Jorge asked:

God does exist?

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In Western culture there are two ideas of God: that derived from Judeo-Christian thinking and that
derived from Greek philosophy.

The view derived from Greek philosophy has to be some kind of metaphysical postulate, like
Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, or Plato's Good; Spinoza's substance or Hegel's Geist. Karl Jaspers has
called the so-called God of the philosophers, "the unconditional imperative". It is not an object of
knowledge. We infer the unconditional imperative from our natural world with our natural reason.
Historically, the greatest philosophers have been those whose thought has brought to light, by way of
pure presupposition, an idea of the unconditional imperative which has hitherto been unthought.

The Judeo-Christian God is a God who is known through Revelation. This is the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. This is the God we tend to wonder about the existence of, not the God of the
philosophers.

I think of it like this: everyone, whoever they are, kneels before something, whether it be money,
fame, knowledge, power, another person. I mean kneel in a metaphorical sense. Our God is that
before which we kneel, because kneeling means offering ourselves, veneration of the other, worship.
What we worship is God. So in a sense, there is always a God before each one of us, whether we like
it or not.

In this context we might like to reconsider the ontological argument put forward by Augustine in the
fifth century, but reformulated in scholastic manner by Anselm in the eleventh, then refuted by Kant
but revived by Hegel. Anselm said, God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. If we
can conceive something greater, then it is not God we are thinking of, but an idol of our own
imagining. This is a way of saying that God is neither conceivable nor inconceivable. Not conceivable
because we can always think of something greater eg. 'greater than the greatest'. Not inconceivable
because the idea of that than which nothing greater can be conceived always lies before our mind's
eye like a horizon line beyond which we can't see. But if we simply say 'there is nothing beyond that
horizon' we can think of something greater: a horizon beyond which there is something (even though
inconceivable as to what). If you can think this, you are not thinking of God, but your thought is
directed toward an ultimate horizon beyond which something is.

— Given this, hopefully you will be able to draw your own conclusions.

Matthew Del Nevo
www.sicetnon.com