No, the lazy choice is to have the visions of the infinite you mention and instead of trying to understand them, simply to describe them in terms of whatever traditional concepts are floating around in your culture-- which in this case are at best 99% anthropomorphizing fable, and often consciously designed to enslave you.

Ironically, in the modern West the relationship between church and state has been almost entirely severed. Christianity is now mostly harmless. The truly dangerous religions are the civic/nationalistic religions. Instead of pledging to God, we pledge to the flag. Instead of wearing crosses we wear lapel pins. We even get to elect a high priest every four years ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY&feature=relat... ). And unlike Christianity, nationalism has conscription and nuclear bombs. The history of the 20th century shows that dropping the "God" label did not get rid of religion, it made religion far more insidious and dangerous.

Unless state religion causes Christianity (unlikely, IMO), that leaves us with two possibilities: either Christianity causes state religion, or they are both just different faces of the same mentality. In either case, your assertion that "Christianity is now mostly harmless" is wrong.

   No, the lazy choice is to have the visions of the infinite
   you mention and instead of trying to understand them,
   simply to describe them in terms of whatever traditional
   concepts are floating around in your culture.

The lazy is on you, it seems, for making all kinds of straw man arguments here. Surely 99% of belief in God is based on culture and anthropology, but 99% is not 100%. You do the topic a disservice to say that it is.

Personally? I find it funny when people say they're an atheist. "How do you know what not to believe in?" is my first question, and usually that shuts them down. You see, atheism is a response to those traditional cultural ideas of religion (and the history of how they have evolved), not to the real concept of a God. To the atheist, God, santa clause, the christian church, the easter bunny, etc -- it's all the same thing. Stuff you can't prove. They haven't grown to understand where the definitional fault lines are.

That's lazy.

There are an infinite number of things we can believe in. This makes it necessary to come up with a rational framework based on what we know to make probabilistic inferences. This is basically an argument handled as such:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

I don't want to come off as attacking faith or your beliefs, either. I know what it is like to believe and to not believe so I can respect your experience even though I don't share it.

You are answering in the positive -- how you know _what_ to believe in. That is not the question, and the two are not logical opposites of one another.

Let's try a thought experiment, shall we? Let's say you and I meet on a train.

If I told you my barn was red, would you believe me? You might or might not. We might have a discussion about science and how we know things. I'm sure we could come to some sort of understanding about levels of proof and this and that.

Why is that? Because reasoning and logic work inside of a web of meanings that we call language. That's what science is built on. It's both part of everyday knowledge and part of advanced reasoning.

We are dealing with concrete things: nouns with meanings, lists of things, perceptions and the relationship of formal systems, empiricality and positivism. But what happens if I introduce an item without common meaning? Perhaps things without any meaning at all. Let's say you are a caveman and I am from the year 4000.

I say "I have something that you do not understand. It is so outside your understanding such that that I cannot describe it to you inside of our limited window of conversation. I cannot even begin to describe the generics of the things that lead to those concepts"

Now you're perfectly capable of saying "I don't believe that. I only believe things that have a strict order (not realizing, of course, that all of "common sense" is tenuous at best. Read up)"

That's cool. Nothing wrong with that. But it does not impact the veracity of my statement. In fact, without language, reason, observation, theory, and reproduction, _you're unable to make any conclusions about my statement one way or another_. Things outside our web of understanding exist in a place where we can make no conclusions one way or another.

All I am saying is that there is a class of such statements. There always have been, and there always will be. Most of these statements -- perhaps 99.99999% of them -- are eventually dealt with as our experiential and smenatic toolbox expands. God, to me, is the set of those true statements that we are unable to understand.

Now I'm not talking about reasoning in common language and logical space -- I think science probably forms the interface between the true and unknowable and the true and knowable. In that sense, science and religion are like yin and yang -- one is simply the thing the other is not (and likewise, one is contained inside the other)

Looking back over written history, we can see the wonderful dialectic of reason and faith. One can look at this as the war of reason over superstition, or one can look at it as the conquest of universal concepts of morality and faith over political, tribal, and primitive power systems -- the species learning what part of God-belief is critical to its survival and what is not. Same thing, different viewpoint.

