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Please keep in mind I am by no means at all anti-God or an atheist or even agnostic. I simply reject the particular efforts of foolish people who try with foolish premises and foolish arguments to prove what cannot be proved, and if it were proved, would be without significance i.e. the material existence of God — tim wood

no issue with that.

Please keep in mind I am by no means at all anti-God or an atheist or even agnostic. I simply reject the particular efforts of foolish people who try with foolish premises and foolish arguments to prove what cannot be proved, and if it were proved, would be without significance i.e. the material existence of God. — tim wood

A goal of philosophy is understanding the nature of the universe and that includes understanding if there is a God and the nature of God.

If God exists, there is plenty we can deduce about him:

- https://www.iep.utm.edu/aquinas/#SH6c
- https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/255620

If God exists and revealed Himself to all humanity, because he is our creator, we would recognized him instantly. He has not done so, so, there is no proof that God exists.

My answer to your question is, MAN can not prove God exists, only God Himself can do that. — StaggeringBlow

I think that this perspective is flawed. In order that a human being could recognize God if He revealed Himself, one would have to already have an idea of what God is. Without that idea of what God is, it would be impossible to recognize God, no matter what He did to reveal Himself.

So prior to recognizing God, in His actual existence, we need to understand what God is. This is necessary in order that we could recognize God's actual existence when He reveals Himself to us. And, in order to understand what God is, someone must demonstrate, prove to you, what God is, because you cannot recognize Him based on what He has revealed,.as He cannot reveal Himself to you until you are capable of recognizing Him. So it is necessary that God be proven to you prior to God revealing Himself to you.

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But we have to have a definition of the term God before we can do any reasoning:

1. God is defined as creator of the universe
2. God exists is given
3. So God created the universe
4. So God must be powerful and intelligent to create the universe
5. And so on (see https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/255620)

God is not some all powerful thing, it's unfair, that's someone in heaven; where's contradiction to God who gets to be God? Don't you see there are many higher forces, many things in heaven instead. God, if anything, is improperly named because it refers to one, and if you're intelligent on the matter leads to better framework for knowledge of such a type.

I like the joke that the foremost existence is God; that could be one man.

On the multiplicity of God, if there are many things in heaven, they can be traced back in a casual hierarchy of creation to a single creator, who we could then regard as God. Or we could regard the one thing that gave the order for the universe to be created as God.

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Another thought, accepting that god exists would also accept that devils and angels also exist. As the saying goes, you can't have one without the others.

Does that make it more complicated to derive anything from the existence of god? If anything can be attributed to god then we should be able to do the same for the rest of them.

Anyone want to describe the devil? :naughty:

The only rule here is that whatever you wish to attribute to God must be derived from his existence only. — tim wood

For me, the essential question here is "what is existence?". I think that an objects (or a Gods for that matter) existence is its properties. In that case, your exercise would not change if you replaced God with, say, an apple. Whenever I imagine an apple, I see something red, fairly round, delicious, etc. Those qualities are what makes it an apple. In fact, I bet anyone of us would have major difficulties imagining an apple without imagining any of its properties, and the same is true for God. Existence without property is non-existence. Therefore, alone the fact that God exists means that he has properties, and the fact that he has properties (e.g. omnipresence, omnibenevolence, omniscience, etc.) lead to the conclusion that he is relevant to human beings, for instance:

- takes the pressure off life a bit if there is some kind of afterlife (could also be seen as a negative thing)
- helps with finding value in suffering - good for mental health in adversity
- good for mental health to believe that one's innermost centre is indestructible
- helpful in cultivating a sense of oneness with the natural world
- helpful in developing creatively to believe in an inner spontaneous source of newness, and the imperative to create and express
- helpful to believe that death is not the ultimate evil - avoidance of death can result in inauthentic living
- helps in understanding the world as panpsychic — bert1

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Just for the heck of it, what properties does an apple have? — tim wood

Whenever I imagine an apple, I see something red, fairly round, delicious, etc. — purple-reindeer

These, for instance.

