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I have no idea what tag to add. I never believed in God. I went to Church for the fun of it but was also confused. However, I did my own abstract thinking and believe that the ideas I'm conceiving of might be similar to what Christanity is teaching formed independently.

I know there are proof systems of pure number theory where induction is not a meaningful statement but rather a rule of inference. The proof system has no statements about subsets of natural numbers such as the statement that for every subset of the natural numbers that contains 0 and contains the successor of every natural number it contains, contains all natural numbers. Rather, its deductive rules once you show that 0 has a specific property the system can describe and you show that for every natural number that has that property, its successor has that property lets you deduce that all natural numbers have that property. I think that similarly, we could define God as the idea of seeing everything through the method of thinking you have right then. Then God would be a rule of inference rather than a theory to think in. My question is

Can God be defined as the idea of seeing everything through the method of thinking right then?

I literally want just a yes or a no as the answer and don't need an explanation. Otherwise, nobody is going to know how to answer the question in a way I can understand. There's no point asking a question if they can't provide an answer that will satisfy me.

Update: right after writing what I just wrote before this, I read the review. However, as somebody who found what they were actually saying at Church far too confusing and took in almost none of it and never bothered to do my own study of it, I could not tell at all for any of the questions that popped up in the review by reading the title of the question whether it would be a similar question to this or not.

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  • In Christianity, the parts of our body-soul composite that do the thinking (i.e. both the "intellect" and the "reason" faculties; they are distinct !) have their powers given to us by God who is completely outside His creation (transcendent), although He also inserts Himself within the universe of what the "intellect" can grasp, thereby enabling humans to know Him from: 1) Scriptures, 2) Jesus Christ, 3). Conscience, 4) Intellect (via analogy of being and creation), 5) Special impression / appearance / communication, 6) A few other channels. Apr 28, 2021 at 1:33
  • As a consequence, there are parts of God that we cannot know, since 1) He doesn't reveal the whole of Himself to us and 2) He is not completely within that universe of thought. As a result, we cannot define God completely, although we are not completely in the dark either. THUS, the method to know him must necessarily via the method He provides to us, namely the channels enumerated above. Apr 28, 2021 at 1:33
  • God cannot be defined that way because 1) God cannot be confined to human ideas or methods, and 2) God is not a linear static heuristic like recursive inductive inferences are. The doctrine of Divine Simplicity may seem to lead to this idea, but in fact there is a substantial difference in the way God is in himself, and the way that we conceive of him. (Not sure why your question was closed.)
    – zippy2006
    May 1, 2021 at 14:48
  • @zippy2006 According to math.stackexchange.com/questions/1839913/…, the axiom of choice is not provable. Assuming you have a sequence of nonempty sets that has no choice function, you may be able to conceive of an object playing the role of an object from the first set and pretend it is one of them and then do the same for the second and then for the third and keep going for ever with that process theoretically if your natural mind was headed the right way and you lived for ever. However, as a being who only
    – Timothy
    May 5, 2021 at 19:59
  • exists in finite ordinal times, you will not be able to actually keep going for ever in conceiving of one specifically. Are you saying having a feel for the true nature of God is like keeping on going for ever in conceiving of an object specifically from the first set and then the second and then the third and so on and thus impossible?
    – Timothy
    May 5, 2021 at 20:04

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Can God be defined? No, is the simple answer. Not by anything you (or I) might think of anyway.

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