Define God

Simple: what I see as a pronouncement you see as a pontification.

Or dismissing another's argument without substantiation

Tomato Schlamato

Sorry, no.

Bible believers usually do that and they cannot substantiate.

You are of a different kind.

You'll use all kind of disingenuous and philistine arguments to make your exegesis of the bible prevail.

But it only works with people that are not aware of those methods..

Actually, it's often called disinformation...

Yes, all those poor souls walking around disinformed.

Such as?

Finding a justification to the bible saying that a man who had a testicle crushed will not be allowed to enter the house of the Lord..

Come on Francois. Ever heard of euphemisms?

You criticise your opponents for taking the Bible literally and then you take it literally yourself in order to have a point to make.

You are bombarded daily with the notion that by purchasing a "beauty product" you will enter into the kingdom of the Beautiful. By wearing shades you can enter into the kingdom of smouldering mystery.

God is a concept invented by mankind for the purpose of having a transcendental source for morality which cannot exist if God is not believed in.

You are continually in the position of attacking something without you bothering to offer a credible alternative. That's too easy.

There are important areas in life which cannot be legislated for.

Come on, Spendi, that's exactly what I'm saying.

If I heard of euphemisms?

Looks like you never read my acronyms. I live of euphemisms, I breath euphemisms, I create euphemisms as a hobby!

And you are telling me if I ever hear of them?

That's ok, Spendi..

Tomorrow, in Athens, I'll drink a local Ouzo to your health. (And that's not an euphemism!)

Whoever dreamed up the DNA/RNA information code system which is the basis for all life as we know it.

DNA/RNA appear clearly enough to be the work of a single pair of hands. Our present biosphere is more complex than that and appears to have numerous authors. There is no way to picture a well intentioned God creating black flies or chiggers or mosquitos for instance.

I feel our time may be better spent studying alchemy rather than debating the truth of the Bible and "existance of God".
I consider the term "God" to be the process of the creation of all that exists.
So really "God" should also be refared to as "the creation of existance".

Even if a guy called god acctually built everything. This still failes to explain what was before him. Surley an even greater, more powerfull force?

A question even more mind boggling is instead of "who/what created existance". Is why? I struggle to think of a reason for anything to exist.

I'd rather worship the very fact of Existence rather than some idea of a super-person w ho brings everything but himself into existence.

God is considerably less important than dog food.

The pseudoquestions about the "origin of existence" are based on the psychological game of visualizing " a void" suddenly occupied by "stuff". It is a game because the visualizer has forgotten his own role as a third party "observer" of such a scenario. Remove the observer and the scenario becomes untenable. Hence "existence" is about relationship between observer and observed, not independent "stuff".

Sure, there was no space-time "before the origin" thus there could not be any "before".

You may not agree, but irrespective of "the Big Bang", the argument holds. All retrodiction, is speculation based on "evidence". Both "evidence" and the concept of "time" are functions of "the observer". Theists like Bishop Berkeley tried to get out of this issue by designating "God" as "the ultimate observer".

I think we tend to transfer concepts of everyday life to abstract ideas and then forget that we did it. An atom and a tennis ball are only comparable to a certain extent. They share some similarities that can serve to explain some aspects of the behaviour of an atom using a tennis ball.

Our concept of existence itself is derived from a simple concept of objects. Objects occupy space, they have appearance, origin and duration.
When we then think about the concept of existence we automatically assume that these attributes apply, and the justification is simply that they apply to material, familiar objects we tend to use to vizualize the abstract. But that is an assumption. Concepts like end and beginning may be totally meaningless in relation to the universe.

Define "observer" given your viewpoint.

Good points--out of the conventional boxes, I would say. My comment could have been applied to a notion of the existence of "stuff". But I would prefer to think of existence as the presence of processes, such as the "relationships" between forces and observers and observed mental experiences--rather than "things" (qua thing-ness: what is left over after all other properties are abstracted from some "objective of experience).

Good points--out of the conventional boxes, I would say. My comment could have been applied to a notion of the existence of "stuff". But I would prefer to think of existence as the presence of processes, such as the "relationships" between forces and observers and observed mental experiences--rather than "things" (qua thing-ness: what is left over after all other properties are abstracted from some "objective of experience).