Isn't that basically just a restatement of the whole non-overlapping magisteria argument? Ie, Science talks about things we know, and religion talks about all the things that are also true, but unprovable.

Some assumptions there that should definitely not be accepted at face value:

1. Science is about talking.

2. Religion says true things.

3. It is reasonable to accept these things as true despite being unprovable.

Science is not: a body of information, a group of people, a way of speaking, or the use of technology. Science is a method of analyzing the unknown, which boils down to a simple rule: Theories are verified by evidence.

Yes, any sufficiently complicated axiomatic system will contain unprovable true statements. But we're not living in an axiomatic system, we're living in the universe, where the technical term for the class of statements which are fundamentally and forever unverifiable is "meaningless". That's why Einstein's theories, while elegant and useful, were not accepted until they made a risky prediction that came true. To paraphrase Popper, if a theory makes no risky predictions, then it might be an interesting story, but that's all it is.

Another way to put this is that the meaning of a proposition is the difference between two hypothetical universes, alike in every way, except that in one (A), the proposition is false, and in the other (B), it is true, and the necessary differences implied by this. This isn't all that crazy; whenever you start a statement with "That means...", this is what you're mentally doing, calculating the delta between the world with and the world without.

Take the statement "God exists." If there is not, and can never be, any observable difference between universes A and B, then that statement has no meaning, and we shouldn't even bother talking about it when we could be petting cats or folding socks.

But that's not the case, for most values of "God" that people talk about. A universe designed intentionally by a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent fairy would very likely be very different from the one that fell together by random chance, in ways very much NOT outside our web of understanding.

the conquest of universal concepts of morality and faith over political, tribal, and primitive power systems -- the species learning what part of God-belief is critical to its survival and what is not

We don't get our morality from religion. If we did, then how would christian parents know that they're not supposed to stone their children? (It's not the law, either, because those laws were made mostly by christians, so how did the lawmakers know that stoning ought to be immoral?)

The common response is, It's not all meant to be taken literally, but if that's the case, how do you know which parts to take literally, unless you get your moral sense from somewhere else?

To the extent that truth exists and can be found, science--that is, making up logically coherent stories and then testing those stories against evidence--is the way to find it.

I include in that the very real human need for morality and the experiences commonly described as spirituality. If those types of experiences are valuable and psychologically useful, great; let's investigate and study them. There is a wealth of literature in the Buddhist tradition doing just that. (Buddhism has some warts, but it's always struck me as the least irrational religion, overall.)

The non-overlapping magisteria argument basically amounts to filling in any gaps in our knowledge with the sticky goo of religion to make ourselves feel better until science can come along and clean up the mess. But doesn't that just add friction to the progress of understanding? Is it really so torturous to just admit we don't know something, and live with it, letting it spur us on to more investigation?

Gee - Isaac. Now we're getting into what science is? LOL Now the water is REALLY going to get deep. What's science is a non-trivial question.

I'd like to point out that this format is really prohibitive. Most of the people we're talking about wrote entire books covering some of these issues. To reduce it to a few word bites is going to be a huge undertaking. I want to apologize in advance for mucking up my own argument.

Popper is definitely the man. As you point out, science is nothing if not bold. But Popper was not into the metaphysical -- in fact, just the opposite. The whole late 19th and early 20th century philosophy of science movement was based on "where does science end and pseudo-science begin?" I believe this to be a different, but orthogonal and interesting, debate. If anything, by the time we get to Kuhn we finally realize that the scientific method has built-in limitations -- a discovery which I believe supports my thesis.

I'll agree that my definition of God is meaningless in the strictness terms. Oddly enough, however, language allows us to describe and converse to some degree about this while having a common understanding. So "meaningless" in this case is only in the most formal of terms. Once again, because it is meaningless, the argument holds true -- no conclusion can be reached one way or another.

I never spoke of intelligent design, benevolence, etc -- so not sure where you are going with that. Seems like a non-sequiter. Likewise, I also did not make the case that we get morality from religion. I simply stated that a God-belief may be as genetically useful as rationalism. This is simply because I observe both to be universally prevalent in the species.

And with your question of how to find morality, ie, "it's not all supposed to be taken literally" I have no idea what you are talking about. Myth? Supposedly holy scriptures? I never made any sort of claim about any of that. Confusing religion with a discussion on God doesn't do either subject much good.

