The definition of GOD

Dear reiverix,

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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.

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I didn't dismiss it, I FALSIFIED it, thats what makes in invalid.

Dear PurpleYouko,I think you are perhaps the most advanced in your understanding of what I am saying compared to others here. So What I am going to ask is that you give me some time to get everybody else to the same point you are at. What I am going to do is post a post to everyone, which will explain a lot of stuff including the nature of possibilities and impossibilities, which will explain some of the things you are talking about, and will actually help everybody understand my definition more.

We're almost halfway to the post limit for the thread. I suggest you get started.

Dear Stile,

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Okay, let's try to move this along.

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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.

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What's your next step?

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Please be patient of me, I don't want anybody to be left behind on this, others need to still understand. But it should really be "bestest uber God PERIOD".

Dear Chiroptera,

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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.

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Well I think your problem is that you are presupposing me, your own belief system is stopping you and has nothing to do with the actual definition.

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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.

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Which is ironic as thats exactly all I am doing at this point, simply DEFINING terms. I mean how can YOU argue GOD doesn't exist if you don't even know what GOD IS in the first place.You see you may well be able to argue and even prove that any other definition of God doesn't exist, but one of the questions I ask is can you argue against or prove that MY definition of GOD doesn't exist. But inversely, CAN I argue or prove that my definition of GOD does exist. But before we can even get to that stage, we need to agree on a definition of GOD.

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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.

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Well again your presupposing me, but I will say I will use logic as far as it will go, because if I didn't you would simply say I'm being illogical. However when it comes time for empirical evidence I will provide it.

Dear ICANT,

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Why are you making this God a thing?

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Are you asking why my definition of GOD says BEING/THING? Because you claimed your GOD was "EVERYTHING".But let me explain why my definition says being/thing. I do not know whether GOD is a being or a thing, for example we know that this universe is made up of matter and energy, we as humans are made of matter, but matter is a thing, but we are beings too, so are WE beings or things? So All I have done in my definition is to make sure that I haven't ruled anything out, so GOD could be either a being or a thing, or maybe both.

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I think my God is just as adequate as your god.

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Sorry you don't like my definition of God.

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You must declare this if not your god is not the ultimate god

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Well it's not that I don't like your definition, I falsified it thats all. Again I will show how a GOD that IS EVERYTHING is not the ultimate god at all. If God IS EVERYTHING, then God would be both good and evil in equal measure, So God couldn't DO anything at all, it couldn't do anything good because it's evil would stop it, but it couldn't do anything evil because the good would stop that. Which would make God impotent, making this God UNPOWERFUL. Not a very good example of an ultimate being now is it.

Dear dogrelata,

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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.

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Yes good point, but how does that effect my defintion of GOD, it doesn't, but I will explain a lot of stuff in my next post that will be adressed to everybody so everybody can understand the nature of possibilities and impossibilities. Please bear with me.

TO EVERYONESome people still seem to be struggling to understand my definition, this is perfectly understandable, but I will now try and make everything cystal clear.Here is a list of words in my definition and what they mean;GOD = The word commonly used to refer to the creator, supreme being, the most high etc, but devoid of the religious aspects of the definition. Also this word is in the singular, as in reality it is impossible to get more than one ultimate being.
THE ULTIMATE = The best, greatest, or most extreme. The highest, the maximum, not to be improved upon or surpassed.
POSSIBLE = That which has a capability of being true, happening or existing. The opposite of impossible. This is NOT limited to human imagination of what is possible.
BEING/THING = Either God will be a being or a thing, or both.That should clear up what my definition means.Now to give you some idea of what this ultimate possible being is. It has been argued that GOD cannot be both Omniscient and omnipotent, so lets use that good example to find out what the ultimate being is.Let us imagine 2 possible GODs,GOD 1, is omnipotent but not Omniscient.
GOD 2, is omnipotent and Omniscient.God 2 could technically be argued as being better that God 1 it terms of having better qualities. However it can be argued that God 2 is impossible, and therefore cannot exist.Let us say for the sake of argument that God 2 IS impossible, this would mean that God 1 IS the ultimate POSSIBLE being by default.Notice that my definition ONLY deals with things which are POSSIBLE, anything that is IMPOSSIBLE is already eliminated from the definition. If something is IMPOSSIBLE then by definition it cannot come into existence anyway, and GOD does not need to control impossibilities. So it is POSSIBLE that GOD may not know/do everything, but that does not make it any less the ultimate possible being/thing.The next point is why I say this ultimate possible being/thing "Knows and see all possibilities, and has total control over them. Also having the power to bring any possibility that it chooses into existence".Well this grounds my definition of GOD into our own reality and talks about things that we KNOW exist, ie possibilities, the science of predicting possibilities is of course called PROBABILITY. We also know that we can control possibilities by limiting the variables. We also can create possibilities, for example we can write a book and then make a movie of the book. Infact that is what existence IS, possibilities that have progressed to actuality.So all I have done is taken what we do as humans and taken it to its logical extreme in keeping with my definition of GOD.So now hopefully everyone will understand why my definition of GOD is the most accurate and the most valid of ANY defintion of GOD.Now I am going to talk about infinite possibility some more,It can be stated as fact that God exists as a possibility, it can also be said as a fact that there are an infinite number of possibilities and an infinite number of possibility spaces. For example you can take a whole number as a possibility space and then add one, you can theoretically do this forever. But you can also use an infinite number of decimal numbers within the whole number as individual and unique possibilities. We can also know that some possibility spaces cannot exist as an actuality. For instance, consider a possibility space that consists only of even numbers. It is impossible for it to contain an odd number, by definition! We can also state as fact that, AT LEAST ONE POSSIBILITY EXISTS (It should be pointed out here, that at this stage it does not matter which possibilities actually exist).That is all for now.

