The definition of GOD

Correct. And I've decided that what is real is independent of what I decide is real. That is, I think reality exists on it's own, and I don't have any input as to its existence. I could be wrong, but every time I stub my toe on anything I don't believe exists, reality certainly shows it doesn't care what I think. Therefore, in order to see what does exist, I need some observations from reality.I am not unique in the acceptance of this decision. Many others before me have made the very same assumption. They've brought us computers, airplanes, science itself, and even the locomotive I was previously talking about.We could all be wrong, but there is no denying that it has been a very productive assumption. Perhaps even the most productive assumption in all of human history. It may not help with describing the limits of our imagination. But it doesn't attempt to. It only attempts to decribe the limits of our reality. And it does a magnificent job at that, quite likely the best job ever proposed by humans.But yes, it certainly could be wrong. You're free to stand in front of a locomtive, if you'd like. I'll stick with the assumption that the reality of the locomotive has no bearing on my imagination of it's reality. You're also free to be afraid of locomotives we have no way to identify, if you'd like. But I'll stick with the assumption that the locomotive can't exist unless it can be observed in reality.You have a point that we could be unaware of something's existence. And this is true. But if we start acting on the imagination of something, simply because "we may be unaware of it's existence", then the actions we must start taking will overwhelm our lives. That is, in order to stay consistent, we must then start acting on every single imaginable thing at all that "we may be unaware of it's existence". And that's a lot of things.To ignore the fact that "we may be unaware of it's existence" is exactly the same as "it doesn't exist", is simply dishonest and extremely inconsistent to the point of being hypocritical. That doesn't mean it's factually true, it simply means we need to understand the connection. We simply need to understand that we're incapable of knowing (currently). That is, we only "need" to understand the connection if honesty and integrity and consistency are important to us.

God: The Definition
God is the great void of nothingness that causes humans to imagine supernatural entities to help them deal with that great void of nothingness.As a definition, the above does not need anything other than some frightened humans, a great deal of pain, suffering and death, and a desire by the humans to escape that pain, suffering and death.It’s that simple.P.S. I’ve now read your thesis in its entirety and I think you’ll find it’s one of these things you’ll look back on in a few years and cringe about. Sorry to be so patronising, but we’ve all been there and you’ll learn that life is not what goes on inside your head when you’ve spent too much time on your own, it’s about a whole lot of other things that you have still to learn about.Enjoy the rest of the debate . and good luck, which you’ll need if some of the sharks around here get the scent of your thesis in their nostrils.Edited by dogrelata, : Duh! Grammar again.

Dear bluescat48,

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Your logic is flawed in that the probability that it lands tails (YES-GOD) is the same. each throw has 50-50 chance of landing heads or tails. each throw is the same, where the change occurs is in that the probability that either happens on successive throws is still 1 in 2 but for the same (heads or tails) each time is n where n = number of throws.

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Well it can't be flawed, as you just did the same calculation. But my point was showing how given only 2 possibilities, like heads or tails, or even existence or non-existence, can never always land on the same side indefinitely. Infact we are living proof of that fact, we once were non-existant, but now we do exist, the coin of existence flipped in our favour as is were.

Dear Modulous,Your logic is incredibly erratic sometimes,

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we can only conclude that God may or may not exist.

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contradicts what you said just a short sentence before,

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Whether or not there is a possibility of God existing or not is unknown,

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there is no way of knowing what the probability is that the possibility exists

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Yes there is, it is one chance in two as I explained in my thesis. Either God exists or God doesn't exist, simple.

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You have shown that an infinite number of abstract entities can exist in principle

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which answers your first sentence,

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There is no reason to believe that there are an infinite amount possibility spaces or possibilities.

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Let me ask you a question, why can't there be an infinite number of possibilities? I have shown how there are an infinite number of possibilities, can your show how possibility is not infinite?

