I Know That God Does Not Exist

Apologies, I am right in the middle of final exam prep (among all the other life things) so pretty swamped on my end. I've really appreciated this conversation as well man! To be honest, I enjoy having friends who totally disagree with me . I'm not so arrogant to think I have all the answers. I love listening and learning the perspectives of others, and understanding why they have different views. We all have blind spots, even you (which I'm sure you would admit). How are we ever to learn anything if we only surround ourselves with/interact with people we agree with? Echo chambers help nobody imo.In retrospect, EvC is probably a large reason for all that^. If it weren't for the OG's, guys like jar, Ringo, nwr, Stile, Taz, jon back in the day who knows what sort of close minded religious zealot I would be . I had the benefit of having my beliefs challenged and totally torn apart at a very early age, and I'm grateful for it. Tbh man...your response has been on my mind this past week. I've thought through many different responses...because I don't want to just be one more person of faith who can't hang intellectually. Apologies if I appear as if I am "dodging" the question. It is frustrating to me as well, because, well, I am . It is intentional haha. I've already shared a part of the reason why, however I suppose I can elaborate.Life is not all intellectualism. The ancient Hebrews taught that humans are whole beings. I believe this view, because I have seen it demonstrated throughout life. What this meant to them was humans are made up of flesh and bone yes (body), but also heart (לֵבָב), and soul (נֶפֶשׁ). To them, the "heart" was where both the intellectualism we associate with the "mind" dwelt, as well as the emotions/intentions. And then there is soul (נֶפֶשׁ). To the Hebrew mind, the soul was not the little floaty thing people breathe out when they die in the movies. That was a later (Greek) idea. To them, the soul was your whole life. נֶפֶשׁ, or "nephesh," a word that literally means "life/neck," is a way to describe the unity of all life. To the ancients, you didn't have a soul, you are a soul.I am an intellectual, yes, a theologian, yes, amateur scholar I try to be, lol, I love this stuff. I mean, I was here debating with jar and ringo as a 14 year old LOL I'm a nerd for sources and authors and arguments and debates. But life is more than the mind. Life is more than intellectualism and logic. We are beings of the heart, beings that long for intimacy and connection and relationships and tribe, we seek to be known. And we are beings of the spiritual, often spiritualizing non-religious things without even realizing we are doing so. The American Radical Right spiritualizes Trump, for example (the Radical Left has their own sins lol). We intuitively make meaning out of life, because we intuitively sense there must be a meaning, even if we have no idea what it is. We build societies around spiritual ideas and operate as if they are actually true. The foundation of western democracy, the concept that humans have intrinsic worth and are given to them certain rights from a divine source - an idea not found in nature at all and rather absurd - is an example of this.I'm rambling at this point. Sorry lol. I guess what I'm trying to get at is. I believe in, yes (the mind) but have also known and seen the risen Christ. I have my evidences for it. But, frankly, I reject this platform as the place to try and "convince" you of any part of it. EvC is great, I love it, but it is not a place where authentic "whole person" communication or connection happens. I learned that a long time ago lol. And frankly, at the end of the day, I would throw out any argument I thought would impress you for the chance that you, or my guy Phat, or jar, or even my arch-nemesis Ringo (lol) would know I just care about y'all as people, even people I have never met on the internet. Tbh, the person that I actually am, without all the intellectual bravado...I couldn't care less about proving my positions right and yours wrong. I just care about the wellbeing (physical, mental, and spiritual) of every new friend I meet.So you don't believe like I do, ok, that doesn't change my responsibility to care for, listen to, and value you and your experience. That's what it means to be a Spiritual Care Professional, that's who I want to be, and that's the kind of wholistic communication this form of interaction bars us from having.Anyway. In conclusion, I know I have evaded your question very thoroughly I do so because, as an intellectual person myself, I know firsthand, we often use intellect as a mask behind which we hide our true selves. So, for that reason, I will continue to give you a non-answer If you want to have an actual authentic conversation though, as I said before, I'd be interested in that! Hope this makes sense!Much love bro,- RaphEdited by Raphael, : some cleanup!

