Nein.

I do not hold to the idea that god is necessarily an infinite being. 

Aye, cap'n! 

Ooooh, then we've got some math to work with.

If God is such a vastly powerful being as you describe, it logically follows by basic information laws, that, if described as a sentient entity, that hence he must be immensely complex (I did consider Dawkins, then, to be more accurate than Plantinga). Look at humans. Countless quadrillions of yes/no microsystem variables are taking place as DNA is transcribed into RNA, bases are inserted into phosphoribose templates, VGICs are opening, sphingolipids are accepting transductive messages, cytokines are relaying chemical signals, kinases are switching ADP/ATP. It is one colossal molecular/micro/macro machine which culminates in a conscious, sentient entity of a mere 13 SQ units. If God is omni-max, then according to my calculations, he is 50 SQ units or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times as powerful as the human engine, which means that that number multiplied by the natural logarithm e, multiplied by the Stefan-Boltzmann constant should give you the probability of God existing.

A sentient entity on the order of magnitude of God would have to have tremendous computational power, as already outlined, and would be devastatingly complex. The mere act of a single yes/no microstate fluctuation within a system that would have an estimate 10^100 microsystems would expend more free energy than the universe is in possession of! This is given by the formula Rlog pA/pB. We are talking about powers far, far beyond the Kardashev scale, we are talking about a being so tremendous in complex dynamics that it would be of truly ghastly probabilities . A macrosystem capable of supporting a 50 SQ omni-max entity would be so utterly tremendous that its entropy generation would be self-destructive in a matter of microseconds in a universe of this order. The probability of the God entity, hence, is simply too large to calculate. The best I can do is calculate a single entropy-decreasing microstate yes/no variable within the system of that size. And the answer to that is a probability of almost 1/10^900, which is almost 10^820 times the number of protons in the universe.

My point is that the definition you gave for "God" is basically the same as the definition I gave for "Nature." God, as you've defined him, is basically Nature, except he is aware of what's going on around him and does stuff in nature against which we are defenseless.

Let me make sure i undersatnd this def right by rephrasing it.

god is a almost omni-anal-rentivie "sentient entity" powerful enough that we can't do anything about it's anal-rentivivness ?

Sounds sexy.

God is an enraged elephant?

Until the symmetry is broken, of course.  

Interesting. With the defintion offered, there is nothing that dissalows said entity from consensual interaction with other sentient entities. But I am concerned with it's capabilites in relation to humans. Note also that because it can act without our consent, the definition does not require it.  

This does nothing ti clarify my thinking. An impressive waste of ascii characthers. 

There was something from which the BB emanated. I'm not sure what language you would like me to attach to the concept, hence the "before" in quotes.

Are you suggesting that infornation did not exixt until the BB? 

On what to you base this assertion? Seems to me Type III Kardeshev civilization could pretty much fuck with ua any way it wants. THis only requires the energy consumption of a single galaxy.

Agdistis

 Creator was not a requirement of the defintion.

SO this entity can move our will as well as our physical bodies?  And why aren't you concerned with animals?  Surely they are as effected by what this sentient being does as humans are.  Also, does this being act arbitrarily or does it have some sort of plan?  So far, your definition does not rule out the possibility of a being that does things willy nilly for no real reason.

That weird al yankovic song finally makes sense to me!

THe definition is purposely austere. I don't like the notion of such an entity being capricious and arbitrary, but the definitionas stateddoesn't dis-allow it. 

Could be. Neither required nor disallowed. My feeling is that I would have no way of telling the difference between the two.  

So now this definition allows for polytheism as well as monotheism.  Actually, unless your definition specifies that this is the only sentient intelligence to exist, your definition would require some sort of polytheism for it to make any sense unless you specify that this sentient intelligence has always been independantly of the universe which has also always been.  

Poly theism isn't required. But yes, possible. 

Sounds like you are more interested in being the contrarian than being correct.

You mean the actual meaning of the term you stole?

