Something {god}| can be partially or wholly outside the physical universe and capable of affecting universe.
arguments for God
God must exist {ontological argument, God}. The physical universe proves that God exists {cosmological argument, God}. Universe purposes prove that God exists {teleological argument, God}. Hume and Kant disproved these arguments.
arguments against God
Perhaps, God does not exist. If evil exists, God cannot be completely good and cannot be all-powerful. The idea of God contains contradiction, because nothing is logical necessity. God cannot be omnipotent. God cannot be omniscient. God cannot be eternal.
Because people cannot ascertain truth of statements about God, such statements are meaningless. Attributes of God depend on human attributes and so do not necessarily apply to beings with no bodies. Spirits have no method of interacting with matter, unless they are part matter, or third substances mediate interactions.
No premises have universal acceptance as true. Valid reasoning is difficult about infinities or perfections.
disproofs of God
Supposed proofs of God have convincing disproofs that show contradictions. Today, theologians accept that there is no proof of God.
attributes
God can know people's experiences or know only what people's experiences are like. God can know things by standing outside time or by knowing everything to know at each instant. God can know choices that free wills can make, by observation or foreknowledge, or not know choices before, so self-limiting God's knowledge.
God can be the creator and have created and maintained physical and mental worlds. In Hebrew-Christian world-view, God created universe. The spirit of God moves universe. Man is the image of God. Souls have free will. The feeling of love is important in universe.
God can be essence.
God can be eternal and exist outside time and/or throughout time.
God can be good. God can be beneficent and compassionate. God can be sympathetic.
God can have no bound. However, God is finite, because physical quantities have quanta and are relativistic. Universe can have no bound but still be finite.
God can be intelligent and wise.
God can be like universe boundary, like being both inside and outside spherical surface. Boundary conditions define space points. God is then both immanent and transcendent. Universe is inside God and is the boundary of God.
God can be just.
God can be lawful and orderly in action.
God can expect duty, morality, submission, and other rights from humans.
God can be like mathematical law. If laws are necessary and sufficient, they organize themselves.
God can be mind with no viewpoint and have no body.
God gave commands to humans that establish right and wrong, commands are logically necessary, or both. God can be source of moral judgments. However, morals do not require God, because society and family are settings for moral development.
God has moral attributes. Good will triumph. God knows all and can do all. God wills that people do good. God does only good. God is just. God is merciful. God is loving. God wishes us to manifest his glory.
God can be powerful enough to change logic rules, alter past, and/or allow contradictions to exist simultaneously. Perhaps, God is self-constrained or otherwise constrained against doing these things.
God can be perfection.
God can be a person or personality. God is like a person, with will, agency, feelings, consciousness, and self. However, God is not like man, because God has no brain, glands, body, or human attributes. God can have no emotions, no will, no reason, no sense qualities or perception, and no free will.
God can be purposeful.
God can be self-subsisting and self-sufficient. God can be unconditioned.
Spirit is supernatural or mental substance or essence that is in or part of God. It has power to do things in physical world. It can be transmittable. It can have will. Holy Spirit of Christianity is the way that people know God. Soul receives it to give people Mind, which can then follow spiritual values. It allows people to partake of God or God's qualities. Thus, it enables people to tell true from false and good from evil, to have will and be able to choose, and to speak and know language. However, God is not spirit, because spirit, being non-physical, can have no direct affect on material world. Spirit cannot cause anything, because only physical things can affect physical things. No method exists by which people can detect spirit, because spirit does not affect mass-energy.
Substance is what is true reality, such as matter or mind. God can be fundamental substance, can just work with substance, or can have substance attributes. However, substance has no meaning actually. Underlying universe substrate has no such simple concepts.
God can be the highest or first reality. God can be the highest possible being. God can be logical or universal necessity.
God can be truth.
God can be unique.
God can be unknowable.
God can be will and be free to act immediately on all substances, without influences from other things.
existence of God
God is an existence that is in, as, and of itself. All God's attributes derive from this principle. However, God's possibility does not make necessity, because necessity and existence are about physical world. Existence is not a predicate.
To make things, atoms must bond, requiring a conscious agent {argument from atomic combinations} {atomic combinations, argument}.
Physical-universe existence proves that God exists {cosmological argument}. There must be a first existence, which is God. However, universe has vacuum energy and virtual particles, as well as quantum-mechanical laws.
Proofs {cosmological proof} can be about causes or movements. Effects must have causes, so causal chain must go back to a beginning cause {First Cause, religion}, which is God. Things move, and movements must have previous movements, back to a beginning movement by a prime mover, unmoved by anything else.
problems
God cannot be First Cause, because beginning cause presupposes universe exists, ready for first cause. God is not even about cause and effect, because causes must be physical or mathematical. If God is physical, physical laws limit God.
Universe power comes from its fundamental nature, that small volumes must have great energy, with no need for outside power sources. All things must always move, because motions are relative to observers, not absolute. All particles have intrinsic movements.
Arguments {design, argument} {argument from design} {argument from experience} can be about designing. Universe has unity, is in harmony, and has power and motion. It must have a designer, just as bodies and machines have designers and creators. God creates and designs universe.
problems
The presence of evil, pain, social injustice, and natural disasters point to low harmony and poor design, as well as question whether God is good. Universe harmony is only appearance. At smallest level, universe has quanta and fragments. At greatest level, universe is relative. God does not need to design, because complex things can arise from simpler things by evolution.
