Is God's Existence Possible?

[Tinker Grey]

I don’t believe in infinite regress

The infinite regress doesn't require you to.

 

[Dirk1540]

The infinite regress doesn't require you to.

But if we were to not even get into any of that, would infrinite regress be my only other option to ‘God’?

 

[Tinker Grey]

But if we were to not even get into any of that, would infrinite regress be my only other option to ‘God’?

I have no idea. (BTW, it was reference to the Matrix.)

 

[Dirk1540]

I have no idea. (BTW, it was reference to the Matrix.)

Oh lol. I mean the way that I see it is that even if we have an eternally existing something that is eternally swooshing & swirling & flowing & churning & spitting out contingent things as well...well it’s still an eternally existing something lol

 

[Chriliman]

Oh lol. I mean the way that I see it is that even if we have an eternally existing something that is eternally swooshing & swirling & flowing & churning & spitting out contingent things as well...well it’s still an eternally existing something lol

That description kind of fits the quantum field. I sometimes wonder if given an eternity past of quantum-particle making-fluctuations, if we’d eventually get a universe or even an immortal, hopefully benevolent, God.

 

[Silmarien]

Hey Sil! But can’t necessary being create a world like a wound up clock and just let it go, almost like blowing bubbles, yet metaphorically sort of rest it’s foot & elbow on other created worlds, choose to poke & prode on some worlds but not others? Whatever that necessary existence might consist of?

That would be a more deistic picture, but I don't see why it's impossible. That something exists necessarily would still be a feature in whatever world has been wound up and let go, though. We don't end up with a possible world where there is no necessary being simply because it's a deistic world.

I don’t know if people are moving back & forth with meanings in here when they keep saying God, or if I’m being philosophically lazy when I say God. Am I wrong to call necessary being itself God? Am I wrong to think that God exists merely because I know that something exists instead of nothing (Adding to that that I don’t believe in infinite regress)?

I would say that necessary being is the most foundational theistic concept, but it's not the only one. A genuinely pantheistic picture of reality would incorporate the notion of necessary being also, and even an atheist need not reject it. I would not consider an eternal quantum vortex to be God, but you could argue that such a thing is our necessary being.

So I don't think that "something exists instead of nothing" is quite enough to get us to theism, but you could very easily move into ontological argument territory from here and ask how it can be that anything exists at all, what must be the most fundamental property of necessary existence for reality as we experience it to be possible, and so forth and so on. At least that is basically what I did, if you can condense a couple of years into a paragraph.

 

[durangodawood]

But an absolute thing cannot emerge from relative things. When we're talking about God we're talking about an ultimate reality, an absolute reality. "The absolute" would be whatever is ultimately real not relative to anything else.

If the God in your thought experiment emerged from the non-personal, then reality is ultimately non-personal (all personality reduces to the impersonal) and a great many implications flow from this. Since this God is not absolute, I don't think he's worthy of the title "God" at all. He's actually just a bigger, more powerful version of us creatures. The transcendent creator concept is totally lost.

But in the previous reply you only demanded a "greatest thing".
I provided.
Then you upped the demand to an "absolute thing".
Where will it end???

I can give you an amp that goes to eleven. But thats my final offer.

 

[Dirk1540]

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[Dirk1540]

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