This post has very good insight. I would purport that a primary understanding and definition of G-d is creator.
So if a particular hypothetical god is not a creator, it is not a god? This excludes many polytheistic notions of what "god" means (as well as some of Mormon theology, surprisingly, unless my understanding of it is wrong).
I would take this notion of creator and expand on that idea that a creator is that which begins with something and is able to transform or change or bring about change so that the result after the change is arguably different.
"Begins with something"... so you reject the idea of a god creating
ex nihilo? That's a key element of many other descriptions of "God" that I've heard.
In this manner that which takes something ordered and changes it to chaos is a creator of chaos. That which takes stuff in which there is no life and transforms that to something living is a creator of life.
Using this line of thinking Since there was an era during which there was no life on this planet earth and since there now is an era in which there is an abundance of life. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude and assume that there is a creator of life.
Umm... I'm not so sure about that. I think it's reasonable to conclude and assume that there is a
cause of life, but I think the term "creator" also implies intentionality and agency, both of which I think need their own rationales if we're going to accept them as necessary.
I will now take this to another step. I purport that it is both reasonable and probable that through intelligence manipulation of stuff that has no life that life could be engineered (or created) as a result. I also purport that this possibility is not completely and forever beyond the intelligence of man. That such an idea can only become possible by mankind pursuing the possibility.
Therefore I define G-d as that which possesses such intelligence sufficient to create life. I also put forth that the very intelligence by which life can be created is not foreign to man. In other words that man is in the image and likeness of that intelligence capable of creating life.
IMO, I think we only need to infer intelligence if we first assume intent.
As an example, consider the Mississippi River basin: if we think of it as a massive drainage engineering work, we would have to assume that it was the creation of an intelligence far beyond humanity. Imagine the intricacy of creating a system of watersheds, creeks, rivers, hydraulic jumps, lakes, and everything else, all perfectly meshed together so that a full third of a continent (IIRC) all drains into the Gulf of Mexico.
It would be beyond our human capability to engineer a system that would collect and convey rainwater from North Dakota, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania to the Gulf of Mexico and that would operate for centuries without maintenance.
Now... why don't we have Creationists running around holding up the Mississippi River Basin as an example of God's intelligence? It's because there's no good reason to assume that God particular wanted this vast volume of rainwater to drain into the Gulf of Mexico instead of someplace else.
Because we don't assume that the arrangement we see is intentional, we (or most of us, anyhow) have no problem recognizing that the entire Mississippi River watershed is the product of unintelligent natural processes and nothing more.
I agree that
deliberately creating life from scratch would be a monumental undertaking requiring immense intelligence. However, I have absolutely no reason to assume that life was deliberately created.