Edited by Raphael, : Switched some formatting things

Now this is a more acceptable view than the usual modern version. All in line with what we know.The human is a marvelous organism with brain operations unique from most other species. In the philosophy of mind I could not accept Descartes’ mind–body dualism and I reject, for the same reasons, the similar claim of a soul as a separate “substance” operating. To define “soul” as the more holistic and realistic treatment of body plus cognitive self, the whole self, is both parsimonious and quite elegant.I hereby shamelessly steal this concept and adopt it as the sole definition of soul. Thank you, Oh Ancient Ones. Spiritual in what sense?Feeling in awe of the universe is spiritual. Seeing the Milky Way ablaze on a cold clear moonless night casting shadows in starlight is spiritual (this one does me no end of awe).But, I’ll bet you have some other spiritual in mind. I would bet a small bowl, a minor teensy little bowl, of Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream. Sorry. That’s all the goodies my diet allows me these days. Then it is past time for us to wake up and realize that for us, as an organism evolved on this planet, there is no meaning, no purpose to life beyond that of a gnat trying to survive and procreate. If one insists there is purpose to life then this is it.Any additional purpose or meaning advanced is emotionally derived from self, not from life, and is ephemeral. Which is fine as it helps us get by in this violent uncaring unconcerned universe. Fill your life with self-generated purpose. This universe sure isn't going to give you any. A good practicing Christian. Nice. Human. Or the way we should be ideally.I submit to you that all, even atheists, have the same responsibility. Like original sin, all humans are charged with this responsibility just by virtue of being born. And this charge is placed upon us, ourselves, by us, ourselves.A problem I see is that most of humanity can be insensitive to *others*, the out groups. All humanity cares greatly for family, community and brethren. Out groups, not so much.Religion seems centered on the *us* group. Sharing our special knowledge and scripture that only we can know among us. Keeping the holy sites sacred and reserved for us. Special privileges reserved for us (some more than others). And only us get to be saved. Salvation is exclusive to us, only the believers of our specific creed.A stronger case for human care, concern and help is that of humanism. Doesn’t matter what group you’re in, us, other or sideways. Unfortunately, that is also a human construct, like religion, and humans are just not ideal practitioners of even this secular creed. But, when it is practiced well such is all inclusive. There is no out group. That is the goal. I would like to hear the form of this evidence. What does that entail? How did you verify this evidence was really giving you truth?As far as timing goes, no apologies any more. Take as much as you need. This discussion, no matter how pleasant we may find it, is not worth screwing up your studies.I think this is the second time you apologized for not responding in some nebulous un-imposed time frame. You do that again and I'm going to have to get upset. Never again apologize to me for living your life as you need.Besides, I should be around a few more years anyway, maybe longer I hope, so we have the time.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

This is a problem in some ways, but I can see why we do it.If one group of people were free from COVID 19 and another group of people had the virus, the ones having the virus would be defined at that moment as the OUT Group. You don't want your IN Group (and especially the children) to get infected with cultural BS. All inclusiveness is a liberals wet dream.
Not that God doesn't support it. But there are conditions.

