Hi.  How are we all doing?  Good?  I have to say that I'm enjoying our game of philosophical football.  Or at least I was up until this little comment.  You don't know me but I'm an actual scientist (lucky you!) and I'm here to tell you that you're wrong.

Hypotheses are based on observation not evidence.  If Newton had watched the apocryphal apple fall to the ground, rather than hypothesizing a universal force that draws matter together he could have suggested that there is an invisible blanket of hordickelsplat that holds things up and its when that blanket tears that things fall down.  He wouldn't have evidence for either of these thoughts, just the observation that things fall.   It is when the predictions of the hypothesis are tested and evidence is gathered that the hypothesis fails or a theory begins to form.

Thanks for your time.

M

I think you're making the error of leaving yourself out of the equation.

Sheer pure awareness - without any subject - is incoherent, it's an internal contradiction... there must be a subject which is aware, to be simply aware, or to experience awareness, you must experience your own cognitions.... i.e. yourself as a thinker.

Huh. Imagine that.

But that's not the requirement as posted in the OP. The question is not whether the deity being defined exists or not. The question is whether the definition of the deity is coherent or not. So your response is irrelevant because it doesn't address why having "knowledge of every true proposition" is incoherent.

The request in  OP does not ask to provide a scientific hypothesis of God. Is simply requests, and I quote, "provide the minimum requirements for god, and present a coherent, rational definition of god that covers the minimum requirements."

Playing these games neither speaks well of you or your cause.

So you have no definiton.

Got it.

I told you I wanted the definition, you didn't give it to me. I can only assume you don't have it, because it's a perfectly reasonable request- framed in my own sense of exasperation with your obdurate bull-headed idiocy, but a reasonable request nonetheless.

No definition, ergo, no argument.

Thanks for playing, Paisley.

If you know what the term "awareness" means, then I guess it is not incoherent. I said that any definition of God must require that God at least be conscious. That's the minimum requirement. That's the starting point. How is that equivocating? If you insist that consciousness is an incoherent concept, then how can we move forward? Answer: We can't.

No, I don't. I assume that you know what the term "awareness" means because you have experienced it. Unfortunately, based on past threads, you and other members of this forum have sought to make the ridiculous argument that the term "awareness" is a meaningless concept! 

To reach a common understanding? Puhlease! You're not interested in coming to a common understanding. The only interest you and your fellow forum members have is to rant and rave and fling ad hominem attacks. This is made abundantly clear by the following:

I hope you realize that the foregoing is a commentary on your character, not mine. The psychological term for this type of behavior is known as projection.

If you say that universe is conscious or that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of mass/energy, then it most certainly does imply a God-concept. It's called pantheism.

Now, the question is not whether there is evidence for an all-pervading consciousness (although there is). The question is whether or not the concept is coherent. You have failed to provide an explanation for why it is not.

All we want is coherent, unambiguous definitions of the terms we're employing. Jesus fucking Christ! How many pages of how many threads have we spent debating the semantics of a few words? Why is this so difficult?

Dammit, Paisley! If we don't understand your position. You should try to explain it to us. Our goal is to understand each other, not achieve glorious victory.

I mean, what is this? WTF?

Everyone here understands the term awareness, but nobody understands your interpretation of it because nobody can read your mind. Words have multiple meanings, often vague, often mutually exclusive. Does that make any sense to you...at all? 

It's the mind (awareness) being aware of itself being aware of itself, etc. Can you say "infinite regress?"

As I said before, qualifying it with "of" doesn't change anything.

This depends on how you define the "transcendent beyond." I know that it is nontemporal, nonspatial, and nonsensory. IOW, it's beyond time, space, and the senses.  

Oh and also: What other qualifications are there for a god to be a god, and not just an aware and/or conscious being?

Universal consciousness means that the consciousness through which I perceive the world is the same consciousness through which you and all sentient beings perceive the world. Now, the question is not whether you believe in it or not. The only question is whether it is coherent. If you believe it is not, then please explain why it is not.

Smart-aleck comments like these do not help you or your cause.

I need Scissors! 61!

Or I might just be ignored

Hey! That's the exact same definition of something that doesn't exist. What a coincidence!

OK, I saw that link in the other thread. However, it is not even close to what I was asking for.

What I am asking for is a link that substantiates your proposition that the pope called Einstein in to request that he withhold publication on the big bang until the implication for christianty could be worked out. Specifically while the following was going on:

Einstein was not advancing the big bang. Rather, he was still holding the line on a static universe.

 Georges Lemaître had published on the big bang already.

The pope had already shot is smart ass mouth off about how science had, through the big bang, proved special creation.

Georges Lemaître had in fact gone out of his way to get an audience with the pope to tell him to cut it out.

We can categorize all forms as such truth, such as the one portrayed by the tortoise and the hair as "aesthetic truths", morality is one such notion of truth, so is what we find meaningful, just, good, merciful, hopeful about. 

The problem here, even when i was a child I knew the story was not a claim of truth in every situation, but true in a particular context, the tale was to convey a perspective, that allowed me as a child to have a context to reflect in my hasty efforts to do things, in half hearted ways, that the end wouldn't yield the best results. It's the advice I would give to my own children, that if your venturing to do something, give it your best, and don't fall into complacency because nothing is guaranteed, and a belief that it is will only lead you to fail more often than you should. 

