What are the odds of God existing?

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indeed..

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This has become more of a personal brawl than a discussion on the topic.

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Please continue on topic and leave old off-topic and personal battles behind.

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What are the odds of God existing?

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If the old battles continue or this thread flows back into bickering, I will shut this thread down permanently.

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Somebody mentioned that electrons aren't really things -- and they certainly aren't beings. Children are taught, however, that they are things. A great deal is made as a matter of fact about how atoms are matter. Just because electrons change form in certain reactions I guess they stop being matter or things, but you have already made the point that abstractions or energy or functions are not relevantBut I'd like to know how you would answer this instead of trying to answer it myself.

Electrons are obviously not just little pellets, but the only question that matters is whether electrons are conscious or not. Otherwise, they are things, according to the definition I adopted.We can divide up reality any way we like. We could divide it up into little entities and big entities, or according to color, or whether or not an entity tends to spread out like water or stay compact. We could say that the real divisions are the elements of the periodic table and so on. None of these classifications matter though in relation to the question of whether or not there is a God. The division that is relevant is that of beings and things.Why so? Because God has to be defined as a being (i.e., conscious entity). Whether God spreads out or remains compact, or what color God is or how big He is is not relevant as regards the topic of the OP. All that matters is whether He's conscious or not. If He's not conscious, He's not God. One might as well in that case call God Nature--or the universe in a certain form. The only way to distinguish God from Nature is to say that this purported God is a Being since nature is not a Being but a thing.If electrons are not conscious, they are things. It doesn't matter what form they take or if they change forms or even what they're made out of.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 05-02-2006 01:58 PMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 05-02-2006 02:00 PMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 05-02-2006 02:01 PM

Beings and things. Beings are conscious. Things are not.Consciousness vs. Unconsciousness?Are you proposing a dualist system of sentience and insentience?
How do we decide into what catagory something falls?lfen

Sometimes we can't decide. We are pretty sure that rocks and planets are not sentient, but I'm not sure about, say, spiders. I think not. Once I read a very ingenious essay that suggested that the way we can know if an animal possesses consciousness or not if whether it sleeps occasionally. The author argues that the only plausible evolutionary reason for sleep is to rest from the strain that consciousness puts on the brain. So if an animal sleeps, that means he's conscious when awake. Most animals, the author said, don't sleep.

I think that's fair, to define everything as a thing that is not a being, and a being as anything with consciousness, although maybe a being could be anything that twitches for that matter, anything with signs of life in it. It doesn't really matter whether it can be classed as sentient or not, or even alive or not, as it's either a thing or a being in the end, so it doesn't challenge your premise. I understand God has to be absolute perfect consciousness so that it's hard to locate the dividing line, but even human beings haven't a consciousness like God's so it may be academic in the end.

Okay, this is getting interesting. Everything not alive is a thing, and most things that are alive are things.I know fish appear to sleep. Spiders spend quiet time when it's dark don't know if that would be defined as sleep. So at some point it appears living things cross a threshold and bcome entities?Any suggestion as to when that happens and how? How does being arrive in the universe?lfen