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A possibility cannot affect other possibility spaces, unless it actually exists. Just because in some possibility spaces there exists a God, does not actually mean that God actually exists and can do anything. The possibility of God is inert and has no power to influence possibility. Thus you have shown that there exists a possibility that in certain possibility spaces a being that has complete power over possibility is a possibility, and thus you have shown that God may or may not exist. Once again, we already knew this.

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Actually I have shown that GOD, Possibility, and Existence are irreducibly dependent, which solves all the problems in this paragraph.

Dear Chiroptera,

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I know what the words mean. I'm just pointing out that these are all subjective qualities, that is, what constitutes "best", "greatest", and so forth is going to depend on the person using the words.

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But this is EXACTLY what I am tring to get you to understand, it doesn't matter what ANYONE THINKS "ultimate" means, its what IS the ultimate. For example who survives in the survival of the fittest, the fittest. Who will be more powerful in the stuggle for power, the most powerful. That is not to say God stuggles, but is an example of how you need understand the concept of ultimate. It does not depend on human thinking.

Dear Chiroptera,

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Now that you've presented your "theory", how do we test it? What experiments or observations can we make in the real world to determine that this god actually exists?

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Well first of all my conclusion was that GOD, possibility and existence are irreducibly dependent. You could falsify the theory by proving that G,P,and E are not irreducibly dependent.Or you could try falsifing the concept of irreducible dependency itself, by proving Time, Space and Matter are not irreducibly dependent.You could do lots of experiments on the nature of possibilities to determine 1. What possibilities are impossible, 2. How existence affects possibilities, and how possibilties effect existence, 3. Whether there are an infinite number of possibilties. etc.You could do experiments showing whether metaphysical existence is real.So there is a few things to get started on.

Dear dogrelata,

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I hate having to go all the way back to Message 143 to clarify to you the context in which you made the statement. However, for the record, the paragraph in question starts with the words, “Notice that my definition ONLY deals with things which are POSSIBLE”. You make it very clear that your definition includes things that are possible . and one of the things you declare to be possible, later in the very same paragraph is, “So it is POSSIBLE that GOD may not know/do everything”.

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You have set context and you have volunteered one of the possibilities that is included with your definition. If you wish to change the above statement so that it does not contradict the statement that “God knows and sees ALL possibilities”, then please do so. Otherwise my “false assumption” remains as valid as it did at the time it was made - as does my equation.

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I think you need to go back to the conversation between PurpleYouko and I that discusses what Omniscient is, to fully understand what I meant.

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so please present your evidence to back up the statement that I am not your defined supergod.

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Do you know and see all possibilities, and have total control over them. Also having the power to bring any possibility that you choose into existence.

Dear paula rose,

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It isn't logical that God could exist 'logically, scientifically and mathematically', as well as 'wise, most powerful and strongest'.
The first definition is not human and the second one is. I do not believe anyone believes god is human, so given the scientific definition, could god be POTENTIAL?

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well first of all the UNIVERSE itself is logical, scientific and mathematical. So why couldn't GOD who supposedly created it be, infact it is more of an assumption to say GOD isn't logical and so forth.Potential is almost but not quite the same as possibility. It has capacity for growth, development etc, but this itself relies on possibility. With possibility it either is or is not, there is no room for improvement. For example the ultimate being would not need to improve.

Dear Stile,

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Yes, agreed, we're capable of imagining God. But we do not know that any particular God (especially an infinite one) is actually possible in our reality.

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We can know GOD exists IF God, possibility and existence ARE irreducibly dependent.

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Agreed. But direct contradiction is not the only way. Another way is by 'not enough information.' For example, I can imagine 500,000 tons of gold. There is no contradiction, it's certainly possible (as in, imaginable). But if this amount of gold does not exist in the universe, then my imagination does not actually exist. In fact, if there is not 500,000 tons of gold in the universe, or enough resources to create 500,000 tons of gold in the universe, then the possibility (even though there's no obvious contradiction) is actually impossible in our universe. We can't know either way, though, since we currently are unable to know how much gold this universe is capable of holding.

