A Working Definition of God

Though some threads have been open for years, and though there's certainly no time limit on replies, a Great Debate probably requires some immediacy and continuity. Determinate delays up to even a few weeks due to lack of time make sense, but indeterminate delays less so. The supposition is that one enters a Great Debate with all one's ducks lined up and that one won't need to go on searches for more ducks in the middle of the debate. Perhaps it would make sense to declare the current thread concluded. Another could be opened when inspiration returns. If I see no posts in the thread within the next few days we'll assume you're done for now. Another easy way to find it is to just to click on your name. All threads you've ever participated in are listed under your name, ordered by the date and time of your last post.--Percy

My references to your confusion were on other matters, but on this particular matter you do appear to have shifted to a more limited context at some point. Recall that I was speaking of the body of belief in God across all peoples of all religions. I specifically listed Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Some will grant that Unitarianism is a Christian religion, and yet I not only believe differently from you, I don't even profess the same trust in God's Word as you (though I at least capitalize "Word" when it is God's ). Now, tell me again who it is that causes people to perceive God differently from you? I believe it involved a character first introduced in 1 Chronicles 21:1, unless you believe the serpent of Genesis is the same character. I see. You're just the same as everyone else except that you keep sins and doctrine separate. And so for other people who perceive God differently from you, their sins are all intertwined with their doctrine, and so their doctrine is wrong. But you keep sins and doctrine separate so your doctrine is right. And yet you claim you don't hold yourself above other people. You're pulling my leg, right? You're not really saying this with a straight face, are you? Which of us is preaching intolerance and prejudice? Opposing such is not arrogant. Yes, Faith, I'm telling you that there are many ways to the Lord. I am happy for you that you have found one of them, but sorry for you that it is leading you into the sins of pride and conceit and intolerance. Long as the Bible is, there is much in the holy books of other religions that does not appear anywhere in the Bible. You are using your Bible as a tool of exclusion. Do not forget that God is everywhere. Just because someone else's path is not your path does not make it the wrong path. Thank you for providing this fine example of inflexibility, rigidity, wickedness and intolerance. If I can be forgiven a popular metaphor, do you really believe that when Moslems (and Unitarians, too, I suppose) reach the pearly gates they're turned away because they didn't find God via Jesus Christ?--Percy

Very coherent, but it did feel like you drifted from the main point somewhere around Noah's Flood, leaving behind a contradiction that you never resolved. I'll make my point again here as I go along. Have you read Ptolemy's thread, SIMPLE Astronomical Evidence Supports the Bible? He's not confused, either, or so he believes, but no one has the slightest idea what he's saying. He's ignoring the constant indications he receives from others that he's not making sense. You're doing the same thing here by declaring that the contradictions or confusions so obvious to others don't exist, including the contradictions with other religions, and the contradictions with most of modern science (from a computer, no less). Your views are contradicted by most of the rest of the world, but you see no problems. Sheesh!This ignoring of problems and contradictions is easier for you to perform than Ptolemy because your views are widely shared within the broader evangelical community, while his are pretty much unique to himself, but the lesson is the same. When you receive enough indications from others that you're not making sense, it's time to do some serious thinking and figure out why. Maybe examining some cults would help. What was the groupthink that led to the Jonestown and Branch Davidian disasters, and to the Heaven's Gate cult of Marshall Applewhite that committed mass suicide because they believed they would be transported to an alien space ship hiding behind an approaching comet. Understanding the strange beliefs that have accompanied some religious endeavors leads us to question how it is we know what we think we know, a constructive exercise for us all.The key point I was making was that if God performs physical deeds in the physical world, both now and in the past, then there should be physical evidence of those physical deeds. Where's the evidence?--Percy

