Thread 942001532

What is God? What is real? What could be real? What can't be real? What are the limits of what can be known? What are the limits of what can be believed? What are the limits of language, thought and experience? Why?

1. Is God real?

That depends on what you mean by “real” and by “God.”
If real means causally efficacious, ontologically fundamental, or experientially undeniable, then God might be:

Real as ground: the ultimate reality or being-itself (Aquinas, Tillich).

Real as consciousness: the total field of awareness (Advaita, panentheism).

Real as relation: the love binding everything together (Christian mysticism).

Real as ideal: the highest possible good or organizing principle of meaning (Plato, Kant).

If God is taken as a being among beings, that concept tends to collapse under scrutiny — infinite and finite cannot coexist on the same ontological plane. But if God is that from which all reality arises and toward which all meaning converges, then “real” and “God” may be two names for the same thing.

2. What is God?

At minimum, God can be understood as:

The Absolute: that which is self-existent and necessary.

The Infinite: that which has no bounds.

The Source: that from which all things emanate.

The Unity: that in which all opposites are reconciled.

The Mystery: that which infinitely exceeds comprehension.

In human terms, “God” is also a mirror of our highest intuitions — love, beauty, truth, being, and justice. But if God is truly infinite, every conception of God must be both true (as a partial reflection) and false (as a limit).

3. What is real?

Reality may be defined in three major ways:

Empirical realism: what persists independently of our perception.

Phenomenal realism: what appears in experience and cannot be denied within it.

Ontological realism: what exists in itself, regardless of form or appearance.

Each perspective reveals a layer:

Matter (what is experienced),

Mind (what experiences),

Mystery (that which makes both possible).

4. What could be real?

Anything that does not entail a logical contradiction and could exist within some coherent world-structure. Reality may include:

The physical (space, time, energy).

The mental (ideas, values, emotions).

The spiritual (consciousness, meaning, being).

If consciousness is fundamental, even dreamlike or divine realities could be “real” in their own domains — modes of the same underlying being.

5. What can’t be real?

Contradictions (a square circle).

Pure nothingness (because even “nothing” must be thought of as something).

Absolute isolation (because definition requires relation).

Reality, whatever it is, seems to be self-consistent, relational, and self-revealing.

6. What are the limits of what can be known?

Knowledge is bounded by:

Cognition (finite minds cannot grasp infinity directly).

Perspective (every view is from somewhere).

Language (concepts carve up the undivided whole).

Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, quantum uncertainty, and phenomenological finitude all point to the same truth: we can know that we cannot know everything.

7. What are the limits of what can be believed?

Belief stretches beyond knowledge, but it too has boundaries:

Logical coherence: belief that violates reason collapses under reflection.

Existential viability: beliefs that cannot be lived lead to despair or contradiction.

Communal resonance: beliefs gain strength when they harmonize with shared meaning.

Yet belief also opens the gate to what reason alone cannot reach — hope, trust, purpose, and awe.

8. What are the limits of language, thought, and experience?

Language fractures the seamless flow of reality into symbols — powerful, but partial.

Thought models the world but cannot contain it.

Experience reveals but cannot explain its own foundation.

The limits arise because all three are expressions of finitude within an infinite context. The very act of awareness points beyond itself — to that which awareness can never fully encompass.

9. Why?

Because the infinite can only manifest finitely.
Every mode of knowing, believing, and experiencing is a local pattern in an unbounded field. The limits themselves make meaning possible: without boundaries, nothing could appear, be known, or loved.
And yet, within those limits, consciousness seems to long for the infinite — as if the finite were the universe’s way of remembering its own boundless source.

Your fortune: Very Bad Luck

What a useless topic of discussion. You are not profound.

>>942001532 (OP)
if God is real, it's not a monkey. so you can stop praying, because it's not listening.

>>942003341
Maybe to you it seems useless, but the questions we ask shape the world we live in. Every discovery, every philosophy, every moral framework began with someone refusing to dismiss a question as pointless.

If wondering about reality, God, truth, and meaning isn’t profound to you, that’s fine — but for many of us, it’s the most essential conversation there is. The value of a topic doesn’t come from who starts it, but from what it invites us to explore.

Sometimes the difference between cynicism and wisdom is just the willingness to stay with a question long enough to see why it matters.

>>942003404
prove it

>>942001532 (OP)
how can mirrors be real if eyes aren't real?

>>942004208
wtf lol

>>942004748
newfag

Bump

>>942003404
In some people’s reality Hid is a monkey that is listening, in others he or it may be a 50ft 3 headed unicorn that grants wishes.

God would have to be the ultimate source of everything by definition. Something obviously came from somewhere or something because it's here. So whatever spurred the beginning of everything must exist and whatever it is, is logically God. Another way to look at it is that the universe and everything in it exists as a pattern of smaller patterns, or a chain of relationships that allow for other relationships to emerge in any significant way. For example: gravity cannot impact anything in a significant way until something is big enough to be effected, which requires electromagnetism so that quantum stuff can clump together, which requires the strong and weak forces because otherwise there wouldn't be any particles to pair in the first place. By this logic there should be one ultimate sort of relationship allowing for any of it to happen, or at the very least a natural relationship that is most relevant to your existence. So, yes there is a God. Personally, I think the point of life is to make your consciousness or "soul" stable enough for it to continue existing after the body is no longer able to support it, and that what one experiences after that is a higher state of consciousness where things are not impermanent or vague. Everything there simply IS in a sense that seems magical from the perspective of life on this plane. I think those other planes one can experience after death based on how they structured themselves in life are what dark matter actually is. Just every other layer of reality we are not yet adapted to interact with, all layered on top of one another.

>>942008616
It's also worth noting that dark matter is linked to the expansion of the space between space in a way. So, maybe when there's no more room in Hell, Hell just gets bigger.

>>942008616
>by definition
Who's definition?

Go sit the fuck down.

>>942008747
God
1. (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.

That's Oxford's definition. What's yours?

Maybe you're the spark I've been waiting for tonight.
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