"To the extent truth exists and can be found, science... is the way to find it" -- hey I'm all for relying on inductive reason, hypothesis, and experimentation to construct more and more complicated models which have greater and greater fidelity to reality. I believe that's the only chance we have as a species to conquer major problems and progress beyond the caves and to the stars. But "truth" is an emotionally laden term both sides use. How about "it just works"? I think once you use the magic word "truth", you've started smoking crack, no matter what side of this discussion you are on. My opinion only.

Love Buddhism, from what I know about it. Wonderful ideas in there. Wish I knew more.

Yeah the sticky goo of religion between hard science is definitely not what I am talking about. I think this view misunderstands science (by believing it to be firm ground when it is always provisional) and religion (by believing it to be gooey) I'm happy to conclude my argument with God simply being the unknowable, not the unknown. I think I make my case by restricting the discussion in this way. I've got no problem discussing the non-overlapping magesteria argument, but the argument is not mine and I think there are a lot of holes in it.

I suspect that no deep satisfaction will really be had here. But it's been enjoyable and entertaining, that's for sure.

language allows us to describe and converse to some degree about this while having a common understanding.

That's a neat thing about language and the power of the human brain, for sure. We can probe into the unknown to make stories, and then reason about the world in which those stories would be true, and then test to see whether or not we live in that world or not. Sometimes, it takes quite a long time to figure out if there would be any differences to be tested.

But "truth" is an emotionally laden term both sides use. How about "it just works"?

And so instrumentalism enters the discussion... We ARE getting into deep waters here!

And with your question of how to find morality, ie, "it's not all supposed to be taken literally" I have no idea what you are talking about.

I was referring to your comment about the conquest of universal concepts of morality and faith over political, tribal, and primitive power systems -- the species learning what part of God-belief is critical to its survival and what is not. I don't consider morality a "part of God-belief", but apparently you don't either, so I seem to have misunderstood where you were going with that. My bad.

I simply stated that a God-belief may be as genetically useful as rationalism.

What if God-belief was an emergent property resulting from other beneficial traits, but not itself beneficial at all?

For example, our mucous membranes, social customs, and fondness for living indoors are all---themselves---very beneficial traits. However, together, they make us very susceptible to the common cold, which is definitely not beneficial to us at all.

Likewise, our agent-fixation, our creativity, and our way of passing wisdom on to our children are all beneficial behaviors, but together, they open the door for bugs to creep into the system. Science is our unit-test framework :)

Love Buddhism, from what I know about it. Wonderful ideas in there. Wish I knew more.

Nothing stopping you :)

The science of spirituality is a very interesting subject, which has sadly been stymied in the west by the success of Yahweh. For centuries, to avoid being persecuted, scientists have had to avoid any subjects that might impede upon religion's "magisterium". If the two do not overlap, it is only because religion has been so aggressive and successful in defending its turf.

In regards to Buddhism, I'm happy with where I am right now. But it does seem that Buddhism would be a good "fit" for me. I've always been a Great Pumpkin man -- hate to leave it without good cause.

"Science is our unit-test framework" -- more like our design review. Living would be the unit-test. Society might be more like a system test. (E-gads, an extended metaphor! Would be fun to chase that one down :) )

As far as Judaism and the various sequels (I won't use the Y word as it offends those of faith), beats me why they are so popular. Intuitively I would think it's because they offer more to the species than they take away in the competitive market of creative narratives to existence -- sort of the same reason start-ups do well because they offer a unique and worthwhile value proposition to their users. But that's just idle speculation. I always had a weak spot for Hegel's historicism and dielectric as a way to understand the role of person, religion, and society. But these ideas went _way_ off the rails later with Marx and others, as you know. Popper had a field day with them, yet I feel there's value to be had here. Seems like a lot of great thinkers get a glimmer of an insight, then spend the rest of their careers taking it too dang far.

Great discussion. Thanks!

Read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. He spends a good chunk of the book analyzing some of the human traits that make us susceptible to religion, as well as the evolutionary advantages of each.

I'd guess it had to do with the level of dedication among followers. When ideologies clash, the one with more fervent believers tends to roll over the others.

It usually goes something like this:

T; Do you believe in god?