Uh, no. Sorry if you don't like the examples, but they were chosen because they were the ones that came to mind when I was trying to think of well known insular religous communities with weird ideas. I would have used less well known religious communities with weird ideas that didn't have disasterous outcomes except that I couldn't think of any since, having not come to disaster, they didn't make the front pages and hence I never heard of them. Though I guess if you go back a century or so the Shakers and the Oneida colony qualify.The point is by no means that Faith's religious ideas are leading her toward disaster. The point is that insular religious communities have a tendency to take on weird ideas that make sense within the community but to few outside it. After dealing repeatedly with Faith's contradictions that she flatly states aren't contradictions I am in essence asking her to freshly examine her views. Again, I'm truly sorry if the examples seemed poorly chosen, but I try to find new explanations rather than repeating old ones under the assumption that if it wasn't understood the first time, saying it again won't be helpful. But after explaining something a number of times one runs out of novel ways to explain it. I'm sure Faith appreciates your support. Could you express this a bit differently, though? I'm having trouble figuring out how you're not actually saying that Faith's religious beliefs are fine and mine are crap. Actually, I don't recall Faith saying that there aren't many paths to Christ, but maybe she did. But she definitely echos your sentiments that the only path to God is through Christ. I find much in this to recommend it. But the question I've been asking Faith is the same one I would still ask you: do you deny salvation to those who don't accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?Of course, that isn't the topic of this thread, but it hearkens back to the issue of evidence of God's deeds. Thanks for the information about Catholic beliefs.--Percy

This is a good point. The Forum Guidelines request that discussions not become personal, and I'll try harder to follow this in the future. I don't usually participate in the non-science threads, and I can see that it is harder to do this when discussing religious beliefs. Actually, I think it would be more accurately expressed differently. You accept only your way to the Lord, while I accept both our ways. You further believe my way is wrong. Now who is more tolerant again?I'm not condemning for you for your belief about the way to the Lord. I'm critisizing you for holding a belief that demonstrates a clear lack of charity and tolerance for the beliefs of others.But let's move off this and back on to the main topic. I apologize if I offended you, and for playing so significant a role in getting this thread temporarily closed.In a Message 245 you said you felt as if you'd already answered the question about evidence. I can't be sure which point I'm not getting across, so being as brief as possible, let me begin from scratch.God has performed and still performs physical deeds in the physical world. These deeds leave behind physical evidence. The evidence from deeds of long ago has long since disappeared. But the evidence from recent deeds should still be around. Where is it?I have a feeling this isn't going to be enough, so let me say a little more. The Bible records momentous deeds that left copious evidence, like the parting of the Red Sea and so forth. Is the reason that evidence from God's recent deeds isn't apparent is because he no longer performs deeds significant enough to produce detectable physical evidence? If a physical event is indetectable, how can we be sure it really happened?Please keep in mind that by evidence I mean objective evidence. That's the kind of evidence where I can see it, you can see it, everyone can see it. This is the "parting of the Red Sea" and "the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah" kind of evidence that is apparent to everyone living in that time and place. If we shift contexts later to consider witness evidence we must keep in mind that only one person can "see" it and testify to it.--Percy

I'm saying both. It is very difficult to make sense of explanations containing contradictory statements. But my point wasn't that you and Ptolemy are peas in a pod. What you both hold in common is the feedback you're receiving *and* ignoring that your message isn't getting across. Ptolemy has been reduced to posting almost identical statements over and over, and your problem is nowhere as severe as that. But your explanations of the contradictions look to me as contradictory as the original statements.Keeping clear definitions in mind is how we'll break out of this. We now undestand there's a difference between physical "everybody can see it" evidence and witness evidence. You now know that the definition of "objective" that I'm using means "of or having to do with a material object". You now know that the definition of "faith" I'm using means "belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence". When I use them in different ways I'll be clear about that, and if you can do the same then we might actually make some progress.--Percy

