[Europan Ocean (OP)]

In the Australian Census 2016, a number of people, I think 29% did not have a religion, but looking in, only .5% of Australians believed there was no God at all, no higher power, nothing.
http://www.abs.gov.au/census

Scientists are the most inclined to doubt the resurrection of Christ... Stephen Hawking says he does not believe in God, because before the big bang, there was no time for God to exist in. Although Christians believe Jesus Christ pre-incarnate is the Father of Eternity. From outside fills the universe with His presence.

What do you believe? In a god, in God, in a higher power, or in an intelligence behind the universe...?

[Greylorn]

The options proposed are all vague.   I prefer something called Beon Theory, which proposes that consciousness is a developed property, originally found by non-incorporated, unconscious entities produced in an ancient collision between dark energy space and another simple space referred to in the theory as Aeon.  The theory is dependent upon and derived from physics, and is verifiable.  It explains the existence of the universe, evolution, and human consciousness and does so without contradictions. 

[PmbPhy]

Scientists are the most inclined to doubt the resurrection of Christ... Stephen Hawking says he does not believe in God, because before the big bang, there was no time for God to exist in.

First off, a person who is a "non theist but not atheist" is called an agnostic. I've gone back and forth between agnostic and theist. An atheist has a poor logical position because he holds that God doesn't exist. Since it's not logically possible to prove that something doesn't exist then the atheist must believe it with no proof. Do you know what its called when you believe something when you don't have proof of it? It's called faith. Frankly I could never have enough faith to be an atheist because I think more logically than atheists do.

Second, I believe that Hawking is a smart man. But with all men, smart or otherwise, he has said some dumb things, and that was one of them. Where exactly did he say that anyway? We have zero knowledge of what happened back to a certain instant of time and before that we know nothing. As stated by Peebles in Principles of Physical Cosmology (1976) page 6

If there were an instant, at a "big bang," when our universe started expanding, it is not in the cosmology as now accepted, because no one has thought of a way to adduce objective physical evidence that such an event really happened.

and that's as true today as it was in 1976. There are even ideas of multiple universes from which an advanced civilization might actually create a universe from their own, leaving their own universe intact. Such a universe is referred to as a child universe. Suppose that there is a scientists in such an advanced civilization who created our universe designed as he chose fit. Then, by the definition of the term, that scientist would in fact be God.


e are theorists today who hold that the universe is infinitely old such as proponents of the Pre-Big Bang Scenario


 Although Christians believe Jesus Christ pre-incarnate is the Father of Eternity. From outside fills the universe with His presence.

What do you believe? In a god, in God, in a higher power, or in an intelligence behind the universe...?
[/quote]

[alancalverd]

Frankly I could never have enough faith to be an atheist because I think more logically than atheists do.

That's a funny kind of logic based on an unjustified interpretation.

The basis of most scientific enquiry is Occam's principle of minimum assumption. Atheism is the stance of not assuming there to be anything necessarily beyond our understanding or observation. For as long as continuum physics provides sufficient understanding and the observations of  quantum physics remain consistent, Occam requires that we should assume an atheist position when analysing new data. Any other approach is intellectual cowardice.

Now there's a novel idea! Religious texts and tales, particularly in the christian tradition, generally praise faith as heroic.   

It's a while since I read "Black Holes and Baby Universes", but I don't recall there being any  supposition of intelligence or purpose in the Hawking model of the creation of new universes. 

[PmbPhy]

That's a funny kind of logic based on an unjustified interpretation.

Wrong. It's your interpretation which is unjustified. The term atheist is defined as
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheist

a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods

Occam's razor is a heuristic guide and is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic or a scientific result. In this case I'm not arguing that atheism is the correct scientific stance. I'm not saying that at all, nor do any physicist I know personally, which is a lot,  because one simply cannot prove something does not exist.

However your use of Occam's razor here is unjustified. There actually are reasons to assume there is a God, none of which I prescribe to and its that which makes me agnostic. Religion, like physical laws and theories are based on inductive reasoning, not[]/i] deductive reasoning. Occam's razor is merely a heuristic guide which says that the simplest explanation is more preferable. That does not mean that I misinterpreted anything in this case as you claim (as you so often do elsewhere).

