I am both brutal and ruthless with aggressive God Mobsters. I was tramautised by one such as a child, and that is my driver for countering their evil today.

But I have a lot of respect for an honest idiot.

A dishonest one who things that you can bring things into being by switching labels, and then claim a discovery, less so.

Nature doesn't equal god. You need objective evidence for a god.

@xenoview
There are different views on what the word “god” means. Nobody owns that franchise. It has been debated for millennia.

If one views god as a metaphor for nature, which many people have historically, and for which there is good reason, then nature itself is the objective evidence.

You need objective evidence for your claim that nature doesn’t equal god. I understand it is your belief.

@skado You say nature is god, prove it.

@xenoview
I didn’t say nature is god. I said people hold different views about it. That is self-evident.
The fact that many people see god as a metaphor for nature is a historical fact. Read Spinoza. The fact that metaphors exist is self-evident.

@xenoview Several beliefs such as religious naturalism make the claim that. If there is no god, then nature fills any gaps left by the absence of god. Such as for example, the need to have something abstract to love and worship, and that in those cases nature then becomes the equivalent of god.

Where it goes wrongs is in the failing to appreciate the difference between the word, "equivalent" and the word "is". Since "equivalent" does not mean, "the same as", which the word "is" does. As in. "When my car breaks down, I use my bicycle to go to work." Therefore my bicycle serves the equivalent purpose of a car for that journey, does not mean however, that a bicycle is car. A car comes with a lot more things, such as an engine, windscreen wipers and two extra wheels. God, as a word, by definition comes with a lot of baggage which nature does not, most especially intentions, a hypothesis of mind, and a lot of historical associations with religion.

When Spinoza used the idea in the first place, he was probably using the idea of a grand poetic metaphor, not to be taken too literally, to punch a hole in the theist bubble, which was fair enough. However to use it the other way round against Spinoza's intent, trying to create a metaphorical justification for religious apologetics, is just dishonest label switching.