As has been mentioned, in Christianity, the Trinity (God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit) is considered to be one being with three different 'faces'. As you said about Mormonism, some denominations of Christianity choose to interpret the Trinity as three separate beings. Could the same not be true about polytheistic religions, without being explicitly stated? In other words, all the Gods of that pantheon are, in fact, just the different personalities of the same God, which are being perceived as different beings.

By 'States' I don't mean a political division, rather a state of existence. Specifically, whether or not a God exists, does not exist, is our creator, or is not our creator.

Also, any effect some other being has on my actions would mean that they are inseparable from the same world I am part of. They would be part of the same causal chain that I am part of, which would lead one to ask who created the creator? How does something come from nothing? — Harry Hindu

It is equally impossible for our minds to grasp infinite causation as it is something coming from nothingness. As you said yourself, "causation could continue forever in both directions". Just because we can't comprehend it, does not mean it necessarily did not happen (although we have no real way of knowing).

An important thought seems to be left out here and that is any effect some "God" would have on my life includes me being created. Every thing I do would be the result of being created by this God. The actions of my children are somewhat caused by me for they would never do the things they do if I had never created them with my wife. — Harry Hindu

That's a very good point, but for the purpose of this debate, having something which creates you does not mean it is a God based on the fact alone that it is affecting your life by allowing it to exist. For example, hypothetically, we could have been created by some freak natural phenomena. Even though that phenomena has created us (and thus has the effect of allowing us to act), it cannot really be considered a 'God' because it has not had any further affect on our lives besides causation.

There are actually a couple of other possibilities, both of which eliminate the possibility of a necessary creator.

1) That there actually isn't a first thing to exist. Causation could continue on forever in both directions. An infinite regress is possible.

2) There is a loop of causation - that the ending is actually the beginning and vice versa. — Harry Hindu

Yes, these are possibilities, but they are not alternatives to whether or not you have a creator. In other words, you must have either no creator or a creator. Whether or not you were created in an infinite stream of causation or by a single being which is the first to exist doesn't change the fact that you were, indeed, created (or vice versa).

I have now reworded the question in order to try and produce a more enlightening and productive debate.

Thus comes the problem with evil, Why would he allow evil to exist if he is an 'all-loving being' it would be expected that he would want the best for us all, and therefore eliminating all evil. — GreyScorpio

Have a look at this: The Three Spectra of Morality.

Basically, it poses that there exists a hierarchy of spectra through which certain events/actions are perceived to be good or evil. We, as Humans, use Sociological Morality, and are unable to comprehend Omniscient Morality (that being the uppermost echelon of ethics), which, presumably, is the morality possessed by an all-knowing God.

As such, the 'evils' which we see in the world could possibly actually be 'good' events in the long run (even if only minimally) when perceived from an omniscient perspective, with us as Humans being unable to interpret them as being so because we are not omniscient. Hence, we must use our own, flawed morality to perceive these events/actions, and thus come to the realisation of them being evil.

I sit and wonder how and why would it be possible for 'an all powerful being' to exist if we, ourselves, have not seen him. — GreyScorpio

Is the God which you are trying to prove one that exists inside or external to the natural, physical world? For example, the Ancient Greeks believed in Gods which existed in the physical world along with them (on Mount Olympus), whereas the Christian God is believed to exist outside the universe (or at least partially such).

If your answer is the latter, then it is impossible to prove the existence of such a God (or lack thereof), because he/she exists outside of our observable universe. Science cannot understand things beyond our universe, as all its laws may be no longer applicable. In other words, Science can only help us understand everything in the physical, natural world (such as the existence of Gods within our world, which have been disproved), but it cannot reveal anything about the external world to our universe (if it exists).

i. For the moment the test of thingness is if in principle it can be felt, seen, smelled, heard, or tasted. Here, at least, neither numbers, love, justice, nor any ideas at all, are things. — tim wood

Just a thought, but could you not also define something as being a 'thing' if it has an effect? For example, some things, like society, cannot be physically sensed (ie, we cannot 'feel' society, 'see' society, etc.), but their impact can be (ie, we can see the effect of society in physical things like infrastructure, public buildings, etc.).

If, on the other hand, you think that it cannot be considered to be a 'thing', then what exactly is it? If it is not a 'thing', then it doesn't fit into your definition of being 'real' either. At least, that's my interpretation of what you're saying (I could be wrong).

