The Fundamental Question: why does anything at all exist?

[Loki]

The only real answer to your question is in religions. That God created everything.

Actually that doesn't answer the question, only delays/postpones it ... until it dawns on you: "Who created God then?".

That is the point. If "God" could have existed without the need of another god creating him, then the universe could just as well have existed without the need of a god creating it.

[Lutiferre]

Actually that doesn't answer the question, only delays/postpones it ... until it dawns on you: "Who created God then?".

God, if he exists, would exactly be timeless, and hence, there would be no beginning of God, since he is not temporally confined.

On the other hand, we know the universe has temporal (as well as spatial) finity and is temporal in nature (four dimensional), which is generally accepted by Big Bang cosmology.

That is the point. If "God" could have existed without the need of another god creating him, then the universe could just as well have existed without the need of a god creating it.

Not exactly, no. The universe is not ontologically (or modally) equivalent to a posited God, and hence, the universe warrants a different ontological explanation than a God who transcends space and time and causality and the quantum vacuum and so on.

But you are right that if God existed, it would not be an explanation of the question "why anything exists rather than nothing". It would be just as puzzling.

Which is why many believe, strictly speaking, nothing exists.

[Lutiferre]

Every little thing exists for a reason, but when you think about existence in everything as one big concept, it is a waste. It's useless!

You are invoking really, the distinction between particulars and universals, or something like it.

But that any particular should exist at all, is itself the question we posite; only by extension and inference do we ask about why existence is the case. Though we could also simply ask it from the phenomenological fact of being, before we even reach the knowledge of particulars in knowing.

[Psychonaut]

Not exactly, no. The universe is not ontologically (or modally) equivalent to a posited God, and hence, the universe warrants a different ontological explanation than a God who transcends space and time and causality and the quantum vacuum and so on.

That depends entirely on how you define "God." Spinoza and his ilk would disagree with you here.

[Lutiferre]

That depends entirely on how you define "God." Spinoza and his ilk would disagree with you here.

Of course!

You can simply define "God" as the universe or "everything", in a monist or pantheist fashion. If you want, you can define God as anything, even your own self.

But I was addressing.. a transcendent God who is independent of the universe, or roughly speaking, the God of via negativa rather than the positive notion of God as the universe.

[Loxias]

Of course!

You can simply define "God" as the universe or "everything", in a monist or pantheist fashion. If you want, you can define God as anything, even your own self.

But I was addressing.. a transcendent God who is independent of the universe, or roughly speaking, the God of via negativa rather than the positive notion of God as the universe.

How to do that and avoid falling into gnosticism?

[Lutiferre]

How to do that and avoid falling into gnosticism?

What do you mean? How to do what? Define God as the universe, or as transcendent to the universe?

[Loxias]

What do you mean? How to do what? Define God as the universe, or as transcendent to the universe?

Well, I have a hard time finding a middle ground between monist views and dualist views. Even with a panentheistic God, transcending through the universe, isn't that still a very gnostic pov?

[Psychonaut]

Of course!

You can simply define "God" as the universe or "everything", in a monist or pantheist fashion. If you want, you can define God as anything, even your own self.

But I was addressing.. a transcendent God who is independent of the universe, or roughly speaking, the God of via negativa rather than the positive notion of God as the universe.

I just think it's worth mentioning in a generalized discussion of a point within the domain of Philosophy of Religion, since something like 1/3 of the world population of religious folk (Indians) hover around the Monist (or some kind of Panentheist position, depending on the particular school of Hindu thought) position.

[Lutiferre]

I just think it's worth mentioning in a generalized discussion of a point within the domain of Philosophy of Religion, since something like 1/3 of the world population of religious folk (Indians) hover around the Monist (or some kind of Panentheist position, depending on the particular school of Hindu thought) position.

Sure. But I was responding to Loki, who was (as it seemed to me) addressing the notion of God as transcendent creator.

But you are right that there are other religious views than just the view of God as creator.

But I don't believe any of them help resolving why something exists rather than nothing, especially not traditional monism.

Only a nihilist monist view of the universe/multiverse has any prospect of making sense of existence, e.g. the idea that nothing (or mathematically, zero) is ontologically or logically equivalent to everything.

Well, I have a hard time finding a middle ground between monist views and dualist views. Even with a panentheistic God, transcending through the universe, isn't that still a very gnostic pov?

I never said I advocated monism or even theism for that matter, in that post; I just said you could define the word "God" as anything you want.

But God is seen as both immanent and transcendent in Christianity, for that matter, in that the universe is itself a participation of Gods actuality, just not in a pure form, or a replication.