Defining God

Outline:
Introduction 0:00
The ultimate foundation of God 4:30
Gods relation to creation 8:15
Deriving the Trinity 18:12
Summary 23:15

What is God? How is God a coherent concept? Can we even define what God is in the first place? What is God's relationship to creation? This video will be about answering those questions

As I mentioned in my video on revolutionizing apologetics the first step in building the Swinburnian framework of apologetics is that we must start off with defining God. This is because God or the philosophical view we call theism is a metaphysical view of the world. Since theism is a global metaphysical theory of reality then we begin by first defining what we mean by theism or God.

There are many different types of theisms. In this video I'm going to be presenting my own model of theism. My model of theism is different from Richard Swinburne's model. However I will use the same methodology that Swinburne uses in order to build a coherent model of God. I will go over how my particular brand of theism can explain the facts about the world in a future video. But I will be focused in this video mainly on detailing what I mean by God.

Keep in mind that I am not dismissing alternative models. I do believe that Swinburne's methodology could be applied to alternative conceptions of God. However the reason why I am bringing my model into the picture is because I want to be consistent with my arguments. Many of the arguments that I will present in future videos depend on a particular conception of God and so it is important that we use such a model.

I shall now begin with presenting what I call the Christian idealist model of God.

Works of Richard Swinburne

[jairocarlomanocupajulca]

Thank you for this video. I really enjoyed it.

[blakejohnson]

Kyle you’re like one of my favorite apologists now man, love your work

Question: What is your denomination?

[daman]

This is so awesome - I subscribed to your channel a while ago but never really dove into your content until now. Please keep doing what you're doing, you don't know how valuable this sort of thing has been to me and how much lay-Christians like me today need to be exposed to analytic theology and philosophy of religion in general.

One question - I'm sort of new to understanding how tropes work so help me out here - what are the persons exactly? I think I understand God being a trope of the property of perfection, but then when this causes the persons to exist, what exactly gets "added on, " so to speak? Properties? Relations? New tropes? Is this something that would probably make sense if I just were to read the Stanford Encyclopedia page on tropes?

[degiro]

Hi men, I have a question about the time. If we have free will, it implies that in the present moment changin our way, but if it is true, it is outside God, so how can be omnicient. Maybe its because we are creation so he know us completly, but i'd like to listen your opinion
Thanks, and great video!

[noxot]

for God to love me less than another is an imperfection. God has to have eternally loved me but God has to have loved me as if I also was born in a limitation because God wants to maximize his love for me and I for him. the meaning of creation is the same reason the Trinity is the Trinity. the Son of God is fully God and fully human. a division of two is resolved by a third. it is by a division and freedom that love has the possibility to not be, but a third unity of the first two resolves this problem. if the first two are united and only reveal a third, the problem of love still exist because if the two united into the third and did not remain two then there would be no one to love but the one that united as the third. but if the third is not, neither are the two united because if they loved each other a third person would be born from their complete union. that is why when the son returns to the father he sends the holy spirit. Christ dies but he resurrects and returns to the father bringing about the everlasting kingdom.

[Shukichi_]

Is your view on God and time similar to WLC "timeless without creation, temporal after creation"?

[legendsplayground]

the question of how can God, a non-material being causes a material thing to exist has been troubling me for decades, if i'm not mistaken, are you saying that material can be reduced to mental stuff? the material would just be God imagination created from his own mental content.

[ceasedesist]

Good video but just to ask, isn't it a catholic dogma that God created out of nothing? Wouldn't that conflict with your model of God? Or am I misinterpreting the dogma? It seems pretty vague because on one hand it says creation out of nothing and no pre-existent thing but on the other it rejects anything besides God.

*296* We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance. God creates freely "out of nothing."
Catechism of the Catholic Church (296)

*II. God the Creator*
1. All that exists outside God was, in its whole substance, produced out of nothing by God.

Edit: Not a catholic

[daniellowry]

I'm curious what would you say to a Unitarian who would say God's loving nature could be satisfied by necessarily creating non divine agents. Or in a sense creation would be a necessary entailment of his goodness but would not contradict Unitarian conceptions of god

[themel]

Some objections presented in your great work :
1. If God is simple, why is he at the same time 3 people and not 48?

2. If the most fundamental thing is perfect, how is it possible that God can bring something imperfect of himself? Anyway, did God know that he was going to create suffering?

3) The only thing we can be sure of is our experience. But we are neither the body nor the mind, but we are fundamentally consciousness (Brahman). Would this be God?

4) if God is simple, how does he think?

5) God is absolutely free? It seems that God is bound in eternity by the laws of rational logic. This would lead us to the fact that logic is more fundamental than God. God is not fundamental.

Good video !

[tweetophon]

The revolutionizing apologetics video was good because you recognised the shortcomings of christian apologetics and the need to establish the broader metaphysical context. Sadly, you lost track of that vision in this video. Instead of talking about the broadest metaphysics and establishing the context for your god, you skipped straight to your theological ideas. It's a missed opportunity, you are going to need to scrap your project and return to step 1. For now, I feel justified in simply saying "no" and discarding your efforts because I do not accept your broader, unexamined assumptions.

[CorbinSimpson]

Hi, your God cannot exist. Omnipotent beings were disproved by Epimenides the Cretan, and the argument was refined by Epicurus of Athens, Russell, and formalized as Lawvere's fixed-point theorem. Omniscient beings were shown incompatible with empirical evidence by Einstein et al., formalized by Bell, and shown impossible by Kochen, Specker, and later Conway.

Additionally, you don't really justify any of your definitions. It's just, like, your opinion. Philosophers make progress by connecting their theories to empirical results of some sort; so far, all you've done is explain why your particular imaginary friends are the best imaginary friends. You don't have any citations either, which is unsurprising given that your contemplations are unphysical.

[csadler]

Which god thing? Oh that's the one YOU picked and none of the others.