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Is the existence of "God" possible?

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I remember discovered the full epistemological reasoning for the answer to this question being an interesting exercise. So, I ask, can God exist? Please provide as much context as necessary in your answer. What underlying principle must one contradict in order to believe that God exists? Can one really live at all by consistently acting in contradiction to this principle?

I know these are easy questions to many here, but we've got a new forum member that might like to express his argument for why He does exist. There also might be some people struggling with the answer to this question, so this discussion will be fruitful for them.

Update

In the discussion that ensues, please do not appeal to "higher authorities" (such as Aquinas and his "five ways")--provide your own reasoning and logic as to your positions. Please keep your posts to-the-point and in terms of essentials, not particulars or minor technicalities; address one broad point at a time, not multiple ones in one post.

In the thread God, Part 1 (which was recently created as a split of the Atheist thread), several issues were addressed, namely the nature of existence as it relates to:

  • The concept "infinity" (which is a concept of method)
  • The Law of Causality
  • The so-called entity "God"

Since this is an update to the lead post of this thread, I ask that, aside from continuing discussions that have already been initiated, members present a definitive proof for why the so-called entity "God" can or cannot exist. Please ignore the fact that the question itself can be shown to be arbitrary, just as the question "Can globular clusters, whose defining characteristics aren't found in a single other entity in reality, exist?" can be shown as arbitrary.

Note the importance of being clear with your concepts and definitions. If you think people might not understand a concept you're trying to utilize (such as one of the three concepts I've listed above), explain its meaning clearly.

Edited by Felipe
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Before anyone can argue for/against the existence of god, we have to have a DEFINITION of god. So: what IS god? What is the nature of god? What are its traits? What can it do/not do. If you cannot provide a definition or at least a description there are no facts in reality to reference in order to form the concept "god", so debate about the existence/nonexistence of such a being or whatever is nonsensical.

It also has to be a POSITIVE definition, also, i.e. traits POSSESSED by god, not definition by negatives; traits NOT possessed by god. An example of this fallacy is the famous Ontological Proof of God forwarded by St. Anselem: defining god as "that which nothing greater can be conceived". The continuation of his "proof" is that this undefined god then MUST exist in reality, because if it exists only in your mind, you can conceive of something greater, namely, a god that exists in reality, so in order to be the greatest thing that can be conceived, it has to actually EXIST.

Provide a list of the traits of god, and I will tell you why they are incorrect. I'm fed up with Catholics and other religious people telling me "but god CLEARLY exists" and then when I explain why their beliefs are contradictory and prove nothing, they proceed to change the terms of the argument by saying, "but that's not what we actually believe. No one said we believe that."

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I'm an Atheist, but I disagree with the Objectivist idea that "God" is contradictory because he exists, by definition, outside of reality.  I've never heard a theist say they believe that God exists outside of reality.

They don't SAY it outright, it logically follows from their definition of what god IS, assuming they have one at all.

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How? The most common explanation I've heard, from a scientific point of view, is that he exists in another physical dimension, which allows him to control the three in which we live. "Existing outside of reality" does not follow from this.

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What do you mean "from a scientific point of view?" Do you mean that the idea of other, unpercievable "dimensions" is "scientific"? Or that this is the statistically most common "explanation" you've heard?

This explanation is the result of yet another vain attempt to find a "place" for God, however the existence of other "dimensions" has not been proven, merely postulated. In order for something in another dimension to "control" this one, there would have to be a MEANS of control, and thus the acting entity AND his dimension would have to be OBSERVABLE, (if only indirectly) and thus subject to a process of definition and proof. None of these conditions apply to this explanation; dimensions are not used in the sense of a part of reality, but as an unbounded, undefined realm OUTSIDE reality, OUTSIDE causalty, outside observation and thus, outside the possibility of definition or proof.

Q.E.D.

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I remember discovered the full epistemological reasoning for the answer to this question being an interesting exercise.  So, I ask, can God exist?  Please provide as much context as necessary in your answer.  What underlying principle must one contradict in order to believe that God exists? Can one really live at all by consistently acting in contradiction to this principle?

I know these are easy questions to many here, but we've got a new forum member that might like to express his argument for why He does exist.  There also might be some people struggling with the answer to this question, so this discussion will be fruitful for them.

Thank your this thread, as I am new here and this is a question that I struggle with. But for me, it doesn't really matter whether God can exist or not. The question for me would be "Does it matter if God exists?" Would the mere objective proof of God's existence change what is moral and valuable? If morality is objective, would the existence of God change that?

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I'm an Atheist, but I disagree with the Objectivist idea that "God" is contradictory because he exists, by definition, outside of reality.  I've never heard a theist say they believe that God exists outside of reality.

Would you mind reciting what you take to be the full Objectivist argument you refer to?

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Thank your this thread, as I am new here and this is a question that I struggle with. But for me, it doesn't really matter whether God can exist or not. The question for me would be "Does it matter if God exists?" Would the mere objective proof of God's existence change what is moral and valuable? If morality is objective, would the existence of God change that?

That really depends upon what precisely you mean by "God". It very well might change what is moral and valuable.

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I'm an Atheist, but I disagree with the Objectivist idea that "God" is contradictory because he exists, by definition, outside of reality.  I've never heard a theist say they believe that God exists outside of reality.

Theist's expand reality to include a reality in which a god can exist in. He's not here on Earth, he's not in space somewhere. He's in Heaven. where is this Heaven? It's somewhere else. Where? Just somewhere else.

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That really depends upon what precisely you mean by "God". It very well might change what is moral and valuable.

Well, I cannot know what is meant by "God", as there is no proof that God exists.

Something has to be perceived, real, before it can be defined.

