Can God exist outside my mind?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gloria1
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
G

Gloria1

Guest
Please what do you think?..Every idea originates from the mind and since God is first in all things, He cannot exist outside the mind. He is the source of all things.
 
The mind generates ideas, it is how we know things. But, to paraphrase Aquinas, nothing gets to the mind except through the senses. The senses perceive reality–what is “out there”–and brings it into the sensory system. The mind takes that sense data and generates ideas from it. That’s how we know reality.

God is the source of all things, as you said. But the mind does not generate God. If God were only an idea in our mind, he would have a mental but not a real, existence. Furthermore, he would not be God, since our minds are by nature limited, and can only generate limited ideas.

The purpose of our mind is to recognize reality, not to create it.
 
Gloria1 said:
Please what do you think?..Every idea originates from the mind and since God is first in all things, He cannot exist outside the mind. He is the source of all things.
Click to expand...
Who made your mind?

ficino
 
Conversely, if the human mind is the source of reality how does one know reality from illusion?

CDL
 
Gloria1 said:
Please what do you think?..Every idea originates from the mind and since God is first in all things, He cannot exist outside the mind. He is the source of all things.
Click to expand...

The mind is a very big place.​

That said, God is not
  • a member of a series
  • localised
  • one thing among other things
    God is transcendent. FWIW, it may be slightly less inadequate to say something like, things are:
  • present to God
  • “in” God
    But all human speech is necessarily inadequate, because it uses created things as for speaking about the Unique & Incomparable God.
 
God isn’t just an idea of yours any more than I am. God is an independent entity as I am. We both very much exist outside your mind.
 
Gloria1 said:
Please what do you think?..Every idea originates from the mind and since God is first in all things, He cannot exist outside the mind. He is the source of all things.
Click to expand...
If God does not exist outside your own mind then you created yourself, and everything you see, touch, feel and experience you created yourself. neat trick. care to explain how you managed it?
 
puzzleannie said:
If God does not exist outside your own mind then you created yourself, and everything you see, touch, feel and experience you created yourself. neat trick. care to explain how you managed it?
Click to expand...
Perhaps one who does that is a Solipsist.

CDK
 
Gloria1 said:
Please what do you think?..Every idea originates from the mind and since God is first in all things, He cannot exist outside the mind. He is the source of all things.
Click to expand...
Doesn’t knowing that Jesus lived on earth, died on earth, rose from the dead and walked the earth again, prove that God exists outside your mind?
 
Gloria1 said:
Please what do you think?..Every idea originates from the mind and since God is first in all things, He cannot exist outside the mind. He is the source of all things.
Click to expand...
I think you need to distinguish between the “idea of God” and God himself.
 
because of the simple fact that your mind can think of a being so far beyond our minds and reality is actually a form of proof of that being outside of ourselves.

example: i cannot concieve of anything that isn’t based in reality and my experience or a combination of those things. but i can concieve of a completely powerful, eternal, illogical (to rational thought) being. therefore, that being must exist. unicorns don’t exist. but horses and horns do and all i’ve done is combine two things i am familiar with. if i can conceive of a God, He must exist.
 
GregoryPalamas said:
Perhaps one who does that is a Solipsist.

CDK
Click to expand...
I have no idea of the meaning of that word, but it sounds like onomotapaeia for what I described. Somebody with that sloppy thinking would be described very well by that sloppy word.
 
Can anything exist within the mind?

Everything and that means every physical thing there is including ourselves exists and operates outside of our minds.

Our mind is not the tissue of the brain but the most complex and wonderful sense of self that can be experienced. We, the things surrounding us and God are most certainly are in some form of existence outside of the mind.

Perhaps the question to consider is “do you believe God to exist within your mind with you?”
 
I guess my link to the short story about a solipsist did not help. A solipsist believes that everything that exists is simply a construct of ones thought. There are very serious limits to such.

Read the linked story again.

CDL
 
Gloria1 said:
Please what do you think?..Every idea originates from the mind and since God is first in all things, He cannot exist outside the mind. He is the source of all things.
Click to expand...
If God is the source of all things, then He is the source of your mind and is therefore outside of your mind. Start with an outside-in construct and it’s easy. You would have answered your own question if you would have started from the end of your post and went backwards 🙂

Peace…

MW
 
JimG said:
The mind generates ideas, it is how we know things. But, to paraphrase Aquinas, nothing gets to the mind except through the senses. The senses perceive reality–what is “out there”–and brings it into the sensory system. The mind takes that sense data and generates ideas from it. That’s how we know reality.

God is the source of all things, as you said. But the mind does not generate God. If God were only an idea in our mind, he would have a mental but not a real, existence. Furthermore, he would not be God, since our minds are by nature limited, and can only generate limited ideas.

The purpose of our mind is to recognize reality, not to create it.
Click to expand...
Interesting, but this leads me to some questions. Where then, was God when I was an infant? Where was He before I learned the “I” concept and started to think of myself as a separate individual? Where was He before I learned the word “God?”

Where is God in our sleep, when our mind is not active?

And finally, what is so real about the senses? Isn’t everything we perceive merely an electrical signal interpreted by our brain? What’s real about that?

Thanks,
Mike
 
mike7795 said:
Interesting, but this leads me to some questions. Where then, was God when I was an infant? Where was He before I learned the “I” concept and started to think of myself as a separate individual? Where was He before I learned the word “God?”

Where is God in our sleep, when our mind is not active?

And finally, what is so real about the senses? Isn’t everything we perceive merely an electrical signal interpreted by our brain? What’s real about that?

Thanks,
Mike
Click to expand...
The senses are how the outside world gets into the mind. Philosophy calls the process abstraction. [Materialists don’t believe in abstraction but think that the mind is an epiphenomenon of brain activity.] An infant, as a human being, has an intellect and will (non-material), which, however, must rely on the development of the senses and the brain to be put to full use. So the outside world, including God, is still ‘out there’ whether you are internally aware of it or not.

Everything we perceive starts out in the senses, and ends up physically, as a electrical signal integrated in the brain, and in my view, abstracted by the mind.

Interestingly, traditional Thomistic philosophy would call all this (name removed by moderator)ut ‘accidents.’ We don’t really get the outside world itself into our mind, only it’s accidents or appearances. But the appearances are designed to match the reality, except in the case of transubstantiation, where God changes the object but leaves the appearances in place.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top