How do i know God is real?

That is a good statement. Whose is it?

Mine (including the typo !)

Hi fresco

you said " For believers their very existence is all the evidence they need."

What's your take on the logic of the following argument with regards to a god being indubitably real?

1) Anything that can be copied or simulated has a doubtable reality (how can you know it's real if it can be hypothetically copied or simulated? you can't)

2) Therefore; that which cannot be copied or simulated has an indubitable reality.

3) The only items that cannot be copied or simulated in anyway are: omnipresence (substance), omnipotence and omniscience.

4) Provided that God is understood in terms of the three aforementioned traits, then God is indubitably real.

My take is as follows.
1. All "things" whether copied or not only have existence relative to other "things".
2. There is no "indubitable reality". There is only social agreement about what constitutes "things". Reality is about "what works" in particular contexts, despite our usual failure or lack of requirement to acknowledge that. As Kant and others have argued, we have no access to any "independent reality".
3. The prefix "omni-" is psychological delegation of ultimate control into the hands of a "divinity" in the face of the lack of control by humans themselves.
4. The thing called "God" by believers, has existence with respect to the thing they call themselves and vice versa. Believers by consensus take "God" to be an ultimate thinger/creator. In that sense they assert that "God is real" but do not see the significance of the omission "real for them".

I think I understand your points Fresco but the 4 points I made were strictly based on objective reasoning. If you are interested in a discussion, then my objections to you are as follows:

1. Regarding your first point, you do not say anything about reality and as I am only focused on what is real, I won't address it.

2. I strongly disagree with your second point. How could you hypothetically respond to the following: "If there is an existence, then there is at least one thing that is truly real; therefore something is indubitably real." How could you rationally fault this? It's as impossible as rejecting existence.

3. Let's temporarily forget the pre-fix "omni". One thing encompasses all things. Naturalists believe this to be substance or matter. Therefore substance or matter is in everything. To be in everything is equivalent to being omnipresent. Omnipresent is just a short way of putting it.

Aside from omnipresence, the only other two traits that cannot be copied or simulated, are omnipotence and omniscience. Given this, we are rationally obliged to acknowledge them as indubitably real as they cannot be copied or simulated.

What I mean by this is that we can't just acknowledge omnipresence and then ignore omnipotence and omniscience. That's being biased and not true to reason and the demands of doubt (an important aspect of reason that exposes truth).

4. Rationally establishing something as indubitably real is different to just arbitrarily attributing realness to something. Only the the aforementioned traits can't be copied or simulated. If something can be hypothetically simulated or copied, then you don't know if its the real thing (paintings and dreams are examples) but if something cannot be copied or simulated, then you know it is the real thing.

We are never going to agree because you take an absolutist stance on "reality", "existence" and "truth". I do not. I take the pragmatic non-representationalist view of language (see Rorty for example) that the meaning of those terms is fluid and contextual. In short "God" is what works in a particular community of believers.
Nor do I ascribe to "logical analysis" in either the metaphysics we are indulging in here, or in actual physics itself (see Niels Bohr quotations about "logic"). All depends on axiomatic choice. (see Godel's Incompleteness Theorem)
For further deconstructive analysis of your concern with copying/representation, I would suggest you look up the philosophical distinction between vorstellung and darstellung. But believers are unlikely to follow an intellectually hazardous path which is superfluous to their requirements.And anyway,they can always evoke their absolutist catch-all clause "that all intellect is in the gift of God".

First of all, Satanism is utterly ridiculous (even more ridiculous than I find Christianity/Religion to be in general, but that's another matter).

Second of all, you are very young to be questioning scientific theories that are adhered/accepted by the majority of all scientists in the world. The Big Bang theory is not really a debate in the scientific community today. The astronomical and mathematical evidence is pretty clear that the universe is expanding.

You can believe what ever you want. Personally, I think humans created the idea of "God" because we fear the unknown and we fear the idea that we aren't superior to everything else in the universe.

Nobody can tell you who created time, matter, and space. Personally, I've always made the argument that for all we know time could have ALWAYS existed. It's more likely than some magical being creating everything from nothing.

"In short "God" is what works in a particular community of believers."

What about reality, existence and doubt? Because I think they are objective and absolute. Can anyone coherently deny existence? or reality?

"But believers are unlikely to follow an intellectually hazardous path which is superfluous to their requirements."

I think the same holds for some Atheists.

Theists and Atheists, should not fear the truth. Nor should they be biased in their reasoning. You cannot pick and mix what you apply doubt to. If there was never any objectivity to rational and logical thought, there would be no unity or agreement whatsoever.

