Hubert L. Dreyfus - How Should We Think About God's Existence?

God exists? God does not exist? What kinds of Gods? It's no challenge to find flaws and fallacies on all sides. Can we step away from old arguments and ask how to approach God's existence? What's the process? What's the way of thinking? What are issues, problems, questions about God and God's existence? Can conventional wisdom be avoided? Can progress be made?

[havenbastion]

There is no "god of the philosophers". That's an arbitrary distinction and a category mistake. They're studying All the concepts of god, which are all identically indistinguishable from fiction.

[robertoalexandre]

How is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob hidden? Look at his appearences or those of his angels in the Old Testament from Genesis where his voice van be heard, he has a meal with Abraham, wrestles with Jacob, appears as a pillar of fire, visits Sodom and Gomorrah....etc., etc., and so on and so on...

Did Pascal even read his own Holy Book?

[ahmedp]

How can we dismiss God existence if say God is a higher-dimension being?
We can barely comprehend 4, 5, etc dimension, let alone whats beyond that.

[papa]

God is shared mental model that answers the big Why-Question of reality.

We as a species, due to our big brains, have an overabundance of the ability to construct mental models. We can even model our models, and come up with very complex models that explain anything. Language is how we share these mental models with each other. As a social species we use language to keep our species social and are constantly sharing our ideas to that end. It is only recently we have developed highly structure ways of creating and vetting models and that has resulted in our modern civilization.

The big Why-Questions are always right there, it seems to be built in, even children are drawn to these types of questions. Our minds are hard wired to solve open questions and force ourselves to come up with an explanation (model) that closes such questions.

[rwc]

Best they got was a burning bush? How about appearing to 70 elders on a sapphire stone? Useless argument when you don't represent scripture fairly.

[Cousinsjay]

When you use a mysterious god to explain the mysteries of the universe you have explained nothing. It's not that difficult to understand.

[Cousinsjay]

It's hard to discuss the existence of god when it's hard to find two people that can agree on the definition of god. As A.C. Grayling suggested we should try to replace the word god with the name Fred . It changes the whole discussion. ie: Fred has a plan for my life; Fred is all knowing and all you think.

[MrTornadillo]

He don’t have any idea of what God is, God is a real presence that a lot of people have feeling. The argument is a vacuum one. I cant believe that so brillant philosophers miss the whole point. Incredible at all.

[karmaarachnid]

How should we think about the existence of leprechauns?

[BradHolkesvig]

God is nothing but a processor of information that gives each created man a visible world to experience. God is like the AI's that we can observe in this world today and it has a voice that can speak directly into your mind, which is what I experienced for 37 years.

[fiazmultani]

O FOLLOWERS of the Gospel! Do not overstep the bounds [of truth] in your religious beliefs, [180] and do not say of God anything but the truth. The Christ Jesus, son of Mary, was but God's Apostle - [the fulfillment of] His promise which He had conveyed unto Mary - and a soul created by Him. [181] Believe, then, in God and His apostles, and do not say, "[God is] a trinity". Desist [from this assertion] for your own good. God is but One God; utterly remote is He, in His glory, from having a son: unto Him belongs all that is in the heavens and all that is on earth; and none is as worthy of trust as God. - 4:171 (Asad)

[GeoCoppens]

"How Should We Think About God's Existence?"
The proper and right approach should be just one: It's absurd nonsense!