I simply hold that (1) there are reasons to hypothesize the existence of God and (2) its illogical to assume something doesn't exist. That you took that to mean more than I did is your fault, not mine.

That's why you're interpretation is flawed.

[alancalverd]

Always a pleasure to split hairs with you, Pete!

I don't see a difference between

not assuming there to be anything necessarily beyond our understanding or observation

and

a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods

except that the latter is a subgroup of the former. Therefore anyone who uses Occam professionally is being intellectually dishonest if he applies different criteria to thoughts outside his professional sphere. However I consider this a lesser sin  than introducing random deities into physics!

[Europan Ocean (OP)]

There is the matter of personal revelation of god to a man or woman. Being rebuked, forgiven, given a clear conscience in a moment and a clean thought life... Such people testify, explain it to their children and there are old books they wrote like Isaiah and the account of the life of Francis of Assisi and a hard man like Martin Luther who experienced being forgiven, and started again from scratch, making a lot of mistakes. Both those men approached the pope with a view to change.

There are three kinds of revelation of god, to self, to children, or to people far away in time. But none of these can be tested in a lab.

Science is a tool, for some it is all reality, all in scientism.

[David Cooper]

Stephen Hawking says he does not believe in God, because before the big bang, there was no time for God to exist in.

His belief in an irrational model leads him to reject God for the wrong reason. Spacetime models can only be made to function correctly by bringing in Newtonian time to work along with the "time" dimension, and that Newtonian time goes back before the big bong.

An atheist has a poor logical position because he holds that God doesn't exist. Since it's not logically possible to prove that something doesn't exist then the atheist must believe it with no proof.

It is possible to prove within the bounds of logic that some things don't exist. For example, things that don't exist can't exist. Animals that have two heads but which also only have one head cannot exist. If there is a contradiction of that kind in the definition of something, that thing clearly cannot exist (unless logic itself is broken, but that's why we are usually forced to restrict ourselves to calling things logical proofs rather than absolute proofs).

Do you know what its called when you believe something when you don't have proof of it? It's called faith. Frankly I could never have enough faith to be an atheist because I think more logically than atheists do.

It is possible that you think more logically than most atheists who have made errors in their thinking and have ruled God out on a false basis, but it's also possible that you don't think as logically as those atheists who rule out God on logical grounds due to the impossibility of him qualifying as God where his definition generates contradictions.

Suppose that there is a scientists in such an advanced civilization who created our universe designed as he chose fit. Then, by the definition of the term, that scientist would in fact be God.

But here we see that we differ wildly on definition - you set a very low bar for your definition of God by allowing an ordinary being to become the "God" of a universe which he has sparked off, even though he knows that he is not a God in his own realm. To me, that is no more a God than any child building a virtual world with a program like Minecraft. That means we aren't using "God" to describe the same thing at all. I set the bar much higher and demand that God has no superiors and must know that he has no superiors, but even God cannot know that he has no superiors because he can't tell if there's a superior God above him who is keeping himself completely hidden from him. I also demand that God be no less than God from the very start - he should not be a natural evolved being that acquired knowledge, mental prowess and other powers later as that would make him no different from us (other than having the luck to come into being first), so he has to exist from the very start in the same advanced state as he will have at any subsequent time, but this strips him of all the credit for his knowledge which he didn't create himself, and it strips him of all the credit for all his genius which he didn't create himself, and it strips him of the credit for all his other powers which he did not create himself. As for the natural bit, if he is merely a mechanistic thing like any other whose functionality can be understood 100% in terms of cause and effect, there's nothing special about him, so he needs to be supernatural, but being supernatural depends on him not having a rational mechanism that can be understood, so if he doesn't understand his own functionality, he falls short of another requirement that I demand he must have, and that is that he understands all things. If he understands all things, he automatically understands that he cannot be supernatural, so again he destroys his own status as God.

So, I set the bar high and nothing can get over it, but to lower the bar on any of those points is to fall a long way short of describing God, and given that you have to lower the bar on all of them, you're left with something of such low status that its' merely a powerful natural being who, if it exists in any way, had the luck to get its paws on the levers of power that might control the universe and things outside of the universe, but it's a being which doesn't even know if it's the most powerful one around. It's really nothing more than an alien, and that is what you should call it instead of trampling all over the word "God". "God" includes the idea of a creator, but "creator" does not include the idea of God, so you need to be very careful with the naming of your categories and your definitions of what they mean if you're to avoid tripping up on the faults in the way you frame them.

