The existence of God

[Belacqua]

Personally I find Neo and Bel's views on this to be quite interesting, and it doesn't make my blood boil like most 'mainstream' talk of Christianity does, but at the same time its interest for me lies in its abstractness, and that very abstractness makes it all but impossible to reconcile with the God described in the Bible. So though I think this classical concept of God, if I'm understanding it right, as some sort of abstract collection of Forms, is interesting, I think getting from that to the God described in the Bible, particularly the 'jealous' god of the OT, is too big a leap.

Thank you, that's kind of you.

It's certainly true that the classical arguments -- even if a person were to find them all persuasive -- don't get anywhere near the God of the Bible. And the people who make the classical arguments are well aware of that. 

Obviously sola scriptura literalism is completely incompatible with any sort of philosophical argument. But how the really intelligent Christians have gotten from the "abstract" versions to some reading of the Bible can be fascinating. William Blake, for example, was an amazing genius, and well worth reading by anybody. 

I don't really know what percentage of believers care about such arguments. If every single believer in the US just thinks of God as Santa Claus, that's more of a problem with education in the US than with the quality of the arguments made by philosophers. Fortunately I can concentrate on the smart people, in the hope of learning something, and ignore literalists, flat-earthers, Q-anon-types, people who think the US military spreads democracy, etc. etc.

The DaVinci Code and Harry Potter are far more popular, number-wise, than Proust. But that doesn't mean I have to spend my time talking about them. 

When there was some danger of the local Christians pushing creationism on the schools in my hometown, my sister ran for school board and made sure to get on the textbook committee. She served until all my nieces and nephews had graduated. That's a practical thing to do if we're worried about bad political influence. Posting on this forum has no such effect.