Experiences of God are no evidence of God. Then I could say my dream last night was evidence of God. Which it isn't. It was just a dream. I can wrap it up in a Christian-Judeo-Islamic tradition but that doesn't make the evidence stronger. Anyone can say every experience is evidence of God. — EugeneW

You seem to be arguing something like this:

1. If we permit experiences of God to count as evidence, then we would be able to say that dreams about God would count as evidence.
2. Dreams about God clearly do not count as evidence.
3. Therefore, we should not permit experiences of God to count as evidence.

I think that the second premise is clearly true. It is totally possible that I can have a dream about something which is false. In fact, all of our dreams seem to incorporate some fictions. They might include some true elements, but the overall dream is not evidence of the existence of something.

Premise 1 seems to be false. Even if we permit experiences of God to count as evidence for the existence of God, this does not entail that we would have to permit dreams to count as evidence. This would seem to be because dreams are not genuine experiences of something, but fabrications of our minds. Thus, we can say that experiences of God count as evidence for God's existence and exclude dreams, as they are not actual experiences. Further, does it not seem that experience does provide evidence for things? It seems that my experience of having hands provides some justification for believing that I have hands in the absence of defeaters. Perhaps your claims should be revised to state that religious experiences do not provide much evidence, given the numerous defeaters that one can encounter against theism, such as the problem of evil. I think this is a more promising claim. You also might object regarding how one ought to determine whether an experience of God is a "genuine" experience. After all, dreams certainly feel genuine when you are in them. I would reply that determining what "feels" real is not a good indicator of what actually is real. Thus, I think you can tell whether something is a genuine experiences if you have good independent evidence that the experience is true and there are not threatening defeaters lurking around the corner. For example, I think an experience of God could rationally raise someone's credence in theism if they have good independent evidence that theism is true, such as a sound argument for the existence of God.

Thanks for the reply! There are two things that I would like to address: first, I will reply to your comments about aseity and, second, I will discuss your objection about evil being a deprivation of goodness.

To start, I do not believe that theists (or anyone at all for that matter) can claim that humans possess the property of aseity. First, there are just too many obvious examples of humans existing contingently. For example, there was a time before I existed and my existence is dependent on many things outside of myself. Before my parents conceived me I did not exist and my existence is very much dependent on my parents. I assume your coming into existence worked roughly the same as mine. There are many possible worlds in which my parents never had me. Thus, we do not necessarily exist. I suppose that you might reply that the theist can just affirm pre-existent souls. I guess these souls would just exist somewhere and then forget everything when they get put in a body or something. I would need to hear an argument from someone about why a theist should believe in pre-existent souls, as I think it is rather counterintuitive to think that I existed before I showed up on earth. Second, I think that affirming that there are things which possess the property of aseity apart from God causes a few problems for theism. This would involve the denial of God's ontological priority, an important good-making property. If there are things which exist in and of themselves apart from God, then God is not ontologically prior to those things. Thus, this would require us to believe that God is not perfect, as he lacks a good-making property. Because of this, I do not think that theists can say that humans possess aseity.

As to your comments about evil, you employ some smart counterexamples. You said, "There is goodness, badness and indifference. Absence of goodness is mere indifference, not positive badness. Take cruelty - what is that an absence of? Kindness? But someone who is indifferent lacks kindness. To be cruel is far more than merely 'not' to be kind. And so on." However, all of the examples that you employ are dissimilar in some important ways. Kindness and cruelty are attitudes that one can have. The lack of an attitude is indifference. Yet, goodness is not an attitude, it is a metaphysical term. Metaphysical terms cannot be indifferent, or have any attitudes at all. Further, goodness is higher up on the ontological ladder compared to attitudes. There are good attitudes, but not vice versa. We can say, "kindness is good," meaningfully, but we cannot say, "good is kindness," meaningfully. Kindness is a kind of good. For these reasons, I do not think your counterexamples work.

If I'm not mistaken, I see an additional problem for theism in your solution to the first time problem. Traditional theism, I think, asserts that God is prior to everything else.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Given the above quote, I'm skeptical about traditional theism accepting that time is co-eternal with God (even if God says so!) — ucarr

Forgive my ignorance, but I cannot reply to your comments about set theory, as I do not have any meaningful understanding of set theory. However, I did follow this above quote and I believe you are providing me with two arguments. The first one looks like this:

1. On traditional theism, God is prior to everything, including time.
2. If God has willed that time always exists, then God is not prior to everything, namely time.
3. Therefore, traditional theists cannot coherently say that God has willed that time always exists (1, 2).

