The definition of GOD

Dear Chiroptera,

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He's setting up for a Transcendental Argument for God.

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Well that depends on what you mean by "Transcendental"1. transcendent, surpassing, or superior.
2. being beyond ordinary or common experience, thought, or belief; supernatural.
3. abstract or metaphysical.
4. idealistic, lofty, or extravagant.
5. Philosophy. a. beyond the contingent and accidental in human experience, but not beyond all human knowledge. b. pertaining to certain theories, etc., explaining what is objective as the contribution of the mind.
c. Kantianism. of, pertaining to, based upon, or concerned with a priori elements in experience, which condition human knowledge.I'm going to try for the first one. Maybe I could throw in a few of the others too.

Dear reiverix,

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But you are looking for a definition of god, as defined by humans. We might as well be defining thin air.

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All other words are defined by Humans, why can't the word God be? And thin air HAS been defined.

Dear PurpleYouko,I think I have made a mistake in explaining my definitions, As omnipotent and Omniscient are simular like words I accidently used one when I meant the other. Is it possible to avoid doing this in the future to just say ALL KNOWING and ALL POWERFUL;ALL KNOWING = Omniscient = Always knowing everything, past present future with absolute infalibility. i.e. can NEVER be wrong about even the minutest detail.
ALL POWERFUL = omnipotent = Having unlimited power(energy/force) to be able to do anything.I don't know whether that actually changes much, but I thought it best to correct my error.I think I can show that my definition of GOD can be both ALL KNOWING and ALL POWERFUL, if these definitions are acceptable. You may turn out to be right when you say omnipotence is more important, in terms of the overall scheme of things. But at the moment I am assuming that each quality is equal to all the other qualities, unless it can be shown otherwise.

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Knowledge of the future is usually included in the definition and this is where my issue begins.
Knowing the future and then being able to change the future negate each other.
If you can change it then it is potentially fluid and therefore not knowable.
If it is knowable then it is set in stone and therefore not changeable.

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OK, this depends a whole lot on the nature of time itself. I will try to show how time can be both fluid and knowable. I will of course try and stay consistent with my definition of GOD.Imagine that GOD wanted you to go from point A to point B. He creates for you a possibility space, in this case a road map (actually only GOD would see the road map because you would be inside the map itself). Now as far as GOD is concerned point B is all that matters, to GOD it is inevitable you will get to point B as all roads lead to it. How you get from A to B is upto you.Now I'm just going to explain a few things, why I can say all this. We know that there are an infinite number of possibilites, but we can also understand how different possibilites can still end up at the same point, for example there are many different ways to travel to work, but your always going to work. Remember also that a possibility does not exist as reality yet, so it is NOT a part of time. So as you go on your journey from A to B you are actually bringing into existence possibilities out of the ones that GOD has already thought of. Notice that this concept is not the same as FATE, as it still leaves room for freedom of choice.The way all this works is that GOD ultimately determines what possibilities can or cannot come into existence, for example lets go back to the A to B scenario. You have decided to take a car to get to point B (I should say that it is possible that you won't need to know where point B is, only GOD really needs to know), but GOD decides for whatever reason that you shouldn't use the car anymore. So GOD simply stops any possibilility from coming into existence that has anything to do with the car, and maybe brings into existence something that GOD would normally deny existence to, basically your car breaks down forcing you to walk. Notice, to you on the ground it might appear that GOD has changed its mind, therefore you could argue the things you have in your quote, however nothing in TIME was changed and nothing in REALITY was changed. However ALL possibilities are still accounted for in GODS Infinite mind.So my GOD knows the future, and can change it without being wrong.OK before we move on did that make any sense to you?

Dear Stile,

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I like banana's, they're yummy......

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Sorry to shorten your quote but I understand your point, However I don't think you understand mine yet. I am NOT proving the existence of anything yet. I am just establishing whether my definition IF it DID exist would be considered THE GOD.

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I gave you a definition of GOD, with no theological ideas,

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"GOD = THE BEING EVERYONE THINKS IS AN ULTIMATE BEING", unfortunatly the word "thinks" is the same as believes, therefore it could be argued as a theoloigical definition. Also just because everyone thinks its the ultimate being, does not necessarily mean it IS the ultimate being. Therefore your definition of GOD is inadequate.