Okay, great, there's no physical evidence of any of God's deeds in the physical world. This makes no sense given that the artifacts of an entire Egyptian army that should be resting at the bottom of the Red Sea, and given the huge amount of geological evidence a global flood only 5000 years ago would have left behind and that you argued lengthily about in other threads, and given the evidence that we *have* found from Biblical sites like Jericho that have been identified, but we'll just chalk this up as yet another Faith contradiction and move on.That leaves witness evidence, and I think we have to be more precise about this term. You refer to the witnessing of the crossing of the Red Sea as witness evidence, and I think we should refer to this as eyewitness evidence. Your other earlier uses of the term "witness evidence" or "witness testimony" is probably more accurately referred to as witnessing for God or witnessing for Christ. You would likely know more about the terminology for this than me, let me know what the right terms are. I just want to avoid confusion by not using the same term for two different things.The problem with the eyewitness evidence of the crossing of the Red Sea is that the account in the OT cannot be established to have been composed by an eyewitness. The events were not even written down until at least 500 years after they are presumed to have happened, sometime during or after the Babylonian exile. The ancient Israelites incorporated myths from other cultures into their own mythic structure, as exampled by the flood of Noah which is actually a myth borrowed from the earlier Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. The story of the Israelites in Egypt may be original with the ancient Israelites, or it might have been borrowed from an earlier culture. Or perhaps it really happened and we just haven't found evidence for it yet.The problem with witnessing for God testimony is that it is not objective. I'm using the word "objective" in the sense of "everyone one can see it, hear it, feel it, etc."So, if God is to be, at least in part, defined by his deeds, it seems that there are no deeds that can be objectively established. We have no physical deeds that can be objectively established through physical evidence. We have no eyewitness evidence of physical deeds that can be objectively established, either. And witnessing for God testimony is subjective and personal.So the only deeds of God we can use are what are at best second hand accounts from the Bible, and subjective witnessing for God testimony. As you say, you either accept this "evidence" or you don't. The evidence from the OT would appear to contradict Magesterium Devolver's characterization of God as love, though this is the definition I like most, and since I don't take the OT literally I see no contradictions for myself.The evidence from the Bible would also appear to contradict Faith's characterization of God as omnipotent and omniscient, since the Bible is inconsistent on this point given the many places where God appears to be playing a somewhat lesser role because of the introduction of constraints.--Percy

Mark24 did not say the Israelites did not exist. He is asking for evidence that the witnesses you claim saw the parting of the Red Sea existed.In the way that Mark24 was offering it as an example of eyewitnesses, the Mahabharata *is* equivalent to the Bible. It includes many events seen by eyewitnesses. You stated that your standard was that if something is witnessed by eyewitnesses then it must be accepted as fact, but there seems to be something more to your standard that you haven't informed us of yet. By what criteria do you reject the eyewitness testimony of the Mahabharata and accept the eyewitness testimony of the Bible?--Percy

Don't close it yet, I'm writing a summation.--Percy

This thread requests a definition of God. The two answers offered were that God is omniscient and omnipotent by Faith, and that God is love by Magisterium Devolver. Faith and MD said they felt their definitions compatible with each other, and Faith claimed her definitions were compatible with the definition in Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary (see Message 10) and with the larger body of Christian thought.These definitions were deemed inadequate by the non-conservatives, and out of this a discussion developed about evidence for the nature of God, and this discussion is far from complete. I recommend a new thread be opened to continue this discussion, perhaps with the title, "Standards of Evidence for Religious Texts".--Percy

Agreed about attacking people. I wrote the Forum Guidelines, after all, so of course I agree. But I don't think you've been here long enough to make a proper interpretation, and it may be that since the post where you came to Faith's defense that she has provided a number of examples that may be leaving you quizzical and wondering if you didn't perhaps offer your support prematurely. Take, for example, this from Faith in Message 297: Faith has been here 10 times as many messages as you, and she's left little gems like this in many threads. While my advice to Faith about her hardness and intolerance may have struck you as unfair given what you'd read so far in this thread, the rest of us pretty much knew where Faith was going.--Percy