What do you mean when you say God "exists"?

[NBB]

You can feel God, some or all i don't know spiritual beings have a 'presence' and God have it, Jesus and the Holy spirit too, if hes presence is close to you, you can feel it, and its wonderful, you can feel the Holy spirit and Jesus too. Enough proof of God for some people to last forever, falls in the categorie of things that can be felt, experimented, etc, Spirit and atoms have the same kind of existence, just different 'substance', i mean that an existing spirit is no less real than atoms but is not material.

 

[SolomonVII]

Accepting transcendence is rejecting the hubris that our reality is fundamentally explicable with the sensory and intellectual faculties that have been evolved to deal with the dimensions of time and space.
The fact is that human evolution has been such that people have evolved to recognize transcendence as a factor whose discernment is such that survival is increased through recognizing it as a fact of our world.
There is nothing more real than survival, and we have evolved psychic faculties to discern the transcendent. Recognizing transcendence as a part of reality has been written into our genes.

 

[NBB]

Accepting transcendence is rejecting the hubris that our reality is fundamentally explicable with the sensory and intellectual faculties that have been evolved to deal with the dimensions of time and space.
The fact is that human evolution has been such that people have evolved to recognize transcendence as a factor whose discernment is such that survival is increased through recognizing it as a fact of our world.
There is nothing more real than survival, and we have evolved psychic faculties to discern the transcendent. Recognizing transcendence as a part of reality has been written into our genes.

Or you just can have a soul and spirit... the brain can't feel spirits like our spirit can feel them, not to debate i guess but i think people just attribute things to evolution, that evolution can't do. Just my opinion.

 

[SolomonVII]

Or you just can have a soul and spirit... the brain can't feel spirits like our spirit can feel them, not to debate i guess but i think people just attribute things to evolution, that evolution can't do. Just my opinion.

I am more attributing a lot of it to biology. Our bodies, through whatever mechanism, have developed an ability to be able to discern the spiritual. This is a rather universal experience, and even athiests talk of a 'god gene'.

It is not just on the level of the brain either. Our perceptions are often based in very deep structures of the nervous and endocrine systems.

What is the point of having faculties that are there to discern things that are not a part of reality, or that delude us?

The argument works better with those who accept evolution of course, but it is the same principle. We have eyes to discern light, and ears to discern sound, and touch to discern pleasure and pain and there is nothing that we have been endowed with biologically that does not increase our ability to survive and multiply.

We have been endowed with the faculties to experience the spiritual, or be a conduit for the spiritual, if you prefer. We have an innate ability to commuicate with the transcendant. What would be the function of developing faculties to discern an unreal being?
Higher level organisms, and people are in a category all by themselves in this regard, have developed the capacity to endure any how as long as there is a why. God is the ultimate grounds of meaning and purpose that give us a why for any level of hell yet thrown at us.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

I am more attributing a lot of it to biology. Our bodies, through whatever mechanism, have developed an ability to be able to discern the spiritual. This is a rather universal experience, and even athiests talk of a 'god gene'.

It is not just on the level of the brain either. Our perceptions are often based in very deep structures of the nervous and endocrine systems.

What is the point of having faculties that are there to discern things that are not a part of reality, or that delude us?

The argument works better with those who accept evolution of course, but it is the same principle. We have eyes to discern light, and ears to discern sound, and touch to discern pleasure and pain and there is nothing that we have been endowed with biologically that does not increase our ability to survive and multiply.

We have been endowed with the faculties to experience the spiritual, or be a conduit for the spiritual, if you prefer. We have an innate ability to commuicate with the transcendant. What would be the function of developing faculties to discern an unreal being?
Higher level organisms, and people are in a category all by themselves in this regard, have developed the capacity to endure any how as long as there is a why. God is the ultimate grounds of meaning and purpose that give us a why for any level of hell yet thrown at us.

Isn't this exactly what The God Delusion addressed?