No, that's not why. The reason why is from fear and mistrust of those who are different from us; IOW plain old xenophobia (fear of the foreign). Yet again, download and read Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians for free (as a PDF, for a nominal fee for e-book formats), and read it. It's an easy and entertaining read since he went out of his way to make accessible to non-psychologists and non-statistians the findings of four decades of his research, which are usually very heavily laden in statistical mathmatics.Basically, what he found was that those who rated high on his right-wing authoritarian (RWA) index viewed the world as being binary: Us versus Them, our in-group having to protect itself and its very existence against the dangers that the out-group presents. BTW, Altemeyer wasn't just expressing his opinions, but rather his in his decades of psychological research he also studied what high and low RWAs tend to believe and how they think (he's a retired psych professor who was just coming up on retirement when he wrote that book in 2006; he has since co-authored a book about Trump with Watergate figure John Dean, Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers).One of the things that Altemeyer found is that high RWAs live every day in an almost constant state of heightened fear which lead to panicked and inappropriately strong reactions to minor events that pose no actual danger and which leads to hatred; ie, they frequently perceive danger where there is none. It has also been found that their amygdalae are larger and more active than in low-RWAs. The amygdala (we have two) is that part of the brain which plays a primary role in emotional responses such as fear, anxiety, and aggression. It is part of the limbic system which has been lumped into the "reptilian brain" just below it -- Wikipedia calls it the "paleomammalian cortex". Therefore the functions of the limbic system border on instinctual responses which have evolved.BTW, low-RWAs can also respond with fear and hate, but those responses are to actual dangers and those feelings normally go away after the danger is past. What makes the current climate different is that those very real dangers not only haven't gone away yet, but the GQP keeps doubling down.So as to your misapplied example of the need to quarantine infected populations during a pandemic, your objection raised an actual clear and present danger which requires emergency action while AZPaul3 was talking about normal, non-emergency times. Spoken like a high-RWA.Xenophobia makes a lot of sense evolutionarily that the instinct for fearing outsiders has been deeply ingrained into the most basic structures of our brains by many millennia of human evolution as it worked to help guarantee the survival of small human tribes -- perhaps even more so when there were still human sub-species (eg, Neanderthals) around in which case the "they don't look like us" aspect of xenophobia would have come into play. Each of those small tribes were able to survive because outsiders from other tribes did usually pose a danger to them so it was appropriate to fear them -- though interestingly, since they needed to raid neighboring tribes for wives, that could also explain the exact opposite response, xenophilia, our attraction to foreign females while fearing and hating foreign men.The problem is that we have outgrown the need for xenophobia, but we are still saddled with that ancient baggage which now poses a grave danger for society which is now very diversified. A quality which used to ensure our survival now will have the effect of destroying us.When you have an ethnically monolithic society (eg, as in most central and northern European countries) where everybody in the country looks pretty much the same and all share the same culture and religion (somewhat the same), then when refugees and colonial populations arrive looking different and having different cultures (including different religions) that creates a huge cultural shock for that society. For decades, Europeans have basically been scratching and shaking their heads over how the US would keep having such problems trying to deal with diversity (both racial and religion -- remember our own Protestant persecution of the Catholics), but now they're having to go through the same thing and they cannot deal with it. Part of the motivation for the growth of European right-wing nationalist groups (outside of Russian funding) is their reaction to the presence of refugees.When it was still on Netflix I watched the 2015 German movie, Er is wieder da ("He is Back", released with the English title, "Look Who's Back"), in which Hitler mysteriously reappears in 2011 Berlin. The director used the Borat model in which they traveled throughout Germany filming "Hitler" interacting with regular Germans. Over and over again those Germans complain to Hitler how their culture was being endangered by these foreign immigrants whom the government is giving everything. Even though that the 2016 US presidential campaign was only starting, the parallels between the mood in both countries were striking. BTW, I can't find that movie anywhere now. It had been on Netflix US but no longer. It doesn't come up on Roku Search. I even switched my unit's language to German to find German titles, but without luck. And ever since then Prime Video keeps coming up with German subtitles, though that has come in handy when I couldn't read the computer display on The Expanse.Now, your appeal to having to quarantine the "OUT group" for an actual disease touches on a common anti-immigrant trope, which is that they are all diseased. Or else bring other "cultural and societal maladies" including crime and a foreign culture -- in the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, a centerpiece of Zoot Suit, the prosecutor denounced the Hispanic defendants as having "Aztec blood" which made them naturally blood thirsty and driven to kill people by stabbing them (an actual part of the trial transcript). Even when that "foreign" population had been here since before we came and took the land from them (So Calif used to be part of Mexico). Our downtown had a sizeable Chinatown until we burned it down around 1910 in order to "control disease". 
But didn't Jesus teach that we are all brothers? "Don't call unclean that which I have made clean"? The Good Samaritan in which a hated foreigner is the good guy in the story? Doesn't that go against xenophobia?Sing a bit of that Christian song, "Jesus Loves the Little Children", to yourself:

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Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in his sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

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NOTE: some variant lyrics adds "brown"

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So maybe inclusiveness was meant to be part of Christian belief since it was taught by Jesus, even though Christian doctrine has been constructed to oppose Jesus' teachings.Edited by dwise1, : minor typo

Then fuck him and his conditions. Phat, your version of a god is such an evil ass.

i dont understand your reasoning. But then, you dont believe mine. so we are at an impasse. Inclusiveness is akin to anarchy in my world. What is it in yours?If the universe were only humans plus a myriad of other strange life forms, how would it be any safer than being in communion?

