"Just a theory" negation has me concerned with how that word is typically used

[Mike Cl]

Shadow boxing straw deities?  Why is G-d changeless?  I see no reason to agree to that theological joke.  G-d as manifested in the human imagination for example, is as varied as the humans and constantly changing in each individual as each individual changes.  Heraclitus and Xenophanes trump Thales and Pythagoras ;-)  But the wrong answer by Thales and Pythagoras was pragmatically more useful, eventually.

Worship is such a loaded word.  Most people don't worship anything or anyone ... and that may be OK.  I find worship to be a kind of mania.  So I agree with you, at least today, I don't worship anything or anyone either.  Of course that may be because as an old guy I am simply burnt out, too tired to be a fanatic.

Okay--you did not say that god was changeless.  To answer your question, I don't know why god is changeless.  I have simply heard that from theists so much it is kind of a knee-jerk thought attached to the notion of god.  You don't have to believe that god is changeless. 

[Baruch]

Good ... how can you argue against a position, when you unconsciously accept an opponent's assumptions?  Don't use a concept, unless you own up to it (and yes, you can use something rhetorically that you yourself don't agree with).

PS - I fully support using weapons against enemies, while they are enemies.  Even weapons of mass destruction ... though it may be un-pragmatic to use such weapons in practice (vs intimidation).  We have yet to evolve a society where the leaders play chess, and if they lose, they have to commit seppuku in embarrassment.  It was a choice made as one imagined outcome vs another.  Better yet, the method of choosing ministers on Lilliput ... some kind of tightrope walking ;-)  The Japanese imagination of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere aka better Japanese Empire ... cost 20 million Chinese lives.  If you can't eat a little red herring, best not try to eat a shark.

[Mike Cl]

Good ... how can you argue against a position, when you unconsciously accept an opponent's assumptions?  Don't use a concept, unless you own up to it (and yes, you can use something rhetorically that you yourself don't agree with).

I did not say I accepted my opponent's assumption.  I merely stated I made an assumption as to what his argument would contain.  The only assumption I have about god is that it does not exist.  Period.  I argue that all the time.  But I also have come to assume (which is not really a good thing to do--assume) that a theist will imbue god with certain characteristics and one of  the most common ones I've heard is that god is changeless.  And I suppose in a sense, they are right--how can something that does not exist change???  It can't.  But then, a theist assumes god exists and does not change.   

[Baruch]

Not this theist ;-)  Greek philosophical memes are so ... 2400 BCE.

[Deidre32]

The Dead Sea scrolls are not strong, verifiable and supporting evidence...of anything at all. So when I hear religious people misusing that term, I want to cringe. For they have no supporting evidence to come up with a 'theory of God.'

[AllPurposeAtheist]

I have this theory that most people are just full of shit. Turns out that I'm right. Sewage treatment plants are the only real proof I need, but we all know that,  right?

[Baruch]

Deidre32 ... well there is fact and there is scholarship ... but don't tell the scholars ;-)  Scholarship involves Derrida-like deconstruction of physical evidence (often old written evidence).  The result is "what might have been" or "what might be today".  So bias enters into scholarship, but presumably more educated bias than a lay person can muster.  The usual denigration is "ivory tower".

The Dead Sea scrolls are only evidence of themselves.  Their origin is disputable.  Their meaning is disputable.  And we can't escape that with more scholarship, because what we really need to do is to have a time machine, to talk to the Essenes and other folks of that time.  This is why I can't base my religion on old books, though sometimes I find some verse or other to be inspirational.

AllPurposeAtheist - You realize you are quoting one of Jesus' jokes, right?  "It is what comes out of you that defiles you" ... "not what goes into you".  But again, what did the writer (not Jesus) mean by that.  So the scholar engages in exegesis.

One can attempt to reconstruct the mental world of people who wrote things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, and many have come up with their own version, just as they do with the authorized books of the Bible.  For me, the Gospel of Thomas, that comes from the later Nag Hammadhi, is definitive, but that is my "scholarly" intuition at work.

[Mike Cl]

For me, the Gospel of Thomas, that comes from the later Nag Hammadhi, is definitive, but that is my "scholarly" intuition at work.

If I remember correctly, the Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings, the originator of each impossible to know.  So, how can that 'book' be definitive?  And of what?   

[Baruch]

Well definitive for many of you ... is Jesus Christ (not that fictional folk rabbi guy) appearing in front of you, judging you as damned, and tossing you into a lake of lava ;-)  But no need to worry, unless in death you meet up with Dante!  In which case I am toast, because my Italian is rather poor.

Yes, the Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings, there is virtually no hagiography in it.  In synchrony (time emptiness) the originator doesn't matter.  And diachrony (time fullness) won't help unless you have a time machine.  Hagiography being a modest kind of mythology.

Definitive for me means ... it has genuineness, verisimilitude and truthiness unlike other works of that period ... it speaks to me in oracular ways.  But I get that more or less from many works of wisdom literature.  Wisdom literature goes back to Old Kingdom Egypt ... and is most familiar in the Proverbs and Psalms of the Bible.  But the prayers of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav is a more recent incarnation.

[Mike Cl]

Yes, the Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings, there is virtually no hagiography in it.  In synchrony (time emptiness) the originator doesn't matter.  And diachrony (time fullness) won't help unless you have a time machine.  Hagiography being a modest kind of mythology.

Definitive for me means ... it has genuineness, verisimilitude and truthiness unlike other works of that period ... it speaks to me in oracular ways.  But I get that more or less from many works of wisdom literature.  Wisdom literature goes back to Old Kingdom Egypt ... and is most familiar in the Proverbs and Psalms of the Bible.  But the prayers of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav is a more recent incarnation.

I have often read the term Wisdom Literature--and have read a fair amount of it.  I am amused that much of it contains little to no wisdom--at least as far as I'm concerned.

[Baruch]

Well maybe you need to write your own ... and see if anyone still cares 2000 years from now ;-))

[Mike Cl]

Well maybe you need to write your own ... and see if anyone still cares 2000 years from now ;-))

I haven't written it.  But I do take what I think works for me and use it.  As for seeing if anyone cares in 2000 years--that has no pull for me.  I won't care what people think (or don't think) of me in 20 yrs from now.  Or 2 years, for that matter.  My current well being is not predicated upon what anyone will think of me in the future.  I can't control that even if I want to. 

[Baruch]

No Mike CL is an island?

"But I do take what I think works for me and use it" ... exactly what I do.  Are you me, or am I you?

[Mike Cl]

No Mike CL is an island?

"But I do take what I think works for me and use it" ... exactly what I do.  Are you me, or am I you?

I am a rock, I am an island...............I'm a Simon and Garfunkel song. :)

"Are you me, or am I you?"  You are me--I am you--we are all one--right????

[surreptitious57]

Going back to the question raised in the OP. The word theory has two different meanings which are
virtually polar opposites hence the confusion over its use. In science it is an established frame work
of laws representing the most rigorously tested hypotheses which have all been subject to potential
falsification. So it is not something untestable or unsupportable which is what the lay definition of it
is. It is interesting how Christians say evolution is only a theory. Since they never say it at all about
gravity or electromagnetism or quantum mechanics or general relativity which are also only theories