Your alien (which you misname "God") may well exist, but God in the proper sense cannot.

[Europan Ocean (OP)]

Derek Prince was a professional logician who lectured at Cambridge before WW2. During WW2 he experienced God, God's presence... and began to understand the Bible. He was a CO, nurse. He became a Bible teacher. He married a few times due to widowing and died in 2003 in Israel. He is an example of a logical thinker who experienced God, but never found him despite much looking beforehand. Then to come to understand and write on the subject.

Einstein had interesting views at the same time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein

[Greylorn]

Suppose that there is a scientists in such an advanced civilization who created our universe designed as he chose fit. Then, by the definition of the term, that scientist would in fact be God.

But here we see that we differ wildly on definition - you set a very low bar for your definition of God by allowing an ordinary being to become the "God" of a universe which he has sparked off, even though he knows that he is not a God in his own realm. To me, that is no more a God than any child building a virtual world with a program like Minecraft. That means we aren't using "God" to describe the same thing at all. I set the bar much higher and demand that God has no superiors and must know that he has no superiors, but even God cannot know that he has no superiors because he can't tell if there's a superior God above him who is keeping himself completely hidden from him. I also demand that God be no less than God from the very start - he should not be a natural evolved being that acquired knowledge, mental prowess and other powers later as that would make him no different from us (other than having the luck to come into being first), so he has to exist from the very start in the same advanced state as he will have at any subsequent time, but this strips him of all the credit for his knowledge which he didn't create himself, and it strips him of all the credit for all his genius which he didn't create himself, and it strips him of the credit for all his other powers which he did not create himself. As for the natural bit, if he is merely a mechanistic thing like any other whose functionality can be understood 100% in terms of cause and effect, there's nothing special about him, so he needs to be supernatural, but being supernatural depends on him not having a rational mechanism that can be understood, so if he doesn't understand his own functionality, he falls short of another requirement that I demand he must have, and that is that he understands all things. If he understands all things, he automatically understands that he cannot be supernatural, so again he destroys his own status as God.

So, I set the bar high and nothing can get over it, but to lower the bar on any of those points is to fall a long way short of describing God, and given that you have to lower the bar on all of them, you're left with something of such low status that its' merely a powerful natural being who, if it exists in any way, had the luck to get its paws on the levers of power that might control the universe and things outside of the universe, but it's a being which doesn't even know if it's the most powerful one around. It's really nothing more than an alien, and that is what you should call it instead of trampling all over the word "God". "God" includes the idea of a creator, but "creator" does not include the idea of God, so you need to be very careful with the naming of your categories and your definitions of what they mean if you're to avoid tripping up on the faults in the way you frame them.

Your alien (which you misname "God") may well exist, but God in the proper sense cannot.

David,
It appears as though your God concept is identical to the Christian God, omnipotent, all-knowing, etc.  If so, your God cannot think.  Thought, as humans experience it, involves the creation of new concepts, ideas previously unknown.  A God who knows everything cannot have such a thought.  Thus it would seem as though such a being cannot create anything, including a universe with animate life and humans.  What is the use of such a God concept in a rational discussion? 

The point of any God concept is to explain the origin of the universe.  Perhaps we should be looking for a functional Creator concept? 

From experience we know that intelligent, limited beings with conscious minds can create things.  Why not consider the possibility that T. Aquinas had his fat head up his dorsal orifice when he decided to define God, and that a genuinely logical Creator must be limited, by logic if nothing else? 

[PmbPhy]

head

It is possible to prove within the bounds of logic that some things don't exist. For example, things that don't exist can't exist. Animals that have two heads but which also only have one head cannot exist. If there is a contradiction of that kind in the definition of something, that thing clearly cannot exist (unless logic itself is broken, but that's why we are usually forced to restrict ourselves to calling things logical proofs rather than absolute proofs).
[/quote]
Sorry David but I don't accept your argument as being a logical one. Using a logical contradiction in an attempt to create a logical proof is flawed logical argument and as such cannot be considered to be within the bounds of logic.

