[Go back]
Author's note: writing this shit at 2AM because God forbid I get to have a normal sleeping schedule -w-
The existence or inexistence of the divine has been and still is a very controversial topic of debate. And I do understand why; despite what the apatheists might say, the possible existence of divinity is an extremely trascendental variable, one which, depending on what is assumed, can shift one's entire philosophical principles and notions of morality.
But the complexity of philosophy regarding the divine is not the topic I am going to cover in this text, but rather a specific and smaller area: can it be determined if the divine exists?
The theists will state "yes", and then go on through convoluted arguments and mental experiments to prove how the divine does exist, and it has a form that supports their chosen religion or belief system. But it almost always fails to concretely prove the existence of the divine, since it relies on abstract objects, not on physical proof. And, when they do attempt to make use of proof, it's never verifiable or genuinely supportive of their assertions.
The atheists will state "no", and then point out inconsistencies in the theists belief systems. The most classic example of this, is finding logical holes in the Bible- and occasionally some other "divinely inspired" manuscripts. Atheists will often present effective arguments which disprove specific assertions made by theists, and, by extension, disproving their belief systems.
However, the one thing the atheists fail at, is disproving divinity as a whole: they do succeed in "proving" certain divinities are not logical, but they can never present evidence that supports the assertion that [no divinity exists].
As previously observed, these two groups have one thing in common: they fail at defining [divinity's existence/inexistence]. None of them can provide effective proof that defines whether divinity exists or not, and, I believe that is essentially impossible to do so given our current technology.
The nature of the divine is inherently beyond the notions of physical reality, it is by definition something that exists outside of our framework of understanding reality. For example, God, as described by the Bible, is an entity which is "of Spirit", and was only "of the Flesh" for a limited period of time, as Joshua/Jesus: if the nature of God is to be taken literally, then He is not a physical being, and as of currently, we do not have any way of observing or measuring things which are not physical. Objectively, we do not even have a way proving that something can be [real] while also [not physical]. So it is logical to conclude that, researching God is way beyond our league.
The way things are right now, the situation could be expressed as such: imagine a box placed upside-down, which you are not allowed to interact with in any way other than basic observation. Now, determine whether there is a spider inside of it or not.
Effectively- you can't: you cannot determine the existence of the spider in any way, without looking inside of the box. In the same way we cannot determine the existence of the divine without ripping through the fabric of reality and staring into the void, to check if divinity stares back.