A: Define 'god'

T: <some description involving unverifiable supernatural beings>

A: No. I do not believe that.

No one gets shut down.

"They haven't grown to understand where the definitional fault lines are."

Nice ad hominem there. Talk about lazy.

T: Do you believe in God? A: I believe through inductive reasoning that there are things we do not understand. I believe it is critically important to know this. I also believe this always to be the case. You can call this continuing lack of knowledge "a hole", part of the implications of Godel's theorem -- whatever. I find no problem with those who choose the word "God"

See how much more fun this is with two players?

Well, you were the one saying you ask that question of others, and then you gave a fairly dismissive account of how others answer. Basically, you played both parts.

I simply offered an alternative to how those sorts of conversations go when I'm the one being asked. You know, giving you an actual person so you don't have to play both parts. It's more fun that way.

If you want to use a very particular definition of "god" to frame the discussion in your favor, that's great. But we both know that when most people are talking about god and atheism and belief they are not obliquely referring to Godel anything.

I understand that you and others confuse God, religion, and social justice. I'll posit that they are all related in some fashion outside the scope of this discussion. But that common confusion is a colloquial discussion (What is commonly meant when one says something) not a semantic and epistemological one.

You seem to be saying here that, for you, "God" is the unknown -- not the unknowable, which is a fairly common belief, but the unknown. This is a novel viewpoint for me. Does this mean that knowledge, as and when it is grasped by the human mind, moves from the realm of the exalted to the secular? Is there more "God" in the world of an infant than ours?

In other comments you seem to refer to the more conventional notion of the unknowable, so perhaps I'm misunderstanding.

It is not clear what you mean by "God" to start with. Clearly it's more than just an alias for the unknown (or unknowable?). In another comment, you refer to "the real concept of a God". What is the real concept of a God? How did you arrive at it, conclude that it is the real concept of God, and integrate it into your philosophy?

Yes, when I say unknown, I mean unknowable. I use them interchangeably for brevity at times. I believe the proof is on sound footing when the term "unknowable" is used. "Unknown" has a lot of issues, and the argument is left in the "who knows" category.

I started a couple of years ago to study proof and anti-proofs on the existence of God. Very interesting subject, and I enjoyed the reading and listening a lot. I had a simple question: was there a common thread that appeared in all types of God discussions that was not along the lines of a big, scary, invisible man-in-the-sky? Something that mostly ran the same through the Greeks, Romans, Hindus, etc? Is it possible to use the word God in a clear, unambiguous manner?

I'm currently convinced that there is, and I've shared it with you guys, mainly because as hackers I figured you appreciate the "hack". But I try to remain open that I've screwed the pooch in some fashion in my studies. Happy to be proven wrong as well. Have at it.

It's interesting that what I'm saying ties into some of the more interesting math and physics work on today, mostly the idea of a computational substrate to the universe and the question of whether we are living in a simulation.

You've also brought up the personal aspect of belief and how, for instance, it applies to infants. Hey -- beats me. That wasn't my initial goals. The implications could be very fascinating.

As far as my personal speculation goes past this definition, I'm inclined to both the computational universe and simulation arguments, both of which I think lead to some sort of intelligence "out there". (Or something we could at least describe as working in a planned manner to accomplish pre-determined goals). So in my personal belief system I have an intelligent God who exists outside of our ability to really get a grip on him/her/it/etc.

But that's about it. I don't think you can take the God argument any further and still have a common format for discussion -- there are no further commonalities that I can find. Some folks have the far-away God, some the man-in-my-head God -- it's all over the place. Not only can you go no further, I think it is impossible to do so without destroying the theory so far, ie, the more attributes you give to an unkowable thing, the less unknowable it is. (Hence my difficulty actually describing what I mean by intelligent)

Looked at it this way, atheists are like those cavemen denying that things could exist for which they are unable to describe or reason about -- it's just silly. One could use the words provincial or childish -- no harm is meant using them but they're not spot on either. Really religious people, on the other hand, are like those folks who dream up entire fantasies around the unknown, and they do not distinguish between the unknown and the unknowable. Just as bad, in my opinion. But ironically enough, looked at another way, both sides are tremendously good.

