Does God 'exist'?

I read something interesting that Parodites wrote about this issue, he said the question “Does God exist” is meaningless because first of all existence is not something you can predicate, as Kant and others have pointed out, so we need to be subtler in our meaning and intentions here; but also and more importantly because God functions as a symbol of the transcendent space within us, within and as the limits of our mentalities and conscious experiences, the ‘virtual’ or abstract-like existence of the mind, which itself represents an irreducible dyad or polarity with that other facet of our lives namely our bodies and all the atoms and chemicals etc. that constitute them. He supposes the right question would be, “Is there a God?” and the answer to such a question is certainly Yes, for God is a functional concept within our minds and even the atheist cannot deny this.

Furthermore and to counter in advance the criticisms of the angry self-proud atheists reading this, “existence” is not something that could properly be applied to God assuming this God-thing was actually… real in the sense that theists assume it to be. Why? Because existence as we know and mean it as an idea and as a reality constitutes an inevitable scope of finitude, of being in space and time; is that God? Certainly I think most theists think about God as if he exists physically of sorts (even if immaterially-‘physically’) insofar as occuping some region of the universe, as if heaven were out there somewhere and if we could look far enough we could find it in a telescope, or like God is in the clouds as an old man with a long white beard, watching what we do. These images reveal that what is commonly thought about as God’s existence is already transposed into the human realm of finite, material and spatially-temporally located things. But God, if such a thing ‘exists’ then would not its existence, by definition of maximum transcendence, exist more virtually as indeed our own minds do, and perhaps alongside that same plane of symbolic references we can imagine God emerging from/as the highest of all possible contradictions and irreducible irreconciliations, as indeed our own minds and thoughts are and our very lives in the subjective/“I” sense of them. What I am trying to get at here and if I am following Parodites line of thinking accurately is the idea that God properly would not exist in any way that we exist; God would in effect be the highest-most possibility for transcendent virtuality, absolutely removed from anything material or immanent and therefore not of the human world in any way other than mediated contacts as might be possible through the mind’s apprehension of transcendence and the nature and stuff of virtuality-as-such either directly as pure conception and knowing in the philosophical sense or indirectly as coming up against the hard limits beyond which we cannot think, reason or even feel. Parsing out liminal spaces in this way is also a function of the God-concept for our minds, although I am sure not its primary function therein.

So to ask if God exists I wonder if we are doing God a disservice, anthropomorphizing something that by its very definition and meaning at the level of pure conception itself should be understood as beyond all possible finitizing and immanentizing, beyond all materiality, space and time relations; as emerging secondarily, triadically, etc. as the sum-result of underlying tensions that cannot be resolved yet persist and never vanish, like as Parodites points out the irresolvible and uncollapsable tensions between the realms of things like atoms and molecules on the one hand and our love on the other, or the neurological impulses in our brain cells and our thoughts and moral understandings. Despite far-removed causalities and correspondences these domains are so far removed and remote from each other that meaning slips away, they cannot at once be brought into perfect alignment within a single system and understanding as if one might clearly emerge from/become the other without excess and error. Continuing on with that example we see this as the cause of so much philosophical debate and discussion and theorizing, and still there is no agreement as to the nature of consciousness or its relation to things like neurons and action-potentials in the brain.

Imagine for a moment pure mentality, pure abstract virtuality and the transcendent dimension itself, then attempt to relate or juxtapose that to the entirety of physical material existence. It cannot be done, this implies too huge and unresolvable a contrast and contradiction, and the tension that results must produce something in the form of a higher triadic non-dialectical relation, a third term as Parodites calls it after Pierce’s work I believe; what is that third term between finite and infinite, between all of ‘existence’ on the one hand and all immateriality/meaning/transcendent virtuality on the other hand? Perhaps that third term is God itself, as indeed the tension between our own irreducible dyads lead to what we experience as thinking and our inner selves, unresolvable to either of the terms of the underlying relation, it may be the case that there is a higher thinking and experiencing going on as the unresolved tension-emergence between the highest possible dyads.

Well if the dyads you speak of are Kant’s transcendental (Being) character & empirical (immanence) character, the triadic is BOTH, and both are the triadic: substance, demonstration (action), essence.

There is no substance without essence or demonstration/action.

There is no demonstration (action) without substance or essence.

There is no essence without demonstration (action) or substance.

It would be like a lyric without singing or vocalist.

They each require the other.

So there is a transcendental Virtuoso after which all virtues/capacities are patterned—we approach but never reach—but the Virtuoso approached/reached (into time, to us) first/always (subsumes all change). We can’t reach the Virtuoso, we can only receive, and give what we receive to others who receive (and give).

It’s basically all Parodites’ fault if I got any of that wrong.

It’s not an empty/abstract absolute. It’s as full/concrete as it gets.

Pretty sure you’re on the same page here, thanks for the partial summary.

Feel free to add to the discussion if you want.

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Relevant elsewhere 3 hrs ago. Relevant here, still.

There is no function without machine who acts. Also no malfunction/dysfunction.

Universals without demonstrations are empty. Examples without universals exemplify nothing.

Kant is either crying tears of pride or shame right now lol.

I really don’t follow why you posted most of that, but thanks anyway.

Is that why you went to the existential import thread and said that it wasn’t philosophy?

You’re a funny guy, Hum.

I don’t remember that, but sure. If I said it then it’s almost certainly true.

Do you remember, now? Start strong, end weak.

Hm.

Yikes.

Like I said, it is correct. Not sure why you bring that up here though. Try to remain coherent and make your posts relevant to the discussion.

Density is based on mutual support. Alignment. Connection. Interaction. Features most commonly found in clusters of atoms. The density of the earth and the material planes, is so huge, that people can’t control it or use it, even though if someone did start to use a dense system/energy/material, huge power and free energy can be the result.

A god that has density and submits to natural law,
is much different than the Greek’s transcandental metaphysical gods.
Abstraction often relates with simplification and reduction.
It’s a negative thought process.
Apply it completely and you are left with next to nothing.
God is next to nothing, when they say it is a “spiritual” force.
Something beyond / devorced from density.
If God is real, it can talk to us without
the use of schizophrenic prophets.
It would be even denser than ourselves.

That’s my comments for now.

Does God exist?

He cannot be proven or disproven intellectually for the total satisfaction of those who doubt.
It all comes down to faith, you either have it or you do not.

“Does God exist?”

Yes.

I suggest that as we stand on the earth and look out into the universe, we are viewing God from a similar perspective we once had when we opened our eyes and looked out into the amniotic waters of our mother’s womb.

I suggest that the truth of what God is and what we are in relation to her is way more “natural” and “organic” and “familial” than what HumAnIze is imagining in his OP.

Indeed, it’s almost too simple in that the Creator of this universe (our ultimate parent) is simply the fully-developed / fully-matured “adult” version of what we (our minds/souls) are.

After undergoing our 2nd and final birth into “true reality” via the process that we call death, God, and our true and eternal form (the same form as God), will finally be revealed to us.

“…it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is…”

Even Christ stated that we must experience two births - one “of water” (the human womb) and the other “of spirit” (via death).

Again, how much more “natural” and “organic” can the truth of reality be than in the possible fact that we momentarily exist in God’s cosmic “womb” as the literal “embryos” of the highest species of Being in all of reality?

In other words, just like mammals on earth, the “highest species of Being in all of reality” replicates itself by conceiving its own offspring (us) within itself (out of the living mental fabric of its own personal mind).

“As Below, So Above”