If you want to disambiguate a bit, I like using the phrase “God of Abraham”. (The simulation argument suggests that the universe may indeed have had some kind of Creator, but it clearly wasn’t YHWH.)
The simulation took 6 days to put together. At first YHWH started with an empty universe with just a single planet. To take a quick look around he opened the debug console and forced a light source with the command...
...The advanced editing software would recalculate everything to fit together each time he implemented a new feature to avoid discontinuities in the simulation. On the third day when he decided on the overall structure of his universe it calculated backwards to create a history consistent with the planet he had already been working on for two days, and later on it would recalculate the history of life each time he imported a new critter...
...Intrigued how the simulation looked like from inside YHWH took a partial copy of his mind, scaled it down to fit in one of the sims and inserted it into the simulation. Since had had some interesting interactions with some of the sims and didn’t want to wipe them he anchored the recalculation at the conception of his avatar...
I would refine that it’s not a meaningful argument to have. Theists can still question whether what they mean by God exists in the way that they mean.
I think atheists make a mistake in tackling whether God exists when they don’t know what theists mean by ‘God’ or ‘exist’ (and theists don’t either). Atheists tend to press the meaning of the words towards overly empirical interpretations, so that they pretend theists believe in some sort of creature. In particular, arguments about a flying spaghetti monster, etc, feel entirely irrelevant to someone that is theist. They know they are considering something different.
‘Something different’ doesn’t mean slippery and shape-changing just so that you can never get a hold of it in an argument. It’s something a linguist or a psychologist could probably get a hold of.
My impression of the best way to convert a theist, based on intuition rather than practice in the field, is to challenge the consequences of this God-that-exists.
For example, what does God do and how is he good? Try to get the theist to feel for a rough answer, and then ask again in a week. As soon as the theist articulates a consequence, they realize it’s not true as they go about their day with this thought in hand and their image of what God does erodes. Until their concept of God doesn’t really do anything, and he’s not really that good in the sense they originally meant. Even if they still “believe in God”, their beliefs don’t have any consequence.
It’s depressing. I wouldn’t deliberately deconvert anyone.
Note that some versions of what people mean by God are very vague. So at that level, it may not be a meaningful question.
If you want to disambiguate a bit, I like using the phrase “God of Abraham”. (The simulation argument suggests that the universe may indeed have had some kind of Creator, but it clearly wasn’t YHWH.)
Clearly?
The simulation took 6 days to put together. At first YHWH started with an empty universe with just a single planet. To take a quick look around he opened the debug console and forced a light source with the command...
...The advanced editing software would recalculate everything to fit together each time he implemented a new feature to avoid discontinuities in the simulation. On the third day when he decided on the overall structure of his universe it calculated backwards to create a history consistent with the planet he had already been working on for two days, and later on it would recalculate the history of life each time he imported a new critter...
...Intrigued how the simulation looked like from inside YHWH took a partial copy of his mind, scaled it down to fit in one of the sims and inserted it into the simulation. Since had had some interesting interactions with some of the sims and didn’t want to wipe them he anchored the recalculation at the conception of his avatar...
This story doesn’t account for YHWH’s legal and moral decrees, or most of his other numerous interventions.
Those are left as exercises for the reader.
People engage in this sort of ridiculous rationalization too often already in complete seriousness without encouragement.
Well, I guess that the universe is indeed consistent with having been designed by a sadistic bastard like YHWH...
Note that all versions of what people mean by ‘exist’ are pretty vague too. So at that level, it may not be a meaningful question.
I would refine that it’s not a meaningful argument to have. Theists can still question whether what they mean by God exists in the way that they mean.
I think atheists make a mistake in tackling whether God exists when they don’t know what theists mean by ‘God’ or ‘exist’ (and theists don’t either). Atheists tend to press the meaning of the words towards overly empirical interpretations, so that they pretend theists believe in some sort of creature. In particular, arguments about a flying spaghetti monster, etc, feel entirely irrelevant to someone that is theist. They know they are considering something different.
‘Something different’ doesn’t mean slippery and shape-changing just so that you can never get a hold of it in an argument. It’s something a linguist or a psychologist could probably get a hold of.
My impression of the best way to convert a theist, based on intuition rather than practice in the field, is to challenge the consequences of this God-that-exists.
For example, what does God do and how is he good? Try to get the theist to feel for a rough answer, and then ask again in a week. As soon as the theist articulates a consequence, they realize it’s not true as they go about their day with this thought in hand and their image of what God does erodes. Until their concept of God doesn’t really do anything, and he’s not really that good in the sense they originally meant. Even if they still “believe in God”, their beliefs don’t have any consequence.
It’s depressing. I wouldn’t deliberately deconvert anyone.