As for your belief in what God is, that's merely your personal opinion, and a Judeo-Christian one at that. I'm using the term as one uses it in most conversations about God and as defined in the Oxford English dictionary, i.e. as the term pertains to this thread see: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/god

1. (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.

2. (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshipped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.

The dictionary is a reflection of how most people use a term and most people use the term God as being that being who created our universe/world and is responsible for our existence.  A creator of a universe need not be all-knowing etc. I also don't accept your view that a being capable of creating a universe is an ordinary being.

That you have certain demands of "God" is your business alone.

[PmbPhy]

David,
It appears as though your God concept is identical to the Christian God, omnipotent, all-knowing, etc.  If so, your God cannot think.  Thought, as humans experience it, involves the creation of new concepts, ideas previously unknown.

Regarding your comment "the Christian God." The God of Christianity is the same God as that of Judaism and Islam, i.e. The God of Abraham. Its unfortunate that most people who aren't Muslims are completely unaware of the fact that the God of Islam is the exact same God/being as that of Christianity and Judaism. Its also unfortunate that those who know that the God of Islam is the God of Abraham also believe that the Christian God, the God of Judaism and the God of Islam are all different Gods even though they all believe that their God is the God of Abraham. That's extremely illogical. I've had that discussion with a few Christians and they hold that to be case because they have "different beliefs" about God. That's pretty sad logic to me.

A anyway, since when does human thought require the creation of new concepts? A new thought such as "I'm going to choose to have OJ for breakfast then I'll shower and go to work" does not constitute the creation of a new concept.

I don't accept that the God of Abraham (GoA) knows everything. I don't believe that the Bible even states that God ever said that he did know everything. Had that been true he never would have regretted creating Man and had have no need to destroy them with a flood nor would God have regretted making Saul King.

I did a bit of searching today on this notion and learned that my not accepting that the GoA not knowing everything is hardly a new thought. I learned that his notion is referred to as Open Theism and is a evangelical and post-evangelical Protestant Christianity concept. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_theism

This has been decribed in short here: http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/why-does-god-regret-and-repent-in-the-bible

This is a huge and important issue. Back in the mid-1990s, I was embroiled in disputes over what is called “Open Theism,” which argues that God is open to the future in the sense that he does not have exhaustive knowledge of what is coming in the future.

Note that the person who wrote that holds it to be wrong with his reasoning being that its akin to us saying "I'm going to regret doing X but here I go and do it."  I consider that to be nonsense. Especially when the consequence is killing mankind and since it removes free-will. At least in my opinion. Christians seem to hold that GoA has he same emotions we have and they at the same time hold that the GoA doesn't have the same emotions. I can't accept arguments with such logical contradictions. Especially when its not backed up in the Bible. The author's arguments are not logical ones, they're all guesswork with him almost always using terms like "I think" and "may have/be". For example

He may well be capable of lamenting over something he chose to bring about. And God may be capable of looking back on the very act of bringing something about and lamenting that act in one regard, while affirming it as best in another regard.

So here we see him use the phrases "may well be capable" and "may be capable". He also bases his argument on the verse

The Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret [or repent], for he is not a man, that he should have regret [or repent].

One is forced to interpret "The Glory of Israel" as being identical to "God." But notice that this is not God speaking but the author, who may have been Samuel himself but nobody is certain of that but Jewish tradition holds that it was Samuel that wrote the books of Samuel.

Christians etc will always argue that the books of the Bible are the "inspired word of God" meaning that God put what to write in the minds of the authors and then they just wrote down what God told them to. However there's a place in the New Testament where it said that a few of the apostles were arguing over the meaning of something. If what was in their minds was the inspired word of God then there'd be no argument among their meaning between  the apostles.


Note: When I speak of what's in the Bible I do so not on someone else's interpretation of its content but what I actually read in it. Someone once suggested to me that I read the Bible cover to cover, every single word, at last five times. I've only done it twice. I'll keep going though since the Bible is the most widely read book that there is.

The Bible is flawed too. I've read places where there are contradictions. I think it was in the two stories of how King Saul (?) died. If it wasn't King Saul it was how someone else died. But they contradict each other. I also found it extremely odd that in Numbers the exact count of the tribes were almost always rounded off to the nearest hundred. There were never numbers like 45,234 people. There is one place where the count is rounded to the nearest 50, i.e. the tribe of Gad.