But both behaviors seem to have evolutionary roots. Perhaps a survival trait. One trait can work with complex interactions between known concepts. Another trait can work in an almost random manner when no information is present. As you can see, because we're talking about how the species interacts with both the unknown and unknowable, the discussion about religion and God are joined -- but it's a completely new direction for the discussion. When try to have a religion discussion and a God discussion at the same time, we get these cartoon answers for complex questions.

It's in fact a very poor ad hominem, a non-existent ad hominem in my opinion, and if it was read that way, it was read that way in error.

Just to argue the point, how do you define supernatural? Where do you draw the line between natural-yet-incomprehensible-phenomena and that-which-is-only-imagination?

There is some ground between being religious and being an atheist. Being an atheist implies some degree of faith. The question whether there is a God cannot be answered within our current knowledge (and it may pretty well remain so until the end of our universe). An atheist firmly believes the answer is "no". An agnostic acknowledges we are unable to answer the question. Maybe in a million years, maybe never. Interestingly, the only answer science can give to questions like these is on the lines of "we can neither prove nor disprove this hypothesis".

As I use to joke, I lack the faith required to be an atheist. ;-)

I think we are really playing with words here. You are absolutely sure God does not exist, but I cannot make the required leap of faith that being a true atheist implies and, thus, I can only call myself agnostic. Still, I am pretty sure He (or She, or It) doesn't exist.

As you well pointed out, I am not absolutely sure of anything that cannot be proved with a sound mathematical demonstration. That's about all the faith I have.

And I place it _very_ carefully ;-)

I used to think that it is just as arrogant to be an atheist as it is to be religious. Both sides have no proof. I considered myself to be agnostic as all we can confidently say is that "we don't know".

But I changed my label on reading jmc's words.

[edit: on reading other parts of this discussion, I see that jmc has already been quoted. However I'll let this post be, as it is still a reply to the parent.]

The JMC God exists outside our space-time continuum, since before the Universe and is said to have caused its formation and to interact with it in some way or the other, sometimes violating causality. Good luck trying to shape that into a testable hypothesis ;-) I won't bother with it until someone cooks up a decent one.

So, as only a true agnostic can say, I don't care if God exists or not. It's not a question I can answer.

Great thought provoking reply.

Personally, I don't have trouble concluding that the God theories of current religions are wrong (looking at the contradictions, absurd stories, in-built benefits for preacher class etc). Could there be some other non-religious God? "I don't care" is a good approach.

JMC = 'John McCarthy' as well as 'Jewish-Muslim-Christian' (all Abrahamic religions)? Whoa! My brain explodes!!! :-)

I'm playing a different game with pi. Produced by the brain as a shorthand or discovered within the fabric of the universe? Number theory, to me, is either a grand unveiling or just another language.

As someone smarter than me once put it: "It's not that I believe in no gods, it's just that I don't believe in gods."

Christians and other believers have this most extra-ordinary theory: that there is an all-powerful creator who created everything, who sees everything, and has everything under control. They offer not one shred of proof, then muse out loud about the "faith" required not to believe in their absurd hypothesis.

I'd love to believe in gods of some kind -- it's not easy to accept the inevitability of your own annihilation -- but nobody has ever given me sufficient reason to deviate from the more sensible position of non-belief.

It seems this person is agnostic rather than an atheist. As I put previously, an atheist believes "the God question" (that cannot be answered at all) actually has an answer and the answer is "no". An agnostic acknowledges we cannot answer the God question. As for the werewolf question, it is easier to create testable hypothesis that could and most probably would be proven false.

And, of course, even if you can prove false every "evidence" every religion says it provides, that would not answer the God question. It would only prove religions didn't get it right.

The God question cannot be answered with science and, so, it cannot be really answered. We are not discussing science here. We are discussing semantics.

BTW, I would be quite astonished if God did, indeed, exist. And somewhat happy. It's pretty dry here in no-faith-land.

What a very sad way to look at life.

Being agnostic is NOT a middle ground between theism and atheism. The break down is like this: 1) A god exists. 2) A god does not exist.

Theists accept #1 and reject #2. Atheists reject #1 and can either accept or reject #2.

Gnosticism (for the purpose of this discussion) deals with what you claim to know. A gnostic claims knowledge about the truth of an assertion. An agnostic (literally "without knowledge") does not claim to have such knowledge.