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Well you may be right. But this still follows the general rule that all things are possible unless proved otherwise. Infact because WE DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING, GOD will always remain a possibility, unless we can prove GOD doesn't exist. So because GOD IS a possibility right now, I can put forward my argument, it is upto critics to prove that God IS NOT a possibility to invalidate my argument.

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Equally, we don't know how much God this universe is capable of holding either, if any at all. Therefore we cannot say that God certainly is a possibility. It may be that God simply cannot exist because our universe cannot support Him. It may be that God cannot exist outside our universe because outside our universe cannot support Him. Without knowing, we can't say that the being in our imaginations is actually possible in reality.

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I don't think the universe is holding GOD or that it supports him, but I don't think your argument here holds up. I think it is possible for a being that knows all possibilities to exist, by simply looking at us. We can think of and manipulate possibilities, and so it stands to reason that IF WE evolved to this point, then a being may have evolved that can control all possibilities.Also we can know God exists if GOD, possibility and existence are irreducibly dependent.

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Not true. Why would this be true? Especially when you're defining God as infinite. Let's use a simple analogy with numbers, with God representing infinite. Each 'universe' will contain one number. So we have the universe containing 1, the universe containing 2, the universe containing 3... and so on. We obviously have an infinite number of universes, as we have an infinite number of numbers. However, there is no single universe that actually contains the number 'infinite'. Every single universe contains a specific, defined number. There is no universe that contains 'infinite', and therefore, there is no requirement for there to be a universe that contains God, even if we have an infinite number of universes.

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Unfortunately your argument doesn't work, any given number can be infinite by itself. 1 contains infinity anyway 1.1, 1.11, 1.111, 1.1111, 1.11111 etc. So you will get infinity always.

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A God of ultimate identity, that leaves no confusion as to the possibility of His existence.

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Well this is debatable, for this I think assumes that GOD would need to prove his existence, but GOD might not need to prove his existence. Also if my theory is correct that GOD, possibility and existence are irreducibly dependent, then that solves the confusion.

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Because, obviously, a being who could leave no confusion as to it's existence would be better.

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Well to God I suspect it doesn't have confusion as to it's existence. But its not obvious, maybe it is better for us humans to be a little confused, simply because of freedom of choice, at the moment we can choose not to believe, but if we KNEW what choice would you have? But then maybe its not so bad knowing God exists, because we still have a choice to ignore him or whatever.

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the information we would require to make such a proof just doesn't exist right now, as far as I'm aware, anyway. If you know of any information that does indicate the existence of any God (not even limited to the one you've defined), please present it. Until you do that, your God is limited to your imagination.

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Well as I claim GOD, Possibility and Existence are irreducibly dependent, so possibility and existence ARE proof of GOD.

Dear dogrelata,

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That is the part of my argument which clearly demonstrates that all possibilities are not equally valid.

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I agree, which is what I too argued in my thesis.

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No, I fully understand the nature of possibilities; I was simply using an analogy to anticipate the type of argument I expect you to make.

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OK fine as your were taking a ”devil’s advocate’ point of view, but we seem to be in agreement then on the nature of possibility.

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I’m sorry, but this is just errant nonsense.

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Q. How should we determine whether something is possible? A. If it’s not impossible.

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Q. How should we decide whether something is impossible? A. If it’s not possible

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All of which tells us precisely nothing.

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It tells us a lot, I invite you to look up the words possible and impossible in a dictionary. You see as they are exact opposites we can use proof by contradiction.

Dear Chiroptera,

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ROTU writes:

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The Idea that "God cannot be proved" has always been illogical to me....

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To me, too, as is the idea that God can be proven.

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Hold on, it is illogical to you that GOD can AND cannot be proved. Now thats illogical!

Dear dogrelata,

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In any sequence of coin tosses, all possible outcomes are equally probable. So 10 consecutive heads are no less likely than any other sequence. There are 1,024 possible sequences, each of which are equally probable. Increasing the number of tosses does not change this principle in any way - there are now an infinite number of possible sequences, each of which are equally probable. For your information, if the initial probability of flipping a head is 50%, no matter how long the sequence is, even infinite, the probability of any given sequence happening can never equal 0%.