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

This sounds like an "Everything Exists" scenario. Your argument argues that God exists because everything else is not-God.

But someone could argue that Cthulu exists because everything else is not-Cthulu. Or mermaids exist because everything else is not-mermaids. Or apples exist because everything else is not-apples. Or my dog Pete exists because everything else is not my dog Pete.

Sorry, but it sounds a little absurd to me.

You did not read my post properly. What you describe would be absurd, but luckily it isn't relevant to what I said. Everything exists because there is a Ground of Being - which you may call Cthulu if you wish, but what we call it is fairly irrelevant to the essence thereof. Yes, your dog exists because everything else is not your dog, but why is it so if fundamentally we can reduce your dog into underlying forces of matter or such from which it is composed, that are itself a part of the universe? Why does our external categorisation, our nominalism approach to create artificial distinction, actually do so? Is there fundamentally a 'dog', or is this merely an abstraction we have created, naming and isolating a particular component of an ongoing process of the universe? On what grounds can it be so isolated?

If not, then ultimately there is only monism, which is tantamount to non-existence (as monistic systems like the Eleatic school or the non-duality of Buddhism readily acknowledges). For it is all in all. Even materialism peels back to the four primary forces that are taken to represent some form of energy that we are ultimately seeking to reconcile in a Theory of Everything.

This is why God, the Ground of Being, intervenes. You are making the post-Scholastic error of placing God in the dock. It isn't our conception of God as different from other things that grant Him existence - rather, God as distinct therefrom, brings existence to other things, 'creates' them as it were. What you prefer to call God, would not change this, nor would this apply to other ideas that can easily be reduced back a level of categorisation. Does naming something grant it existence, or are we acknowledging pre-existent differentiation? Did not atoms always exist, even before we named them or conceptualised them? But at that point, how could they be differentiated from something else, if no mind was present to do such differentiation? To 'name' them as it were? For does something not only come to be when differentiated from the whole? We had no knowledge of them, so for all intents and purposes, the abstract concept did not then exist - and between our abstractions and the 'real thing' lies an unbridgeable gulf. As Wittgenstein had it, a description of a portrait is not the portrait itself.

I hope this makes it clearer to you.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Rather than asking whether or not God exists, I instead want to focus on the epistemological criteria that we use to determine whether things in general exist and how that applies to God when someone says God "exists".

My personal view is that the criteria should be consistent. If A exists, then we should be able to use the same criteria to determine whether B exists. If B fails the criteria, then B does not exist.

I also think that the criteria should avoid the "Everything Exists" scenario. The criteria should avoid absurd conclusions such as the idea that mermaids, trolls, and snorglezonkers exist.

There are various ways we can define how something "exists".

Category #1: The most common definition would be a "physical existence" in the sense that it is composed of atoms, molecules, and/or energy. It can be seen, touched, tasted, felt, or heard unambiguously by any observer. This includes things like dogs, houses, mailmen, bacteria, the Sun, etc. This is scientific materialism.

Category #2: There is another class of things which are mental objects of the human imagination such as mermaids, trolls, your billionaire self, etc. Everyone can immediately recognize a drawing of a mermaid and identify it as such. These things "exist" in some sense of the word since they are things which we imagine. However, in general, we say that these things do not exist even though they have some sort of subjective existence within the human mind. We do this because otherwise we end up with an "Everything Exists" scenario. If mental objects of the human imagination are included in the category of "existing things", then the whole concept of existence goes out the window.

Category #3: Ideas or abstractions which manifest themselves in actions. This includes things like love, justice, hate, peace. Many people might say that these things "exist" while recognizing that their "existence" is fundamentally different than "physical existence". Love and justice may or may not exist but regardless of where your beliefs stand on this, I think we are all in agreement that love and justice are not the same as dogs and houses. I would argue that these abstractions do not exist in an essential way but are rather contingent upon interactions between things that physically exist. These abstractions manifest themselves in verbs and actions. For example, suppose you were shown three photos: 1) a picture of an empty room; 2) a picture of a room with two people standing in it and 3) a picture of a room with two smiling people holding hands and/or hugging. You are then asked to identify the room with love in it. Everyone picks Room #3 because it shows physical things (i.e. humans) interacting in a way which we have ascribed the word "love" to.