The term "atheist" is very similar to the legal term "not-guilty". Declaring a person "not-guilty" does not mean they are "innocent". It simply means that there is insufficient evidence to declare them "guilty". Saying that an atheist must "prove" that no gods exist is like saying that you must prove your innocence in a court of law. Rejecting an assertion because it lacks supporting evidence does not require proving the opposite assertion.

Gnosticism is a religion in its own right and agnosticism generally always applies to questions of religious significance.

Literally, "gnostic" and "agnostic" refer to what you claim, or do not claim, to know. Given the general muddle of terms--"agnostic", "agnostic theist", "agnostic atheist", etc--I tend to find it more helpful to separate out the terms into core meanings. I believe doing so more clearly displays the positions, as you can plot the Atheism <-> Theism axis against the Agnostic <-> Gnostic axis. I would argue that this separation of claims-of-knowledge vs claims-of-god(s) is clearer than the simple Atheist <-> Agnostic <-> Theist positioning.

Weinberg is surely right that, if the word God is not to become completely useless, it should be used in the way people have generally understood it: to denote a supernatural creator that is 'appropriate for us to worship'.

--Dawkins

  A: I believe that when you die, your energy goes back out into the world, and becomes a part of everything.
  P: Yeah, that's why you get cold.  Entropy.

Aquinas called God "Pure substance through pure act". It's very hard not to see a definition of matter and energy there and given by a "Saint".

Dawkins here is insisting on a definition for which his professional training gives no special insight. So why should he be recognized as some "expert"?

He doesn't have to be. The argument stands on its own: you can define "God" to be whatever you want, but the definition that you advance approaches tautology.

Sure, "God" could be whatever you want it to be. But that's exactly the point. It's a personal relationship (or lack thereof) defined by you. And no amount of science can take that away. If anything, the failures of modern physics (and soon neuroscience too) deepens my appreciation for the religious perspective.

  And who stands outside time and space to define the tautology? 

There is no fundamental understanding regarding the concept of "outside time and space", because our knowledge of them both derives from experience. To have some understanding of 'outside', you would have to have received that information a priori. That would mean that everyone had received that information, however.

Since, we can readily determine that the difference between believers and non-believers is a matter of experience. The difference between the two has nothing to do with "outside" either time and space, because that "outside" is not experiencable (at this point in time).

No it wouldn't. Perhaps I'm just special.

a priori knowledge is knowledge gained without experience. There is no reason it has to be universal.

edit:

This should not be taken that I'm implying that believers are ranting prophets. Just a query as to how you propose to tell the difference.

My advice would be to look at the person. If the man seems rational and honest, then maybe there is something to it. Then again, maybe not. It's really up to you.

Really, its arbitrary. Just make up your mind.

Since I understand you're a neuroscientist by training, what do you mean by "and soon neuroscience too"?

It's not obvious to me that consciousness can explain itself.

To paraphrase Dawkins' speech to the University of Kentucky,

The thing about being an atheist is that you don't think that "theology" is a subject at all. You're not an expert in fairies, but I'll bet you have no problem not believing in those.

Actually, since Dawkins is an expert in Ethology, the evolution of animal behavior, he is in fact uniquely qualified to talk about religion, as that is among the most odd, fascinating, paradoxical, and complex behaviors that evolution has yet produced. In The God Delusion, he outlines many of the factors of the human animal that make us particularly susceptible to religion.

Theologists are the ones not qualified to analyze religion.

I'm pretty sure this doesn't mean anything.

"visions of the infintite" = can mean many things that approach that limit = Pi = recursion of indefinite length = time "before" matter = the number of possible synaptic connections ...

What makes them interesting "visions" - to me - is our intellect can just about get our fingers those concepts and then...indeed, I know not the bounds of this inquiry

And studying semantic memory in the brain, I have no idea where a concept like "infinity" comes from. Sure it might come from the brain? It must! Right? Right!? :)

Our having a concept of infinity has no metaphysical significance. All our definitions are phrased negatively, by what it's not:

Infinite: That which has no limit. From the Latin 'infinitas', meaning 'unboundedness'.

Try and see if you can define infinity by what it is rather than what it isn't.

