Scientists discover that atheists might not exist, and that’s not a joke

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Jan Ardena said:
"the one Supreme Being,"
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Well done.

Jan.
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Nope. No good at all. The dictionary doesn't define god as just the supreme being. It also defines god as one of several deities. It doesn't agree with you at all.

So stop evading. Explain the difference between one supreme being and several deities. Remember that the context of this thread is whether or not it's even possible to disbelieve - so tell us why the difference between one god and several gods has any significance. If you can believe in one god, why not several? And if you disbelieve in gods number 2 and beyond, why can't you also disbelieve in god number 1?
 
Jan Ardena said:
No. Stop playing games. You know what the difference is.
By the way, you were made by your parents, not created.

Jan.
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It isn't about what I know. It's about what you can't explain. It certainly isn't clear that you know the difference between god and gods.

And by the way, I bet you can't explain the difference between created and made either.
 
Jan Ardena said:
Well it should. Look at other dictionaries, or Wikipedia.
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We can't typically solve philosophical problems by looking in dictionaries. What dictionaries give you is how words are most commonly used at a particular point in time. (If you look in the definitive Oxford English Dictionary you will get an essay on each word, describing the various usages the same word has had in different centuries.)

The issue in question here is more about how words should be used. No dictionary can tell you that. We have gone beyond simple consideration of word usage at a particular moment in time to consideration of the nature and reality of whatever it is that the words supposedly refer to and name.

Concerning 'God' and 'gods', that's a question for theology and more broadly, for the philosophy of religion.
 
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Musika said:
So things like people's minds, notions of justice, equality etc (or even ideas about how everything, including things we cannot explain coherently in terms of the sense objects is actually made up of physical things, ie rain chequed empiricism), and other things which all stand beyond the power of our 5 senses to examine, all partake of an essentially unimportant reality?
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Everything we experience is physically real, we just don’t commonly interpret realty as such. A tree, a person, a brain and the thoughts it expresses can all be identified as episodic organizations of material stuff, by stuff I mean everything from asteroids to the most basic elements of existence. For example, a notion of justice would exist as a recognizable pattern of neurologic activity among a population of given organisms in a given location and time. That would be one of countless interpretations of that identifiable expression of physicality, each being contextually dependent.

But you are arguing for a uniform "playing field" for processes ... IOW whatever processes are available to God must be apparent in the lives of humans in order to rendered acceptible .... IOW it's a proposal the suffers from qualitative comparisons .... in fact there is no need to even introduce notions of God or ants to highlight the problems.... even if you solely use technological advancements available of current human society, you necessarily alienate the same human society of 400 (what to speak of 4000) years previous. IOW today's notions of the ceiling of cutting edge empiricism are tomorrow's out dated processes.
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The only uniformity I’m addressing is that all processes are contextual, in that they can be infinitely viewed as many, or collectively viewed as one. When viewed as many they can be perceived as independent. When viewed collectively that illusion of independence perspectively disappears. The processes of Gods and ants can be contextually delineated in one sense, and also be shown to be elemental cogs of a greater process in another.

Granted, its one aspect of reality, but your decision to bring it to the discussion brings in to focus your choice of saddles.
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OK, then unsaddle the burden of biology and see how far it gets you.

Says who?
Certainly not biologists (or at least biologists who wish to make statements on the authority of their discipline).
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What exactly do you think enables you to actively engage the reality you inhabit if not the biology that animates your body and mind?

If you can't even authoritatively say all life are "slaves" to the constraints of our biology (what on earth can you talk about to reference something not on earth :) ?), you have severe ontological problems in place well before you are approaching any meaninful definition of "God".
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As far as we know, all life on earth is currently biologically based, and therefore constrained by the nature of their biology. I would think it reasonable to assume that life in any form, where ever it exists would be constrained by its particular underling operational framework. The same would logically apply to gods should they be shown to exists.
 
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