There may be places in the Bible where men have stated that God knows everything but that's different than God himself having stated it. In the book of Job God is held to have made many statements about his abilities but nobody is sure about who wrote that book and whether its supposed to be as told by God, being a real story with actual statements held to be made by God or whether its merely a story told an attempt to explain something.

Thus it would seem as though such a being cannot create anything, including a universe with animate life and humans.

Not having any new thoughts doesn't imply that such a being cannot have an original physical creation of something such as the universe.

What is the use of such a God concept in a rational discussion? 

While I don't accept David's view on the definition of God it doesn't seem to me that one cannot have a rational discussion about such a God which is still useful. In fact there are always discussions of that kind going on as their have been since the creation of such an idea.

[PmbPhy]

By the way. One cannot logically hold that there is a being who knows the future exactly while at the same time hold that Quantum Mechanics (QM) is true since QM holds that the future is undetermined.

[David Cooper]

It is possible to prove within the bounds of logic that some things don't exist. For example, things that don't exist can't exist. Animals that have two heads but which also only have one head cannot exist. If there is a contradiction of that kind in the definition of something, that thing clearly cannot exist (unless logic itself is broken, but that's why we are usually forced to restrict ourselves to calling things logical proofs rather than absolute proofs).

Sorry David but I don't accept your argument as being a logical one. Using a logical contradiction in an attempt to create a logical proof is flawed logical argument and as such cannot be considered to be within the bounds of logic.

I don't know which school of logic you belong to, but in the respectable ones it is most certainly not accepted that something that can't exist can exist (just as it isn't accepted that zero equals one), or that an animal with two heads can (at the same time) have only one head (i.e. that 2=1). Contradiction is one of the most important tools of logic for disproving things, and a disproof is a proof [ because "a proof that x" is the same thing as "a disproof that not -x"].

As for your belief in what God is, that's merely your personal opinion, and a Judeo-Christian one at that. I'm using the term as one uses it in most conversations about God and as defined in the Oxford English dictionary, ... The dictionary is a reflection of how most people use a term and most people use the term God as being that being who created our universe/world and is responsible for our existence.  A creator of a universe need not be all-knowing etc.

Most people mean rather more than a mere creator of the universe, but the important point here is that definitions are indeed important and should not be mixed up with each other. If I disprove God using one definition of God, you are not entitled to assert that you have destroyed that proof by proving that a powerful alien can exist and by declaring that that alien is God. You need to restrict yourself to claiming that a God of definition A cannot be disproved (which is correct - your alien could exist), just as I have to restrict myself to saying that a God of definition B cannot exist (because its qualifications are impossible to meet) - neither of us has any right to extend our claim beyond the range of the definition we've used, unless we can show that the proposed definition of God tied to a specific claim fails to match up to any acceptable measure of what God is supposed to be.

I also don't accept your view that a being capable of creating a universe is an ordinary being.

You could argue that a cheetah is not an ordinary being too because it can run faster than any other animal, but that is simply being impressed at something having more x than something else. A being that happens to be in a position that gives it the opportunity to create a universe is merely lucky to have access to the necessary levers of power, just as a cheetah is lucky to be able to run fast. Is a disabled person inferior to people who aren't disabled? Should a disabled person look up to non-disabled people with admiration and declare them superior? What is more special about a being that can create a universe than one which can't but which could if it had the luck to have access to the same power? We can create virtual universes in a computer, so in what way are we fundamentally inferior? All that the creator of a universe is is a powerful alien. But the biggest question you need to ask yourself is this: why call such a being which creates a universe a "God" rather than just calling him a being which creates a universe? It is a massive dishonesty to apply the G word to this when it has so much implied extra baggage. Our task is to be clear about what we're trying to prove or disprove and not to use ambiguous terms in ways that lead to confusion, and declaring that God could exist on the basis that a powerful alien could exist is extremely misleading. Our task here is to provide clarity and to avoid playing word games.

1. (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.

Omnipotent and omniscient are usual parts of the definition, so why are they missing? It's because dictionaries are complied by lexicographers who try to define things as best they can but who often fall short. It is also not their job to pin down every last part of the definition - that is a job for AGI systems.

