>That's wrong though. Deistic religions are build upon the idea that there is a powerful being (not a mindless thing or process), commonly refereed to as 'a god' that created the universe.
That's the god that I'm arguing for. A powerful "being" that is timeless and immaterial that caused our universe to come into existence.
Yeah and like I said there is no reason to assume that it is a being.
You think that people decided there must be a man in the sky for no reason and THEN attributed things to him? Dan Dennett presents a very compelling case that belief in the supernatural arises from an overgrown sense of pattern recognition in humans, where people start to feel that something must be consciously influencing the world around them.
I'm not sure how that relates to what we're talking about.
I would agree that god is not "a being." That would be another way of saying that god is a creature. The god that I'm arguing for would have be "being itself," or in other words, existence itself, because if it doesn't exist then it couldn't cause anything.
>man in the sky
Fuck off back to lebbit
You said that you think people posited an impersonal God first. I don't think that makes sense.
We were talking about the absolute most primitive initial forms of religion. Chill out
Well let's call it 'a whatever' then.
Deistic religions work on the assumption that it is 'a being' though. That's why the existence of 'a whatever' can't give them any credibility. Just like the existence of winged flying creatures does not prove the existence of fairies. All this means is that 'a being' COULD exist and that isn't enough to function as the foundation of a religion.
Would you accept that this timeless and immaterial "whatever" is the most likely cause for the existence of the universe? The reason I say this timeless and immaterial "whatever" is the foundation of most major religions is because if you accept this, then you can start asking the question of why this timeless and immaterial "whatever" caused the universe to come into existence. The answer to this is where some religions will start to become distinct.
>Would you accept that this timeless and immaterial "whatever" is the most likely cause for the existence of the universe?
For the sake of the argument I agreed with that, yeah. This follows from the effect-cause thing we talked about earlier.
>then you can start asking the question of why this timeless and immaterial "whatever" caused the universe to come into existence.
Nope, here is the problem: 'Why' questions assume intent and only 'a being' has intent.
What a moron. Go back to your state school "classes" and learn to think and express yourself clearly.