If you're saying that infinity is not directly realizable in what we perceive, then I agree. But this has little to do with how it's defined (or even its metaphysical significance); positive and negative definitions are for all intents and purposes equivalent.

Seriously, I'm not trying to proselytize nor argue. I just find atheism to be an untenable position. It's an attempt to say something while really saying nothing. Problem is, I know the same can be said of theism. But I think the latter is that much more compelling because it starts and ends with one question - "God" - that we can pose to ourselves. Where the answer leads is up to us to decide.

For example, the number 0.33333 is infinite if you write it this way. If you use another representation (1/3) then it isn't. Similarly, you can use a computer program that generates the digits of pi as a representation of pi.

But replace the loaded term "God" with something else, say "Nature" or "Infinite" or "Universe" or even "Matter", and I can't see how one doesn't tumble back to a more humble position.

Well, obviously I believe in "nature" and "universe" and "matter". But praying to these things is silly, because they don't have minds and can't hear you.

That's not what "God" means. What "God" means, to the majority of english speakers at least, is some form of magical super-fairy who created the universe and loves you. And no, I don't believe in magic or super-fairies, and I am not convinced that the universe's has a creator, and if it does, I'm further not convinced that said creator would necessarily be loving, or even have emotions as you and I conceive them.

The slippery definition is a common tactic. You can't just redefine the term until it's something we all agree on, and then pretend that you're still talking about the same thing that we were disagreeing with. Either God is a magical ghost, or it's nature. If it's nature, then let's stop pretending that this is about deities and theism, and admit that we're just using poetic terms to talk about physics, declare that praying accomplishes no more than any other kind of meditative activity, and stop treating "religion" as any more special than sports or soap operas.

I'd be ok with that.

You're insisting on a set of concepts that never worked for me. So I gave them up. It's still weird for me that this thread is filled with this common response, among folks very comfortable writing their own definitions on a daily basis, but this subject area provokes resistance but not reformation.

By "Nature", where does that end for you? This planet? Or the solar system? The universe? Or the "metaverse"? There have been Christian theologians who can be read as naturalistic pantheists. See Charles Hartshorne. Good luck ascribing classical concepts to him, for instance.

If that is what you mean by "prayer" and "god", then you shouldn't use those terms, for the same reason that you don't call firetrucks "lampshades" and asprin "peanut butter".

I suspect that those concepts never worked for you because they don't work, period. Giving them up is called being an atheist. Why not just own that?

In the broadest sense, nature is what exists on a material level. If you assume a priori, as Hume did, that all things that exist do so on a material and sensible level, then sure, that is a fine definition of 'nature.' But that's an assumption that, right or wrong, not everyone makes, so it isn't correct to say that.

On a material level... So, what exists on a non-material level?

The existence of information implies that it has some representation in some medium. Scramble the representation, and the information is gone. Qv, the files on my hard drive that time I used a magnetized screwdriver to put it in a new case, or the speaking ability of old alcoholics.

Pretty smart people sometimes get confused by different levels of analysis and then start saying absurd things. We can talk about semiconductors or registers or instructions or lines of code or functions or programs. It's not that each one of these conversations are the same, but they do imply one another. When we talk about an abstraction like "purple" or "justice" or "motherly", we're implying all the real world examples (past, present, and future) of these abstractions, and focusing on what they have in common.

"Justice" doesn't exist apart from just things, any more than "purple" exists apart from the typical human experience of purple light. There's no sense in looking for Plato's Ideal Forms; you won't find them, no matter how many caves you turn around in.

I would argue that, when we talk about "nature", we are referring to all that exists, but that's not enough to know how to use the term, which is why you find that flip definition unsatisfactory. We're specifically focusing on the level of analysis that involves fundamental properties of things. Since things are the sum of their properties (in other words, "things are what they are"), "nature" is what is, "natural" properly means "consistent with a thing's fundamental properties", and "supernatural" is "imaginary and not real."

God isn't natural, therefor, God doesn't exist. Quid erat demonstratum.

And that's why geeks are atheists ;)

In all seriousness, I actually think that this is what people usually mean when they use the terms "nature" and "supernatural". They sometimes bundle in the assumption that supernatural things can exist (which is a contradiction) and that humans are somehow magical non-animal creatures and not a part of nature (which is silly.)

