Silly notions of God

From here:

The God attacked by most modern atheists, Hart argues, is a sort of superhero, a "cosmic craftsman" – the technical term is "demiurge" – whose defining quality is that he's by far the most powerful being in the universe, or perhaps outside the universe (though it's never quite clear what that might mean). The superhero God can do anything he likes to the universe, including creating it to begin with. Demolishing this God is pretty straightforward: all you need to do is point to the lack of scientific evidence for his existence, and the fact that we don't need to postulate him in order to explain how the universe works.

I would add they think that such a notion of "God" either acts against physical laws or, alternatively, provides explanations for phenomena which physical laws are unable to account for (this latter being known as the "God of the gaps").  Personally I think this is an absolutely ludicrous conception of "God".

Nevertheless it is this concept that all atheists I have heard seem to espouse.  See a blog entry by me in my other blog:

A ridiculous conception of God Part 2


The author quotes Damon Linker who says: 
 

… according to the classical metaphysical traditions of both the East and West, God is the unconditioned cause of reality – of absolutely everything that is – from the beginning to the end of time. Understood in this way, one can’t even say that God "exists" in the sense that my car or Mount Everest or electrons exist. God is what grounds the existence of every contingent thing, making it possible, sustaining it through time, unifying it, giving it actuality. God is the condition of the possibility of anything existing at all.

This seems to reflect my own concept of God.

 
The author exactly expresses the view I've always expressed; namely that atheists only ever attack utterly ludicrous simplistic conceptions of "God". This includes people like Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawkings et al.

The excuse they inevitably give is that most people believe in the type of "God" they attack. That's an interesting strategy . . ignore what the most sophisticated thinkers that have ever lived have said about the concept of "God" and attack the most silly and simplistic conceptions of "god" imaginable . .  And attack straw men versions of what the most sophisticated thinkers have said (yes Dawkins, I'm looking at you!)

This is a strategy employed not in just this area but elsewhere too. I get the impression that most people just want to give the appearance of "winning" the argument rather than actually engage with the ideas themselves and seeking to discover the truth about the world.

So much for the rationality of human beings . .