If someone can think of a fourth class of things, please let me know and I will add it here.

My question is: Which category does God belong to?

People say God "exists" but what criteria are they using to define this?

Most theists say that God is not physical, so he is not Category 1.
Most theists say that God is not purely imaginary, so he is not Category 2.
Most theists would probably say that God is not only an idea or abstraction manifested in actions, so he is not Category 3. (Although perhaps some deists or philosophers would be comfortable putting God in Category 3?....)

So then, how exactly does God exist? What category of existence does he fall into?

Many theists argue that God exists because they feel that he does. This is often veiled in Christian-ese metaphorical language such as, "God came into my heart" or some other such thing. This may be compelling subjective evidence, however it fails the criteria because it leads to an "Everything Exists" scenario. If "feelings" are the primary criteria, then if someone "feels" like Cthulu exists, then their claim has the exact same legitimacy as yours. It is well-documented that the mind can lead to illusory subjective feelings.

Some posters might say, "He belongs in none of the categories because he is his own category." This also fails the "Everything Exists" criteria because someone could use the exact same argument to claim that anything exists including mermaids or Cthulu.

Some posters might say something along the lines of, "The Bible says so". They may communicate this via posting various verses or other such things. This unfortunately does not answer the question unless the Bible happens to state clearly that God belongs in one of the three categories above.

Some posters might say, "There is a fourth category of things which exist spiritually." If so, I would like to hear more about how this class of things "exists" in some sense and what other entities exist in this other category. And, more importantly, how we can distinguish this class of existence from Category #2. Is there any method for sorting things which spiritually exist out from the things which exist only as mental constructs of the imagination?

Looking forward to the responses.

I only have been shown evidence of category 2: god exists, as a character in a book.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Reality contains a transcendent component. At the exact moment of the Big Bang, the laws governing physics did not exist. The cause of the universe lies outside of reality, as we define real existence.
And yet here we are. If we are real, transcendence must be real too.
God fundamentally is understood as transcendence.

The laws of physics = the laws of the space-time continuum.
Sure, those didn't exist when the space-time continuum didn't exist.

Neither did space and time themselves.
And for that reason, it might not make any sense to talk about "causes".

I also think it's a bit disengenous of you to limit "reality" to just the universe. You don't know that.

If for example a multi-verse exists, then that multi-verse is part of reality as well.

So your conclusion is built on very questionable premises.
And I'ld also add that even if I grant your premises, your conclusion doesn't follow either.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Usually when non-believers say "You can't see God, you can't feel God, you can't whatever God" I remind them that even science said in the "natural" world, no they cannot prove He exists. But then they follow up by saying ifs He's supernatural then they have no way to prove He exists. Which is why they say they can't claim He doesn't exist then.

Your reminder seems obsolete.

When a non-believer says "You can't see God, you can't feel God, you can't whatever God", they are just agreeing with what science has to say about it, as per what you yourself said: you can't demonstrate/prove that god exists. How do you demonstrate that a certain thing exists.... You detect it in some way. You measure or observe it's manifestation. This measuring / detecting can be done through the senses: seeing, feeling, hearing, .... directly or indirectly.

So the non-believer is in agreement with science there.

You can't detect gods.

Not until they have a way to examine the supernatural world.

Assuming there is a supernatural world to examine in the first place, off course.

 

[DogmaHunter]

You can feel God, some or all i don't know spiritual beings have a 'presence' and God have it, Jesus and the Holy spirit too, if hes presence is close to you, you can feel it, and its wonderful, you can feel the Holy spirit and Jesus too. Enough proof of God for some people to last forever, falls in the categorie of things that can be felt, experimented, etc, Spirit and atoms have the same kind of existence, just different 'substance', i mean that an existing spirit is no less real than atoms but is not material.

