(January 20, 2015 at 1:22 pm)Heywood Wrote: The notion of God existing outside of reality is nonsensical. I never made that claim.....I never would make that claim.
Perhaps I misunderstood you. Earlier you said:
(January 19, 2015 at 3:04 am)Heywood Wrote: I often hear atheist ask that if it is possible that God has always existed why can't it be possible that the universe has always existed? Which is a good question(although I would use "reality" instead of universe).
Since the premise can be used to exclude reality from the cause and effect cycle it is not specific to God.
I had assumed that you meant god existed outside of reality, rather than outside of the universe (e.g. in a multiverse, perhaps).
Now then:
(January 20, 2015 at 3:12 pm)Heywood Wrote: Mathmatics is something and as far as I am concerned its existence is eternal. Nothing has ever caused 2+2 to equal 4. It just always been that. It requires no cause.
This is actually false. It could have been apple pie + magic fairies = elbow if the terms had been defined differently. Numbers are abstract concepts invented by humans to model reality; they are not absolutes in and of themselves. That is, they are axioms rather than universal truths.
I found this interesting video on the subject that explains this better than I can:
John Adams Wrote:The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.