Yes, this is a thread about god. No, I don't know where this thread is going once my question is answered/discussed. Yes, this is the best place I could find to put this thread.

So I'm an atheist, but lately I've been beginning to sympathise with agnostics (the agnostic that most people think of it as - believing one cannot know one way or the other, and there's a 50/50 chance, NOT the agnostic that says they don't know whether there's a god or not - as that includes pretty much everyone).

My reasoning for this is as follows:

The only argument that one should need to use to argue for atheism is the one from analogy, comparing god to the spaghetti monster or unicorns or faeries etc. If you say that god is just as probable as those things, then it follows that it's pretty ludicrous to believe in such a being. However, lately I've been wondering if any of those analogies are comparable at all. Firstly, I should tell you that I'm not talking about a religious god, I'm talking simply about a deistic creator (not Yaweh or Allah etc - I still believe those to be more improbable than probable). Back to the point, how is a deistic god comparable to the creatures such as unicorns or the celestial teapot? Those creatures are specific things. The more specific something is with a lack of evidence for its existence, the more unlikely it is to exist. A deistic god isn't specific AT ALL, nothing is revealed of its nature. In fact, it's not really an it, it's more of a function. What I mean by this is that the only thing that's implied by saying there's a 50/50 chance that there's a deistic god is that there's a 50/50 chance that the universe was intelligently created. The only "characteristic" (for want of a better word) of the god is a function - creation. So, any atheist care to explain why such a god is not equally as probable and improbable of existing?

I fully agree with you there - deistic gods have a 50/50 chance of being real, whereas gods in scripture/with specifics (Yaweh, Allah, the flying spaghetti monster) become less and less likely the more you complicate them. So yes, ultimately you're right.

HOWEVER I would argue that although this may be true (which is why i remain open minded to the idea of 'a' God) without any specifics about the god, you cannot worship it, nor form any religion around it, and as such, for all intents and purposes, it becomes an utterly useless concept. That's not to discredit it, its an utterly beautiful system, but you can't really DO anything with it :/

If you simplify the definition of god down to "whatever created the universe", then it's hard to argue that such a thing doesn't exist. Something did bring about the existence of the universe in one way or another, and whether that something is as god-like as a deity or just a random quantum fluctuation, it all fits your definition of "god".


That said I don't think the odds are 50/50, we don't know enough to confidently say those are the only two options. Even if they are, that doesn't make their likelihood equal.

Quote from Exilement

If you simplify the definition of god down to "whatever created the universe", then it's hard to argue that such a thing doesn't exist. Something did bring about the existence of the universe in one way or another, and whether that something is as god-like as a deity or just a random quantum fluctuation, it all fits your definition of "god".


That said I don't think the odds are 50/50, we don't know enough to confidently say those are the only two options. Even if they are, that doesn't make their likelihood equal.

My definition was an "intelligent creator", i.e. something of intelligence that created the universe purposefully. A quantum fluctuation would not fit this definition, only a deistic god would. In my head it seems that there are 2 options: creation or non-creation, with various subsets in each (creation being various forms of intelligence and non-creation being things such as quantum fluctuation as you said). there are different possibilities within each overarching function. I suppose there is a third option: no cause, matter just is, however that's irrelevant as it doesn't answer the question "where did this come from?", it just makes the question redundant.

sure, perhaps some exterior sentient being created us, but this argument is flawed in that there's no way to prove it wrong or right, because what you're proposing lays outside our plane of existence, so not only would it be rude, but foolish to create concrete beliefs about something that we simply can't provide any evidence for or against.

Quote from Captain Cook

sure, perhaps some exterior sentient being created us, but this argument is flawed in that there's no way to prove it wrong or right, because what you're proposing lays outside our plane of existence, so not only would it be rude, but foolish to create concrete beliefs about something that we simply can't provide any evidence for or against.

I tend to agree that it's pointless talking about what lies beyond the plane of knowledge, in fact I've mentioned the same thing in many of my philosophy essays. However, I think that we can definitely use our logic and intuition to deduce some sort of "boundaries" for what can or cannot be. I mean, even saying something like "there are infinite possibilities for how we are created" is saying something - it's saying that the probability of god is little due to the infinite possibilities. I'm just extending that by saying there are 2 categories to that "infinite possibility list" - creation and non-creation.