Then Thor and Odin exist also, as Vikings notoriously "felt" and "experienced" the presence of these Norse Gods during their epic battles.

The same goes for Mars and Apollo etc.

And likely just about every other religion.


Or maybe, just maybe,... all those followers are just mistaken about what they think they've experienced. That seems more likely then to state that ALL gods exist - since that can't possibly be true as most of them are mutually exclusive.

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

This is mostly a word salad, but I'll try to address it:

It is not a matter of time. It is a matter of the very nature of the universe lying outside of itself.

There are several ways to define the universe. Scientists often describe the "observable universe" which is the farthest light we can see based on the age since the universe began expanding.

A more all-encompassing view is that the universe is "everything that exists" including parts of the universe beyond the observable universe.

So the idea of the "universe lying outside itself" is meaningless.

Transcendence exists because it is part of what constitutes the reality of the world, as science reveals it to be.

Huh?

Any description of the nature of reality that does not accept transcendance as a feature of reality rejects the science of the fundamental nature of the universe.

I can't even respond to this sentence. I am trying. But I can't.

My argument was not that transcendence was God, or Christian God.
My argument is that transcendence is a fundamental feature of the universe. The universe does not exist without it.

Please define "transcendence".

Since the world is real, and the reality of the space time continuum emerges out of transcendence, this is how it can be distinguished from imagination.

There is no evidence that "the space time continuum emerges out of transcendence". I don't even know what that sentence implies or means...

Transcendence, by definition, is beyond any when. The beginnings of time itself lie in transcendence.

Random Deepak Chopra Quote Generator

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

You can feel God, some or all i don't know spiritual beings have a 'presence' and God have it, Jesus and the Holy spirit too, if hes presence is close to you, you can feel it, and its wonderful, you can feel the Holy spirit and Jesus too. Enough proof of God for some people to last forever, falls in the categorie of things that can be felt, experimented, etc, Spirit and atoms have the same kind of existence, just different 'substance', i mean that an existing spirit is no less real than atoms but is not material.

I can also feel the emotion called "love" or "fear". But, as far as I can tell, these are just subjective experiences contingent upon my existence rather than fundamentally existing themselves.

Is God like this?

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

Accepting transcendence is rejecting the hubris that our reality is fundamentally explicable with the sensory and intellectual faculties that have been evolved to deal with the dimensions of time and space.

We invented microscopes and telescopes and ultraviolet sensors and computers which allow us to access facets of the universe well beyond the sensory faculties that evolution constrained us with.

Is it transcendent to look in a microscope?

The fact is that human evolution has been such that people have evolved to recognize transcendence as a factor whose discernment is such that survival is increased through recognizing it as a fact of our world.
There is nothing more real than survival, and we have evolved psychic faculties to discern the transcendent. Recognizing transcendence as a part of reality has been written into our genes.

You must be a fan of Deepak Chopra, right?

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

I really appreciate your responses as you are probably the most engaging of the respondents so far

You did not read my post properly. What you describe would be absurd, but luckily it isn't relevant to what I said. Everything exists because there is a Ground of Being - which you may call Cthulu if you wish, but what we call it is fairly irrelevant to the essence thereof. Yes, your dog exists because everything else is not your dog, but why is it so if fundamentally we can reduce your dog into underlying forces of matter or such from which it is composed, that are itself a part of the universe? Why does our external categorisation, our nominalism approach to create artificial distinction, actually do so? Is there fundamentally a 'dog', or is this merely an abstraction we have created, naming and isolating a particular component of an ongoing process of the universe? On what grounds can it be so isolated?

