If God Didn't Exist

[Groo the Wanderer]

Sorry Dairy, but this one makes no sense. If God did not exist, neither then would we, or anything for that matter. All of creation is held in being by the divine will of God alone. If He did not will it, it would not exist. Hence,without God, there would be no us to answer the question.

[Anomaly]

Groo,
I think it has long since been established that dairy is hypothetically exploring motivations and reasons for our choices in action.

Thanks for playing. Stop wacking the dead mole.

[Justified Saint]

[quote name='JeffCR07' post='1208273' date='Mar 4 2007, 09:43 PM']Any Anselmian, or any philosopher who considers the Ontological Argument sound, would answer this question by saying that it is unanswerable. This is true because we don't really understand the phrase "If God didn't exist..." Such a saying is unthinkable in the same way that the saying "If a square could be round..." is unthinkable. We could never answer the question "if a square could be round, what would geometry be like?" precisely because it is impossible to imagine such a scenario. By definition, a square cannot be round, and so we cannot imagine a square ever being round. In the same way, the Anselmian or anyone holding to the Ontological Argument (myself included) would say that by definition, God cannot [i]not[/i] exist, and so we can't even conceive of what your question actually means.[/quote]

This seems to be a rather confused piece of reasoning, perhaps you can clarify. There is nothing inconceivable about non-existence, indeed if something can exist its negation is always imaginable. In fact, I thought a crucial part to the ontological argument was the conceivability of the non-existence of God. Whereas it is a contradiction to say a square circle, the same can only be said about God if you were to say something meaningless like "God exists and doesn't exist." Now, if for the Anselmian, God necessarily has to exist (which borders on tautology), then to say that he doesn't exist would translate, I suspect, to the confused statement above, and hence your inability to find any meaning in the topic's question. Yet, if others call that an example of sound thinking, I find it just an incident of cleverly avoiding the issue through semantic manipulation.

[Didacus]

[quote name='track2004' post='1207274' date='Mar 3 2007, 01:17 PM']Arguably if God didn't exist, there wouldn't be a devil.[/quote]

That wasn't part of the hypothesis...

It really goes back to waht G.K. Chesterton was saying, no God, no atheist. No God, well then no devil, so no evil and no good so all the question of being perfect or good or evil would actually not make sense and become in itself inamissible. Heck if God didn't exist, there would be no such question to ask - linking back to Jeff's statement. (and yes, I'm a BIG Anselm fan too, and Jeff introduced me back in the day. Thanks Jeff)



I haven't gotten as far as Thomas Aquinas yet but working on it. next on my list is Augustine (gotta LOVE Augustine!).

[Pontifite 7 of 10]

I'm confused, which one says "I belive God exists" because this could be interprited bolth ways.