My father used to tell me, when i was a child, that more than any sort of success in a career, more than any sort of education I may obtain, of how well I do in these endeavors, all that really mattered to him, was that I be a "good" person. That his dream for my life, is to live to an aesthetic  truth for an ambition. It wasn't vague for me what he wanted, I understand it as well than as I do now.

These truths may not be able to be called objective, they may all posses qualities that keep them continually subjective as what they mean, and if they hold true for everybody, but this doesn't diminish the importance of them.

In the approaching world, you profess your notion of truth as a literal scientific version of it, as more important than mine, but I'd wager than science in the end will vote in favor of mine over yours. Science is not the language we use to distill indifference, it's not a call to care, a rebuke to injustice. It's not love your neighbor as yourself, nor a confessor of sacred values such as freedom, community, hope, and love. Only the aesthetic can ever produce convictions, cause us to reflect on our injustice and cruelty, and change. Science may in fact hold many tools to make the world better, but this meaningless if no one really cares too much for the world at all.

Such aesthetics truths may be trivial and too ambiguous for you to find them meaningful, but for history it has been it's most important. 

But the aesthetic truth of the tortoise and the hare may be determined empirically, as well. It will be noted that a process that is methodical may take longer than a hasty process, but will yield better results. Otherwise, this "aesthetic truth" would not be a truth at all. Even at the heart of this subjective tale, there is objective knowledge.

Any tale, parable, or myth that doesn't provide empirical benefit is not an aesthetic truth. These tales are not outside the purvue of rational thought and empirical evidence.

This is not to say that your dad wasn't right. My dad said something similar. And I have told my daughter the same thing. It is rational, and subject to logical thinking and empirical evidence.

Think of the society in which you would like to live. Is it the one in which everyone is selfish, greedy, and without compassion or empathy? Or is it the society in which everyone cares about everyone else, where generosity is the norm, and consideration the rule? I believe the first society will not stand for long. I believe the second will stand for a long, long time. (Assuming they aren't invaded by the selfish society.)

But that's just me. I can see the application of rationality and empirical evidence to pretty much anything that matters in life. Even the irrational stuff, like Monty Python (which I still enjoy) has a rational foundation: the transient enjoyment of experience, within the context of the society in which I would wish to live. That, and it's funny.

Again, your mileage may vary. Your mind is not like mine, and I'm sure you are thankful for that. So am I: the world is a much better place with a variety of people.

All worldviews are held because we find them to be relatable. Our experience and reflection on the life in front of us, leads us to ascribe to a worldview in which relates to this. Why it's easy for me to reject secular humanism, and the common sort of beliefs expounded by our village atheist, is they peddle a sort of Disney land understanding of the world, that lacks any real sort of reflection on suffering, on hope, on depravity, love. The body of thought by proponents of disbelief are absent of reflection on the everyday experiences of my life, all the secular worldview I've encountered remind me of children who close their eyes to certain depictions of reality and deny whats there. 

My arousal of secular visions found there end, in my early years of HS, waiting for a train late at night to a bar that didn't card me and my friends, and waiting with us was a child, I'd say no more than 10 years old, strung out on drugs, and delusional, and angry, telling us how he had just come from seeing his brother, and how he wanted to bash his brothers' wife's head in with a pipe, here I stood only a few years older than him, and bewildered to witness depravity in the form of a young child. Gone were all the illusions of liberalism, humanism with its soft strokes, faith in science or reason, to solve the condition at the heart here.

In a recent blog post, PZ Myers claimed a child staring at the stars as the  aspiring depiction of the human condition, but the depiction of the human condition I even knew as a boy, was that tragic child by the train, whose innocence was lost. I've lived my life as more of an observer of tragedy than a victim of it, a witness to indifference of human beings, when constantly rather than tokenly come to face with injustice, impoverishment, and suffering. I've seen the victims of misery percieve themselves as that man by the tombs who "was always crying out and bruising himself with stones (Mark 8...).

I only know one worldview that shares with me in this reflection, whose conditions of existence to be made sense of were not much different than mine, only one worldview that I found to be relatable to the conditions of my nagging disbelief and belief. A worldview with a depiction of a mutilated innocence at the heart of humanity, is what's relatable to me. And its in the vision of this worldview, that perceives even in this, the existence of hope, dignity, and love, to be the most empowering image that I have ever known.

This is why I hold Jesus Christ as the Truth. 

Our comical atheist (not all atheist, just a certain brand of them) will barely get this, as they are too focused on the material composition of the cosmos, and find more of an inspiration in staring at the stars, than in acts of love. Their shallowness allows them to hold science as the most endearing purveyor of truth, and atheism as cheap cure for a condition they barely know nothing of.

Well, I never said that what we claim is aesthetic truth is beyond scrutiny, or beyond reasonable discussion, and justification. Even if I were to say I thought a particular film was the best film of the year, I may in fact have rational reasons, and basis for why I perceive this particular film as such, in fact if you disagreed we could even have a tightly argued discussion about the merits of a good film.  I can lead you to reasonably understand why i perceive a certain film to the "best", and yet you can disagree with me, because you have a different standard as to what composes "best". 