LOLWhat the hell does "being in communion" even mean?You keep using words Phat but I don't think any of them mean what you think they mean.

Humanism. What is it with religion and exclusivity? Why try to exclude some from their humanity? Well, Phat, I find it obvious in my world that real is safer than fantasy.

In our world (AKA "the real world") inclusiveness is vitally necessary to keep our society from tearing itself apart.Think of the armed services. Each branch has its own culture, its own part of the Mission, and its own way of operating towards completing the Mission. Because of having their own cultures and histories and differences in which they operate, there is some friction between the branches, AKA "rivalries" (eg, there was fierce in-fighting after Sputnik over which branch's rocket program would be the first to launch a US satellite). The Mission requires that we not only work together but also that we learn to coordinate our operations very closely, such that we now have joint Navy-Air Force bases.Now, I had always been an advocate of my interpretation of "Total Force", which is that we are on the same team committed to the same Mission so stop this stupid inter-branch rivalry and bickering! Inter-branch inclusiveness.Your model of exclusiveness just brings us back to the disaster of the failed mission to rescue the American Embassy hostages in Teheran (Spring 1980), which was our wake-up call for the need to learn to integrate for joint operations. But let's take your desired model one step further and anticipate the inter-branch exclusivity and rivalry escalating to open aggression and virtual civil war between the branches complete with weapons fired in anger.Somewhat hyperbolic, but what's the limit, where would we draw the line? Your need for exclusiveness would require something like apartheid where the "wrong" segments of our diverse population would have to be collected and restricted in special "homeland" regions where they would have to endure poverty and lack of proper education, medical care, or even any kind of functional economy.Instead of all of us being Americans living in the same country and participating in the same economy and society, you want to fragment us into privileged communities for your "IN group" and ghettos for the "Others" (I'm thinking of the original ghettos, i ghetti, in which the Jews had been segregated for centuries in order to protect the Christians from having to deal with the "anarchy" of being exposed to the existence of a different religion)? You are advocating the oppression of the "Others"?Oppressing entire large portions of the population leads to deeply ingrained resentment and eventually erupts into violent rebellion with devastating consequences for our society. Is that what you really advocate? Basically, that would result in the widespread outbreak of anarchy, which you claim is what you want to keep have happening. Yet you promote anarchy happening.Or wouldn't including those large portions of the population into all aspects of society help to keep anarchy from happening? And to allow our society -- and ourselves -- to prosper? I have no idea what you are talking about. First you advocate for exclusion and then you switch sides and talk about "being in communion"?Who being in communion with whom? Only your "IN group" excluding "the Others" whom you keep safely locked away out of sight in their ghettos?Have you actually thought any of this through?

I have no issues sounding like I believe in God or agreeing with scriptures.
Some definitions of God, and His scriptures, are very nice and attractive. I would like to be associated with such things, so thank-you for doing so. If love had a being, I would follow it/him/her/they (because I follow love.)
If a Divine Being existed, and it embodies love, then I think we should all want more of this Diving Being in my life (because I want more love in all lives.)But if I already follow love, and a being happens to exist that embodies that love... nothing about my life would change.
I would already be following that Divine Being, without even knowing it, just by following love.So, again, the idea of such a Divine Being, regardless of whether or not it actually exists, is superfluous until such a time that this being is shown to exist, and can expound on our ideas of what love is. But... I haven't rejected anything.
I am perfectly willing, open, and desire a connection with any being that can help show Love.
That being can be as small as any mundane creature of this world (sometimes even a house-cat can teach us things we don't know about Love.)
That being can be as large as a Diving Being.
I am interested in anything that can teach us about or show Love.Of course, as far as Gods are concerned... until one is actually shown to exist: I Know That God Does Not Exist.
And, lucky for me, I can still follow Love as much as possible anyway. You too!

