I agree with @ergoplato that most believers may not recognize my concept of God. They might even consider me an atheist (@jlundell). Nevertheless, I believe that my 'definition' aligns with the traditions of the church fathers and Christian thinkers such as Eriugena.
It's frustrating that religious dogmas are often discussed condescendingly, while the dogmas of naturalism are unquestioningly embraced. For example, the dogma that everything is material seems so self-evident that no alternative is considered. This is perplexing, given that both in the past and present, numerous philosophers have raised significant objections to naturalism.
I have not yet managed to formulate precisely what I believe. Several years ago, I began studying philosophy, and I expected that it would confuse my beliefs. However, the opposite happened: God found a logical place in my thinking about life's profound questions. I'll write a separate thread about this soon.
@HeavenlyPossum And yet, many people have experiences that show the opposite. By the way, I am not one of them. Rationally, I fully support belief in a transcendent reality, but I struggle greatly to experience that reality.
Many people have experiences; I’m not aware of any experiences that do or could answer the question of why there is a universe.
Have you read Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics? Heidegger is very problematic and the book is very dense and disconcerting, but it’s an incredible attempt at just trying to figure out what we’re asking when we ask “why is there something rather than nothing?”
@cbontenbal I don't really know whether I qualify to answer since I am a religious person. But my feeling - and it is only a feeling: I defer to @HeavenlyPossum in that the only truly honest answer is "I don't know" - is that it had to.
All of the 'rules' we observe nature appearing to follow are part of the universe we're trying to explain. That includes principles like causality. Supposing that, outwith that universe, those rules don't exist, then we have a condition in which ->
My best (or most self-satisfying) guess is that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, and there is in fact a universal wave function with no wave function collapse. It’s mathematically the simplest model of “existence” and includes all possible realities occurring simultaneously (I presume including ones in which there is no existence). This would suggest that we’re subjectively aware of only one of an infinite series of possible quantum outcomes all happening parallel to, but subjectively inaccessible to, each other.
But that’s a guess that makes sense based on my extraordinarily limited understanding and subjective experience; I don’t pretend it is the “answer” or that I’m meaningfully capable of even answering a question like that.
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