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Thankyou for proving the point I was making in my thesis, that it is impossible for coins to fall on just one side forever, infact you have shown how as there are 1,024 possible sequences for just 10 coins, each of which are equally probable, making the chance of all ten coins being heads exclusively less likely, because in the terms you have it is more likely that another sequence will happen.

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So there are two flaws in your reasoning. The first is that any given sequence that you consider to be significant is any more or less likely to happen than any other. The second is that your ”perfect example’ is a perfect example of no more than your utter failure to understand the laws of probability.

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It's not a flaw because thats exactly my point, a NO-GOD space requires special circumstances, which as you have proven don't exist.Which means your second flaw is non existent too.

Dear dogrelata,

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In the above ”argument’, the reverse is equally true, so by your own reckoning it only needs one coin lands as NO-GOD, then YES-GOD loses. So what you have ”proved’ is that there is a ”certainty’ of both a no-god and a god existing concurrently within the same reality.

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This is not true, I explained why NO-GOD spaces have a disadvantage over YES-GOD spaces in the two preceeding paragraphs of the quote you gave, you seem to have ignored that explanation.

There is no contradiction. We know there are two hypothetical possibilities: God exists, or God does not exist. We do not know if it is in reality possible that God exists. If that confuses you let me explain:There are two hypothetical possibilities: I can do 500,000 press-ups in 1 hour or I cannot do 500,000 press-ups in one hour. With suitably advanced science we might deduce a maximum possible number of press-ups my body is capable of doing. If that turns out to be 250 then we now know that it is not possible that I can do 500,000 press-ups in 1 hour. We can also use less advanced science and deduce that to perform 500,000 press-ups in one hour would mean I do over 138 press-ups a second. Upon examination it looks impossible to achieve.So, either God exists or he doesn't exist. We do not even know if it is possible for God to actually exist. There may be constraints on reality that prohibit its existence. Since we do not know if this is the case, we cannot know if God can exist within reality.To clarify, on the one hand hypothetically god could exist - but this is just a thought possibility, a hypothetical, an imagination session a 'what if', call it what you will - we do not know if it could actually exist in reality. You promised you wouldn't argue that since you can imagine God...he must exist and you starkly discriminated between the imagination and reality.What we need to do is to find out what the ultimate possible being actually is. What is the most ultimate thing that could exist in this reality? Not hypothetically speaking, but actually speaking. What constraints does reality have and within those constraints what is the ultimate. For all we know, it could be us. It certainly might be the case that this being exists and is not aware of its status as 'ultimate'. It is also possible that it is possible to exist but doesn't. Once we get that information we need to then see if this being would be able to affect all possibilities. After that, we'd need information as to whether this possible being actually does exist. So you accept that at best, you have demonstrated that an abstraction of God is possible; We can imagine God. You made the claim, you have to support it. There is no reason to think that in a finite reality an infinite number of things could be. Quite the contrary: one would imagine that there can only be a finite number of possibilities. You have not shown there are an infinite number of possibilities. I don't need to disprove your claim, you need to show that it is true. Saying that there are an infinite number of abstract entities that exist in principle is not the same as showing that there are an infinite number of possibilities.Even with an infinite number of possibilities we still need to uncover the constraints. One would not expect that anything that can be imagined is within the realms of possibility in reality. One would expect that there are also things outside our imagination that could not exist. No you haven't and no it doesn't. It does not solve any of the problems in the paragraph since you said "As we proved earlier God is the only possible possibility" and we don't agree on this. Thus, claiming that the conclusions based on controversial premises lend support to your premises looks slightly circular.You need to answer the problem: A possibility cannot affect other possibilities. Only the actual existence of the claimed entity can do this.

Great. So determining what is "ultimate" is just a tautology. But tautologies are pretty useless since they convey no information.

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If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a monkey.
Haven't you always wanted a monkey?
-- The Barenaked Ladies