If you believe in the objectivity of reason, then I think we will reach the same conclusion with regards to this topic. This requires both of us to be sincere and open-minded.

It may be worth reiterating the following point one more time:

Rationally establishing something as indubitably real is different to just arbitrarily attributing realness to something. Only the aforementioned traits can't be copied or simulated.

From a non scientist over here.

Would not infinite time theory go against the laws of thermodynamics? i.e Time is finite and you cannot have an infinite amount of a finite thing.

I have been wrong before

We can certainly deny their absolute status. It happens all the time in science when paradigms shift.

"Objectivity" is another absolutist myth, but of course we can have agreement based on contextually common goals, language and physiology.

Please note that if you follow my ten years of posting here you will find extended explanations of my views. You are merely adhering to an aspect of what is technically termed "naive realism", which few contemporary philosophers or scientists would support.

It would indeed, but it's either it was always there, it started on its own, or a magical being created it from nothing (in which case the next question arises, where did the magical being come from). I pick what I deem to be the more likely of the three.

Most preachers fail to teach their congregations that Satan is the ruler of this world.

Actually, you are citing what you are wont to believe about the Bible.

Very convenient.

Now you don't have to look

"We can certainly deny their absolute status. It happens all the time in science when paradigms shift."

Please note, I am not saying that we are real or the world we experience is real. I am asserting that there is something (not us) that is indubitably real and that there being an existence is absolute.
Would science ever deny this?

Paradigms shift in science only when there is a crisis. One reason for why this crisis occurs, is when a theory goes against rational absolutes such as there being an existence or there being something real.

If an observation was made that implied something comes in and goes out of existence, it would never be accepted. A different theory would be suggested to accommodate the observation. Hell, we may even have a paradigm shift. BUT it will never, for example, be accepted that something comes in and goes out of existence.

"You are merely adhering to an aspect of what is technically termed "naive realism""

Either we have a different understanding of what Naive realism entails, or I am not a naive realist. I do not take our world to be real as an absolute. I take existence as an absolute and there being a reality as an absolute.

Something can't come from nothing. What bridges the two? Nothing

Point understood.

I suggest you check out Heidegger's argument that Western thinkers have been pre-occupied with "beings" (the noun) as opposed to "being" (the verb). This trend manifests as a Cartesian "subject-object" distinction which predicates "naive realism" rather that the holistic (Eastern) view that subjects and objects are inextricable. For those with a psychological need for "divinity" this holism can manifest as pantheism or simplistically that "all...including self...is a manifestation of God". But this position obviously casts out the idea that "God" is a separate caring parental entity vis-a-vis "self" and therefore fails to fulfill psychological needs of most Western "believers".

In order to see where I (and Heidegger) are coming from you need to understand that we are born into a Western language community historically predicated on subject-object distinctions. Couple that with a rejection of language as respresentational, and understand that it is constructional and you will be going in my direction.

My advice my friend is to look into it. Get yourself a decent understanding of all of the finer details. There is no harm in throwing your hands in the air and saying, "I don't know" and go away and study the subject, the only way any of us get a strong hold on what we understand, or indeed to develop and better understand it, is to study when we don't know the answer.
What you just told me is that you don't like the question "what caused the universe to begin" so you will opt for a contra-scientific explanation with zero evidence, that requires a lot of faith.

I love science, and until now I have respected your scientific approach, don't undo it for arguments sake.

I have looked into it. There is nothing that would lead me to believe a magical being created the universe. I legitimately don't know how the universe began (if ANYONE knew we wouldn't be having this discussion). I just stated what my favorite theory on the universe is. Nowhere did I say it were true and nowhere did I say I could provide evidence for it. That's the difference between 90% of all Young-Earth Creationists and myself.

yeah those young earth creationists are a hoot. we should go throw rocks at them or something

I studied some existentialism and phenomenology during my degree. As far as I remember, reason does not feature much within it. It's more like a description rather than rational investigation.

All my arguments are based on reason. If we cannot discuss using reason, then I think we might have to agree to disagree.

"Couple that with a rejection of language as respresentational, and understand that it is constructional and you will be going in my direction."

Even if we take language as constructional rather than representational, we cannot sensibly construct items of language where the entirety of existence (not just reality or simulative realities) cannot accommodate such items.

For example I'l construct the word square-circle. Such a word is logically absurd. It cannot be accommodated in existence. It therefore cannot have any semantic value.
As for words such as a 100th spatial dimension, it may be accommodated by existence (as in there may be a 100th spatial dimension in existence) but we cannot know that therefore we cannot understand or assign an appropriate and adequate semantic value to such a phrase.