What Is Atheism

@ElwoodBlues [quote]No. A God can't be "anything." If "God" is a category that includes everything, then why have a category?

Your "God" label is a distinction without a difference, AKA a phantom distinction fallacy. And that's why your characterization of atheism fails. Also your theist vs atheist dichotomy holds no room for agnostics - that's the excluded middle fallacy.[/quote]

What is everything made up of?

@AkioTsukino [quote]What is everything made up of?[/quote] Ask a particle physicist. I think there's six kinds of quark and six kinds of lepton. Then each of those 12 has an anti-particle. Oh, and photons. Oh, and gravitons. And maybe some other stuff. Like I said, ask a particle physicist.

@ElwoodBlues Let's just take a shortcut. Gods is a category that anything can fit into. Why have a category like that? Because to be a god requires only one thing. Might.

@ElwoodBlues Everything is made up of energy. How's that? You. Me. This pencil. I don't fully - let's say - grasp this concept so I can't very well argue it. I don't know auto mechanics but I get in my car and drive. Then if it breaks down I call a mechanic.

@AkioTsukino [quote]Everything is made up of energy.[/quote]
Anything can - under the right circumstances - be [i]tranformed[/i] into energy. That's not the same as saying it [i]is[/i] energy. Just because I can sell my laptop and covert it into Swiss Francs doesn't mean it's [i]made[/i] out of Swiss Francs any more than it's made out of Bitcoin.

For example, To convert an up quark entirely into energy, you would need an up anti-quark. And we don't think the universe contains an equal balance of particles and anti- particles (or of matter and anti-matter if you prefer). We think there was a symmetry breaking that left the universe almost devoid of anti-matter. So I don't think the universe can be returned to a pure energy state, until maybe the Big Crunch when it all collapses back down into a singularity.

@ElwoodBlues [quote]To convert a Z vector boson entirely into energy, you would need an anti- Z vector boson[/quote]
My quantum mechanical studies are decades old (after they were theorized but before they were confirmed) and memory has faded so I rely on Wikipedia for a quick check and it says that Z0 is its own anti-particle.

@ninalanyon Thanks, I will edit that!!
P.S. You and I are of a similar age, but your recollections about those force mediating particles is better than mine.

@ElwoodBlues

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@AkioTsukino

@ElwoodBlues What if I told you your inability to grasp theology is not an argument against it?

See how I blocked your style, yes?!

[media=https://youtu.be/y8oIfhsdDPM]

@AkioTsukino
I don't accept your axioms of theology; that's what this debate is about.

BTW, I'm not the one who compared a predictive sciene to witch-hunting. That's your mistake; you've got to either retract it or live with the consequences.

Anything can - under the right circumstances - be tranformed into energy. That's not the same as saying it is energy. Just because I can sell my laptop and covert it into Swiss Francs doesn't mean it's made out of Swiss Francs any more than it's made out of Bitcoin.

@ElwoodBlues [quote]Anything can - under the right circumstances - be tranformed into energy. That's not the same as saying it is energy.[/quote]

And anything can be a god. That's not the same as saying everything is God.

@AkioTsukino The lower case letter "d" on my screen - that can't be a god. Neither can the ampersand glyph "&".

@ElwoodBlues [quote]The lower case letter "d" on my screen - that can't be a god. Neither can the ampersand glyph "&".[/quote]

Why not? What about . . .

@AkioTsukino Those are [i]symbols[/i] for gods

The map is not the territory

They need a consciousness to connect a symbol to that which they represent. Take away the consciousness and a symbol becomes a shape.

@newjaninev2 The map is not the territory but the symbols are the gods. They are phallic. You know what that represents? I'll give you a clue. It doesn't have consciousness. Fertility symbols. I've explained this repeatedly. To say a god has to have consciousness isn't accurate. It can, but it doesn't have to.

@AkioTsukino and you’re immediately back to the same problem... if anything or anyone can be a god, then nothing is a god, because being a god is an indistinguishable state

@AkioTsukino You pretend that godhood can be conferred by anyone, simply by believing. Thus you pretend godhood depends entirely on a person's internal state. And then you take a YUGE unwarranted leap and pretend that the this internal state creates some kind of external godhood. Nope. Sorry. Believing in a flat Earth didn't make it flat.

@newjaninev2 Being a god is being worshiped. That's all. Indistinguishable states don't enter into the equation.

@ElwoodBlues Stop chasing your tail. A god is something that is worshiped. No one did that on purpose to inconvenience the ignorant atheists. Regroup. Admit your mistake. Like good scientists. Fess up. And stop trying to tell theists what a god is. You'll feel much better.

@AkioTsukino [quote]tell theists what a god is[/quote]

You did that... a god can be anything and everyone at any time for any purpose... and is therefore indistinguishable from anything else except inside an individual’s head.

Irrational, isn't it?

@AkioTsukino I suggested that theism is irrational.

What is definitely irrational is your subsequent suggestion that I did the opposite.

Perhaps you’d now like to address the points I made in my comment

or will you [i]yet again[/i] just run away (covering your withdrawal with a cloud of incoherence)

@newjaninev2 There isn't anything left to say. Maybe you didn't see my other post.

A god is anything or anyone deified. If it isn't deified it isn't a god. The qualities, agency, powers and influence of the thing itself aren't what makes the god, the veneration is.

If two people observe a mountain one of them may make the mountain their god and the other may not. It wasn't a god until it was deified. It becomes a god, or God, to the person and in a general sense. It would be a god if the worshiper had other gods of more significance to that person, or God if it was placed above those other gods in significance. To those who don't venerate the mountain it becomes a god due to it being venerated by others, but it doesn't become their god. The mountain may become other people's God or god as well.

Godhood is in the eye of the beholder. It is dependent only upon the veneration it receives. It doesn't require or result in any special qualities outside the respect and veneration, the might attributed to it by the one who's deity it becomes.

@AkioTsukino [quote]Being a god is being worshiped.[/quote]
In your definition, godhood is conferred simply by a FEELING that someone somewhere has. Frankly that's an insult to theists. If someone decides to worship a doorknob, most people would view that as mental illness, not religion.

Your attempt to define godhood as nothing more than a feeling is a false equivalence. Just like your confusion of the map with the terrain is a false equivalence. You may have a set of definitions you believe to be internally consistent, but your definitions do not fit the concepts and definitions and behaviors of real people; neither theists nor agnostics nor atheists. Your attempt to re-define "god" just doesn't match the way the word is used.