But that's an assumption that, right or wrong, not everyone makes, so it isn't correct to say that.

If the assumption is right, then the people who don't make it are incorrect, aren't they? They might mean something vague and undefined when they say nature (in fact, I'm quite sure most do), but that doesn't mean that the soup of contradictions most people carry around in their heads is even slightly valid or worth worrying about.

I would argue that "nature" is a matter of perspective. If the universe is a simulation, for example, the set of things in that simulation and the set of rules that apply to them to us constitute nature. You could define nature to also include the machine that runs that simulation and the universe in which it exists, but I don't think at that point the term "nature" is very useful. To this outer world, the term "supernatural" would apply, relative to the people in the simulation.

This outer world would be capable of interfering with the simulation in ways that violate the rules that normally govern it (this was mentioned here[powerpoint]: http://www.mit.edu/%7Ehooman/ComputersAndGod.ppt), and those interferences could be called supernatural; or perhaps since they've still occurred inside the simulation, they are "natural" but "paranormal". Replace "simulation" and "outer world" with "physical world" and 'spiritual planes' if those terms float your boat. I'm just playing with semantics here, but so are you:

God isn't natural, therefor, God doesn't exist.

This doesn't refute the idea of God, it just shows that some definitions of "God" and of "nature" are incompatible and may need to be revised.

When people speak of supernatural things, they do not generally mean that something is defying its own essence. What they do generally mean is that is defies what we understand to be the essence of physical matter. Our understanding of it is based on our experience thereof. So, something which is supernatural, defies classification through experiential knowledge.

We can also speak can also speak of supernatural as a sort of non-material existence, by which I don't mean Plato's forms, necessarily, but entities that exist that are not governed by the laws that visible matter is governed. Such an entity has not been widely experienced (otherwise our physics would take it into account,) and is possibly non-experienciable, so one might debate the merits of discussing it as there is clearly no reason to assume it exists. However, one cannot simply define it away.

St. Anselm in middle ages attempted to define 'God' as existing, arrived at what we now call the Ontological proof of his existence. The 'proof' was so laughable that nearly all of the Scholastics rejected it out of hand and even went out of there way to refute it. Now you seem to be presenting me with the ontological disproof. It's a little ridiculous.

  God would be more perfect if he could create the whole universe without even bothering to exist.
  God is completely perfect.
  Therefor, God doesn't exist.
  QED.

If it can't handle a perfect sandwich, what hope does it have with a perfect deity?

You're right, I am conflating definitions somewhat. Arguments get squished when typed quickly into a little textarea.

My point is that people don't just mean that "supernatural" is "that which we haven't observed and thus don't understand." There is an implication that we can't understand supernatural things using theories and evidence, which is crazy. (Be careful using the word "visible" in this context. Plenty of matter isn't visible, but I doubt anyone would call electrons supernatural. I think you mean visible in the not-just-visual sense, yes?)

What does it mean to say that something exists, but has no effect on any part of the universe, no aspects that can ever be observed in any way, that leaves no footprint that can ever be detected? I think we call those kinds of things "imaginary".

The inflexibility of thought is what doesn't work for us. But that wasn't a reason to stop learning. We just searched a bit harder for folks to learn from. Now we're satisfied by the result even as the learning is incomplete.

I consider my life rich with meaning and spiritual satisfaction. I relish my place in this species, my instincts and my awareness of them. My scant century-or-so of life is a limited quantity, and that motivates me to use it to live and love and push for everything I can achieve.

Not only is my life 100% godless, I try to be free of superstition of all kinds. (No Santa, no tooth fairy, no magic dreams, no esp, no ghosts, etc.)

Superstition, in my opinion, is mental clutter that obscures spirituality.

Really? What's "spirituality" then?

By this definition, you could just as easily be a pantheist (or panentheist). But that's up to you to decide.

Beyond that, yes, you're probably right: a broader definition of god would probably lead to less people calling themselves atheist. I'm not sure how you would go about expanding the definition, it seems like any religion which says "this is what god is" will have a natural advantage over one which says "god is whatever you like", since people are better at coming together over things which they share, rather than things they agree not to share.

   Why bother with redefining someone else's term for your own use?

It's easier to understand creationism than physics.