I guess I just answered my own question. The existence of "God" would matter to me, depending on the nature of that existence.

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The question for me would be "Does it matter if God exists?" Would the mere objective proof of God's existence change what is moral and valuable? If morality is objective, would the existence of God change that?

That would depend on God's attributes and what it is capable of doing.

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[C]an God exist?  Please provide as much context as necessary in your answer.

God: A perfect being conceived as the creator of the universe, and worshipped in monotheistic religions.

Such a God cannot exist because the universe, as such, cannot be created in the physical realm. The universe is not an existent to be created. It is a name for the collection of all existents--like society is a name for a collection of people. To say that God created the universe is to say that he created every single thing that exists. Did he create your toothbrush?

Theists need to pinpoint exactly what God created. If a serious theist takes up this challenge, he might begin by putting forward the belief that God created the Earth or the Sun or Man. And in these cases he would need to provide some evidence before any rational thinker could take his claim half-way seriously. And if his God truly loves him and answers his prayers, I'm sure locating some evidence won't be too difficult.

Edited by MisterSwig
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I'm an Atheist, but I disagree with the Objectivist idea that "God" is contradictory because he exists, by definition, outside of reality.  I've never heard a theist say they believe that God exists outside of reality.

It is inherent in the notion that god created reality. If he created it, he must exist outside or independent of reality.
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Thanks Rational One, I hadn't noticed. Let me figure something out here. I'm going to temporarily suspend posts to see how I want to organize the threads.

Update

Okay, I have taken a look at the discussion on God in the Atheist thread (which I split into this thread), and it appears no conclusion was found due to massive evasion. I'm going to update the opening post for this thread so that it reflects the issues that were left unresolved in the previous thread. However, please carry on with already-introduced topics within this thread.

Edited by Felipe
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can God exist?
I would say "no", since he does not exist (and if something is not true, then it is not possible that it is true). If someone has a decent argument that god does exist, I'm willing to listen, but I have not been even a little bit impressed by anything I've heard so far. All of the evidence points to the conclusion that god does not exist, and no credible evidence points to the conclusion that he does exist, so given that we are dealing with a fundamental, law-of-the-excluded-middle case, I don't see any rational conclusion other than that he does not exist (which means that he cannot exist, given the nature of "can" vs. "does".

The specific arguments to be brought to bear on the matter depends on what you are talking about. For example, there is the matter of his mailing address. Under one version of god, he is totally outside the universe. Given the normal use of "universe", that refers to "all that exists" from which we can learn that god is outside of "what exists", thus he does not exist. Naturally, the clever way to weasel out of this is to claim that he lives in an alternative dimension other than the standard 4 that we inhabit, and when they say god created the universe, they mean that he created the 4 dimensions that we have access to but not the one that he occupies. That one, apparently, must have been created by god's auntie or someone other than god. Either that, or we have to assume that god's dimension somehow didn't have to be created, but our dimensions did (this is on the assumption that we somehow need the existence of god to explain how the universe, i.e. our dimensions, got created).

There are various standard contradiction problems, for instance that his omnipotence is limited so that he is incapable of creating a non-prime number so huge that he cannot factor it, or a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it, or a hole so small that he cannot pass through it. Also by assumption, he cannot withdraw from any part of the universe (given the axiom of omnipresence) -- I on the other hand can withdraw from Sunday school and do something better with my time, so I have powers that are beyond god.

He is completely anomalous, physically, in terms of anything known to exist. He has no specific properties (for example, mass, energy, extent, spin, charge, velocity). It's hard to think of anything that is known to exist, and which is so anomalous. Perhaps one of those god-believing types would like to make some specific proposals to put some meat on the bones of god, but I'm pretty sure that they reject the conclusion that he has zero mass and they reject the conclusion that he has an infinite mass and they reject the idea that he has some specific intermediate mass. We know that massless entities exist (for example, photons), but they are not totally propertiless.

I think if somebody were to say that god weight 2 million pounds, has a chitinous exoskeleton and 90 arms, and lives a trillion miles from earth on the planet Zahadun, the matter would be simpler -- it would be a simple go-look issue. As I understand it, all of the evasions about god's properties is exactly because they want to be sure nobody can determine whether he exists.

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I think if somebody were to say that god weight 2 million pounds, has a chitinous exoskeleton and 90 arms, and lives a trillion miles from earth on the planet Zahadun, the matter would be simpler -- it would be a simple go-look issue.

Ha, ha! Yeah, it's pretty "simple" to travel a trillion miles into space looking for a god.

The born-again Christians make it a whole lot easier. They claim that the Holy Ghost literally enters their body. So I guess all you have to do is peer into their eyes to catch a glimpse of God.

Edited by MisterSwig
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As I understand the Objectivist argument for the existence of gods(s), the concept of the arbitrary, a concept that is neither true nor false is essential to the argument. I don't understand how an Objectivist could or should argue for its nonexistence. That would be an attempt to prove a negative, which is impossible. I can't point to the nonexistent facts that "prove" the nonexistence of a nonexistent entity (god). Because there aren't any, they don't exist because the concept is arbitrary. But maybe I just don't understand what exactly it is we are supposed to do here.

Edited by Rational_One
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As I understand the Objectivist argument for the existence of gods(s), the concept of the arbitrary, a concept that is neither true nor false is essential to the argument. I don't understand how an Objectivist could or should argue for its nonexistence. That would be an attempt to prove a negative, which is impossible. I can't point to the nonexistent facts that "prove" the nonexistence of a nonexistent entity (god). Because there aren't any, it they don't exist because the concept is arbitrary. But maybe I just don't understand what exactly it is we are supposed to do here.

This is essentially my argument. I just don't buy the "God must exist outside of reality" argument.

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