Can anyone articulate why a god exists?

Originally posted by whereu ↑

"You show me evidence and if I have the ability to understand it I will take it on board and abandon something I have believed in deeply for 50 years or more. I have a tenuous grip at best on my beliefs."

I'll try, even though I think that the chances of success are low.
My challenge to your beliefs is that your proposals appear to me to be based more on lack of evidence or even the ability to provide evidence to support or refute such proposals. I think that we have no knowledge to help support you statement:

"So this consciousness we call God is without beginning also, I imagine, because everything in the entire universe or multiverse also has had no beginning, universes come into being from stuff that has always existed. Therefore for me at least it's not a long stretch to accept that life and consciousness have always existed, they may change and transform, but the unit of existance is eternal. Neither beginning or ending, just changing, evolving. The only constant being this entity, force, substance we call God."

Religious people make statements that can't be supported or refuted by rational evidence, and then claim victory. I believe that your claims fall into this category, although you do also claim to be willing to change your mind - which is refreshing.

All I can do is appeal to your stated belief in science. A proposal needs to have a path to both verify and refute it through evidence. I submit that neither can be done for your proposal. I further submit that consequently your proposal is really a faith statement in the sense that many religious statements that can't be verified or disputed are.

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It's not a contest.
I don't want to convince you of anything because I haven't got a clue.
But I am exceedingly happy if you are able to convince me of something because that would mean I possibly learnt something. I don't even understand how or why there are two sides to what has become for most on HC a battle of attrition. Because neither side has any answers at that event horizon where natural order and science no longer function and religion tries to deliver understanding of the abstract in metaphorical terms.

Not always but very often and seldom by yourself, the olive branch is extended by either side, but the rhetoric still contains snide and derogatory remarks, loaded words. I do it myself. Fortunately both side reject me.

All I am doing with my pathetic little brain is trying to make sense of life, my life in particular. Birth, death and all that is between, and then I question, is there anything either side of this blink of a life?

If there is not then life is completely pointless. Every scrap of knowledge, goodness, the loves of my life, the accumulation of my life have been no more than a passing, meaningless flicker. It is worthy to question this, especially when personal experience suggests that there may be more to a human than it being just an animal that will come into existence and go out of existence to be completely obliterated.

Nothingness does not cause me any concern. I've been knocked out, I've been out for days after a major car accident, I've been operated on, so nothingness is good.

All I can do is appeal to your stated belief in science. That is what I am working with. I'm as rational as I can be with what I have to work with. You don't seem to appreciate the complexity from molecular to rainforest systems, the symbiotic and complete web of life connections. Time and natural order is all that is needed. Do you really believe that? Science describes a mechanistic world beautifully, what then does art and poetry, music and dance, religion and philosophy describe. I would say the human soul.

Sure, religion is a mess. It's beliefs for the most part are no better than a Grimms' Fairy Tale, but there has been plenty of dumb science as well. Fortunately science is self regulatory, religion just keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper.

Religious people make statements that can't be supported or refuted by rational evidence, and then claim victory. I have never claimed victory, least of all over myself. The evidence is hiding in plain sight. You may describe every detail of this world in mechanistic detail but that in no way takes into account the total human experience of a spiritual component. This is universal. Shall we dismiss this as what, some cultural relic from a family group in Africa 5 million years ago?

And then there is the personal experience. The otherworldly experiences that defy natural order. I think both sides have contaminated the water and have imprinted us all with baggage we can't put down.