Dear Chiroptera,

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Actually, I asked for ways to falsify the existence of the god defined by you. That is, I was asking for how we can falsify the existence of the god you defined by empirical means. What observations can we make in the real world will help in determining whether your god exists? In particular, even if we can establish the existence of a very powerful being, how do we know it is omnipotent? How do we know that there isn't something even more powerful, but it is only this not-so-powerful being who chooses to interact with the world?

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Well as I am not arguing the existence of my definition of GOD yet, I have given no evidence to be falsified. All I am concerned with at the moment is whether the definition itself can be falsified, and whether my definition would be GOD if my definition DID exist. There is no need to jump the gun, we should only deal with one thing at a time.

Did I call it or what?

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Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter;
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters:
A choice of cancer or polio. -- The Rolling Stones

Awwww, did I offend you?My "clever insults," as you put them, are meant to illustrate the silliness of claiming your definition of "god" has any more or less merit than any other definition anyone cares to come up with, no matter how ludicrous. Infinity != 100%, genius.In fact, Infinity + 1 actually does add up to something.Infinity + 1 = infinity. If you say that a car is a car because it is a car, then yes - that would be circular logic. The reason would be what's invalid. No. But you can't prove that a car is a car by saying it's a car - you need to examine the object's characteristics (presence of wheels, internal combustion engine, etc) and see if it is a car. Circular reasoning is logically invalid even if it arrives at the correct conclusion by accident. Well, why wait - by all means, oh wise one, show us this proof you think you've discovered.

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When you know you're going to wake up in three days, dying is not a sacrifice. It's a painful inconvenience.

So you want to know whether your definition of God is consistent with common usage by monotheists? It is certainly not universally understood to mean those things, but yes, it seems consistent with the way it is used by most monotheists. American Heritage Dictionary gives us two principle definitions:

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A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions.

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Which seems to be similar to yours, and:

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A being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in and worshiped by a people, especially a male deity thought to control some part of nature or reality.

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which isn't entirely consistent with yours. God doesn't represent the ultimate possible being. This is different from your definitions of a being which is a 'creator of the universe', 'ruler of same', 'supreme intelligence', etc. God, in your original idea, represents a being which is the most ultimate being imaginable by humans.The ultimate possible being could be human beings for certain understandings of 'ultimate'. If it means the original being, then it could be the exceptionally hot and dense state of the early moments of the universe. Which is not supreme intelligence.There is a big gap between 'imaginable' and 'possible', though I appreciate some people can have difficulties with this one. It does sound like you are going to move onto Anselm's proofs but I hope I'm wrong. If you wanted a thread that argued this position, for example:

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God is the entity, which nothing greater can be conceived.
It is greater to be necessary than not.
God must be necessary.
God necessarily exists.

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It would probably have been easier to have started there. Either way, I'd be interested in seeing where you are going with this. You've kept us in suspense about where you want to go with this definition for too long: release the suspense, reveal what lies under the covers.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

You wanted a definition of god and I gave you one. You didn't like it so you dismiss it. My definition is just as valid as yours but it doesn't look biblical, which is really your problem.

Hi ROTU That is pretty much the same definition that I used earlier I think. But does your God know which route I will take?
Does he know which possible future i will follow between point A and B?
Does he know every thought process that will occur to me during my journey, every car that will hinder my progress and every school bus that will pull out in front of me on the actual route that I will take?
that would be Omniscience (All knowing)
What you seem to be describing seems more like an application of Omnipotence (All Powerful) to make sure that I take one of those possible routes to reach point B.Again, I have no problem with your God working that way. I just don't believe that the God you are defining is truly All Knowing otherwise there could only ever be ONE road that he knows I will take. He would know every twist and turn of it, every pothole and twig that I would drive through, The exact speed at every point, even the total number of revolutions my engine would go through during the trip.It is a little like the example I gave a few posts back. I don't know if it slipped past you. here it is again. A simple thought exercise.God knows that 2 + 2 = 4 and that it always will be the same in all possible universes (All knowing and so on)
God changes the universe so that 2 + 2 = 73 in all possible universes(all powerful and so on)
it is Logically impossible (with our logic) that both of these statements are simultaneously true.of course it may still be that both statements ARE true and that God IS both all knowing and all powerful but the point is that if that is the case then he is beyond our logic so any logical definition is impossible.
Do you see my point? Yes your post made a lot of sense.
I don't have an issue with your definition. Although it still does seem to me that the God you are defining (through examples) is NOT all knowing in the sense that I am describing and that our agreed upon definition describes.My only real problem is that a God that fully meets the definitions, falls outside of Human logic so it becomes somewhat tricky to prove it.