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I did think about it before answering, it is just that I don't believe that there is any difference between an "imagined" apple with all the properties that a "real" apple has (except for one, that one being empirical detectability) and a "real" apple.
As this problem doesn't even arise in question to God (unless someone believes he is empirically detectable, but in that case he'd be either "real" or have at least one property and ergo he'd be relevant already), the "imagined" God is the "real" God.

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All this says is that you did not understand the question even a little bit. — tim wood

If that is so, would you please be so kind as to explain to me what I didn't understand - maybe a bit more respectfully?

For an imagined apple! The question is, what properties do you say an apple has. It is not a trick question, but you may care to read it carefully and think about it before answering. — tim wood

So what you're saying is you're content with the properties I proposed for an apple - an imaginary apple opposed to a "real" apple that is - but when I argue that a real apple is the same as an imaginary apple when it comes to their overall properties

I did think about it before answering, it is just that I don't believe that there is any difference between an "imagined" apple with all the properties that a "real" apple has (except for one, that one being empirical detectability) and a "real" apple. — purple-reindeer

suddenly you don't approve of the properties?

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Can anyone apart from tim wood explain what he is driving at? I'm lost.

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OK, so Berkeleyan idealism is that an object is nothing other than its perceived qualities, if I remember correctly.

So, applying this to God, if that is what you are getting at, if God is to exist then he is nothing other than his perceived qualities. Is that the line of thinking you are trying to elicit?

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Sorry but when you say ''God exists, so what?'' what do you mean by ''God''?

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But first let us satisfy ourselves that the parish-pump idea of the necessity (or even the desirability) of a real existing God can be dispensed with as the immature wishfull thinking that it is. — tim wood

In this thread are you trying to address this then? I think that one conception of god has a real physical instantiation. But you won't let me talk about it because I am not allowed a definition of 'God', all I am allowed is his existence. I can't get anywhere with that. And that's not just a problem with God, that's a problem with anything. I can't determine whether horses exist or not if you won't allow me a concept of 'horse'. It's easy to show why. Take a prokkjellyvunt. Do they exist? Well, it's hard to say, until we know what I mean by prokkjellyvunt. Maybe its a matchstick construction that I built on my desk with glue, and I have named it so. Then to show it exists I could take some photos of it and send them to you.

I own the quote, but I can't find it, so lack its context. — tim wood

Check the title of the thread.

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I'm familiar with the following:

1. The cosmoligical argument.
2. The teleological argument
3. The ontological argument

I'd say 1 and 2, if accepted, i.e. God exists, doesn't achieve much because his goodness yet remains unproven.

However, 3. the ontological proof does prove EVERYTHING about God (omnibenevolence, omniscience and omnipotence), after all God is the most perfect being possible in that argument.

Perhaps you can show how your definition is of something. — tim wood

The object of a definition is a word. We define words, not things. The word 'God' definitely exists. And it is trivial to make a definition, (e.g. let 'God' mean that which created the universe), as you say we can define anything any way we like. The more difficult and interesting question is, does the word 'God' (once we have defined it) have a referent?

So, for a quick and dirty example:

Let 'God' be that which is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

Is there anything which exists that is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient?

I think there is, I think space is all these things. Space is certainly omnipresent. If omnipotence is conceived not in terms of 'can do any random sentence with a verb in it' but in terms of 'all the power to act that there is', then space is omnipotent in the sense that it does everything. If omniscience is conceived not in terms of 'knows every proposition' but in terms of 'consciousness being everywhere throughout its being', and it is logically impossible for consciousness to be emergent (as I have argued ad nauseum elsewhere), then space is omniscient.

...therefore the referent of 'God' is space.

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In all this I argue from a definition, plus observations/things we already know about, to a conclusion about something's existence. To insist I start with existence and nothing else is strange, and I don't understand why you would do that.