If not, then ultimately there is only monism, which is tantamount to non-existence (as monistic systems like the Eleatic school or the non-duality of Buddhism readily acknowledges). For it is all in all. Even materialism peels back to the four primary forces that are taken to represent some form of energy that we are ultimately seeking to reconcile in a Theory of Everything.

Everything you've said thus far is very plausible. Our minds enjoy categorizing things but the more we learn about the universe, the more we see that these categories, while useful, are ultimately illusory.

This is why God, the Ground of Being, intervenes.

You lost me here. The previous paragraph described things correctly as we know from science. There is no intervention necessary. What's wrong with monism (especially if science points us in that direction anyway)?

You've also used a verb which implies that this "Ground of Being" can act. Is this an accidental anthropomorphism or is it intentional?

It isn't our conception of God as different from other things that grant Him existence - rather, God as distinct therefrom, brings existence to other things, 'creates' them as it were.

But science, as you stated, suggests the opposite. When we see a "dog" as a separate existing entity, science tells us that that this is just a useful categorization done by our brains while in reality this dog is actually just composed of a few fundamental forces and fields (and perhaps, one day, science may discover that this can be encapsulated by a single force or field).

There is no "dog" or "house" or "car". Everything is forces and fields. Our minds make up these categories to differentiate things. Why do you say "God" creates them?

Does naming something grant it existence, or are we acknowledging pre-existent differentiation?

You are confusing me now. Is the universe, in reality differentiated or is the universe in reality undifferentiated?

Also, I would argue that, prior to something existing, there was no differentiation. So there is no "pre-existent differentiation".

Did not atoms always exist, even before we named them or conceptualised them? But at that point, how could they be differentiated from something else, if no mind was present to do such differentiation?

Maybe they don't really exist as fundamentally separate things until a mind can categorize them as such, but they still exist. For example, consider something much larger than an atom, like Neptune. Before any human mind saw and named Neptune, it is philosophically plausible to view Neptune as an "un-differentiated" collection of forces and fields and it was only upon conscious observing that it "became" something more than that. But, in a fundamental sense, it still existed, just not as a categorized entity with clear boundaries from the rest of the universe. Humans make up all these definitions to make boundaries between things even if, in reality, those boundaries are fundamentally blurry.

Similar to the classic Tao saying, "If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?"

I think a scientifically sound answer to this koan would be that the falling tree produces disturbances in the air at certain frequencies in a fundamental sense, but this is not "sound" until it is consciously processed by a brain. In this sense, both a car horn and a tree falling are fundamentally "disturbances of the air", but our brain categorizes them as "different" even if they are, fundamentally, the same thing.

For does something not only come to be when differentiated from the whole? We had no knowledge of them, so for all intents and purposes, the abstract concept did not then exist - and between our abstractions and the 'real thing' lies an unbridgeable gulf. As Wittgenstein had it, a description of a portrait is not the portrait itself.

I hope this makes it clearer to you.

I think I understand more where you're coming from in approaching the problem from philosophical deism. Perhaps you can clarify some of the above questions and comments I had. I enjoy talking about philosophical deism as I think it is philosophically tenable and an interesting line of thinking to consider.

But I'll remind you that philosophical deism is a long way from Christian theism. This thread was primarily focused on addressing Christian theism so, in some sense, our conversation -- though interesting -- is a bit off-topic

 

[NBB]

Then Thor and Odin exist also, as Vikings notoriously "felt" and "experienced" the presence of these Norse Gods during their epic battles.

The same goes for Mars and Apollo etc.

And likely just about every other religion.


Or maybe, just maybe,... all those followers are just mistaken about what they think they've experienced. That seems more likely then to state that ALL gods exist - since that can't possibly be true as most of them are mutually exclusive.

Maybe was something poetic and not the real presence of someone, if you would experience this you would know.

 

[NBB]

I can also feel the emotion called "love" or "fear". But, as far as I can tell, these are just subjective experiences contingent upon my existence rather than fundamentally existing themselves.

Is God like this?

No is very precise, something that is 'not in you' like, very real experience.