This atheist doesn't like it 1.) because it steals the term god from its common usage 2.) it is still completely unevidenced 3.) the argument for or against such an entity is the stuff of drunken bar room conversations not of actual intellectual inquiry. 

Nothing. 

And the point of placing us in a subordinate position in the heirarchy of sentience beneath a fictional entity would be what? 

I would call that a superficial commonality. The only reason that there is this commonality is because it arises from the actual common basis of all theistic thinking which is answering the creation (the nature of existence) question and looking for some means by which to make sense of what can at times be a less than desirable existence.

Why should anyone accept the actual eixstence of an entity which resembles your newly created definition for the term god? If there is no reason to, then why bother to make up definitions? This is nothing more than creating a character for a novel.

 You are basically taking characteristics of actually existing entities and ascribing them to a manufactured entity for the sole purpose opf placing that entity into a heireachy above the actually existing entities fromwhich you took the characteristics. Why should we assume humans are not the top tier of any heirarchy of sentience?

I did miss that.

God is the stolen term. And I don't mean that your definition does not, or can not, fit under the term god in the way that one might when saying one must steal from naturalism to discuss the supernatural.

Since god is, for all purposes, devoid of any actual referent there would be nothing contradictory about using god as a name for the being/s you suggest. The problem is that, if what you are suggesting is a natural material sentient lifeform that simply has capabilities 'above' those of humans, then no one else is using the term in this way. To use common words in a way, not only different, but all but antithetical to the way others use them makes the use of words pointless.

The problem is that the parts you strip are the very heart of the common definition of the term. That the term is irrelevant with its common definition does not mean that one is justified in simply redefining the term to anything they want in an attempt to make it relevant.

What? Why do you want to try and define something for which there is no evidence? Should I try and define a curple? Shouldn't we first have evidence of some existence and then attempt to follow the evidence to whatever actually exists and not until that point worry ourselves with a definition or a term (name). To make definitions for terms and then look for evidence to support our the existence for our terms as defined seems to me to be working backwards. We would have no reason to think the definitions for our terms would turn out to correspond to reality.

Yes.

By lower stature do you mean at the whim of? Powerless against? Or do you mean reliant upon and endebted to?

Call, it opinion. Theism is founded in answering questions for which answers are or were not readily available and providing foundations for things such as morality and existence. That we must end up in a subordinate position to any entity to which these things are attributed seems to simply arise from the nature of what it would mean for a god to be the creator and the supreme justification.  

I see no reason to look for what there is no evidence of. I wouldn't even know how to start. The fact that the term god is defined incoherently is not my fault. It is the way the term is used. I did not define it.

Yes. 

But to start from the observable and attempt to define something which has not been observed is no better than to start from a incoherent foundation, if you are attempting to make a claim about reality. 

I did not say we are at the top. I asked why we should assume we are not.

Wave, Todangst was not being obtuse.  He was showing you that your definition is so vague that an elephant or a man with a bomb fit it.

What you think you mean by it has no bearing on the fact that linguistically, it can apply to literally thousands of natural things on this very planet.

You need to refine your language to eliminate the possibility of it referring to things you don't intend.

You're thinking way too far into the boxes you've put your concept into.

The point is that your definition is vague enough to allow us to define pretty much all of your terms for you, such that an angry man with a nuke riding an enraged elephant would fit.

For that matter, I can imagine a man with muscular distrophy, sitting in a wheelchair inside a reinforced titanium fortress, surrounded by a mote full of sulfuric acid and the entire Chinese army.  The man in the wheel chair has the movement of only his left pinky, but his pinky is situated atop a button that will detonate a nuclear bomb.

You are utterly powerless to stop this man from exerting his will upon you.  He is sentient, and the scope of his existence is such that you are powerless to affect his will in any way whatsoever.

Again, the point you're missing is that you're trying to create a definition for god, but you're allowing things that are not god to be possible answers for the definition.  You must refine it such that we cannot imagine anything except what you mean for god to be.