I can prove god does not exist.
I can prove god does exist.
I think therefore I am.. but thoughts are not physical.
If I exist something created me god is defined as creator of the universe. By definition god exists.
On the other hand physical is apperception of atoms which are not physical.. atoms are subatomic electromagnetic energy waves. Our consciousness perceives this vibrating energy as
Angstroms decibels and firing synapses.. none of which are physical..
I think therefore I am… I am?
Curious that the god of the bible said to Moses “tell them I AM has sent you.
Come on people THINK. Because all we are is thoughts trying to make our existence as a singularity consciousness in a universe of nothingness a more enjoyable experience.
By creating this BEAUTIFUL PERCEPTION OF A PHYSICAL REALITY.
I think therefore I am.
Mathematically I AM (1) a singularity consciousness
In a universe of (0) nothingness.
Do you recognize this ? 1000111000111
Everything in existence is created and communicated as a singularity vibrating in a universe of nothingness.
Time does not exist
Energy cannot be created or destroyed
We are an ever expanding ever changing consciousness creating a physical perception of reality to make our boring lonely existence as a singularity in a universe of nothingness a more enjoyable experience.

I'm not sure you can do either. That's not true.
Lots of things exist without being created. Like you and I and fish and rocks and trees and wind and snails. This definition is wrong. What do you think physical means?
"Subatomic electromagnetic energy waves" sounds pretty physical to me. Those are all physical.
Angstroms and just as physical as miles.
Sound is based on physical waves.
Synapses are physical things within your physical brain within your physical body. Maybe that's all you are.
That doesn't sound very nice.I'm much more. I'm physical, with the ability to create thoughts and have emotions. Sometimes I want to make my life more enjoyable, and other times I want to make it more challenging. Sometimes I don't want anything at all. The universe is not "(0) nothingness."
The universe is filled with many things. Many alive, and many inanimate.
Some can create other things, others cannot. Some simply are. This isn't true since the universe is not "nothingness." Sure.
Except for when it does. Probably.
But maybe not.I don't know any different, anyway. Nah.I'm a consciousness that sometimes changes, and sometimes remains static.
I experience a perception of reality, but I just do it... I don't do it for any particular reason.
I discover my own purpose in life - and it's stronger than trying to not be boring. Or, at least, it is for me.I don't think any of this has to do with knowing if God exists or not, though.
But after reading it, I do think you could use some more Love in your life.Which means, I still know that God does not exist.

By that logic, something must have created god. Creator is an attribute of some gods. Most of the Egyptian and Greek/Roman gods were not creators.

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You keep using that word. I'm not sure it means what you think it means.

