Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

According to the rules, if you say his name, the thread is over and the person who says it loses.

The way I look at God is not the wrong way, though. In fact, I would contend that if you define God as the universe, then the word God in fact loses all meaning and becomes entirely pointless. The universe is the universe, but it is God who created it. In other words, why should I care two spits about a god who does nothing? a god who is unable to think, unable to act? A god who is just the universe is no god at all. Without some sort of Creator-creature distinction, the statement, "God is the universe" is entirely meaningless.

On the other hand, a God who creates has power. A God who does great deeds and acts in history is worthy of worship. Even if such a God risks suffering and death, at least such a God can be called a hero, even more so if he triumphs over death.

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Who said that I don't believe God can't think or act? Every time there's a natural movement of any kind, that's God acting. And God does it because it's possible.

I don't believe in a Creator. If there is a Creator, then, who created the Creator? I reckon it just stops here. The universe exists for the sake of existing.


"Anything that happens, happens.
"Anything that in happening causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
"Anything that in happening causes itself to happen again, happens again."
- Douglas Adams, author (1952 - 2001)

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"They've taken Mr Rimmer! Sir, they've taken Mr Rimmer!"
"Quick, let's get outta here before they bring him back!"

But that's just the point. A Creator doesn't need someone to create him. That's why he's the Creator. If someone created him, he wouldn't be Creator anymore, now would he?

But pantheism reminds me of St. Paul's words in Romans:


But there is one factor you've left out of the equation, Jerome. And that is the fact that I know God. The God I know is not some vague concept of the universe, but a living, active God who has revealed himself to me as the Suffering God who died on Good Friday and rose again from the dead on Easter. I have seen this God at work in my own life through the things I have endured.

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I used to be (and I may be again in the future) an atheist. I didn't hate religious people. I didn't hate anyone. I still don't really hate anyone. I think that it's a common misconception that atheists always hate religion. Some atheists just don't believe in it, some atheists do hate it. There's a difference. I believe that religion causes problems and it solves problems. It balances it self out.

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Hang on a moment. That doesn't lead as smoothly as you seem to think. Even if you create something, something must create you. If I had children, that doesn't mean I wouldn't have parents.

But if you take a Creator out of the equation, and all you have is what exists, has existed and will exist, then the whole thing is much more simple and easy to understand.

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"They've taken Mr Rimmer! Sir, they've taken Mr Rimmer!"
"Quick, let's get outta here before they bring him back!"

But then you have to explain the origins of everthing in existence, including existence itself. Existence has to start somewhere. The notion of a Creator simply points to the origins of all things, including existence itself. Such a Creator needs no origin if he has always been and always will be.

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But if the Creator "just exists", surely that defeats the point of saying "we have to assign everything that exists with a cause". If the Creator can "just exist", why can't the universe "just exist"?

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"You get the Most Annoying Transsexual I've Ever Spoken To award." -The Zephyr Song

The universe can't "just exist." The universe is in a constant state of decay, which means that, if it "just existed", then it would have ceased to exist long ago. Our modern science has at least proven that the universe had a beginning.

Ah, but the Creator, if he exists, is not bound by the laws of physics as we know them. This is what is meant when we say that God is transcendent. Some Medieval philosophers used to argue that he existed in a dimension outside of time, that is, a place where all times flow into one (how's that for 4-D physics for ya?). The point is that, being an eternal entity that transcends matter, he can (and in fact does) simply exist. And since his energy is infinite, he can expend as much as he needs to create whole universes and not be diminished.

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I was going to let this go, because it's rather a conversation ender... but the more I read this thread's updates, the more I have to go back to this.

We a'ready have a word defined as the Universe. It's "Universe." We don't need another word to be defined as the same thing. In fact, since there's already a definition for the word "God," then you actually confuse the matter by redefining the wording.

You mean one or both of two things. 1) that the things people attribute to acts of God should be seen as mere physical phenomenon, and that the connotations of the word "God" should be attributed to the universe, and/or 2) that there is no God, and that the highest reality is the Universe.

The first is a tenant of atheism, the second is a little stronger, it's called "Naturalism." Naturalism is based on the philosophy (not science, mind you) that everything follows in a cause-effect relationship from discoverable or undiscoverable natural laws, and that there is no such thing as consciousness in the strictest ontological sense, but only the manifestations of causal interactions on electrochemical membranes that the poor membranes mistake for consciousness.

Naturalism is bound by this: it is based on the absolute truth that nothing exists except that which is caused, including awareness of truth. So, if Naturalism is true and "all there is" is the universe and causal relationships, then you CAN'T KNOW that it's true, since truth has nothing to do with electrochemical impulses.

Therefore, the only way to believe in Naturalism is... get this... by faith. You have to believe, defying logic and the tenants of naturalism itself, that it is philosophically, ontologically true.

I really was going to let this go, but I don't have enough faith to believe this self-contradictory philosophy in my electrochemical membranes.

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By 'just existing', I don't mean 'having no beginning'. I mean 'having no cause'.

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"You get the Most Annoying Transsexual I've Ever Spoken To award." -The Zephyr Song