Posted: Oct 07, 2016 10:44 pm
Thomas Eshuis wrote:jamest wrote:This is a naive thread in my eyes, as the usual attitude of most theists to this question (including myself), is that God is eternal and thus had no beginning... hence required no cause for its own existence. It wouldn't even make sense for God to be an effect of another cause! I mean, God cannot be 'God' if it's a mere effect of something else. That's why God is consistently defined as the primal cause of everything.
I was under the impression that most atheists were aware of this, hence my judgement that it's a naive thread.
Except that it depends on your definition of 'God'.
Of course, but there can be no rational definition of God which reports it to being an effect of something else. Otherwise, anything and everything could be God as long as its existence effects further changes within its greater environment - as surely everything does.
God as it is commonly understood, refers to the Abrahamic god.
That depends upon which part of the world you live in - cultural influences. I'm addressing the issue from the perspective of reason, disassociated from any cultural bias. Regardless, I would still expect most Xians/Jews to believe that God is eternal and thus have no cause for its own existence. I'd also expect most atheists to be familiar with this and understand the synonymous connection between the concepts of eternal and acausal.