Question for gnostics...

Do you know that God exists or do you only believe that God exists?

I came up with this proof of God's existence this evening for your amusement:

I know that God exists. I can't know something that isn't true; I can only believe something that isn't true. Therefore God must exist. If you say that I am lying then you must be lying, because you can't possibly know that I'm not telling the truth.

The evidence, by the way, is the proof. If God wants skeptics to know that he exists he can prove it to them himself. I know these little mind games don't amount to much...just something to wrap your mind around.

 

the flaw in your logic is that you can know something that isn't true.

 

These are the definitions I'm using.

#1. You can't directly perceive something that isn't there.

#2. If there is no doubt about its being there then it must be true.

Like I said, you can believe something that isn't true, but you can't truly know something unless that something is true.

 

There is also no doubt about the fact that it isnt there. There's no real proof either way, eventually it all comes down to what you believe

 

its like this if im in my room and i look at my wall. I think to myself "i guess there could be a goblin on the other side of that wall" i dont have proof that there is a goblin there, but i dont have proof that there isnt one either so why does that mean that there is one there?

 

The difference is that it's possible to know that a goblin isn't there, while it's impossible to know that God isn't there. It's possible to know that a goblin isn't there because it's possible that an omniscient God exists to know whether or not a goblin is there.

If you're not going to take my word for it that I know God exists...then you have to apply this same skepticism to all of reality. Therefore objective reality is obsolete, as it requires indirect experience. How do you know that the atomic weight of oxygen is 16, for instance? Because someone told you and you trust them not to lie. I'll bet you do 'know' that oxygen exists, don't you? Well I know God exists.

So what I'm saying is this: Either God exists or there is no objective reality, because I know that God exists.

 

Existence is a concept created by human beings to describe aspects of the reality we find ourselves in.

How we answer the question: "Does God exist?" has as much to do with how we define Existence as with how we define God.

 

I'm just pointing out a certain double standard that exists. Or does it? And that's exactly my point: We 'know' certain things to be universally true simply because we're told we can perceive them directly. However we have no way of knowing whether or not everyone who says they have perceived anything directly is telling the truth. Our objective reality is therefore based solely on trust, but we 'know' people lie.

I'm saying that in order to avoid a double standard you have to accept it as being true when I say that I know that God exists. This does not apply to just anything, though...only God, as God, unlike other conceptual entities, cannot possibly be falsified.

I'm basically saying that only truths are completely unfalsifiable.