can God exist in imagination?

[Valjean]

It happens everything can exist in imagination except God who can only be seen to exist by virtue of his sheer size that proves he is the necessary being.

Huh?
You'll have to explain this further.

I believe even atoms let alone animals choose between good and evil, but what they are choosing is between submitting to the holy spirit or the devil and there is between levels too like humans.

All of which makes sense only in context of your particular mythology.

Justify your premises or derived conclusions cannot be accepted.

 

[Link]

Huh?
You'll have to explain this further.

I suggest reading Anselm works, and not the predicate non-sense people use to refute it. Read the refutation only after you've read the original.

There are levels of existence, the highest type is necessary in terms of existence. A necessary being when recalled simply by it's definition it is known to exist. This attribute of it proves it exists.

 

[Link]

I'm just trying to make people understand ontological arguments. They are sound in my view.

At the end obviously atheists won't accept it.

 

[Clara Tea]

Set theory. God is the absolute in terms of positive qualities and existence. There is no set of life of positives including this one, which won't be included in him. Since our reality life can't be divorced from God's, it's proven he exists (his sheer size comes to this one too).

Lets use set theory:

Lets define life's positives as A, B, and C.

Lets define life's negatives as D, E, and F.

God contains a bit of all positives, as you assert. Lets call God G. So, G contains the set A, B, and C.

But God also contains some negatives (he flooded the world during Noah's time which killed a lot of innocent people) (God allows suffering and death, and doesn't even answer prayers of people dying of cancer). So, G also contains the set D, E. and F.

Good and bad also exists outside of God, so lets call the set that is not God H. So H contains the set of A, B, C, D, E, and F.

There is also the intersection of G and H which contains some of both. That is the intersection of G and H contains A, B, C, D, E, and F.

So, the entire universe contains A, B, C, D, E, and F. In other words the entire universe including God and what is not God contains both good and evil.

 

[Link]

Lets use set theory:

Lets define life's positives as A, B, and C.

Lets define life's negatives as D, E, and F.

God contains a bit of all positives, as you assert. Lets call God G. So, G contains the set A, B, and C.

But God also contains some negatives (he flooded the world during Noah's time which killed a lot of innocent people) (God allows suffering and death, and doesn't even answer prayers of people dying of cancer). So, G also contains the set D, E. and F.

Good and bad also exists outside of God, so lets call the set that is not God H. So H contains the set of A, B, C, D, E, and F.

There is also the intersection of G and H which contains some of both. That is the intersection of G and H contains A, B, C, D, E, and F.

So, the entire universe contains A, B, C, D, E, and F. In other words the entire universe including God and what is not God contains both good and evil.

Evil can be said (in terms of morally evil) to be negative, while other things can be neutral (morally). God is absolute positive infinity, he doesn't contain negatives.

 

[Clara Tea]

I'm just trying to make people understand ontological arguments. They are sound in my view.

At the end obviously atheists won't accept it.

Our arguments about existence cease to make sense once we prove that we don't exist.

 

[Clara Tea]

Evil can be said (in terms of morally evil) to be negative, while other things can be neutral (morally). God is absolute positive infinity, he doesn't contain negatives.

The world is a mess. Pollution, Global Warming, political cheating, lies, homelessness, COVID, etc. Did a loving God create all of this? Did God create a world of poop and stink? Are these the positive attributes that you speak of?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Because of God being necessary and ontological argument being a sound argument.

The Ontological Argument (either version) isn't a sound argument.

Why would you assume that God must be a necessary being?

 

[Link]

The world is a mess. Pollution, Global Warming, political cheating, lies, homelessness, COVID, etc. Did a loving God create all of this? Did God create a world of poop and stink? Are these the positive attributes that you speak of?

I've made a thread about theodicy here: My Theodicy, why Evil and suffering exists. | Religious Forums

This thread is not about that.

 

[Link]

The Ontological Argument (either version) isn't a sound argument.

Why would you assume that God must be a necessary being?

It's not an assumption, it's something we see as an aspect of it or description of it when we recall it. In terms of greatness, it's greater to be necessary then not. In terms of perfection, it's a perfection. In terms of life size, think set theory, it proves it being necessary too and hence exists when we think of it being the biggest being in terms of life amount.

