Originally posted by PureX
The fact that I have not, supports the assertion. The fact that you can't disprove the assertion also supports it, but ultimately support in itself is not proof, and there will not be any proof for this particular assertion except it's irrefutability.
No, actually we haven't been able to do so. We would have to have knowledge of all that exists, and does not exist, to know for certain that something does not exist. Until then, we are only extrapolating conclusions based on partial information. We have no proof for or against the existence of God, and probably never will.
As a human, I can recognize that my consciousness does not perceive all that is. I am therefor conscious of the unknown. Thus, I am also aware of my inevitable fallability in making sense of the world around me. Aren't you?
We do the best we can with the limited information we have, and the limited capacity we have for understanding this information. But we would be dishonest if we assumed this were enough to "know the whole truth". The concept of God is not a relative truth, but as we conceive of it, is a unversal or "wholistic" truth. And so we lie to ourselves if we presume we can know it.
You assume the following:
To know wether or not a God exists, one must know about everything that can or does exist. Which we in no possibile way can.
However, there you again assume something, with no proof, that it is necessary to know all of existence, before one can answer wether or not there exists a Deity.
However the issue is simple this. Wether or not I know about everything that exists or can exists or not, I can at least put all of that together in one category and give it a name.
That Category will then contain all of Existence, which is everything that can or does exist.
I could ask myself then, if All of Existence could have had a start or begin.
If I were to assume that All of Existence had a begin, then the only way it could have had a begin is when it began from or in nothing.
But.... Nothing is not a begin. Nothing is only nothing.
Which means that I need to state then that All of Existence did NOT have a begin. Something, in whatever form or constitution, must have been existing Always.
This simply logic just shows and proofs to us, that we do not
have to assume a Deity exists.
It does not -in first instance-
proof that all of existence does not contain something we can call a Deity, since we are not assuming anything in this stage of our reasoning about that matters.
The issue is then simply this: wether or not any Deity exists, there is always a form of existence, and All of Existence did not have a begin neither had an end.
In the same way as we can not assume All of Existence had a begin from nothing, All of Existence neither can have an end in nothing.
But my conclusion that there has had to be always something that has existence already proofs to me that this fact is not dependend on the existence of any Deity or any other particular thing that does or can exist.
However, it is stated about a particular Deity, that this Deity is the necessary being, without which the world would not exist.
We have however shown that the existence of the world (All of Existence) is not dependend on that Deity.
Now the only possible way in which we then could give meaning to the fact that this Deity is the necessary being of the world, is if the world in total - all that is or can exists - would be equal to that Deity. If we would assume anything less then that, then this would conflict with the property of the necessary being, since that would make this Deity to any other something that might - or might not exist, but which is not in any way crucial for the world itself to exist.
So, in principle we could state that, that this Deity is the necessary being and is therefore equal to All of Existence, without having to deny that that Deity exist. And that is of course the only way in which we could state that, since if that Deity would be anything -whatever minimal- less then All of Existence, it would not have the property of the necessary being.
But this is of course not everything, cause that Deity also comes with the definition that that Deity - for else it would not be a Deity - would have to be a consciouss being.
So, only of this defined form of existence - which as we have stated must be equal to All of existence and can not be anything less then All of Existence - could be matched with the property of being consciouss, only THEN we could state that this Deity can and does exist.
The problem is however that for this Deity, there would not exist anything outside of it (since that is already contained within that Deity since it is equal to All of Existence). Which means it is impossible that that Deity can be consciouss of something that exists outside, apart and independend of it.
There is realy no way in which this Deity could state it's own consciousness, cause neither does there exist something outside of itself, about which it could state that it has existence, at the same time there is nothing that exists, that could state the existence of that Deity.
Which means: in no possible way is there any way for this Deity to have it's existence stated in an objective way. This Deity therefore does not have anything outside of itself, and could not state anything about it's own existence, and neither can something outside of this Deity state anything about the existence of that Deity.
This therefore means: we can not conclude that this Deity has consciouss existence, since it is not in any way possible to state that in any objective way.
That means that EITHER that Deity is not consciouss itself, and can therefore not be the Deity which we defined OR that Deity is consciouss but then at the same time not All of Existence and would therefore not be a necessy being for the world to exist, and for that reason can neither be the Deity which we defined.
The use of this logic therefore means, that there is no possible way in which this Deity can have all of the properties by which it was defined (necessary being & consciouss being).
Which means: this Deity - which is defined as having BOTH the properties of the necessary being AND a consciouss being can not exist.
Again, this does not affect that for the logic we have presented there must always be something instead of nothing, so the world itself would not be any less existing without that particular Deity.
Thus, even when I can not know ALL of existence in any possbile way, I CAN however know that a Deity - which is defined as both the necessary being and a consciouss being - can not exist.
