I'm really interested in this topic, and rather than take the atheist position, I'm going to try to play along with the theist position.  I'm kind of interested in seeing if I can get anywhere close to a coherent definition.

To begin with, I'll start with the simple definition - god (in lowercase letters).  When I look at the history of gods, I see various creatures, all of whom possessed great power, but none of whom were limitless.  In fact, most of the Greek and Roman gods had serious flaws.  Some gods were quite human in appearance, while other, older gods took the form of dragons or sea turtles, or other such natural creatures.

So, I would think a "god" would have requirements something like this:

* A being capable of interacting with earth and its inhabitants, though it might reside in a place apart from earth.  

* This being would have to be intelligent, though not necessarily vastly intelligent.

* Either through natural ability or advanced technology, this being would have to be able to exert complete or nearly complete control over the environment with respect to humans, though it wouldn't necessarily have to be able to control humans directly.

* It would have to be tremendously long-lived by human standards.

* I suppose it would need to have an interest in interacting with earth.  I mean... hell, if it didn't interact with earth, and lived somewhere imperceptible to humans... we'd be kind of stuck knowing anything about it, and we'd be back at square one, right?

I recognize that this definition could include very powerful aliens who formed naturally through evolution on a different planet.  If we're going to look at "god" comprehensively, I suppose we have to account for a "Stargate" sort of scenario, where the early gods were actually aliens.

I'll see what everybody thinks of this definition before I start messing with the later god concepts of monotheist religions.

 So, Will, what do you think of my definition?  Forget that it's not Yahweh/Jesus, and let me know if you're an atheist, and if so, strong or weak.

In this case, because we're dealing with something that could possibly exist in the natural world (though unlikely, given little evidence) I'd say I don't believe in these aliens, but I couldn't completely discount them.

But are they gods? They look like aliens to me, seeing as they're part of the natural world.

 So technically, an "atheist" is not a full-fledged atheist if we agree that the entire historical context of the word "god" is included in the statement "I don't believe in god."  There could very well have been aliens visiting earth thousands of years ago, and though it seems highly unlikely, being a "strong atheist" with respect to this definition would be a little foolish.

We can say, then, that one need not mention atheism except in respect to a god that has been proposed.  Very few people (excepting Ciarin and a few other strange people) believe in gods in the sense that I've proposed, so it's not really necessary to mention not believing in them.

Just to keep playing devil's advocate, I would suggest that a creator of this universe would be enough qualification by a lot of people's standards.  Could we say that a god (in the Yahweh sense) would have to, at a minimum, have created the universe?

Suppose that each universe is a bubble in a multiverse, and there is another universe in the multiverse such that intelligent beings have the capability to create universes.  It might be hard to imagine, but realistically, it might be just a matter of scale.  The universe seems immense to us, but if there is another universe thousands of orders of magnitude more immense, our black holes might be interesting little lab experiments for inhabitants of the bigger universe.

I guess I'll tip my hand on this.

Attributes of god:

* Able to influence reality (and is thus observable, at least in principle)

* Sentient

* Omniscient

* Omnipresent

I'm not going for the other omnis, because I don't think they are necessary for god. Omnipotence is good, certainly, but it's also a copout. All it means is, "able to do anything," which leads to such great stoner conundrums as, "Can god make a Dallas Cowgirl so heavy that he can't lift her?" And omnibenevolence? What the hell is that, really?

Given those basic attributes, here is my proposed coherent definition of god:

The universal quantum mind.

Hey! Stop snickering. Hear me out.

The universe may be considered as a vast quantum computer. Given that we ourselves have emergent intelligence (I guess), the universal quantum computer may also have emergent intelligence. The only two questions left are, can this emergent intelligence influence other quantum events? Can these influenced quantum events propogate to the extent of influencing non-quantum processes such as evolution?

I reckon it's not much of a god if you have to speculate on its efficacy on non-quantum processes. It's also entirely speculative, relying on our ignorance of the underlying principles of QM, and so is just another form of quantum woo. But, we do have a rudimentary understanding of quantum computing, and viewing the universe as a quantum computer isn't entirely unrealistic. Still, though, everything else is a chain of wild speculation, rather than just wide-eyed speculation.

In any case, the omnipresent universal mind knows when you masturbate. Believe me, it's keeping a list, too, and if you want to get into Quantum Heaven, you'd best not.

