MBPrata wrote:Clearer. I was hoping for a definition of "god."
Oh, please, don't do that to me. You sound like my father, rejecting God because it's an "abstract" concept. I get tired describing God for my father, I tell even it can't be abstract because His concept it is actually written in a book and he keeps saying it's abstract (he's an atheist, by the way). I meant "god" in the most traditional way, so to speak. You know, that traditional, somehow rustic, way. As in: the beginning of all things, created by noone or nothing, conscious eternal being that can save us if he/she/??? wants.
I'm asking out of genuine curiosity, not trying to do anything to you. I'm sure you are aware that there different conceptions of God, and some people reject some, accept others, and lump them all under the same category. I also don't happen to think of God (in the sense of
ipsum esse subsistens or the maximally excellent being) as particularly abstract, either. That always struck me as something of a cop out. I'm glad we seem to be on the same page there.
Anyway, so I asked because I had an argument in the back of my mind. I'm not going to try to play games with you. It's not an argument I'm particularly fond of, and when I teach the subject I steer my students away from it. But all the same, you've raised the possibility of God's existence (in the classical sense), so I'm curious what you make of it. When you say that it is at least possible, if very unlikely, that God exists, in the language of analytical philosophy, we would state that as, "There is a possible world in which God exists." That's not to say that this possible world really
does exist. It's just the way philosophers talk about possibility and probability. I won't bore you with the details; besides, you might be familiar with them anyway.
Regardless, we would say so far, "It is possible that God exists; therefore, there is a possible world (or a possible state of affairs, if you prefer) in which it is true to say that God exists." If that's not controversial, then all that is really left is what seems like a very unfair move but one that I think is logically necessary. It goes like this:
"If there is a possible world in which God exists, then God exists in all possible worlds."
But, of course, if God exists in all possible worlds, then He exists in this one, too. Therefore, God exists.
I'm tempted to launch into an explanation of the premise I characterized as seemingly unfair but logically necessary, but I want to hold off on that. I'm curious as to your thoughts on what I've suggested so far. I don't expect you to agree with the conclusion. I do wonder, though, about your thoughts regarding the formal validity of this approach to the question and if you'd be open to and interested in exploring it further. As a final thought, that's why I was asking about the definition of god. The argument I just outlined, if it has any hope of succeeding, has to deal
only with the classical concept of God. The Odin-like god . . . the superman who exists in the genus of person and thus the genus of being and differs from us only by degree . . . that god can't be shown to exist from any of this. But the story is different with the God of the Bible. I hope you can appreciate why I asked for the clarifications, then.