Additionally, if you include 'having an effect' as being a property of 'thingness', then it becomes quite hard to draw lines between 'things' and 'not-things'. For example, justice could be considered to have an effect on the natural world in that it causes humans to do certain things, like kill other humans (using capital punishment as an example), and thus is a 'thing'. However, earlier you mentioned that it could not be considered to be a 'thing' because of it not being a physical entity.

What do you think?

(By the way, I am not necessarily arguing for this amendment to your definition, merely bringing it to your attention).

I personally want there to be a God, one which is benevolent and allows for semi-determinism. By this, I mean that God dictates certain key events which are to happen in my life no matter what (they are determined), however, all other actions, minor events, and my responses to those actions are made by free will. In other words, I exist in a world of semi-free will.

I want there to be a God so that there can be meaning and purpose in my life - so that I can realise that there are things I can serve on Earth greater than society or myself, that I may meet those who I love once again after death, and that there is a grand scheme of things. I know this may be quite naïve, but then again, so are all beliefs about the existence (or non-existence) of God. After all, we don't even know if God exists, let alone what his personality would be like.

Question for you - if you believe that is the case, why bother saying anything? Whatever you say must be like everything else - meaningless. — Wayfarer

I believe in a God, and am not an atheist. In that scenario, I was trying to point out that, for a theist, discovering that there is actually no God would be confronting - we would be forced to realise that nothing has meaning (if that were the case, which I don't believe it to be). The same would be true for Atheists, although to a lesser extent, because it would mean things that they would realise certain things they have done in their life may be detrimental to them in the afterlife (depending on the God that is revealed to be real).

Obviously theism and atheism can't be explained in terms of rationality. It's like two people put in the exact same environment (our world) and one sees God and the other doesn't. Clearly the fault is not in logic. — TheMadFool

I agree with you 100%. Neither theism nor atheism can be considered more 'rational' than each other.

Linking to my previous post, you can say that both theists and atheists alike fiercely debate their beliefs as they provide the security from which they perceive the world. Psychologically and sociologically, everything we do is influenced by our beliefs and stigmas, including whether or not the existence of a God is included in our worldview.

In other words, belief in a God helps us determine our actions, as it is part of the inherent societal attitudes influencing our decisions.

Fear is a powerful motivator in humans. Especially fear of the unknown. Historically, and even today, God has provided for us something to explain the 'unknown', and to provide meaning to the 'unknown'.

Additionally, the idea of there being no God can be quite confronting, particularly considering its implications - that there is no purpose in life, that there is nothing after death, that 'good' and 'evil' are only social contracts which serve no purpose other than to continue the survival of our species. That there is nothing that we can ever do in life which has any effect on anything rather than the physical world, which, ultimately, is meaningless.

This is why theism is such a ubiquitous and prevailing belief, and why it is so hotly contested. People who believe in a God don't want the security of its belief to be questioned and/or taken away, because it casts everything they value beyond the material world into doubt. Hence, to answer your question, the idea of a God can be considered of fundamental psychological importance to Humans.

Let me reword my hypothesis:

There are six possible conditions of God's existence. One of these is a certainty, and therefore there are no levels of how probable a certain outcome is, because it already exists as a certainty. It is not a random event.

However, as humans who can never come to know the certainty of God's existence, there are six possibilities which can be assigned a probability of how correct we are when we 'randomly' choose one to believe in.

Let me expand this idea further:

• On earth, we can never come to know if God exists or not (see discussion on 'Believing in a God is not irrational, despite being improvable'). Therefore, any assumptions we make about his existence are effectively us justifying a random belief without evidence.
• As such, our choice has a probability of being the correct one. If we choose to believe in a God, that belief has a 1/3 chance of being true. For example, if I asked you to guess whether I had a Cat, Dog, or Fish, even though there is an answer which is already 100% true, you can't know that answer. Thus, you have a 1/3 chance of being correct in your assumption. The same is applicable with these scenarios - whatever we choose to believe has a certain chance at being the correct outcome. Even though the state of Gods existence doesn't have a probability, what we choose to believe has a probability of being right, because it is effectively a random choice.

I hope this clarifies things.

By suggesting God has a chance to exist you are actually claiming that God currently does not exist but that a future event will give God a chance to exist. — Jeremiah

Can you explain to me how this is so?

Using that same reasoning there is a fifty-fifty chance that there is a flying pink unicorn next to me chanting in Aramaic, because it either exists, or it doesn't.

These probabilities are made on the basis of how many times the outcome of a God existing is reached when we systematically analyse all the possibilities (as far as we know) of how we come to exist and whether or not other beings exist. Because there are six possible outcomes according to these statements, and two of them happen to be that a God exists, there is therefore one outcome of a God existing per every three (or a 1/3 probability).This is basic probability mathematics.