I would have to work out the bugs, but I actually think Nigel is quite close with the quantum computer thing, as for Quantum heaven thing, let's say I'm uncertain about that.

I don't think she would want you cheating on her with me.

While i find Hamby's list to be reasonably agreeable... i happen to have exceedingly low standards for what constitues "A god"

-Abilities/Powers that defy conventional relative knowledge.

ie. If some "being" was to possess absolute control over fire, and claims to be a "Fire god" , I would be fine calling him a god, myself. Regardless of how he attains such power. Be it some magical metaphysical power, or incredibly advanced technology, i find it irrelavent.

It's not so much the universe that is god, it is the sentience of the universe that is god. It's not the collective processes of the universe; it is a specific process that provides a distinct self-awareness. Just as the mind is not the entirety of the brain, the sentience of the universe is not the totality of the universe.

But it is god only if it has the ability to influence reality in any way. It'd really suck for the universe if it were self-aware, but unable to influence anything, but it wouldn't be a god at that point, per my necessary attributes.

In a great RPG I played once, you discover that worlds, universes, galaxies...everything in your reality is nothing but a computer simulation in another reality. You were all created by an algorithm in a computer, designed to find out the origins of life by creating a "virtual" form of it, only to end up being entertainment for people later on as what was happening in the simulation began being broadcasted.

and immediately te shan strikes you across the face with his staff.

Isn't defining something we know nothing about impossible? Even if you give a coherent definition of something, who decides whether or not that meets the requirements of god? What are the requirements of god? Who approves those? I don't see any way to objectively verify whether the requirements of your challenge are met.

That's "ignorance". If "agnosticism" is "ignorance of gods", I'm fine with that. That would be my misunderstanding. Atheists would still be saying they're ignorant of something they're waiting for someone else to define coherently, though, so ...

Hmm. The problem is again with the word "exist", then. We'd have to find a different way for a totally different universe with totally different rules to "exist". If we have no way to ever know anything about this other universe (it being a one-way relationship), then my first thought is that it's completely irrelevant, and the truth or falsity of its existence cannot be shown one way or another. That means we can't know anything about it. If it can affect our world without us ever being able to know, then we're off to the land of Next Tuesday-ism.

But why even call these things gods, when an equal possibility exists that they do these things without purpose? If one moment is the creator of the next, is the first moment a god?

There's no reason for us to believe that the alternate universe behaves in such a way as it obeys cause and effect, so it could cause something in our universe without any affect whatsoever on it. In fact, it's carte blanche for that universe. No argument could be made on its behalf.

just to be clear, te shan was an early chinese ch'an (zen) master known for using his staff as a freeway to enlightenment.

and, to paraphrase the illuminating words of an ancient sutra carried across the himilayas by bodhidharma himself, he is tired of your shit.

As I said, I'm find with a definition of "a god". Any god will do, really. If someone is going to say "No gods exist", then they better be sure that they know what doesn't exist.

But if you're letting people define god in any way whatsoever then I can define my front door as god and have just proven to you gods exist. "I don't believe in god" then becomes "I don't believe in whatever you want to apply the word god to", which is meaningless. There must be some objective way to tell whether something can be called a god or not before we start discussing whether specific qualities of it are consistent with godlyness. We obviously don't have proof of "gods", so we have nothing to compare suggested gods to, and see if they match.

It's like if you're shown a picture and asked "is this a triangle", you know exactly what needs must be met for something to qualify as a triangle, though there are a ton of different looking triangles. With "god" we have absolutely nothing to even start with.

I guess my point is that the word god means absolutely nothing. I don't think it's even possible to begin with a word then try to attach qualities to it. You need to have something new first, then invent a word for it.

1. For an entity to be "God" it's necessary that its description properly correlates with the books and ancient stories. If not, give it another name, "God" is taken.

2. The rest is as the books describe of course. Immanent, sentient, the origin of existence, we are it's image... etc.

You mean I gotta start again!? LOL.

Okay, well the answer, as you already know, is everything.

That easily covers immanence.

It also easily covers we are in its image, absolutely it does, you cannot take away or alter a picofragment of our world, our universe, our history and have the exact same us result. Our identity as humans is completely irrevocably inseparable from the universal identity, ergo our image is god's image.