2. (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshipped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.

There are many proposed gods, but God with a capital G refers to a single God which is in charge of everything. This means that the word God only applies to religions which have a supreme god. Lesser gods are things that could exist, just as fairies could exist - there is typically nothing in their definition that requires them to do anything so special as to be impossible.

That you have certain demands of "God" is your business alone.

Not when the requirements are absolutely standard ones that most believers claim of him, such as being almighty, all-knowing and the creator of all things. Most of the people who argue that God exists are not talking about a powerful alien being, but about an almighty, all-knowing creator of all things, and these qualities that they claim of him are taking him a long way from a mere powerful alien. If they were just believers in a powerful alien, that would be fine because that's a harmless belief which may even be right. The reason I take part in discussions of this kind is that the stakes are much higher than that - most Goddists claim that an almighty, all-knowing creator of all things exists, but they also claim, as in your dictionary's first definition, that he is the source of all moral authority. That makes this imaginary being extremely dangerous - the mere idea of him has a major role in driving war, terrorism and all manner of other abuses because of the "holy" texts that supposedly came from this impossible being. And that is why I object strongly to your approach, because you try to encompass that kind of God into your claim that God can't be disproved, but the kind of "God" that can't be disproved is merely a powerful alien being which falls a hell of a long way short of what is normally regarded as God. Your "God" could be an alien child called Kevin which spends all its time making universes in its bedroom. Their God is one which sets rules about who you are allowed to kill, and they should not be given any encouragement by inaccurate claims that their God can exist when he has actually been disproved.

By the way. One cannot logically hold that there is a being who knows the future exactly while at the same time hold that Quantum Mechanics (QM) is true since QM holds that the future is undetermined.

QM asserts that it all comes down to something random, but what appears to be random needn't be random - it's just one of those cases of physicists going beyond their competence by denying the existence of something they can't detect.

[Greylorn]

PmbPhy,
You left a somewhat wide ranging (rambling) post which started out being addressed to me, then went elsewhere.  The best I can do is reply to a few apparently relevant comments. 

You wrote, "By the way. One cannot logically hold that there is a being who knows the future exactly while at the same time hold that Quantum Mechanics (QM) is true since QM holds that the future is undetermined."

Why would I disagree?  You're singing to the choir.   

Earlier you wrote, "A anyway, since when does human thought require the creation of new concepts? A new thought such as "I'm going to choose to have OJ for breakfast then I'll shower and go to work" does not constitute the creation of a new concept."

You are using a definition which is rather broad, and which easily includes the neural mechanisms of any cockroach.  There is something unique about humans which shows up now and then in what we call the "thought" process, which is not apparent in animals (I'd be delighted to learn that dolphins are an exception).  If we cannot agree on this, we will waste one another's time bandying various definitions around. 

We are somewhat at the mercy of a language which makes few distinctions within the understanding of a common word, such as "thought."  I propose to make some.

There is a kind of human thought which is genuinely imaginative.  It is not involved in routine decisions.  Those who have driven a car for any time, repeating particular pathways, know that it is possible to arrive at one's destination without any conscious recollection of the driving process, because his real mind wandered elsewhere while his brain and central nervous system controlled the vehicle.  It's this "real mind" in which I'm interested.

An engineer might arise in the morning, go through the same routine you spoke of and drive himself to his workplace, most of the time thinking, with his real and imaginative mind, about the circuit he is in the process of designing.  He might come up with a new concept for that circuit while his brain is piloting his car into the parking lot.   

We are all familiar (I hope) with this kind of thought distinction, mostly because we don't think about it, and there are no words in our language to distinguish one kind of information processing from another.  Thus, in your mind, you see no distinction between the mental processes involved in replying to a forum post and those which determine personal hygiene. 

I make sharp distinctions about such things, but so far have not made them clear.  As your comments make obvious, my use of the term "thought" is incomplete and inadequate. 

It is imaginative thought I find interesting-- that kind of thought which engages previously unknown ideas.  The history of physics was built upon such thoughts, from Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Planck, and Einstein.  Perhaps they too took showers if the plumbing permitted, or baths, but I don't put their hygienic decisions into the category of thought, no more than a dog thinks about licking its nuts. 

