This is going to be a bit of a complex node, so those of you who haven't done any philosophy or mathematics may find this a little difficult to follow. For that I apologise, and I will try to couch everything in ordinary english language to make things easier. Please re-read this node a few times before you make up your mind over it, as the idea while strange at first does tend to grow on you. It did with me.

Enough faffing about, lets begin. The major reason why we cannot prove the existence of God is that the definition of God Himself makes it very difficult. In order to Prove that God exists, we need to Prove that there is something involved in the universe that is Infinitely (Wise/Powerful/All Knowing/Compassionate) etc, and seeing as we have no idea what these actually mean ( we are limited beings after all, and infinite compassion, and power are outside of our experience) we have no frame of reference in which to judge the existence of such a being. Even if we did, could we? Imagine a fruit fly trying to decide whether the parlimentary democracy or free-form post-nihilism is the best type of government. It is impossible, the tools are simply not there. The fruit fly's conception will never be up to the task of judging until it has evolved way past the stage of being a fruit fly. But even so, if we increase the size of the being doing the judging, the argument still holds, as they approach the size of the known universe (in understanding and skill) to the point that they are the most knowledgable being in the universe, they will still be unequipped with the Infinite attributes set out above for the simple reason that the Universe is their context and they have no knowledge of anything else, just conjecture. Seeing as all that is in the universe can be taken as a pattern, then God cannot be a pattern.

Phew! That was hard. Now comes the harder bit. Where do we go from here? All the atheists reading this node will be jumping up and down with glee, but I wouldn't be too happy yet. As if this is true is has rather profound implications for atheism, and agnosticism in general.

If we look at the universe again, and more specifically our own experiences we find that patterns are not the only things that exist here. The universe is a dichotomy of pattern and awareness. Put simply awareness perceives pattern. This includes the things we see, hear, touch, and think. After all, if you can observe your thoughts you are not them, are you? Anyway, what if God is awareness, all awareness everywhere, including that which is in you, and I and the rest of humanity? Or the world? That would explain the infinity of All gods resources, it would explain the universe, as God is aware of it, and parts of it (ie us) can be aware of him. It explains why God is all powerful, because the universe is in God's mind, and so he can alter it at will, and it explains almost every other attribute we assign to Him.

Some good points here, but I feel I must comment on the last paragraph. As a materialist, I would state that there is only one level of reality: the complex pattern of matter and energy that we call the physical universe.

When you state that awareness perceives pattern, you are (I assume) postulating a second, perhaps 'higher' reality; the universe of awareness. But this is a dualist position, and I do believe that is considered an undefendable, or at least incredibly dodgy, one by most sane philosophers.

I think your argument is flawed. Yes, we can perceive our own thoughts, but that doesn't lead to any contradiction. We simply have a thought pattern at a higher level that is concious of (i.e. models) the lower level thought pattern. (Overeducated people at this point may be seeing shades of Bertrand Russell. Yes, his formalism was incomplete, but nobody said our minds could solve the halting problem...)

I hope that doesn't go over everybody's heads. I would suggest reading Godel, Escher, Bach to all those who are confused but interested.

But to get back on-topic: it is perfectly possible to think of God as pattern (see pantheism for an interesting position on this), so long as you simply discard the notion of an infinite God. I mean, who said God was infinite in the first place?

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