Not actually. Our minds and senses are very specifically formed to detect and deal with only the relevant.
Not all things (even relevant things) are detectable by the senses. Any “logical being” (that is, any kind of things that can exist in the mind and not in reality), such as … well … logic, or the idea of negation and privation (and there’s a bunch of other stuff) … does not exist in reality and cannot be detected by the sense. Nonetheless, it has a
foundation in the reality … but certainly does not exist in reality.
Even if there was some irrelevant existence somewhere, we could never detect it nor have any constructive thoughts concerning it. The fact that we imagine things, is merely a perturbation of our effort to analyze relevant existence.
To humans, and all creatures really, existence and relevance are identical other than one indicating more significance or priority.
I would say, since we can make the distinction between relevance and existence, we shouldn’t therefore say that they are the exact same thing. Even you, as your wrote here, conceptually distinguished the two in you hypothetically said “if there was some irrelevant existence somewhere …”
Also, certain things are more or less relevant to certain people, but I would not then say that they exist more or less for certain people. The result of your thinking can end up as a kind of relativism/subjectivism.
To me, that is the technical truth of it. In ancient Greece, they would argue that principles don’t actually exist. The is an old Plato issue. But actually as long as a principle is being physically realized, the principle itself has physical actuality. Thus angels pop in and out of physical existence as they become used or not used. In the divine realm, they are always present at all times.
You seem to be getting two uses of the word “physical” confused with each other. The more modern day usage means, more or less, the equivalent of “material” or “corporeal.” However, the older use simply meant anything that had real actuality. Thus, hypothetically, an angel, whether he intervenes in the material universe or not, has physical existence (as long as God has given him existence).
But I did NOT say that God is not spirit. As I just explained, the divine things become physical things when and only when they are manifest in the physical world. But when is God NOT manifest in the physical world? - Never.
I agree that God is constantly acting in the material universe (by the doctrine of conservation). However, I would not say that God (in his divine essence) is physical, in the sense of being corporeal (except only with the Incarnation, of course). God is certainly physical in the sense of actually existing, and he has this kind of physical existence independent of the material universe and whether we were created or not, etc. The universe didn’t have to exist, but that doesn’t change the fact that God would exist nonetheless.
) you sound? What “things” did you have to accomplish, and how did atheism get in the way?
