the earth: until evidence otherwise (or a falsifiable theory at the least).

Some of us simply have different standards to the formation of our beliefs and we require more than just a few hundred pages from an outdated book that has lots of competition from other hypothesised Gods and their "holy" books. It doesn't make us right, it doesn't make the theists right either. Both groups are hedging on possibilities. We simply put our faith into evidence-based methodology, while the theists put their faith into "holy" books.

Perhaps it would be more efficient if you began with why you think the universe and everything with a beginning require a creator and operator and why this proposed entity, which you have labeled 'God', must be responsible for all four of those things. For instance, why would the creator of the universe, if there is such a thing, also necessarily be the operator of everything with a beginning?

Actually, the evidence suggests that stars form due to turbulence causing extremely thin clouds of gas and dust to form pockets dense enough to collapse under their own gravitational attraction.

So they...er... create themselves out of thin air.

I think that this is the end of our conversation then. I keep asking you why you start with god, asking you why you're making that assumption, and you keep responding 'because people have before me'. I've countered that with the point that many things that people thought before have been abandoned as superstitions and/or ignorance, such as the earth being flat, so you need a much better reason than that alone. 'People have thought it before, therefore it is true until you prove it false' is not a reasonable position to take.

You could, for example, tell me specifically what it is that people have thought in the past that you agree with. Then we'd have something to discuss. Failing that, this isn't really going anywhere.

My self-thought out hypothesis is that there are no gods as described by any of the religions that I'm aware of. Also comments like 'which you hold to be better than theirs' aren't going to do you any favours.

As I explained, you've defined God in a way that I must accept existence of the deity.

Now if you make the leap from "God is whatever defined and launched the universe" to "God is the heavenly patriarch who spoke to Abraham" then there's something to discuss.

Hes not saying its true or false. Hes simply asking if we can all agree on his definition of god, in order to move on to his next stage

Let's set aside (or do it in parallel) this issue of identifying the appropriate definition of God. We could probably quibble about that forever. Let's jump to what evidence or rational argument you have for the existence of God?

Most of the atheists on this forum will probably at some point contend that there is very little good evidence or compelling arguments, hence their atheism. The best way to move forward is to present your best evidence or argument, and we can evaluate it. If that argument or evidence subtly depends on the exact definition used, we can worry about that when we come to it.

Operator of the universe and everything with a beginning means an entity that is the hands-on agent running all the systems of all things and processes in the universe and everything else with a beginning.

But to be intelligent you have got to have a concept of whatever gods which might present themselves; otherwise you will not notice the presence of any gods, but specially the God creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning, even though you are facing them or one of them.

So, why not take the presentation from me that the thinkers of mankind from millennia back back back long ago have already come to the conclusion to the concept of God as the creator and operator of the universe.

Google "origin of the concept of God."



Read on say just the first 5000 hits and you will come to the conclusion that the thinkers of mankind from millennia ago have already formulated the concept of God as the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning.



Tell you what, why don't you search your mental database and see if you have any inkling at all of what is God, from all the reading and thinking and experiencing of life to date.

And tell readers here what you find, in your mental database.

You say:

"Now if you make the leap from "God is whatever defined and launched the universe" to "God is the heavenly patriarch who spoke to Abraham" then there's something to discuss."

Let's just finish first with God in concept the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning.

When you have accepted that concept, then you can go further to find out what other features have been added to that concept by the thinkers of mankind from millennia way way back ago.


Anyway, if you already accept the concept of God as the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning, you can proceed to exchange thoughts with the thinkers of the Christian faith, the Islamic faith, and also the faith of orthodox Jews what other annexed features they know to be for themselves, between them they hold millennia of thinking on the concept of God in addition to the features of creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning.

My objective in this thread is to find out whether I can talk with atheists rationally and civilly on the concept of God (here I go again) as creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning.

Thanks everyone for your posts.


As all of us are using the English language, may I just propose this exercise to you who are not happy with my repetition of the concept of God as the creator and operator of the universe and everything with a beginning, the following thought experiment.

Let us say that you are applying for a job or membership in an establishment where you must have fluency in English and also knowledgeable of the everyday vocabulary of English, and you have to pass an essay test where among the items, you are required to write some definition on each of a list of say just 10 words, limiting yourselves to write only no more than 20 words to define each word, and one of these words in God.

So, if you do have at all some ideas about the concept of God in English, do the exercise on God, and put it in your next post here.


This exercise will enable us to do a comparison on your concepts of God and the concept of God from my presentation as formulated by thinkers...

I'm not sure what you mean by accept. Do I believe in the existence of that god, or do I accept that it is one concept of god?
And I want to find out if you understand and consider the responses or are just waiting to read a script.