The existence of God

[Belacqua]

Tell me you've never read Plato without saying you've never read Plato.

I haven't read much Plato. Would you please elaborate on how LinuxGal's comment betrays lack of knowledge of Plato?

Thank you for asking! I enjoy this subject a lot.

No doubt you know that Plato wrote about "Forms" or "Ideas." These are not physical objects. They exist eternally, and we may deduce their existence through experience of the world, but because they are not physical we have no sense-knowledge of them. They are only known in the mind. 

The easiest example would be numbers. We can deduce what two is because we have experience of two-ness in the world. Two chairs, two books. But we never experience the number itself through our senses. Two is therefore an intelligible object, not a sensible object. Yet two would continue to exist even if, for some reason, there were no pairs of two physical objects in the world. 

So for Plato, two exists in a way that no pointer on any device can detect. 

Numbers are a simple case, but the Forms include many other intelligible objects not known through the senses. Justice, for example. At the top of the hierarchy is the Form of the Good. This is goodness itself -- not a good thing. We know of goodness by extrapolating its existence from examples in this world -- a good book or a good chocolate cake. But goodness itself exists, is not sensible, and cannot be detected by any sort of device.

As you know the Bible has a lot about behavior but very little about metaphysics. When the early Christians began to worry about metaphysics, they adapted almost all of their theology from the Greeks. From Plato, they took the idea that God is like the Form of the Good. Not a physical object. Not detectable by the senses or any sort of machine that operates according to the principles of physics. Not a thing. Linux Girl wants to limit the definition of "existence" to things that a pointer on a device can point to, but of course Platonists, Neoplatonists, and Christians don't agree. 

No doubt if you look around enough you can find Christians who do speak of God (non-metaphorically) as being some sort of big guy. Like one physical object among all the other physical objects in the world. There are so many Christians in the world that you can find one of them who says just about anything. Just as if you look hard enough, you can find an atheist who thinks Hillary Clinton is an alien lizard. But all of the significant theologians -- any one you can name (not a TV evangelist) holds to this non-physical, intelligible definition of God. When Kant or Hegel write about God, this is what they're talking about. When atheist philosophers who use God as a kind of theoretical limit-case (e.g. Zizek or Badiou) talk about God, this is what they're talking about. 

I understand of course that lots of people -- probably everyone on this forum -- will reject Platonic metaphysics. Most people here believe very strongly in a materialist or physicalist metaphysics. I am not saying they are wrong. I am only saying that when people say things about the God the Christians believe in, it would make sense for them to know what it is the Christians believe. 

If Linux Girl challenged the Pope by saying that no pointer on any device had ever pointed to his God, the Pope would just say of course not -- that's not what God is like.