Quote from GrimmtheReaper

I believe that God would be some sort of Astral Being, existing in time, but not locked in it, and with great power coming from the birth of the Universe. Basically, he/she/it is like "The Q" race in the Star Trek series: Voyager, but far, far older, and with far greater intelligence. Make sense?

Allow me to elaborate: The Q were humans, or very similar to it, who could alter the fabric of space and time, thus changing how the universe works, as well as exist anywhere they choose. They can create, destroy, and alter, just as we believe God can. But because they were living beings, with a physical form, they could also do anything a human being can. If you apply the same aspect to God, whom many believe created us in his/her/its image, then I believe I hit the nail on the head.

What I'm getting at is that he may very well be visually human, but genetically and temporally inverse to us.

Before anyone asks: Why doesn't God show up if he/she/it has a physical form? That's an entirely different question, and should be debated elsewhere.

Quote from Zed

If we're unable to conceive of it then we can't talk about it. Language is a communication of thought. If there is no thought, there should be no language.

That was pretty much my point, if it does exist it something beyond our (current) level of comprehension or measurements. We cannot describe it as we wouldn't know what it is, only what it does. Much like dark energy if we go into that.

Quote from Zed

If there is no thought, there should be no language.

#SWAG

Okay, let's see. We all can start making assumptions about whether god can jump or not, or if he can take a phisical form to do it. but the real point of this is to see if believers people can actually say WHAT god is and not what he CAN DO.
What Zed wants you to say is something like

God is a old looking man, bald, with white long beard, bear's hands, and a super sword-staff that shines when you masturbate (the sun doesn't exist, is just god' sword-staff shinning all day thanks to masturbation power).

After saying this, all I have to say is we can say whatever we want abour what god is if he exists or not, but we'll never know if we're right or not. Also, we can't really give god a form or classify him/her/it in a category of somethings because we only know what he/she/it did. we never saw him/her/it, or we don't have any kind of picture, or description about him/her/it.

All we can do now are assumptions, and we'll know if he/she/it is real or not when we die. If believers are right, they can laugh at atheist while they fall to hell. Sadly, if believers are wrong, we'll just die and atheist won't be able to enjoy their win. Just relax, and let's enjoy living. Answers will come by themselves.

Quote from Gunnii

Much like dark energy if we go into that.

That's a nice example. My response is that we probably shouldn't be talking about "dark energy" at all. Contemporary physicists are terrible for overstepping their boundaries. Although the fact that it has mass may constitute enough of a description to work with; I haven't really thought enough about this example to give you a clear answer on it. From the looks of Wikipedia, however, people are at least trying pretty hard to describe the stuff. It's not like they've said "the definition of 'dark energy' is 'whatever causes the expansion of the universe'" - they've said "something is causing the expansion of the universe and we really don't know what it is, but when we find it we'll call it 'dark energy'". And anyone who made any statement about dark energy beyond that would be talking nonsense.

Quote from Kodoku

#SWAG

Okay, let's see. We all can start making assumptions about whether god can jump or not, or if he can take a phisical form to do it. but the real point of this is to see if believers people can actually say WHAT god is and not what he CAN DO.
What Zed wants you to say is something like

"God is a old looking man, bald, with white long beard, bear's hands, and a super sword-staff that shines when you masturbate (the sun doesn't exist, is just god' sword-staff shinning all day thanks to masturbation power)."

After saying this, all I have to say is we can say whatever we want abour what god is if he exists or not, but we'll never know if we're right or not. Also, we can't really give god a form or classify him/her/it in a category of somethings because we only know what he/she/it did. we never saw him/her/it, or we don't have any kind of picture, or description about him/her/it.

All we can do now are assumptions, and we'll know if he/she/it is real or not when we die. If believers are right, they can laugh at atheist while they fall to hell. Sadly, if believers are wrong, we'll just die and atheist won't be able to enjoy their win. Just relax, and let's enjoy living. Answers will come by themselves.

You got so close to my point and then veered off at the last minute.

A few people at the start answered the question by giving God a physical form, but the trouble comes when people still think "God" is a thing even after that physical form is gone. The real point of the question is to make people think about what exactly their concept of "God" is and whether or not it's consistent. All the definitions of God [which people would accept as describing the whole thing, ie. "omnipotent," "creator," etc.] centre on capability, but if you don't give physical form to x then saying "x did this and that" is empty.

"We'll never know if we're right or not" is precisely why you're talking gibberish. I want to make this clear: I am not saying you are wrong. I am not saying "God doesn't exist". I am saying you don't even get to that point. Unicorns don't exist, but at least we have the concept of what a unicorn would be. Unicorns are closer to existing than God, because "God" is not even a word. There is no question about "who is right" here because there isn't even an argument. Neither atheists nor theists are even stating an intelligible position.



(Although saying "if you're bad you'll go to hell when you die" is fine. It's objectively false - people have watched dead bodies and they don't go anywhere - but at least it means something.)

