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Old 07-30-2003, 03:46 PM   #36 (permalink)
CSflim
Sky Piercer
 
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Location: Ireland
What we are proposing is first of all a concept of god. We shall refer to this as Conceptual God...as opposed to Real God.
This Conceptual God "exists" within our minds. The word "exists" is used in the argument to take on far too literal a meaning. For to me a conceptual existence and an actual (?) existence are qualitatively different things.
To elaborate, this conceptual existence seems to imply a reality completely encapsulated by our (collective?) thoughts. It is reminiscent of the "Platonic Reality" of mathematical abstractions (does a perfect circle really exist somewhere?). We are "placing" Conceptual God into a "place", namely the Conceptual reality.
However, we are not in any way confining this Conceptual God in any way by placing it into the Conceptual Reality. This is where the argument hinges on. By placing the Conceptual God into this conceptual reality, we are confining its "powers". as such a Conceptual God cannot allow itself to be constrained by its Conceptual reality, and must "break out" into the real reality, and become the Real God (or simply cease to exist!)
However, there is no confinement in the Conceptual reality, as it doesn't literally "exist", in a similar way that mathematical abstractions do not literally. This conceptual reality is an abstraction of our real reality. In effect we can "place" anything from Real Reality into this Conceptual Reality. So Conceptual God can indeed be perfect and omnipotent and omnipresent within the framework of our defined reality. But we must always remember that this reality does not literally exist!
As such, we may "project" our Conceptual Reality onto The Real Reality, but it will always remain the Conceptual Reality. Similarly, though we may project our Conceptual God onto a Real God, it does not validate the existence of Real God, as the projection remains within the conceptual reality!

eeerrrkkk...I was right about it being difficult to put into words! But that is what you get when you come up against tightly formed arguments composed of anti-logic. Maybe I’ll try again later!
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