So what remains is to provide that the universe is sentient, and how sentience can be involved in the origin of the universe.

The latter part is dismissable as a relic of confusing psychological experience of time (blocks of macroscopic changes of state ordered in accordance with the psychological reality which requires them) with evidence of the real objective nature of time. The perceived separation of sentience as existing "now" and the origin of the universe existing "then" is characteristic of psychology, not time.

So that leave us with the other bit. Is the universe sentient? This comes down to what we think sentience is, and admitting a definition of sentience which is inherently dualistic (and lets admit, a just a little narcissistic) as the premise leads quickly to the conclusion that the universe is not sentient. So, what I said about the premise can stand as my argument for now.

An excellent question for a Pantheist to put forward a definition of god, and for Atheists to question.

I'm not going to take a Pantheist's view or "play Devil's Advocate" (no pun intended), but to add an element which your above question would question, I'll
search around for a definition of god to a Pantheist (better than I could provide) and return with it when I find it.

I do this to expand previous definitions to include something more specific regarding a non-personal god.

Below is a snippet from the link provided.

http://knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Pantheism/

"Pantheism, simply stated, means "God is All". It is the view that everything is of an all encompassing God. More detailed definitions tend to emphasize the idea that natural law, existence and/or the universe (the sum total of all that is was and shall be) is personified in the theological principle of 'God'. ..."

Again, this is a snippet. It's NOT complete! Please refer to the link above for more details about God in Pantheism.

The theological principle of "God" isn't clear, or internally consistent. Are you saying that the universe is a subset of God, or that the theological  principle of God applies to something? Because then, you'd be inconsistent twice.

Let's ground the problem a little more seriously: in order to qualify as a god, must an entity be worshipped?

That's closer to the question. If we can think of wacky creatures all day, we're not really hitting the mark if we're just imagining wacky creatures.

I didn't want to extract the entire web page. Check out the link. After, if you find that site's definition is lacking, my suggestion is to google "Pantheis". Pls beware that Pantheism evolved from its original form, and even since Spinoza. In any case,
rather than my winging a Pantheist def it's best to check out the link, and other links, if you want further info.

To "ground the problem a little more seriously", as said...

Sorry.

Speaking of moderm Pantheism...

Panthists do not worship.

Panthists do not pray.

Panthists do not abide by ancient "texts" or scriptures.

Panthists do not abide by modern day "texts" or scriptures, although they may have read at some of them, OR an interpretation of them.

Panthists do not congregate in a "House of Worship."

The Panthist god is not a "personal god."

The Panthist god does not have a personal agenda.

In that context, the Panthist god does not act with an intention or purpose.

The Panthist god is not a deity, a spirit, or a supernatural being.

A Pantheist would say nature is my God.

A Pantheist would no worship their god any more than a physicist would worship f=ma.

Erronous are the posts seeking an all encompassing unified definition of gods.

Such a definition does not exist.

There are multiple definitions for gods, as their are for many words.

That does not mean the word is undefinable or incoherent.

The word is coherent when it's understood in the context it's being used. The context will lead towards an appropriate definition to those that know the variety of definitions.

Which is exactly why I asked her about it.

I've noticed theism in general has a problem with being too vague. I guess it's so they can more easily equivocate things.

Okay; I might try a more sincere effort here:

The Minimum Requirements for a Deity

 - Must have de facto influence over events that occur in the universe; that is, must have influence over events superceding that of the natural laws of the universe.

 - It's influence must be conditional on belief in it's existence. That is to say, it cannot participate in the universe in any way if such participation would be observed by an entity that does not believe it exists.

The Coherent, Rational Definition for a Deity

My deity is not a 'first cause' of any sort; it is simply a being that can influence events in ways that the natural laws of the universe would otherwise not allow for under any circumstances presusming that it's actions would only be observed by those who believe that the deity exists. It cannot excerise any action where an atheist is watching or a recording device (which does not have the capacity for belief) is monitoring.

Hm. I think that's all.

TAKE THAT YOU ATHEIST SCUM!!!

This reminded me of Frank Tiplers Physics of Immortality I had read a long time ago and didnt like it much. Didnt know he made more of them, but he did. I guess he's trying to sell books. Here's a critique:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/tipler.html