Just because one feels an experience from one’s own mind proves nothing, except a person’s belief in their own mind. I experienced seeing a large Rabbit with a wheel borrow full of colored eggs when I was 4 years old. I know that was only my experience and wasn’t real.
The God you speak of was the idea of some other human being and did not write anything, and one just believes what another human said was inspired. so cannot prove anything.
As a post script, I would like to know where God existed, before there was a place to exist?
And to anyone thinking of posting anything like “He just was.”, I’m just going to respond “He just was where?”.
isnt there a better thread for that? this is about faith, not god.
It takes a lot of faith to believe in a contradictory all-powerful, all-knowing, all wise and eternal entity, but the amount of blind faith needed to believe that such an entity existed when there was no place for it be goes right off the scale.
While I do not disagree with that - there are (or were) other threads devoted to the ‘does god exist’ debate - there are other nuances to ‘faith’ then just the belief (or lack thereof ) in ‘God’ - the discussion with gus mayo as a case in point.
I’ve reported my own post to request a mod-ruling.
Fair enough. Personally, I would consider “Faith in gods” part of the topic, not off-topic.
faith in - yes
existence of - no
IMHO, of course.
They go hand-in-hand, I think. The amount of faith needed to believe in something that can exist is miniscule in comparison to the amount of faith needed to believe in something that cannot exist. What you have faith in is as important to this conversation as why you have faith.
But there in lies the rub -
Faith requires no evidence (of existence) - so can exist in its own tidy little vacuum - therefore debating the existence of said thing is secondary to debating faith in it.
But it matters when trying to differentiate between faith based on previous knowledge of that which is possible, blind faith in that which is possible, and blind faith in that which is impossible.
I fear we will go in circles here - and again, I don’t disagree with your post.
By forcing the person stating ‘faith in god’ to go thru an exercise of ‘proving existence’ is futile at best, as stated before - faith requires no evidence whatsoever.
Being able to frame your faith in ‘why’ is always better than just saying it is - but none of those ‘whys’ will ever be evidence for a given deity.
Or, God created the space he exists in at the same time he created himself. Or God is space, in some way we don’t understand. Or God doesn’t take up space, but is extradimensional, in some way we can’t describe. Or Space was always there, just like God was always there.
monavis has dropped this “gotcha” a dozen times in the past, and feels convinced that it is of portentous value in rebutting God, but it really isn’t of much value. It’s like the absurdly fundamentalist Christians who demand to know what happened “before” the Big Bang, or “where the Big Bang happened.”
The primary difference is that the cosmologist says, “I don’t know,” and the theologian just makes up another nonsense term like “immanent” or “numinous.”
I understand each and every word in that sentence, and the sentence makes perfect sense structurally…but no matter how many times I read it, it makes absolutely no sense to me.
Well, what are the limits to faith? Can you have faith in absurd or even insane ideas? God is so powerful that, at the end of time, he went back to the beginning of time, and created himself.
What does “God has existed forever” really mean?
Theology easily gets goofy this way.
If there is a beginning and/or end of time, it means absolutely nothing.
[quote=“Trinopus, post:494, topic:667270”]
Or, God created the space he exists in at the same time he created himself. Or God is space, in some way we don’t understand. Or God doesn’t take up space, but is extradimensional, in some way we can’t describe. Or Space was always there, just like God was always there.
monavis has dropped this “gotcha” a dozen times in the past, and feels convinced that it is of portentous value in rebutting God, but it really isn’t of much value. It’s like the absurdly fundamentalist Christians who demand to know what happened “before” the Big Bang, or “where the Big Bang happened.”
The primary difference is that the cosmologist says, “I don’t know,” and the theologian just makes up another nonsense term like “immanent” or “numinous.”[/QUOT
I am not rebutting God, Just that the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim God needed a creator, or at least a place to exist and It looks to me that place proceeded thing.
Agreed. Also, I’m not sure that “time had no beginning” is meaningful. The clock has been running “forever?” No matter how many hours ago you suggest, the clock was running before that? There really is no “meaning” in any “infinite” declaration of concrete reality.
I simply have to disagree with this. I gave several alternatives. God might be, himself, the “place” he occupies. God might take up no space at all. God might exist in some “otherspace” that has no spatial properties. Or God might have created space at the same time he came into existence himself.
The problem is that we’re deep in the throes of metaphysics, and a theologian can make up any pseudo-property of God that he wants. I respect what you’re trying to say, but I think it simply doesn’t work, because it is so easily answered. e.g., how big is God? Can he compress himself into a small space? Can he compress himself into zero space? Can anyone prove this, either way?
For those who have faith, no question is unanswerable. They merely say, “It’s a miracle” and that ends it. For those (myself included) who do not have faith, the questions aren’t even interesting. I don’t know – and don’t much care – if God occupies physical space or not. There isn’t any non-faith-based way to address the matter.