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There are so many gods and there have been so very many more gods in the past. And that's just considering all the gods that we have created in all of human existence, ignoring for sake of simplification how each individual creates his own gods based on his misunderstanding of the ideas of gods that he's taught (that would increase the number of gods billions-fold). Which one are you talking about? Do you even know that? It should be intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that until you can properly define which god you are talking about, then you could not even begin to address the question of whether that god exists or not.For that matter, developing any argument or engaging in any discussion requires that the terminology we use be properly defined as fully and precisely and properly as possible. The presentation of such a proper definition of "god" in these discussions is so rare that I cannot think of a single instance of it being done.For example, if you are also a creationist who would go on to discuss evolution eiher here or anywhere else, then you must provide a clear description of what you are calling "evolution" (plus how you think that it works). It has been my decades-long experience that when creationists talk about "evolution" nothing they say has anything to do with evolution nor how it works, but rather they are arguing against something entirely different that they merely call "evolution" and their arguments against how their "evolution" works have nothing to do with how evolution actually works. And for decades every time I ask a creationist what he means by "evolution" and how he thinks that it works, he either runs away or immediately tries to change the subject. Same as when we ask a theist what he means by "god". 
So I'll go out on a limb here and assume that you're a theist of the "Evangelical Christian" persuasion. In that case for you "god" would be your particular sect's particular interpretation of "God", which is generally based on the Jewish god, יהוה (commonly euphemized as "Adonai" because of the Commandment to not say the Name (hence "HaShem" (השׁם, "The Name") -- even when the rest of the text uses vowel points (the Hebrew alphabet consist of only consonants, no vowels) יהוה is never written with points, a custom extended into English by writing "G-d"), even though Evangelical Christianity's "God" is markedly different from the Judaism's "G-d" or even the "God" of most other forms of Christianity.Therefore, there is no universally understood meaning for "god", "god" does not refer to one specific god (nor does "God", BTW, as you can now clearly see), so just throwing it out there (either as "god" or "God") begs of the question of "What the hell are you talking about?" No, you cannot, given that the closest thing to a universal definition for "god" is that it refers to a supernatural entity. The distinguishing characteristic of the supernatural and of anything supernatural is that we cannot sense it, we cannot detect it, we cannot even determine whether it exists. Therefore, you cannot prove that a supernatural entity exists.As for proving "god does not exist", from the subject of burden of proof we have the question of Proving a negative (follow link for access to the quote's embedded links):

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A negative claim is the opposite of an affirmative or positive claim. It asserts the non-existence or exclusion of something.

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A negative claim may or may not exist as a counterpoint to a previous claim. A proof of impossibility or an evidence of absence argument are typical methods to fulfill the burden of proof for a negative claim.

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Most express that as "you cannot prove a negative," but as that quote shows there are still ways to address it. So as for proving and various or all gods do not exist we most certainly do have copious evidence of absence and arguments can be made for impossibility. 
Also, the entire question of any god's existence is irrelevant and meaningless. It's not even what most atheists are talking about, but rather it is the opponents of atheists who are fixated on that question.So many times I've seen theists use one of two approaches (or even both):

1. Deride the atheist for believing that "God does not exist" and demand that the atheist provide proof that "God does not exist".
   1. That misrepresents many if not most atheists' position: "We just cannot bring ourselves to believe that stuff that you're pushing. We're not buying it!"
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   2. The existence of any gods, let alone specific ones, is not important to us. We just cannot give credence nor allegiance to any of those gods. We do not give credence to the existence of a religion's gods solely because we do not accept that religion itself. It is not not accepting the existence of certain (or any) gods which causes us to reject their associated religions. IOW, our theist opponents have our atheism's causality completely turned around.
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   3. You are imposing on us the monumental task, considered logically impossible by most, of Proving a negative (yes, I am providing the link to that a second time in the same message). Refer above to review the problems with that (assuming you had read it the first time). How very unreasonable of them, especially since they do that in order to shift the burden of proof away from them, where it belongs, and to us instead.
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   4. The Burden of Proof for the existence of any god belongs to those who advocate for us to accept that existence. IOW, the existence of your god is a positive claim, which places the burden of proof squarely on your shoulders, not ours. So do your own job and stop trying to foist it off on others.
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2. Try to maneuver the atheist into conceding to the possibility that some god, any unspecified god might possibly exist. After all, maintaining that absolutely no god exists is an absolute position that is unprovable (review the beginning of this section), so there is a chance that you, the atheist, are wrong about that absolute position. And then at the moment that the atheist makes even the slightest concession you seize upon it as them admitting to your own particular perversion of יהוה including the entire body of theology, beliefs, superstitions, and perverse apologetics belonging to your own particular sect.
   
   1. First, this is still based on the false assumption that "existence of God" is a prime issue for atheists. It isn't, so theists need to stop projecting their own issues and insecurities onto others.
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   2. Second, there are almost infinitely more gods than your own particular perversion of your misunderstandings of יהוה. Conceding that a god might possibly does not automatically validate your own particular perversion of יהוה, but rather Vishnu would be just as valid a consideration.
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      Though the concession is actually that the supernatural could possibly exist, which may or may not include entities for which we humans might create gods to try to comprehend those entities (which we cannot learn anything about anyway, so good luck with that!).