That said, my numbers are largely invalid because we can never know the true nature of our external universe, but it is stupid regardless to say that the possibility must be 50-50 because God either exists or not (see example at beginning).

Also, probability isn't just to do with random events. Whether or not a God exists isn't like a dice role, where we have no idea of the outcome apart from that it can be one of six numbers. Using the statements in my argument, you can determine the possible scenarios of God existing or not, in which case these probabilities aren't 'random', rather based on how often a circumstance occurs as a result of this reasoning.

Why can't moral relativism be applied to an advanced civilisation? What evidence do you have to suppose that it must be immoral to simulate our reality? We can have no possible understanding of the society which simulated our own, or how similar ours is to then, and thus, we can make no assumption of what can be considered 'moral' or 'immoral' by their standards, only our own.
You're connecting scientific development with developing a 'pure' morality. What basis do you make this on? Science does not necessarily progress only when certain moral principles are made in society.

Throughout history numerous medical and scientific developments have been made despite them being 'immoral', such as the dissecting of dead human bodies during the middle ages. An advanced civilisation could have an archaic morality and still be very advanced technologically, because there is simply no relevant correlation between the two.

I considered that thought. The short answer is even if there were multiple realities, each would run more simulations than itself, ultimately, there would be more simulations than realities. — TheMadFool

It is possible that there are an infinite number of realities with an infinite number of constraints on how many/what kind of simulations they run, and thus, you can't argue that it is more likely that there are more simulations than realities.

An advanced civilisation would not simulate this reality because it would be utterly immoral to do so. — tom

Morality is inherently subjective. On Earth alone there are a plethora of different cultures with different views as to what is evil and good according to their socio-cultural background. Take, for example, the Letin Clan of Indonesia, which practices Cannibalism regularly. In this tribe Cannibalism is perceived as something which is not evil, whereas in other Western societies, it is.
What is there to suggest that moral relativism could not apply to other advanced civilisations? You're arguing that it is immoral, but it is only immoral from our perspective. It could be viewed in a completely different light in that civilisation.

Why is there necessarily only one reality and multiple simulations? Couldn't there happen to exist multiple realities which themselves may have an infinite number of simulations? If such is true, then we can't really estimate the probability of being in a simulation is greater than being a reality, as we have now way of knowing how many realities there are to run simulations.

Individual genetic 'defects' mean nothing evolutionarily unless they come to define a species as a whole.

But is it not true that genetic defects which would normally kill certain individuals are now becoming more present in the species as a whole as those with genetic defects are becoming able to bear children with those same defects. Even though at the moment these defects may form a minority, the number of people with genetic diseases is rising, particularly through the advent of non-uteral birth.

if the results of evolution happen to be a bunch of intelligent apes who can invent things like seat-belts that happen to save lives, then so be it - they are the species best adapted to survival in their environment.

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Is it not true to say that even though we, as Humans, may have evolved to create laws which prevent stupidity from killing people of our own race, that is not necessarily the best adaption to our environment? After all, the introduction of such laws has meant populations have boomed, which is now having a detrimental effect on not only our planet, but also our societies, with increased demands of governments to provide pensions/social welfare, etc. Saying that the creation of these laws is the best adaption to our environment really isn't true, especially considering these laws were added into our environment by Humans in a different scenario prior to their introduction.

The idea of three existing moral spectra does not impact the importance of the Human morality that we live by. Practically, this argument is used as a justification for moral relativism and as proof for a God which can still be omnibenevolent despite the apparent suffering in the world. Yes, it is true that we can never understand omniscient morality, but that doesn't mean we can't still live by the morals of our society. Our sociological morality is the purest form of morality we can cognitively attain, and thus, the best one by which we should live.

Perhaps these moralities don't exist as independent from each other, rather as existing within one another. For example, you mentioned sometimes Humans resort to Fundamental moral behaviour (ie, in anarchy), despite being part of a society. As such, it could be considered that Humans still possess Fundamental Morality, but also have an additional, outer 'layer of morality' which is Sociological morality.

Still, whether or not Humans created the idea of a God or not does not detract from these scenarios, as even if God is a human construction, other explanations for our creation and the existence of other beings (such as those above) are still relevant.

@andrewk, I assume they are equally probable because there is no way we can know or prove that they are unequal. Whilst these scenarios are likely not equally probable, we can't really know how much more probable a certain scenario is - hence, I assume they are equal for the sake of providing some kind of statistic.