I can see what you're saying, but it's a shitty situation because when you mention that the whole premise is fictional, making a case that we were all shitted out from the giant blue elephant hiding inside of the sun suddenly has just as much merit as the Creation Non-Creation premises.

Quote from Exilement

If you simplify the definition of god down to "whatever created the universe", then it's hard to argue that such a thing doesn't exist. Something did bring about the existence of the universe in one way or another, and whether that something is as god-like as a deity or just a random quantum fluctuation, it all fits your definition of "god".


That said I don't think the odds are 50/50, we don't know enough to confidently say those are the only two options. Even if they are, that doesn't make their likelihood equal.

Essentially, this.

Quote from Automaton

My definition was an "intelligent creator", i.e. something of intelligence that created the universe purposefully. A quantum fluctuation would not fit this definition, only a deistic god would. In my head it seems that there are 2 options: creation or non-creation, with various subsets in each (creation being various forms of intelligence and non-creation being things such as quantum fluctuation as you said). there are different possibilities within each overarching function. I suppose there is a third option: no cause, matter just is, however that's irrelevant as it doesn't answer the question "where did this come from?", it just makes the question redundant.

Can you have intelligence without substance? I, and most neuroscientists, would say no. Your deistic God is actually surprisingly specific. You have a testable hypothesis there, but we can prove it false without even checking - an intelligence without matter is impossible.

So I suppose the counter-argument to this would be that:
a) a deistic god IS specific because it has to be made of matter (however I know people that would claim outside of the universe there could be intelligence without matter)
b) it's improbable because there are many, many other possibilities for where the universe could have originated?

Quote from Zed

an intelligence without matter is impossible.

Even prior to the universes existence? Who's to say the rules weren't different before?
If deistic god can create the universe and the rules why can it not supersede them?

But that's when this starts boiling down to finger pointing because it becomes impossible to prove or disprove.
So let's call this a dead end.

Quote from Jutsu

Even prior to the universes existence? Who's to say the rules weren't different before?

If deistic god can create the universe and the rules why can it not supersede them?

Prior? Before?

Time is a dimension. We experience it subjectively as constantly moving in one direction, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really work like that. It's like if you passed a 3-dimensional sphere through a flat 2-dimensional universe. Subjectively they would only be able to see a circle that gets larger/smaller. They'll only see one flat "slice" of the sphere at a time -- just like we experience time in continuous "slices", moment to moment.

So saying "before the universe" doesn't make much sense, it's applying our subjective viewpoint to something we can't even comprehend. Time is just another dimension of our universe, and the arrow of time follows the increase of total entropy in the universe. To put it another way, more time means more entropy, and more entropy means more time.

The universe's total entropy has constantly increased since the beginning of time, when it was just an infinitely dense, infinitely small singularity. A singularity like that has an infinitely small amount of entropy, so there's no possible way that time existed before then.


But like you said, discussing spacetime as if it existed before the universe that contains it amounts to blind guessing, so it's pointless either way.

Yes we experience it like that, but who's to say there wasn't a "before" to the deistic god?

But you're right, it's a fruitless discussion. We both agree.

Quote from Jutsu

Even prior to the universes existence? Who's to say the rules weren't different before?
If deistic god can create the universe and the rules why can it not supersede them?

But that's when this starts boiling down to finger pointing because it becomes impossible to prove or disprove.
So let's call this a dead end.

To this argument, it doesn't matter whether it can be proven or not. What my original argument was that if, as you said, the deistic god supersedes the universe and can have intelligence without matter, than surely there's a 50/50 chance of that being the case. I'm challenging someone to prove that not to be the case.

Oh, I know I am just discussing.

The truth is I don't like cracking things like this down to numbers and your whole plan gets fucked if you factor in the 30% chance this reality is imagined/dreamed.
But hey, I reckon you'll still get some fun out of this.

even a 30% probability is more probable than what strong atheists make out. I guess I'm just looking for some way to strengthen my old position of "a deistic god is very unlikely", but I'm struggling to come up with reasons why that's the case.