Steve, you are confusing me. You want atheists to start from the premise that God exists and from that view address what S/he looks like and whether we're a sideshow or not, yet are unhappy with the replies.

For atheists God is a human mental contruct, like fairies. You could ask what do fairies look like and what role do they have in our lives.

I know there are people who believe in fairies and I've spoken with people who will swear on all that is dear to them that they have seen and spoken to fairies. Or Angels for that matter.

In fact, I have a sister in law who is speaking on a daily basis with angels. Her life and those of her children is still a sad mess in spite of inside info from higer up.

Humans explore why we should be good and lead good lives. A great number of us are first good because we do not want to get into trouble with our parents. When we outgrow that many of us look for another 'parent'. God fulfills that role.

Those of us who cannot believe in a God the question is 'why be good and live good lives when nobody is watching us'. What are the rewards.
On that I'd love to have a discussion.

It really is quite irrelevant what kind of entity God is. The issue is whether a God is necessary for a person to live a good life. And I'm not speaking of the material sense here when referring to a good life.

Hey Steve

If a concept which relates to the entities which is described as the creator in many religions exists, I very much doubt if it is anything like the one written about in those desert books. We all know Christianity and Islam are based on Judaism and Judaism is a made up fairy tale which was used to manipulate the masses. So to try and think god is anything like the god described by a group of people in a desert a few thousand years ago is about as likely as god being like the one the Greeks created like Atlas or the pagan one who stone henge was created for.

I don’t think we will ever know of the thing we call god because to find it we would have to go out of this universe or it would have to choose to show itself to us. Besides with our current technology it’s impossible to contemplate infinity and if we want to understand the thing we call god we will have to be able to grasp infinity because infinity is how long it would have existed for.

It does not matter anyway in a few hundred years or thousand we ourselves will be gods with the technology we will posses we will be able to do anything inside the laws of physics and quite possibly outside them as well. Then we will create our own universes and wait a few billion years until some beings evolve in that universe and start looking to the skies and asking the same questions as we are now…

"God's nature (for lack of words - please do not imply that I say here that God has a nature) does not depend on whether the world that we live in requires a creator or not." - Yuyutsu

By world do you mean univserse or this world? If you mean the universe can be ceated without God, I would say physics is likely to demonstrate that highly plausible, within the next decade, using partile accelerators.

Further, if you are saying, there is a God, yet, said God, is not the creator of the Universe; well, that is an interest suggestion. What would be the qualities of said God, and how might those qualities be supported? By what means would the God be conscious/sentient? Would the God experience cause and effect, in the absence of time?

Yuyutsu and Poly,

Most importantly, how many perfections are there? If there is only one perfect state, how can God transition between states?

If there is one perefect state or infinite perfect states, or, any number in between, God is subject to the laws of mathematics, as mathermatics relates to the Set of States for the Realm of God.

Cheers,

Oly.

davidf,

How could 3,000,000 people collaborate such a lie?

The first link is a response to your brush off the witness of 3,000,000 people.

Or show me even one, credible account which repudiates the Torah.

While there is great beauty in the Torah, it is no erotic love poem.

Chronicle of the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind (the fall from grace) perhaps...

The last link has a closer look at Jericho:

"Kathleen Kenyan excavated Jericho. She says the best date we have for the entry of the Jewish people into the land of Israel is 1400 B.C.E. ....a hundred and fifty year gap between the destruction of Jericho and the entry of the Jewish people into the land. Therefore she concludes that the Jews couldn't have been the ones responsible for destroying Jericho. They just attributed it their ancestors....

Now how does she arrive at her conclusion that Jericho was destroyed no later than 1550 B.C.E.? ....She based her argument on the absence of imported Cypriot pottery. A certain style of pottery from Cyprus was imported into the area from 1550 to 1400 B.C.E., and she found none of it at Jericho. Therefore she concluded that Jericho must have been destroyed earlier than 1550 B.C.E.

But this conclusion is very weak. It can be attacked in at least four different ways.

(1) Method: conclusions based on what you don't find are always weak (see below).

(2) She herself says that Jericho was not on any of the major trade routes - is that where you expect to find imported pottery?

(3) She sank two shafts into what she herself describes as the poor section of the city. Is that where you expect to find imported pottery?

(4) She totally ignored the dating of local pottery which had been found in earlier excavations which do come from dates later than 1550 B.C.E.

.... I won't speculate what leads to this kind of sloppy argumentation. But surely we don't have to give up our views in the face of criticism like this!"

*Anansi*
" ... Those of us who cannot believe in a God the question is 'why be good and live good lives when nobody is watching us'. What are the rewards. On that I'd love to have a discussion. ... "

It takes me back to the Black Hole. That partially observable "thing" that has corporeal existence, the singularity nexus and non corporeality on the "other side."

Some of the El GoddO concepts purports to offer something in relation to this don't they? Afterall, I think its more likely than not that if there is on going existence on offer after the death of the flesh, that the majority of people are into it, especially if yr life is miserable or mediocre and unfulling in real terms or imagined.

There is the suggestion from some too that perception into the non-corporeal for corporeal advantage is also on offer.

Are there non-corporeal entities that have at times in the history of this place shared our corporeal existence, mutually accomplished some amazing things and then gone elsewhere in the aftermath.

As opposed to old books, is there on offer a 1 on 1 relationship with said entity, from non-corporeality via energy to consciousness?

Or is it just weird pathology, from say those who channel the energy of sexuality like a serpent up the spine into the brain via liturgy and ritual or otherwise that along with good genetics and environmental factors occasionally produces some genuinely highly evolved, caring contributors who bring great benefit to Humanity as a whole?

Or just plain old "mad hatters tea party?"

"By world do you mean universe or this world?" - Oliver.

Either way, God's "nature" does not depend on either needing a creator or not.

To both Oliver and EasyTimes: it may or may not be plausible for someone to be able to create world(s), but I wouldn't consider that a big deal and it certainly doesn't make one a god. While he/she (the creator) may perhaps even be worshiped and revered by creatures of such worlds, you and I know that it is still the same fragile, weak, limited and scared human as before - perhaps turned into some kind of a demi-god, but not God.

Creating worlds and directing life within those worlds can be a fun pastime, but all it makes us is big kids with brighter toys: it is still all physical, there is nothing spiritual about it.

Attempting to place God within any context diminishes Him (not HIM of course, only our perception). Even claiming that He "exists" or "creator of the universe" is to infinitely limit what God is. "Creation" is only meaningful to beings that live in time.

So, your questions, Oliver, such as "What would be the qualities of said God", "By what means would the God be conscious/sentient" or "Would the God experience cause and effect" are utterly beside the mark. If such questions were answerable, then we wouldn't be talking about God, but only about some kind of a demigod (and personally, I wouldn't waste my time discussing such creatures).

Perfection? again, this is meaningless when attributed to God - even "perfect" would constitute a limitation, derived by our fickle minds.

EasyTimes, I liked that you wrote: "I don’t think we will ever know of the thing we call god". Well of course, there is no such "thing" as God - because God is not a "thing"!