I can reasonably and coherently explains the reasons for why I believe in God, and why i am a christian, without ever once revealing signs of an inability to reflect or ponder questions relating to these beliefs. In fact I consider myself to be far more critical of my beliefs, than any sort of shallow pondering the Brian Sapients, and Dawkins of the world may suggest. I don't profess the Christian truth to be an off limits sort of notion of truth, incapable of being criticized or disputed, in fact I open it up to far more scrutiny than other beliefs i hold. 

I can rationally explain the aesthetic reasons for why I love my mother, but just don't take this to be an argument for me trying to convince you to love my mother as well. 

I never said it was not subject to these things, they're just not reducible to it.

Now, here's the difference, I would rather live in the latter society even it weren't going to last long. I rather live amongst a disenfranchised and poor community, with it's toils and suffering, but with a pervading sense of love and community amongst it's people, than Denmark. 

If what I longed for was a society that last long, I'd vouch for groups of individuals with the same sort of goal in mind, if they were selfish, compassionate, greedy, or whatever else it would matter little as long as "living long" was of their ultimate concern as mine. They chose not to rob from me, not because they weren't greedy, but rationally perceived robbing from me to be detrimental to their well being. One does not have to operate from a framework of empathy to be as such. A company may not hire child laborers not out of any moral compulsion of their own, but just because it's not good business. 

So here's a question for you. Would you rather live in a society that will last for long, that offers a good degree of material comfort and well being, but was dominated by individuals who cared very little for their fellow human beings, where empathy and compassion hardly ever reveals itself in human interactions, or just felt so faintly, for the rest of your life, or a society whose material possession were abysmal, who shared whatever little they had, who endearingly loved each other, and yet whose circumstances made them a society not long for the world? 

Would you rather be the family who hid their Jewish neighbor during the holocaust out of compassion and love, who end up being caught, and having their lives cut short, and yet never regretted their decision of love? or the family who witnessed the fate of this one, and refused to shelter their Jewish neighbors, for the sake of prolonging their lives?

I find that one of the  plaguing myths among disbeliever, lies in the power they associate with rational thinking. This sort thinking confuses moral reasoning as the source of moral behavior. You may believe that you feed a hungry child out of compassion because you come to the rational belief that feeding him adds to societies longevity, but this is an illusions, that modern science would be quick to point out to you, as if your sense of compassion yields to rational thinking. 

As self aware creatures, we often tend to believe in the power of our self awareness, to govern our daily lives, forgetting that human beings are creatures of a dichotomy, that we are also instinctual beings, love and hate flows from the same breath, and we have little to no rational control of what we do and don't. You can't make men love their neighbor by rational argument, no matter how many secular humanist believe so. Paul knew this 2000 years ago, Sam Harris just hasn't gotten the memo

It is a state of consciousness that is nonspatial, nontemporal, nonsensory, nonconceptual, and devoid of any content. There is no subject and no object. Or, conversely, you could say that the subject and the object are one and the same. But this is simply a matter of perspective (somewhat analogous to whether the proverbial "glass of water" is half empty or half full).

Is it incoherent? No, I don't think so. I just described it. But I guess you can say it is paradoxical. The bottom line is that it is something whose truth can only be experienced.

Soz. I don't have a link.

I'll look around for it, but
I expect lots of hits, and it's not that important to me to spend hours looking through them.

Despite your intolerance and passionate arguments, a Pantheist god is NOT "consciousness" of anything.

The Pantheist god is not a deity. Period.

In fact, the "consciousness"
business also came from a late poster.

I've only made a few million posts about the Pantheist definition of god for that same reason.

The original thought of the thread poster was to come up with a single all-inclusive definition of god. Only problem as was later realized
is it's not possible.

The Pantheist idea of god keeps blowing everyone out of the water. Can't say anyone's been happy about my posts, but if they were, there wouldn't be much point in my participation, as usual.

Good luck with that.

This is the whole point. If the pantheist God is not a deity, then it really isn't a god! Why do atheist materialists feel compelled to employ the "G" word? Answer: Their worldview is so spiritually bankrupt that this is the only way they can peddle it to an uninformed public. IOW, they deliberately use deception in order to sell atheistic materialism under the guise of pantheism. It's pathetic!

If you deny the reality of the Spirit, then you really can't have a spiritual worldview. Employing deceptive semantics will not change this fact.

The controversy involving the term has resulted in the  emergence of two different forms of pantheism: "classical pantheism" and "naturalistic pantheism." (And I believe these terms are in themselves very misleading.) Classical pantheists believe in a conscious God. Naturalistic pantheists do not (and, as such, they really don't believe in a God at all). 

Naturalistic pantheism is not really pantheism - a term which literally means that "God is All". Naturalistic pantheism is nothing more than atheistic materialism employing deceptive semantics in a vain attempt to justify a spiritually impoverished worldview.  

Naturalistic pantheism is an anti-theistic philosophy for "tree hugging" atheists.