So are you still hung up over god-existence? Why should it be such an issue with you? Thoughts are about a physical as the analog electrical signals going through the amplifier stages of a radio. Or the voltage levels of digital data as it passes through parallel or serial pathways (eg, wires made out of conductive materials) from one register or memory cell to another (all quite physical in their construction, nothing at all abstract about them). All those signals supported by those physical constructs are themselves the result of physical processes (chemical and electrical actions involving matter and energy, which makes them physical!So what the hell are you talking about? What you said makes no sense whatsoever. 
Your other attempts to define away the physical as not being physical are pure nonsense. Uh ... . Didn't your parents ever have The Talk with you? The one about where babies come from?Your parents created you. Didn't you know that? You see, when a mommy and a daddy really love each other ... . And it doesn't involve any storks or cabbage patches.A bit more context can be found in the opening credits of the famous 1969 animated short, Bambi Meets Godzilla, in which writer, choreographer, wardrobe designer, and producer Marv Newland includes this credit:

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Marv Newland produced by Mr. & Mrs. Newland

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Oddly, I seemed to have remembered an additional note to that, "Thanks, Mom and Dad!", but I didn't see it. Uh, no, a god is defined as a human construct to represent a proposed supernatural entity. The necessity of such a construct is both because humans are incapable of sensing, etc, anything supernatural and so cannot learn anything about a supernatural entity except through extraordinary means outside (which would be subject to many problems were that to ever happen, which there is no evidence of) and because the human mind is incapable of dealing with any supernatural entity which could be considered a candidate for "God". That last is why you have had to create your own model of "God" out of your own misunderstanding of what others have taught you about their own misunderstanding of what they had been taught, etc, etc, etc, rinse and repeat for hundreds of generations.Also, as ringo pointed out in Message 2758, only some gods are given the attribute of being creators. Therefore, your definition of "god" as "creator of the universe" is faulty and cannot be used. Remember that you have not specified which of the near-infinite number of gods you are referring to with "god". You presented a faulty misdefinition. You have proven nothing. We were taught that the name, יהוה, was derived from the Hebrew verb for "to be": היה ("hayah" -- sorry, I haven't figured how to do pointed script here). Such that basically יהוה was saying "I am that I am", which leads to the Popeye Postulate "I yam what I yam", which in turn leads to the Tuber Testament (what with all the yams). DISCLOSURE:That is a string of bits (AKA "binary digits"). In octal it would be written as 010707 (the leading zero marks it as being in octal) and in hexadecimal it would be written as 0x11C7 (the 0x marks it as being in hex). Rendering it into decimal would be more work than it's worth. Besides, we don't even know whether it even is a number.Which is the rub, isn't it? Data contains no inherent properties which tells us what data type it is! Is it an integer numeric value and if so how many bits long is the word (also, considering that leading 1, is it in 2's Complement form or some other integer format)? Is it some kind of floating-point value and if so what is that data type's Is it character data and if so using what set of character codes? Is it concatenation of bit fields and if so in what Interface Control Document (ICD) and where in that ICD is the format of those bit fields specified? There are also possible issues concerning encryption and decryption, but that does not affect the fundamental problem of identifying the type of data we're dealing with. Or, for that matter, whether the data stream isn't just simply random bits devoid of any possible meaning. To borrow from a Hardee's chicken fillet sandwich commercial (denigrating McD's chicken items constructed of "chicken parts"): bits are bits.The data itself tells us nothing about what it's data type is nor how it's used. Rather, that depends entirely on how a program uses it. It's the program that determines how it uses those bit strings and hence what they mean. For that matter, a program could use the exact same string of bits as completely different data types as needed (eg, using C/C++'s union structure). 
So then, why did you include that? Did you have a point? The rest is just gobbely-gook nonsense reminiscent of New Age blatherings. Maybe you should go back to playing with crystals.Or stop to think about what you are trying to say. And learn some things along the way.Edited by dwise1, : ABE about ignosticism