I think this argument commits the fallacy of equivocation. In premise 1, traditional theists are committed to say that God is ontologically prior to everything. In premise 2, God is not temporally prior to everything. Thus, you seem to be equivocating two uses of the word "prior." To help illustrate this distinction, consider the example of the relationship between fire and smoke. Fire is ontologically prior to smoke. In other words, smoke is ontologically dependent on fire. If there is not a fire, then there is no smoke. However, fire is not temporally prior to smoke. Once there is fire, then there is instantly smoke. They come about at the same time. Thus, fire is ontologically prior to smoke, but not temporally prior to smoke. Similarly, God is ontologically prior to time (as it is willed into existence by God), but God is not temporally prior to time. Further, God cannot be temporally prior to time when there is no temporality to begin with. For these reasons, I do not think this argument works.

As to your argument about the Word existing with God, this does not seem to be an issue with Christian theists. Christian theists affirm that the Word is of the exact same identical nature as God. Thus, there is not issue with ontological priority. On this view, there are not two Gods who both have ontological priority, but rather one God. On Christian theism, the Trinity is three distinct persons who all share the same nature, which is God. In the same way, you and I can share the same nature---human nature---but can be distinct persons from one another. I hope this helps clarify the discussion!

I am not so sure that your argument shows that theism and antinatalism are compatible. I take your argument to look like this:

1. If theists can say that God did not create humans, then antinatalism and theism are compatible.
2. Theists can say that God did not create humans.
3. Therefore, antinatalism and theism are compatible.

Premise 1 seems intuitive. Given that God is all good, He would only be able to do good things. On antinatalism, making humans is not good. Therefore, in order for one to be an antinatalist theist, one would need to show that God did not make humans. This premise seems airtight. On its face, premise 2 seems absurd and indefensible. After all, look around us and you'll see tons of humans. However, you make a very smart move that saves this premise. You justify premise 2 by claiming that it is possible that God created everything except humans. God knew that humans would eventually come about, but He certainly did not want them. God merely permitted humans to come about but was not involved in their creation. To make this argument more plausible, one can point to replies that theists give to questions about where evil comes from. God did not create evil, he merely permits it (hopefully for good reasons). Why can't we say the same about humans?

I don't think this argument works, however. The reasons that theists can make this claim while maintaining coherent beliefs is that they say evil does not actually exist. In other words, evil does not have a positive ontological status. Evil is a deprivation of goodness, much like cold is a deprivation of heat and does not actually exist. Humans, on the other hand, are not a deprivation of something but are actually real. Further, in order to maintains God's ontological priority, we have to say that God created everything that exists, including humans. By ontological priority, the theist merely means that God exists prior to everything else that exists and, thus, everything is contingent on God's existence. I suppose someone might say we can deny that everything that exists is contingent on God, but this would be positing a necessary, coeternal object that exists independent of God's will. This would clearly cause some problems for the theist. All in all, I think these are good reasons to reject premise 2.

I think you are gesturing at a seemingly obvious problem. If I am correct, your argument goes something like this:

1. If God is changeless, then He cannot create time.
2. Theists are committed to saying that God created everything at a given point, including time.
3. Therefore, God cannot be changeless.

Your justification for premise 1 seems to be that God cannot be changeless and also create time, as God 's experience will then change; He will have gone from being alone to existing alongside something else. I think this points to an ambiguity in the term "changeless." There are two ways that one can "not experience change:" either one does not experience any internal change, or one does not experience any external change. It is important to clarify that one can experience internal change without experiencing external change, and vice versa. For example, the temperature of my room can fluctuate by one degree, but my internal state (including things like beliefs, character traits, mental properties, etc.) can stay the same. Also, my internal state can change (maybe I change my belief about whether the cosmological argument is sound) while the temperature in my room stays the exact same. Thus, God's internal state can remain unchanged while the external world changes significantly. Theists are only committed to the view that God's internal state is without change (i.e., God always remains omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.). Because premise 1 relies on there not being a distinction between internal/external states, then I think we have significant reasons to reject premise 1.

I also think that we have significant reasons to reject premise 2. This argument is presenting a cosmological picture in which God existed from eternity and then at some point created time and space. I think this picture necessarily brings about some absurdities. First, the view entails that we have to say things such as "before time." For example, one can say "God existed before time." But it makes no sense to use temporal language, such as "before," to describe a period in which there is no time. Second, this view entails that there was a time before time began. Again, it seems absurd to speak of temporal measurements like times, periods, moments, ages, and eternity when there is no time at all. This leads me to conclude that the theists should affirm that time has always existed to avoid these absurdities. This also does not entail that there is something outside of God that exists necessarily and coeternally alongside Him; the theists can just say that God has always willed that time exists. For these reasons, I think we should reject premise 2.