[atrifix]

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I know a lot of people say something to the effect of, "I don't necessarily believe in God, but I think there's a higher power." Is there a difference?

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The philosophy of religion/Christan God is usually defined as a "3O" God--omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.


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While I see the belief in a conscious, judging God who would sentence someone to eternal damnation for masturbating as a bit silly, I do lean towards believing in the cliched higher power - something perhaps beyond our observable universe.

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I don't think that this will stand up as a definition. What about some unobservable extradimensional tachyons? They aren't even sentient.

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Of course, as I said, I am only leaning toward this view point. There are a couple of things to be said that could dismiss this belief. First of all, the idea of causality is definitely open for debate on a quantum level. I won't even go into this, as I am not completely sure about how that stuff works, but the idea of matter seemingly randomly popping in and out of existence does throw a wrench into things. Also, there is a problem with extrapolating causality. It's simple; when or where do you stop? If X was responsible for creating the universe, then what was responsible for creating X, and so on and so on.

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Ignoring the fact that the best explanation that modern science can come up with is one where the principle of sufficient reason is false, how are you going to answer the second objection? If you reply that there was no cause for God, then you have two contradictory premises.