Okay, let's try to move this along.I agree that your definition of THE GOD is the bestest uber God we can imagine. If that's your point, I don't think anyone has any objections.What's your next step?

Unlike the others, I am not going to just accept your definition of god so you can move on to the rest of your argument. It is clear that you are going to propose a variation on the Ontological Argument (thanks for correctly identifying this, Modulus -- I tend to inaccurately refer to all word salad arguments for god as TAG) -- but in order to pull this off, you are going to have to be far more careful in how you define god.In fact, as we continue to argue about this, it will become clear (well, not to you, but to our rational readers) how this argument relies, on other things, on ill-defined terms.Another weakness of the approach that you are trying to take is that we have known for several centuries that logic does not lead to knowledge about the world in which we live. That requires testing theoretical concepts with empirical observation, something that the logicians of the Medievel times (and even a few in our current time) did not recognize.But no matter. Now that I see that your argument is going to be a purely logical exercise (and being familiar enough with Anselm and Descarte's line of thought here), I will allow to start with your definition of god.So I propose that we start over again. Go ahead and propose your definition of god. However, be warned; I will object to any terms that don't seem to make any sense, or are not clearly defined themselves. I doubt that the argument you are going to use is going to work -- if it is what I'm thinking, then it has been tried before and failed -- but it certainly isn't even going to get off the ground unless you can be very clear and precise in your initial definition of god.So: restate, as well as you can, the definition of god, and we'll proceed from there.Edited by Chiroptera, : Added subtitle.

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Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter;
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters:
A choice of cancer or polio. -- The Rolling Stones

Hi rulerofthisuniverse, Why are you making this God a thing? I think my God is just as adequate as your god.Sorry you don't like my definition of God.You must declare this if not your god is not the ultimate godHave fun,.

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

. and in Message 123 we have So the all-powerful being is not all-powerful after all. It cannot create more than 100% of anything. It cannot, presumably, create anything that is more powerful than itself, therefore it has only the power to do some things, not anything or everything.

Dear Modulous,

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So you want to know whether your definition of God is consistent with common usage by monotheists?

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No not really, my definition has no bearing on any religious belief about what God is. My definition uses the singular word "being" or "thing", because logically and mathematically it would be impossible to have more than ONE being with complete control over everything. They would cancel each other out, which would mean they are not all powerful and so on.

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God doesn't represent the ultimate possible being. This is different from your definitions of a being which is a 'creator of the universe', 'ruler of same', 'supreme intelligence', etc. God, in your original idea, represents a being which is the most ultimate being imaginable by humans.

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No GOD in my definition does not mean the most ultimate being imaginable by humans at all. It simply means what it says, "the ultimate POSSIBLE being". Think about it, BEFORE humans existed on this planet, was there a POSSIBILITY of them existing? Possibilities do not require(or are not limited to) human imagination.

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The ultimate possible being could be human beings for certain understandings of 'ultimate'. If it means the original being, then it could be the exceptionally hot and dense state of the early moments of the universe. Which is not supreme intelligence.

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Yes you could possibly have an ultimate human, but that is not what my definition is defining. Also my definition does not describe any sort of orginal being in the way you say, as my definition describes something that can control all things that come into existence FROM a state of possibility TO existence. So technically my God comes BEFORE anything that ACTUALLY exists.

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There is a big gap between 'imaginable' and 'possible', though I appreciate some people can have difficulties with this one.

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Yes there is, and this is what is confusing some people, they think I'm talking about imaginable, but I am NOT.

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It does sound like you are going to move onto Anselm's proofs but I hope I'm wrong. If you wanted a thread that argued this position, for example:

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Don't worry I am not. I said near the start of all this that I am doing something that is totally new. So I understand why what I am doing is hard to understand at the moment, and it is amusing to see people presupposing me. I also understand that everybody on this forum has being arguing back and forth all the usual arguments, so that is why I having being going very slowly and not giving much away yet so people can get the usual "spaggetti flying monster" stuff out of the way, and see how none of the usual arguments actually applies to what I am bringing to the table.