Arguments {argument from eternal truths} {eternal truths argument} can be about truth. Statements are true or false. Statements must exist in minds. Statements about essences, but not existences, can be always true or always false and so must exist in eternal mind. The world has facts {contingent truth, God}, which must come from eternal truths by the principle of sufficient reason. Existences show that there must be eternal mind.
problems
Essences are not necessarily real. Statements can exist in non-eternal minds. Truth can depend on time and location.
Proofs {experiential proof} {argument from religious experience} can be about experiences. Religious revelations and experiences are widespread and involve similar phenomena, so something or someone must inspire them. They can depend on God's existence and action. However, religious experiences are mental processes that depend on brain chemicals and activities, similar to other mental states. People do not yet know how mind works.
Proofs {mental proof} can be about mind and ideas. People know that other people have minds, by analogy with themselves. People can then use analogy to think of an all-knowing mind. Mind has meaningful ideas and has a highest idea, the idea of God, which mystics and religious experience can reveal, in which there seems to be unity of everything and generalized meaning. However, people can always think of something that is one better than the one before it, so people cannot truly think of a highest thing.
Proofs {mind proof} can be about mind. People have reason, mind, and imagination, whose cause is an all-intelligent being (C. S. Lewis). People are conscious and are part of God's consciousness or can experience God's consciousness, mind, or spirit. Universe has evolved higher intelligence forms, continuing even now, and God allows this by continual creation. However, no one yet knows how mind works. Evolution can build mind. Consciousness requires brains.
Proofs {moral proof} can be about morals. People have consciences and know moral laws. People can fail to follow moral laws or conscience and then feel this failure. This feeling is not about conditioning or self-interest, so God must have put moral laws and conscience in people (Kant). However, people develop feelings and ideas socially and can develop guilty feelings even about moral acts.
God must exist because things exist {ontological argument}. There must be a first existence, which is God. However, universe has vacuum energy and virtual particles, as well as quantum-mechanical laws.
Proofs {ontological proof} {argument ex consensu gentium} can be about perfection. God is perfection, the most perfect, most bountiful, and most knowledgeable. People have a mental concept of highest or perfect being, God, with all possible attributes. Only actual existence of such being can give people this idea, so it must actually exist (Anselm). Perhaps, belief in God is part of man's nature. Universe perfection allows people to know imperfection.
However, people can always think of something that is one better than the one before it, so people cannot truly think of a highest thing.
Proofs {perfection proof of God} can be about perfection or goodness. Because things are more or less good, true, and so on, there must be something that is the highest truth, goodness, and so on. However, there does not have to be only one.
Proofs {purpose proof of God} can be about purpose. Because all things act toward goals, even if without mind, so there must be a highest goal or purpose. However, there does not have to be only one.
Proofs {teleological proof} {argument from design with teleology} {argument from analogy} {teleological argument, religion} can be about purpose. Universe is infinitely complex, has order, and has purpose. There must be an intentional mind or intelligent designer to make the universe. God sets the purpose or is the purpose. However, natural selection designs organisms without purposes. Teleology depends on finding purposes, and universe has no clear purposes.
God causes itself {causa sui}. However, causes must already exist, so causing oneself cannot cause one's existence. Most theologians state that God has no cause, because God is necessary.
God can have created universe {creator}, have only given form or laws to universe, or be separate from universe. God created one universe from nothing, and God can modify all matter and events. God can have created it all at one time or creates it continuously.
However, God is not creator of everything, because organisms evolve and physical things make random combinations. Universe is not a machine or body. Matter and energy had to have intrinsic laws to exist, so God cannot have added laws or form. God cannot be separate, because universe is what is.
God can be sacred and/or supernatural {divine, God}. People can have a divine essence or part that can have personal relations with the Divine.
God can be in everything {immanence}|. However, God is not immanent, because space is not continuous but quantized. Infinitesimal space parts are always different and always changing, because small volumes have tremendous energies. Space contracts, expands, and curves over time, because space is dynamic. Time flow is not smooth and continuous but quantized.
God can be all-powerful {omnipotence} {omnipotent}. However, God is not omnipotent, because physical quantities have quanta, are uncontrollable during transitions, have random elements, are relativistic, and take time, so God cannot act immediately and simultaneously.
God can be everywhere at once {omnipresent}|.
God can perceive and know all {omniscience} {omniscient}. God can know everything about past, present, and future. However, God is not omniscient, because Gödel's proof shows that one system cannot contain all true things. Physical quantities are relativistic, so no one viewpoint exists. Physical quantities have quanta, so instruments cannot observe transitions.
Because nothing has existed always, something makes and destroys all things, and that something must have supreme being {supreme being}, existing in itself with no other cause. However, there does not have to be only one.
God can be above or around everything {transcendence} {transcendent}. God can stand outside time, space, and mind and transcend universe. However, God is not transcendent, because signals cannot reach all space simultaneously but travel at light speed. There is no absolute space or time to occupy. Space parts appear different relative to different observers. Space itself can expand and contract over time.
God can be unknowable. People can only know what God is not {via negativa}, such as not animal.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225