Where does God exist?

[LogicalFallacy]

During a church service the other day it was confidently claimed that all theological arguments against God were pointless because God does not exist in our reality therefore we cannot understand God, therefore all arguments against God are wrong. To the experienced Ex-C this is an obvious ploy to make ones God unassailable. It also suffers the fatal flaw of being able to interchange any deity figure you like with it, with no one being able to prove you wrong or argue against it. Example, I get my revelation from a pixie dragon that transcends time and space, who is not understandable, and it outside all natural laws and existence, therefore any argument you bring against my pixie dragon is wrong.

 

However, despite the flaws I thought it would be a useful exercise to go through the various arguments about the different views on where God exists, and the philosophical problems of a God who cannot be understood because it is outside our reality, yet reveals itself to messengers inside reality. I have tried to represent this as God # 3 in my diagram below - exists both outside our reality, but reveals and interferes inside it.

 

My term all that is, is literally all that is. Both what we can detect, and what is claimed, what is hypothesized (Multiverse, other universes, Heaven, hell, other dimensions and whatnot)

 

Here is the breakdown of the Gods:

God #1 - the early God of the Hebrews - lives above the earth, and directly intervenes in the affairs of mankind.

God #2 - Once humanity realized that the universe existed God became part of the universal God - think early Christian church

God #3 - This seems to be the current God that is being argued for - exists in that it is part of all that can exist, you can't understand it because it is outside our reality, yet it reveals and intervenes in reality.

God #4 - this is the blatant - God is in his own dimension, you can't understand it. Case closed

God #5 - is an interesting one - this God exists outside of all that is. I say to this God it therefore does not and cannot exist if it exists outside all that is.

 

Thoughts on this, and arguments specifically against a God that exists outside our reality that we cannot understand but reveals himself to messengers and answers prayers inside our reality?

 

 

[Geezer]

God exists in 2 places: On pages in the Bible & in the minds of believers.

[LogicalFallacy]

Haha, I hear you Geezer. However from a debate perspective its more useful to show how their un-understandable God outside reality that reveals itself to humans in reality is an oxymoron.

 

I liken this to a theist having a cake, eating the cake, wanting to share the cake with others, but trying to keep the cake whole at the same time!

[Margee]

9 hours ago, Geezer said:

God exists in 2 places: On pages in the Bible & in the minds of believers.

Geezer, you forgot that he also lives in our hearts. 

[Joshpantera]

The Nicean Creed says that god is wholly immanent and transcendent. 

 

How do they make sense of that? Indeed, the term omnipresent means present everywhere. It boils down to arguments that force the theists to account for their own terminology and word usage. This is like when some apologist told me that god is self existent, to try and claim that god exists outside of existence, something like god #5. But then found himself at a loss because self existent means existing in some way, and existing in some way means part of existence itself, not outside of existence. When they reach for god #5 they bring upon themselves the problem of loosing the existence of the god they're trying to establish. 

 

And furthermore, god #5 does not gel with the Nicean Creed nor god as omnipresent. 

 

To have it their way they need god present everywhere, but that ushers in pantheism which they don't want because it doesn't gel with their dualistic ideas about heaven and hell, good and evil, etc. They're truly between a rock and a hard place. Sin and redemption is a lot of nonsense against the concept of a god who is everywhere and everything. But a god any less, is just plain less than ultimate, less than absolute, less, less, less...

 

 

[♦ ficino ♦]

As far as I know, the classical answer is that God does not exist in the created universe as to His essence, but He is present via his operations. Since God is not a material substance and does not change, God's essence is not the essence of something that exists in the universe. Whether God's essence is supposed to be "in" the Catholic eucharist, or whether God only operates through that sacrament, I don't know.

 

LF, I think you already pointed to the problem the Christian gets when s/he makes assertions about God in principle unfalsifiable.

 

But I think the discussion can go deeper in the direction of what we mean when we ask, where does something exist? We don't locate immaterial substances like the triangle itself or the circle itself "in a place," do we? I'm not up on philosophy of math, but I thought that mathematicians still argue over whether mathematical entities would exist if the space-time universe did not exist. Still, it does not follow even for a mathematical "Platonist" that if mathematical entities are immaterial substances and not just properties of things, therefore God. 

 

The Neo-Platonists refined Plato's doctrine of principles. Plato had reduced everything to two principles: the One and the Indefinite Dyad, i.e. a principle of multiplicity, which was in some ways like what Aristotle would posit as matter, or pure potentiality. Plotinus' two highest principles were the One and Mind. We can play around and say that all mathematical entities have their ground in the One. A recent paper on Proclus, a neo-Platonist commentator of the fifth century, argues that his commentary on Plato's Republic was a veiled attack on Christianity, and that "the many" and "the Giants" as objects of Proclus' polemic were actually Christians who, Proclus thought, misunderstood Plato and tried to fold their theology into Platonic schemes.

 

Oh well, this post probably doesn't do anything to advance the discussion. But I'll leave it. Carry on, chaps!

[Joshpantera]

On 4/25/2017 at 7:50 AM, ficino said:

s far as I know, the classical answer is that God does not exist in the created universe as to His essence, but He is present via his operations. Since God is not a material substance and does not change, God's essence is not the essence of something that exists in the universe. Whether God's essence is supposed to be "in" the Catholic eucharist, or whether God only operates through that sacrament, I don't know.

 

That's another good example. 

 

They have some hoops to jump through in order to have something like god #5 outside of existence and yet present via his operations here within existence, material existence or otherwise. Imagine trying to establish the essence of something that doesn't exist in the universe, but is never the less present in the universe via religious operations or whatever.

 

And of course holding their noses to omnipresence keeps this nice and easy the whole time. An essence that does not exist in the universe is an essence less than, and much smaller than, an omnipresent essence. It's pretty easy to show how moving the goal way out to god #5 only brings more contradictions and problems to the table. This isn't very different from what happens when creationists push to make Genesis accord with modern scientific knowledge. The hole gets deeper and deeper as they go along.