Nothing at all. I have no concept of gods.

Posted: July 17th 2010

See all questions answered by Mike the Infidel

I’d like to describe the crucial attributes of God, and I’m not going to let a little thing like not believing in him stop me.

First, I’d say that God is intelligent. (Joseph Smith said that, and went on to found one of the dumbest religions of all time.) Because God is so intelligent, he’d be far too smart to invent a dumb thing like creationism, intelligent design, or intelligent design creationism. He’d surely see through the ridiculous charlatanry known as faith healing. He’d also be too smart to need numbskull apologists to defend him using poor reasoning, logical fallacies, and doomed arguments. Maybe they should cut it out.

Apparently, he controls everything, listens to billions of prayers, and (I have heard) is responsible for all the physical processes in the universe. That means he’s a busy guy. So he’d be far too busy to care what people are doing with their naughty bits. He also wouldn’t care about gay people getting married, how low women’s hemlines or necklines are, what kind of underwear people are wearing, or any of a thousand details about food and drink, meat preparation, hair length, language use, or social customs that religious systems concern themselves with for the supposed well-being of their members.

He created the world, and everything that in it is. That includes fossils and rocks that are millions of years old. That would suggest that he wants people to believe that the earth is much older than the 6,000 – 10,000 years that Christian fundamentalists believe it is. Why do they ignore the evidence that comes from the world that their god created? And why don’t they believe the fact of evolution? If he’s the god of truth, shouldn’t they quit trying to ignore facts? Doesn’t that sound like they’re not being respectful to him?

God created a lot of women. I happen to think they’re quite nice-looking, and since I’m created in God’s image, I bet he likes the way they look too. He’d probably be offended if someone tried to cover them in yards of fabric. Or if anyone tried to mutilate their genitals. Or burn them, cut off their noses, or honour-kill them for not being sufficiently obedient.

In other words, from what I can tell of God’s crucial attributes, I think he’d be as disgusted with the attempts of humans to worship him as I am. If he existed, that is.

Posted: June 21st 2010

See all questions answered by Daniel Midgley

The most crucial essence of god is that humans believe in it. It takes humans to invent god, though some other animals show religious/superstitious tendencies also.

Without humans, there would be no god belief and hence, no god in any practical sense to wrangle over if there is enough evidence to support its existence or not.

Posted: June 17th 2010

See all questions answered by logicel

Merriam Webster defines “crucial” as either important or essential as resolving a crisis : decisive (a crucial step), or marked by final determination of a doubtful issue (the crucial game of a series). Since there is no God, God doesn’t “do” anything, including resolving crises and “finally determining” things. So, in a manner of speaking, God’s essence is in no way “crucial”.

Let’s try again: are there any aspects of God that “finally determine” what God is. Here again we run into problems since God’s essence doesn’t seem to be finally determined: one of the essential aspects of God seems to be that nobody agrees on its essential aspects.

Now that I’ve side-stepped your question with a bit of semantics, I’ll give it a go and actually try and answer you. As far as I know, the following tenets are common to the Abrahamic religions: God is the creator, the ultimate authority over morality and truth. God is all-knowing and all-powerful, and God has a plan for every person. God is nearly always referred to in the masculine gender.

From my perspective, God’s essential property is to validate claims made by scripture and clergy. Religions provide specific, concrete answers to existential problems like, “Why am I here?”, “What happens after I die?”, “What is the good life?”, “Are humans essentially good or evil?”, etc, and God supposedly provides these answers with authority. Even for unorthodox believers, God-belief serves to end debate on these issues.

Posted: June 16th 2010

See all questions answered by George Locke

My concept of gods is very general, since I don’t believe in a particular one. I can’t just picture the god I think is there and describe it.

The ontology of a god is a sticky business at the best of times; there’s no good noun to describe it which isn’t simply a synonym of “god”. Therefore my hypothetical concept of a theistic god is built from adjectives and verbs. Such a god is all-powerful and all-knowing, built and shaped the universe to its own specifications and still influences it today (and is therefore at least as old and as complex as the universe itself), intentionally brought about the human race by its own devices and takes more than a passing interest in human affairs and behaviour.

I don’t believe in the existence of any entity which meets even one of these criteria. Therefore, although I don’t know exactly what a god would be, I can safely say I’m an atheist.

Posted: June 14th 2010

See all questions answered by SmartLX