I concede the possibility that some god might exist. However, to the extent that a given definition of god is internally inconsistent, I deny the possibility that such a god exists. I do not accept as a fact that there are an infinite number of possibilities because that phrase is nonsense, it is devoid of meaning. I do not accept as a fact that there are an infinite number of possibility spaces because that phrase is nonsense, it is devoid of meaning.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Which presupposes that 'god' is a being that is in complete control over everything. Whatever the ultimate possible being is, it might not have complete control over everything. That the ultimate possible being does have complete control is a position held by monotheists. So it necessarily has that element of religious belief embedded in it. I was suggesting that you had contradictory definitions. On the one hand, god is the ultimate possible being, on the other hand it is a creator of the universe and 'ruler of same'. The creator of the universe and even it's governor aren't necessarily the ultimate possible beings. It is certainly high up the scale of ultimate being that can be imagined. Possibilities can certainly exceed any imagination we care to imagine. Also - our imagination can conceive of things which are not possible. The ultimate possible being might not be the same as the ultimate being we can imagine as possibly existing. The ultimate possible being might be us. I wasn't talking about an ultimate human. I was talking about humans being the ultimate possible being -that which would be called 'god' under certain wordings of your definition. It might be the case that it is not possible to have a more ultimate being than ourselves. So you agree that it is possible, in principle, for human beings to be the ultimate possible being? We can certainly imagine superior beings by whatever metric we like, but it might be the case that none of these beings, or any other, actually exists or could exist. That's great, I have a feeling that you're never going to get there though since there are going to be so many objections to what I assume are going to form your premises. It is up to you how to handle it, of course, but since if you want to lay out the argument you're going to have to spill the beans before you really want to, it might worth considering getting it over and done with.Either way, I await your thoughts about what I said.

I’d just like to re-cap what we’ve managed to find out so far. In Message 123 we were told:- By Message 143 this had changed somewhat to become:- So when the term having unlimited power to be able to do anything is used, it doesn’t really mean that at all, it just means it has the power to do the things it can do. A bit like myself really. I can do the things I am able to do, but I can’t do the things I am unable to do.I was also wondering who or what is the arbiter of what is possible or impossible for supergod to be able to do . and who or what determines the possibility of whether supergod may or may not know all that can be known.The thing is, we’re approaching 150 posts on this topic and you’ve not managed to move it forward one inch in terms of getting even one person to agree with your definition of what an ultimate possible being might be, even hypothetically.It worries me that you aren’t able to figure out why you are unable to sell your definition. I have to say I don’t believe for a second that if this topic reaches 150,000 posts, anyone will have bought your definition. I think you need to take some time out to find out why people choose to invent or believe in the gods they put their faith in. Once you have done that, you may begin to understand how futile your attempts to sell your particular definition are.In the meantime it begins to look ever more likely that whatever revelations you have to impart to the world are wholly dependant on the world accepting your particular definition, i.e. the ”proof’ you believe you have formulated is based upon the premise you seem so desperate for everyone to accept.Sorry, but that’s just not going to happen. I tend to agree with Modulus in Message 145 that you really need to either cut to the chase now or make a dignified retreat and live to fight another day on another thread. Edited by dogrelata, : No reason given.

I have been amuse by (among other things) how ruler has been individually answering every single post in this thread. It's going to take him a while to get anywhere (assuming that he is going anywhere).

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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

By definition, you're god.

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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

You did no such thing. We don't care if god knows he exists. We only care about if humans know he exists so we can define him.What you really want is a monopoly on the definition of god. If it suits your religion you will feel more secure about it. You have to face facts here, your posts you a definite trend towards wishful thinking.Edited by reiverix, : No reason given.

Does that mean I don’t have to go to work on Monday?