@MontereyJack,
MontereyJack wrote:
After four thousand years there still is no verifiable evidence a god exists. There's a whole lot of supposition but no verifiable evidence. Your argument seems to boil down to god exists because god exists, which is not exactly compelling.
Is there evidence that 'the universe' exists? Sure, we can see planets and galaxies using telescopes, but what evidence is there that the universe as a whole exists? We can't stand outside of it to observe it as a circumscribed thing.
But look at the universality of the laws of physics/nature, the periodic table, the fact that the entire universe is made up of protons, electrons, neutrons, photons, quarks, neutrinos, etc. The fact that the diversity of forms that make up the universe are all made up of the same fundamental pieces and mechanics suggests that the universe is a unified whole . . . but is it 'proof?' What could possibly 'prove' that the universe exists as a whole?
Thinking and describing the universe as 'the universe,' is just an awareness of it in its totality. When people talk about multiple universes, they aren't understanding the fundamental meaning of the term, "universe," which refers to everything that can possibly exist, i.e. the universal set containing all other sets that exist.
So "God" is just the agency/authorship attributed to 'the universe.' If you can say that everything that exists falls within the same ultimately 'universal set,' then you can say that all consciousness/intent/agency/power/knowledge/etc. also falls within the same universal set and we can call the ultimate authority, "God," Theology uses lots of different metaphors, analogies, parables, etc. to represent God in a way that makes sense to readers, but there is no question of proving God's existence, because what all these different theologists/philosophers are writing about in different ways is nothing more or less than the absolute authority of the universe as a whole, which cannot not exist because the universe and everything that makes it up exists.
What you and other atheists try to do is separate the notion of God from the rest of the universe, which doesn't make sense. If the universe exists as the universal set of all things, then authority/truth/power/consciousness/intent/etc. all exist as well. You may have trouble with how to represent God in a way that seem plausible to you, but ultimately you can't deny the existence of absolute power, because everything about your existence and everything you perceive and know is dependent on the power of its existence, and it is beyond the control of you or any other human authority, so you can't pretend like humans created the universe. It has to be a higher power, whether or not you like the idea of describing that power in terms of a person/father or not.