 

[NothingIsImpossible]

Your reminder seems obsolete.

When a non-believer says "You can't see God, you can't feel God, you can't whatever God", they are just agreeing with what science has to say about it, as per what you yourself said: you can't demonstrate/prove that god exists. How do you demonstrate that a certain thing exists.... You detect it in some way. You measure or observe it's manifestation. This measuring / detecting can be done through the senses: seeing, feeling, hearing, .... directly or indirectly.

So the non-believer is in agreement with science there.

You can't detect gods.



Assuming there is a supernatural world to examine in the first place, off course.

Well science doesn't really fully know what happens when you enter a blackhole. They even guess maybe their could be the possibility of it being a wormhole that exits from another blackhole.

They can't prove or disprove dark matter.

They can't prove or disprove the idea of a multiverse.

They can't prove or disprove the idea of time travel.

Point is there are lots of things science can't say "isn't real" because its beyond science right now. Including the super natural. You say "if it exists" but science says both answers. It may and it may not.

Also technically speaking God can be proven to exist but most die hard atheists dismiss any claims anyways.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Well science doesn't really fully know what happens when you enter a blackhole. They even guess maybe their could be the possibility of it being a wormhole that exits from another blackhole.

They can't prove or disprove dark matter.

They can't prove or disprove the idea of a multiverse.

They can't prove or disprove the idea of time travel.

Point is there are lots of things science can't say "isn't real" because its beyond science right now. Including the super natural. You say "if it exists" but science says both answers. It may and it may not.

There's evidence for dark matter so I don't understand why it's on your list. But time travel for instance is something for which there is no evidence (we haven't found any time travelers yet) and for which there is no solid theoretical backing. So there's no real reason to believe in it. So belief in it is illogical.

The point of this thread, as far as I can see, is to determine whether God is in the dark matter category or the time travel category. The third category would be the multiverse: something for which there not only isn't evidence, but for which there never can be evidence. Is that how it is with God?

Also technically speaking God can be proven to exist

Well what are you waiting for? Let's see the proof!

but most die hard atheists dismiss any claims anyways.

Uh, well, yeah, duh. Because anyone can claim anything. We dismiss claims. We need evidence. Or are you implying by your sentence structure that your proof for God is itself a claim? If that's the case I'd be quite disappointed, but not surprised. Or was your quip here some kind of way of saying that atheists are unreasonable for not being gullible enough?

 

[SolomonVII]

The laws of physics = the laws of the space-time continuum.
Sure, those didn't exist when the space-time continuum didn't exist.

Neither did space and time themselves.
And for that reason, it might not make any sense to talk about "causes".

I also think it's a bit disengenous of you to limit "reality" to just the universe. You don't know that.

If for example a multi-verse exists, then that multi-verse is part of reality as well.

So your conclusion is built on very questionable premises.
And I'ld also add that even if I grant your premises, your conclusion doesn't follow either.

Science that goes outside of the laws of physics and space and time has no basis. There is a beginning, and the laws of physics do not apply to that beginning.
On might say then that the reasons for the space time continuum lie outside of space and time, and therefore that is transcendent.
If it is all a part of the multi-verse, that is beyond the laws of science too which defines transcendence.
The virtual infinite nature of a universe, or even a multi-verse are for all practical purposes unknowable. To be unknowable is to be transcendent.

It is hubris that cannot admit this.

 

[SolomonVII]

We invented microscopes and telescopes and ultraviolet sensors and computers which allow us to access facets of the universe well beyond the sensory faculties that evolution constrained us with.

Is it transcendent to look in a microscope?



You must be a fan of Deepak Chopra, right?

The boundaries of the unknown are spongy. We are always struggling against God says the same thing in Biblical terms. The boundaries of the unknown are pushed back when the struggle is successful.
Suffice to say that mystery is something that we have evolved to adapt to.

Tell us about Deepak Chopra if he interests you. He is not my source.