There is no "God hypothesis".

Unfortunately my opponent still seems confused by the idea of a hypothesis. I am having trouble following his argument. "so what is god?" Whatever we are looking for that we label god because: "... a "hypothesis" is simply a guess, and that the nature of the thing in question need not be known at the outset." "A phenomena is not defined by its nature. Nature being a description." A definition is a description. To define a word is to describe the object it refers to. Its obvious that words exist to describe things that have no actual referrents (such as the word "unicorn"), and its obvious that we can set out to investigate whether or not unicorns exist (though good luck finding evidence). Thus not everyone has to agree on what god is for a god hypothesis to exist. The person putting forth and investigating the hypothesis simply has to specify, in other terms (ie supernatural being that is omnipotent and omniscient), exactly what it is that they are looking for. It doesn't matter that not everyone agrees that that is what god it, because NO ONE knows what god is, or if there even is such a thing. If I start a cult declaring that an "electron" is actually a 5 headed gila monster, and manage to convert millions of people, so that whenever they use the word "electron" they mean five headed gila monster, that doesn't invalidate any hypothesis a scientist has about electrons when using the term in its traditional sense. The meaning of a word is not intrinsic, but rather is dependent on the meaning that we give it. Thus it doesn't matter HOW god is defined or WHO agrees to that definition as long as the people positing the hypothesis are clear on what they mean. "I think you'll find that "supernatural being" is not a classification found in any textbook. Furthermore, what scientific field would we utilize to look for "supernatural beings"? The term "supernatural" is used to describe phenomena outside of scientific understanding." Thats why there are hypotheses about it! Its not well understood. Supernatural simply means not subject to the laws of physics. It doesn't mean unknowable by scientific means. As long as supernatural events are observable phenomena (such as resurrection from the dead), they can be carefully observed and documented using scientific means. "There is a difference between a common definition used in everyday life and a scientific definition. A scientific definition of something is made to distinguish the phenomena from others (already known to exist). I can call god whatever I want outside of a lab, but inside I have to identify it specifically." This actually serves to support my point. The scientists can define precisely what they are looking for, and then look for it. Not ALL conceptions of god are amenable to this method, but most are. Its simply a matter of a being having properties that would effect our experience in some way. Again, we don't need to know what god is beforehand. We don't need to get everyone to agree on what the nature of god is. All we need is a group of scientists willing to say "if god is xyz then we would expect to see abc"- thats a god hypothesis. Its possible to investigate and confirm/disconfirm such a hypothesis. I am confused at what your objection is. "A scientist does not want to have to rummage through every conceivable conception of god in order to begin testing as he neither has the time but more so because such definitions keep appearing. Scientists very rarely deal with competing hypotheses. But if they ever do, they deal with at the very most, a handful of competing theories. Your Ad Nauseam argument is false." Of course they don't have to- they only deal with the hypotheses they think are likely. Or they could ignore all of them. That doesn't change the fact that said hypotheses exist. In earlier times there were many competing theories are to what gravity is- whether spooky action at a distance or disturbances in the aether, or a perturbation of spacetime. As it so happens the last one is correct. But scientists did NOT at the outset have any idea which hypothesis was correct. Over time they investigated all of them and Einstein's theory won out. Similarly, there are many competing hypotheses as to what god is. They could ALL BE FALSE. There could be no god. But it doesn't follow from that that the hypotheses themselves do not exist.