New topic: As best I can tell, the God of Abraham did not know everything.  This is implicit throughout the Old Testament.  The notion of an omnipotent, all-knowing and therefore non-thinking God seems to be a consequence of fat Thomas' incompetent "logic," as with other elements of the current God concept. 

IMO although various religionists might claim that the God of Abraham, Christianity, and Islam are the same being, they are as confused about that as they are about most everything else, just like staunch atheists.  For example, what about the Trinity?  Not in Judaism, not in Islam.  But so what, since all versions of the creator concept except mine are hopelessly flawed, either illogical or inconsistent with reality, and usually both?

Finally, let me try to address this comment of yours: "Not having any new thoughts doesn't imply that such a being cannot have an original physical creation of something such as the universe."   This is the level of analysis that I'd expect from a non-engineer, someone who has never used fundamental physics concepts to actually build some sort of functional mechanism. 

I cannot imagine assembling a computer or a computer program, or even a simple circuit connecting that computer to the real world, without learning things I did not previously know.  Moreover, there have been occasions in which making a working, complex machine, entails new inventions of things previously not existing. 

Most people considering such subjects are atheists, and I presume, progressive liberals of some sort.  My experience is that they cannot handle divergent ideas and treat them with a crab-bucket mentality.  Hope you're not one of them.  If so, last conversation.   

[PmbPhy]

You left a somewhat wide ranging (rambling) post which started out being addressed to me, then went elsewhere.  The best I can do is reply to a few apparently relevant comments. 

It wasn't rambling, it was thorough. There's a major difference. The only response of mine directed to you were the ones immediately after where I quoted you which were relevant to the part of your post I quoted. Others were to David and the rest were general statements about the assertion that God knows everything. I'm not even certain why I responded to David since he has very strange notions about everything under the Sun as evidenced by his comment about school of logic you belong to, which showed he had no idea what I was saying.

If I don't comment on other of your comments then there's a good reason for it. I.e. mostly politeness. E.g. I was giving an example of a thought and you compared that to the level of a cockroach. Cockroaches don't wonder

"I'm going to choose to have OJ for breakfast then I'll shower and go to work"

And there's no way that I'm going to divert this thread to what a thought is for a single point that nobody here is interested in. Plus I find your responses to be rude, i.e.

Finally, let me try to address this comment of yours: "Not having any new thoughts doesn't imply that such a being cannot have an original physical creation of something such as the universe."   This is the level of analysis that I'd expect from a non-engineer, someone who has never used fundamental physics concepts to actually build some sort of functional mechanism. 

You don't know me so stop making such terrible assumptions. An engineer? I'm a physicist and a mathematician who used to be an electronics technician. I also worked at MIT on the Chandra X-ray satellite. I was the one who tutored the engineers when I was in college because I knew the subject matters so much better than they do. You have no idea what I've done in my life so stop assuming such things. You're coming across as a rude jerk.

Since you appear to be a rude jerk by nature, from what I've been reading of your posts so far, you're going straight into my ignore list before you say something even ruder and I have to ban you from the forum. I'll let me fellow moderators deal with your poor attitude.

[David Cooper]

I'm not even certain why I responded to David since he has very strange notions about everything under the Sun as evidenced by his comment about school of logic you belong to, which showed he had no idea what I was saying.

It was a polite way of saying that you have a very poor idea of what logic is.

[WilliamAFigueroa]

I have a strong tendency to drift towards the simulation theory, but do not have much value for man-made Gods, though I do not have an issue with people believing in one, because of the God gene.

[Greylorn]

I have a strong tendency to drift towards the simulation theory, but do not have much value for man-made Gods, though I do not have an issue with people believing in one, because of the God gene.

Disbelieving in "God" because of what some authority figure on a TV documentary channel said means that you get your ideas from authority figures, which most people do.  The "god gene" (if such a thing existed) would be responsible for the same general belief patterns.  Atheism flies in the face of honestly observed reality as much as does religion; flip sides of the same wooden nickel.
-G.

[Zer0]

Hello Europan Ocean.

The Subject says - Non theist but not atheist? What do you believe?

But considering this subject is viewed with  pure scientific methodology, won't the concept of atheism be just a subjective reality & objectively nonexistent ?