Quote:I don't think there was a time when there "wasn't". Everything that exists now always existed. We're all a manifestation of that eternal existence. How does that preclude God?

Because if existence always existed then god the creator is a redundancy .....

(December 8, 2022 at 5:46 pm)Lek Wrote: I don't think there was a time when there "wasn't". Everything that exists now always existed. We're all a manifestation of that eternal existence. How does that preclude God?

Gods bring up extra questions, and answer none.  Are gods not included in "existence"?  If so, then one concludes that gods were always part of existence and always will be, but aren't the cause of existence itself.  They would literally be as ignorant of why they existed as anyone else.

God always existed. He is not the cause of existence, but is existence. Creation is a manifestation of the eternal existence, not separate from it.

(December 8, 2022 at 7:15 pm)Lek Wrote: God always existed. He is not the cause of existence, but is existence. Creation is a manifestation of the eternal existence, not separate from it.

More fanfic! This is my lucky day.

(December 8, 2022 at 7:15 pm)Lek Wrote: God always existed. He is not the cause of existence, but is existence. Creation is a manifestation of the eternal existence, not separate from it.

Are you saying at some point in god history , god and no thing existed at the same time?

(December 8, 2022 at 7:15 pm)Lek Wrote: God always existed. He is not the cause of existence, but is existence. Creation is a manifestation of the eternal existence, not separate from it.

I wonder why existence says don't eat bacon and no two women sleeping together.

(December 8, 2022 at 8:15 pm)h4ym4n Wrote:

(December 8, 2022 at 7:15 pm)Lek Wrote: God always existed. He is not the cause of existence, but is existence. Creation is a manifestation of the eternal existence, not separate from it.

Are you saying at some point in god history , god and no thing existed at the same time?

Yeah, then god got bored and needed people and animals to fuck with.  All the floating around in the nothing just wasn't satisfying...sort of like heaven, as it's described.

(December 8, 2022 at 2:03 pm)Lek Wrote: So God doesn't exist because of your image of what God should be or what someone else believes are his characteristics?

The thing is that the Christian God was debunked back in the 17th century with Newton's discovery of the laws of motion because the universe began to be understood as a perfectly working clock, a machine, with its gears operating by the laws of physics. The intervention of God or the devil in this machine-like universe was regarded as increasingly unlikely.

So you had philosophical materialists like Rene Descartes and Thomas Hobbes and Spinoza making arguments against the possibility of miracles. Therefore, Christianity got replaced by Deism, with its emphasis on the use of reason to judge religious faith claims. As a result, Christian ideas like miracles, beliefs in angels, demons, and the power of witchcraft were eventually rejected as unreasonable.

(December 8, 2022 at 2:03 pm)Lek Wrote: So God doesn't exist because of your image of what God should be or what someone else believes are his characteristics?

That's exactly right. When I'm told that a Being exists whose characteristics are mutually incompatible to the point of logical impossibility, I opt not to believe. We can test this pretty easily: list what you think are God's characteristics.

Boru