Quote from Zed

That's a nice example. My response is that we probably shouldn't be talking about "dark energy" at all. Contemporary physicists are terrible for overstepping their boundaries. Although the fact that it has mass may constitute enough of a description to work with; I haven't really thought enough about this example to give you a clear answer on it. From the looks of Wikipedia, however, people are at least trying pretty hard to describe the stuff. It's not like they've said "the definition of 'dark energy' is 'whatever causes the expansion of the universe'" - they've said "something is causing the expansion of the universe and we really don't know what it is, but when we find it we'll call it 'dark energy'". And anyone who made any statement about dark energy beyond that would be talking nonsense.

That is also how I feel about god. Trying to claim they have some higher knowledge of its true form without providing any way of describing it, whether it would be language, mathematics or any other form of expression is nonsense.
Thus, even if people would prove god existed through the recording of a miracle or whatever, it would still not prove them right since they would only manage to describe the effects, but not the cause, they could only argue that there is a god, not that it is their god.

Quote from Gunnii

That is also how I feel about god. Trying to claim they have some higher knowledge of its true form without providing any way of describing it, whether it would be language, mathematics or any other form of expression is nonsense.
Thus, even if people would prove god existed through the recording of a miracle or whatever, it would still not prove them right since they would only manage to describe the effects, but not the cause, they could only argue that there is a god, not that it is their god.

I'd go further. It's not even that it won't prove them right - it's that they've got nothing to be right about. Back to dark energy, when scientists find out what's causing the accelerated expansion of the universe they won't say "we were right about dark energy" because they hadn't actually made any statement about dark energy in the first place. It's just "whatever caused the accelerated expansion of the universe". (I don't know enough about the topic - some scientists might have made meaningful predictions - but you get my point.) In the same way, unless religious people actually give a description of God and not just a "He did this" or "He could do that" then the sentence "God exists" is completely empty.

The actual idea in religion is that God is beyond our understanding. You can't really define him physically. Religion does include however a list of characteristics, but they are all moral more than they are physical.
Although in Quran it does state that he uses a 'hand'.

"The actual idea in religion is that God is beyond our understanding"

"Religion does include however a list of characteristics"

I'm sorry, what? how can religion morally characterize a concept that it acknowledges is beyond human comprehension?

If you really want to see God? Jump in front of a moving train, therefore resulting in your death but even then you wouldn't see God. All that will happen is that you will be roaming about limbo like an headless chicken until the judgement day arrives and you are left behind.

All this situations in which prophecies have revealed that people have talked to God... they've either bowed down or God has appear in different forms like a burning bush or a beam of light. But it also says in the bible that Jesus sits in at the right hand of God so we have to assume that can only happen if they are both in some kind off human form. I'll just say this you wouldn't really want to see God in His true form because you would tremble in fear and the shock could possibly kill you.

Quote from Apex-Predator

All this situations in which prophecies have revealed that people have talked to God... they've either bowed down or God has appear in different forms like a burning bush or a beam of light. But it also says in the bible that Jesus sits in at the right hand of God so we have to assume that can only happen if they are both in some kind off human form.

It's fine for you to say that God has had a number of appearances, but are you prepared to accept that there is nothing else to God besides these appearances?

I'm keeping empirical facts out of this debate entirely. If you believe that God is a purple hippopotamus riding a unicycle around the rings of Saturn then that's fine by me, but if that is the case then I think you're opposed to the majority of contemporary theologians. Most people seem to think that there is at least some part of God which his fundamentally unobservable. And I deny that such unobservables can be spoken of. The only way to define such unobservable things is by terms like "omnipotent" which, I argue, doesn't get us any closer to understanding.

Quote from Zed

The only way to define such unobservable things is by terms like "omnipotent" which, I argue, doesn't get us any closer to understanding.

I agree with that but the main objective is not to understand this "things". It's to believe and have faith and somethings are better left explainable.

that's kind of a dumb argument to present in a debate related to our understanding of the concept of god.

I'm not a religious man myself and I do not think that God exists, but I always thought that the idea of God was that it is irrelevant to question what he is capable of and what he truly is, but rather to see the actions that he did. So basically what I'm saying is that trying to define what God is is a waste of time, but it's still possible to comprehend what he has done and to value it assuming he does exist. I don't necessarily believe this, but I do think that's what the counterargument would be. No one will ever define god, and no one of religious faith is in any rush to do so.

If you were to say that "God" is "the x such that x was causally responsible for the creation of the universe" then that x can be filled with "nothing" just as well as it can be filled with anything else. It is a completely empty definition. If people of faith are not in a rush to define God then it is only because they haven't understood the problem.

Quote from Raptor

I'm not a religious man myself and I do not think that God exists, but I always thought that the idea of God was that it is irrelevant to question what he is capable of and what he truly is, but rather to see the actions that he did.

Quote from Raptor

to see the actions that he did.

in that sentence you're still talking about god as if it's a meaningful concept with a clear definition. if "god" is just the sum of whatever actions are attributed to him and those actions are collectively "the things that god did" then you're not saying anything at all.