I do realize that this OP is mainly to examine discussions of the existence of "God", a topic which is immensely important to theists but only marginally (*yawn*) to atheists. It seems that whenever a theist tries to engage with an atheist (or vice versa) the theist immediately gloms onto arguing over the "existence of God" and refuses to let go (like a pit bull's bite when he's in the "red zone"), thus blocking the possibility of constructive discussion. It seems to me that theists also obsess over that question among themselves, but in countless atheist gatherings spanning decades I have almost never heard atheists discussing "the existence of God" among ourselves -- with the exception of sharing those unpleasant encounters with theists and how to respond to them.Of course I'm speaking for myself on this, but as I explained to Godblog in Message 2759 the "existence of God" is a non-issue for us atheists and we get get very bored of it very quickly. Theists seem to think that we became atheists because we reject God (for myriad "reasons" that populate their fantasies), whereas we don't accept "God" because it's part of the overall package of the religion that is what we actually reject -- we don't explicitly reject "God", but rather we reject those religions and their gods are merely part of the bath water that we're throwing out the window.Therefore, by obsessing over their issues with the "existence of God" in order to challenge why we're atheists, theists are blinding themselves to the real reason for our atheism: their religion. They may as well challenge us to disprove transubstantiation, which to us atheists is basically the same kind of question as their god. 
So then: We also simply "don't believe in transubstantiation".Atheism can also be read as "not/without theism" in order to emphasize that it's religions that we do not accept. By not accepting a religion and throwing that dirty bath water out the window, we also throw out everything in that dirty bath water, including their gods.So theists need to stop obsessing over their gods and prepare to discuss their religions with us. Not that they would ever do that. 
A corollary question for theists would be their definition of "atheist". In particular, given a particular individual, how to they classify him/her as an atheist?The operative definition that we keep hearing is what you repeat in your OP (quoted here as they usually say it): "Atheists do not believe in God."OK, so what's "God"? Refer again to my preceding Message 2759 for a discussion of that. Of course, every theist who ever uses the word "God" is referring solely to his own god to the exclusion of all other gods (whether that thought has ever occurred to them or not).So what about a theist who is not a Christian (a "true Christian" in particular)? We atheists would identify him as a theist, but would a theist who believes in a different god also accept that other theist as a theist? Or as an atheist because he believes in a different god, not "The True God"?For example, a Hindu does not believe in a "true Christian's" perversion of יהוה but rather believes in Vishnu.
To us atheists he's obviously a theist, but shouldn't a "true Christian" consider him to be an atheist because he doesn't believe in "God" (as defined by "true Christians")?What about a Mormon whose ideas of "God" are not the same as the "true Christian's"? Or what about Catholics?So in the fevered "true Christian" brain, who is an atheist and who isn't? Gotta get ready now to go to our monthly Atheists United breakfast discussion.Guess what we will most probably not discuss. 

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ABE: Atheists-Breakfast DebriefAt our month Atheists United breakfast (which ran from 1030 to 1430) we enjoyed lively discussion of several topics including politics (mainly whether there still exist any Republicans who actually believe in some actual policies and why are they so silent), whether there's any valid reason for reading Tolkein, linguistics (including why and how languages change, why English spelling is so damned weird, how English grammar is being screwed up by present speakers), the usefulness of Wikipedia in researching specialized vocabularies in foreign languages, the necessity for the invention of various aspects in Star Trek technology for the purpose of promoting the narrative (and to deal with budgetary and visual effects problems), etc.I cannot speak for everything discussed at the other end of the table (common problem with our long table), but almost the only discussion of religion involved "atheists in foxholes" wherein atheists seem far better at dealing with imminent death that are fundamentalist Christians (from an actual war story in which the only ones freaking out and fouling themselves in sheer terror of dying were the "guaranteed saved" Christians), and stories of giving up religion for Lent.As I had predicted, "existence of God", being a non-issue with atheists, was a non-topic as usual.Edited by dwise1, : gotta go

Edited by dwise1, : ABE