From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 10:47 PM
To: Gary Kirkland [garykirkland@charter.net]
Cc: Athein@comcast.net; GkLtft@aol.com; Marketliberal
Subject: RE: [LPC-candidates] The Oppressiveness of Your Religion

Gary Kirkland wrote:

> God is not, by definition, supernatural.

Merriam Webster: "a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship" American Heritage: "a being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in and worshiped by a people, especially a male deity thought to control some part of nature or reality"
Encarta: "supernatural being: one of a group of supernatural male beings in some religions, each of which is worshiped as the personification or controller of some aspect of the universe"
Wikipedia: "any of a number of postulated immortal, supernatural beings, usually said to rule, alone or in company with other gods, over the destinies of humankind and the universe"

There are of course other senses of the word 'god', but they tend to make your conclusion uninteresting instead of just false. Define your terms, and pick your poison. :-)

> Aristotle's God was the Unmoved Mover. Only certain
> religions define God as supernatural. Many religions, Animists, 
> Hindus, Bhuddists, etc, have "natural gods, or God.

Supernaturalism is the thesis that the fundamental laws of physics make irreducible reference to, or were created by, some agency's volition.  On the Usenet newsgroup alt.atheism.moderated a few years back we had a long discussion about defining supernaturality; see e.g. http://tinyurl.com/2nacm where I gave an example of Thor as the god of lightning.  See also http://tinyurl.com/27qs6, where I surveyed the use of "supernatural" in the philosophical literature.

> Do you believe in breathing?

I believe in defining my terms so that what I say isn't a truism pretending to be an insight. If you define "God" as the universe or causality or some such, then your conclusion is a truism.

> belief in breathing implies belief in
> cause and effect,

Belief in a phenomenon does not imply belief that the phenomenon has a cause. Instead of "belief in breathing", you should have said something like "choosing to breathe".

> The big bang theory is a modern
> version of the Unmoved Mover.

Almost no informed atheist would seriously claim that the Big Bang -- or more precisely, the framework of physical laws that allow the Big Bang to arise from an uncaused singularity -- is its own cause completely ex nihilo. (An exception is the atheist philosopher Quentin Smith, but his attempts seem questionable.)

The modern atheistic alternative to God as Uncaused Cause is in fact the metaphysical theory called modal realism, which explains the existence of our universe by saying that all possible universes are equally real -- or at least seem real to their hypothetical inhabitants.