The 'God' Circle
Is there a single argument for the existence of a god that does not distill down to the simple unsupported claim that god is the answer to a question for which no other answer is presently known?
Is there any definition for god that doesn't define him as nothing more than the answer to an unanswered question?
It seems to me when we boil down the arguments for a god and the definitions of god we basically get one big circle. For instance, one might say that a god is required to explain the eixstence of the universe. But what is meant by 'god' when they use the word as an explanation for this phenomenon of the universe existing. Well, apparently they mean the entity that created the universe.
They might then add that they can not see how morality can exist without a god and define god as the grounder of morality. So now the term god has the illusion of an added dimension (god is the grounder of morality and the creator of the universe) to its definition. When we actually consider what is being said though, the definition has not been clarified at all by the additional statement. The term god is still simply being used as the answer to a question for which one has no other answers. Every attempt to define a god seems to rely on an argument that leads one, rightly or wrongly, to posit a god, and one therefor always seems to be led to the circle of defining the answer by the question that is answered with the answer defined by the question. No matter what theistic argument we choose or how one tries to define a god it seems to me that the theist is never able to get past this circular obstacle that leads every proposed definition and every proposed theistic argument nowhere except back into itself.
“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek" -- Tom Robbins
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"The mists of incomprehension and failure of communication are not just annoying impediments to rigorous refutation; they are themselves design features of religions." Dan Dennet--emphasis added.
"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert