It doesn't.

It isn't.

Why do you need purpose?

Oh, hey, are you a nonstandard theist who doesn't always conform to stereotypes about what people who are obviously not you believe?  Huh.

There's a stereotype for that?

Which gods are you into, anyway?

LMFAO, not trying to be insulting but seriously

and again....

At least we don't evangelize or sue people if they insult our religion.

Not nearly as awesome though.

Hi Ciarin.  

I've been quite torn on a few of your posts recently.  On one hand I agree with your position that the broad term 'theist' is often lazily applied to a topic title or discussion when the members involved have really been focusing on christian or abrahamic theism.  On the other hand you seem not able to appreciate the fact that the majority of people only deal with these branches of theism and, when discussing the subject, conversation will obviously be biased by an Abrahamic framework.  In short I admire your demand for linguistic clarity but am disappointed in your acceptance of implicit convention.

Why do I bring it up?  No offense, but it seems to me that quite a lot of your contribution of late has been to stick your head round the door and say "This doesn't apply to me!".  This is fine but it doesn't really contribute anything to proceedings does it?  What are you hoping to acheive by continually pointing out that you're not involved in the conversation?

M

I'm not trying to suggest that you don't answer any questions put towards theists.  All I was saying was, given the inherent bias you know exists towards Abrahamic religions, that some consideration could be given toward the context of the question or thread.

In this thread, for example, it seemed clear to me from the title and the post that the OP was referring to god (singular) as well as the recent waffling on the morality that supposedly comes from this God (singular) - generally an abrahamic argument.  As someone who has a non-abrahamic, polytheistic faith it might have been more constructive to ask for clarity from the OP on whether he was exclusively talking about a monotheistic god or if the creator god from a polytheistic pantheon could be included, and then go onto explain why, in your faith, the creator god and other gods don't assign purpose to human beings - you know, like you did in the "Is God Infinite?" thread.

I'm just saying there are more constructive ways of getting your point across than the "This doesn't apply to me!" approach.

It's worth keeping in mind that the view of gods and goddesses seems to have been much more interesting and convoluted in antiquity. Gods from other lands were considered legitimate, and simply part of the pantheon. Call it religious tolerance, if you like. For instance, the Romans identified the Gauls as worshiping Mercury, a god in their pantheon. Despite being "foreign" in some areas, Mercury was an important part of Greek and Roman mythology, but like the other gods, he had a cult following, and so was a character in stories involving the gods. Sometimes the gods represented a shorthand for people's values, like Pallas Athena's odd collection of traits, or as expressions, like such-and-such a group "worshiping Mars", meaning they were war-like.

The Germanic gods inherited many traits from their Greek and Roman predecessors, unsurprisingly. From what I remember, the stories are largely like Norse myths, which are fun stories, and fit more with an attitude of play than an attitude of serious belief. I mean, one wouldn't follow the example of a Norse story, in the "what would Jesus do" sense, it's just an entertaining story. A comparison of polytheisms and monotheistic religions can't be made in any proper way for that reason.

So a pagan isn't really required to believe as hard as s/he can, unlike what seems to happen with monotheisms. You can just go to the party. That definitely puts it higher on the awesome scale.

I also have a soft spot for the religion of my ancestors, who were crazy bastards.

What kind of an answer is that? You're saying that you know there's a god giving Di66en6ion life and experience? Or life experience? Or ... what are you saying?

Where did you get that God gave life?

Well, I don't think that a god of metalworking would give life.

So I don't see how that would be in the definition of a god.

That is not the definition of God. Otherwise we could equally legitimately label the laws of physics and the flow of energy in the Universe as 'God'. 

God is what many people believe created and and sustains life, but God is not the only thing that could fill those roles. It is begging the question to assert that those attributes are exclusive to the God concept.

God is defined as a supernatural sentient entity of some sort, otherwise it is just a mythical, poetic, or allegorical label for some aspect of reality.

I said in the definition, as in part of the description of God not the definition,

A God that doesn't create and sustain life isn't much of a God now is it?

K, but there's still the problem that chemistry takes care of the mechanisms of life pretty handily without help.

Hey, it's your call. I've never been able to make sense of all this knowledge people claim to have of something we can't know anything about (gods), so if your god wouldn't be quite right without a hammer, a sombrero, and some soul sisters for back-up ... it's your fantasy, so whatever you think makes it better.

What possible reason do you have for saying that chemistry is the "tool" of anything? What's going on with life other than chemistry? Where's the magic that happens that makes you say "God" before you'd bother to figure out what's actually going on?

What I'm saying is I don't believe you. I don't believe you know anything about this pretend mechanic, and I think you're making it up as you go along. You really give me no reason to believe you, either.

One persons god is another persons demons and demigods but not a true real god, just minor things that aren't really of importance. for centuries this argument has gone and in conclusion many christian denominations decided that your so called gods are just demons deceiving people into believing they are gods, like they have done to you. I love these arguments, I don't have to provide any evidence or real plausible argument to prove my point.

Oh Latin Canuck

Unless that person is religiously plural, like most polytheists are.

I think I have a decent grasp of Chemistry so I don't see how I'm jumping to God without bothering to figure out what's going on.

It's that I don't know everything, it's that I know enough.

Well, if your Gods exist, mine doesn't, if mine does, yours doesn't and if neither of ours, then well, neither of ours exist.

Also I think the whole poly theism and more particularly any religion thing is cause by people just going too fast, they should slow down to actually give thought to what they're appllying.

It's not an either/or thing.

Explain this.

You would certainly need to know much more than just 'chemistry' to be able to judge the plausibility of life emerging and evolving without some sort of external, supernatural 'guidance'.

If the idea is of a 'being' who set up the laws of physics and chemistry etc such that it was virtually certain that life would emerge and evolve into humankind somewhere in the Universe, without ongoing direction, that would be more defensible, but begs the question of 'who' did the equivalent duty for such a 'being' itself.

No matter how you cut it, 'God' doesn't work as an explanation of ultimate origin - if 'something' either just popped into existence, or always simply existed, ideas such as a field of all but structureless quantum 'foam' that twitched at least one larger 'singularity' into existence are always going to be more plausible than an infinite all-powerful sentient being.

The idea that intelligent life would require an even more intelligent designer-creator is a logical non-starter, because of the monstrous infinite regress it demands.

EDIT: The basic question of 'who created God?' is tired and old, but unanswerable without seriously fudging the issue...

The only 'Gods' that are consistent with logic are finite and are not the ultimate creators of life, altho a finite but vastly 'advanced' and powerful being who may have been responsible for life "as we know it" is not logically impossible, but could not have created itself, of course.

Basically, they get a huge pile of crap and take it all for granted instead of examining one claim at a time?  

How about the Hyper-God (level 1) who 'creates and sustains' the base level 'God' who 'creates and sustains' mere mortal life?

Or the Hyper-God (level 2) who.... well you should get my drift.