 

[Link]

The Ontological Argument (either version) isn't a sound argument.

Why would you assume that God must be a necessary being?

The way Atheist philosophers reply is to say existence is a predicate and not an attribute. But I think this is a red herring, it can be true or not (debatable too), but it's irrelevant. I am waiting for people to bring this up, but no one has.

 

[Clara Tea]

Describe a real God to me.

Tell me what real entity I'm looking for.

Give me sufficient descriptive information to determine whether any real suspect is God or not.

It would certainly be tempting for a human to claim to be this God that you seek. It has been tried many times in the past. Emperor Hirohito of Japan (circa WW II) was said to be descended directly from the Sun, and he is God. Ditto, Egyptian rulers, and Aztec rulers.

Of course anyone refuting God/men tend to lose their heads, so they get very few critics.

Many religions have asserted their views on pain of death, including the Christian religion. Most have the looming threat of burning in the fires of hell for all eternity for disbelieving. Do loving Gods really need torture?

 

[Link]

Do loving Gods really need torture?

The topic of hell is important but again OFF-TOPIC to the OP.

 

[Valjean]

God can't be compared to unicorns, unicorns don't cover all existence nor are the greatest nor are sheer perfection, so none of them are candidates for being necessary. God being necessary means he exists and can only be seen to exist and it's impossible to imagine him otherwise.

You're randomly assigning qualities to your deity in an effort to justify him; to render him necessary.

Support your premises.
Support the existence of a God. Support the necessary qualities you assign to him.
What Is Circular Reasoning?

 

[sayak83]

It's not an assumption, it's something we see as an aspect of it or description of it when we recall it. In terms of greatness, it's greater to be necessary then not. In terms of perfection, it's a perfection. In terms of life size, think set theory, it proves it being necessary too and hence exists when we think of it being the biggest being in terms of life amount.

Greatness is a vague subjective epithet. So is perfection. These two things have nothing logical about them. Just a matter of contextual value judgement.

 

[Clara Tea]

The way Atheist philosophers reply is to say existence is a predicate and not an attribute. But I think this is a red herring, it can be true or not (debatable too), but it's irrelevant. I am waiting for people to bring this up, but no one has.

Existence, like intelligence, is overrated. There is no point in assuming that we exist (a predicate), since we might not.

Some believe that the entire world is like a Star Trek holodeck....not real, just images. My friend was aghast at a nature show on TV in which a lion ate a water buffalo alive, while it was screaming in pain. She asked herself how a loving God could possibly allow such a cruel event to happen. This is when she realized that it might all be some phony show...like a hologram.

But, even if the cruelty in the world is part of a TV show for God's entertainment, to us, it is real. It doesn't have to actually be occurring for us to be emotionally upset and emotionally scarred by it. If we witness a horrible slaughter (and there have been many in the world), we might be traumatized for life (real or not). It would be like someone putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger. Even if the gun is not loaded, the act of firing it is frightening.

 

[Link]

Greatness is a vague subjective epithet. So is perfection. These two things have nothing logical about them. Just a matter of contextual value judgement.

I've given a different way to see it though, by sheer size of his life amount, you can know he is necessary being as well. Though I do disagree with you about greatness and perfection.

 

[Clara Tea]

Huh?
You'll have to explain this further.
All of which makes sense only in context of your particular mythology.

Justify your premises or derived conclusions cannot be accepted.

A couch potato for 13 billion years, God gets a little gut, and everyone is a critic.

 

[Link]

You're randomly assigning qualities to your deity in an effort to justify him; to render him necessary.

Support your premises.
Support the existence of a God. Support the necessary qualities you assign to him.
What Is Circular Reasoning?

It seems circular, but it's not. It's by recalling it's sheer greatness, or perfection or size in terms of existence, that we see it's necessary, and hence, yes does exist (necessary implies existence).

 

[sayak83]

It's not an assumption, it's something we see as an aspect of it or description of it when we recall it. In terms of greatness, it's greater to be necessary then not. In terms of perfection, it's a perfection. In terms of life size, think set theory, it proves it being necessary too and hence exists when we think of it being the biggest being in terms of life amount.

Let me make a claim
There is no greatest possible being.
Please show this claim to be illogical.