u/ExplorerR

This might be somewhat Wittgensteinian but I assure you it's my own thoughts.

A concern that "God exists" arguments can begin to resemble claims about conceptual or abstract existence more than claims about actual existence in the ordinary sense, is a very real concern.

Normally, we distinguish between:

• Things that exist as concepts, abstractions, or objects of thought

and

• Things that exist independently of thought as actual things a part of this reality.

What allows us to make this distinction is usually some combination of causal interaction, empirical/temporal accessibility, explanatory indispensability, or the ability for a thing to constrain experience independently of our conception of it.

However, many apologetic arguments (especially Abrahamic ones) conclude with a God whose existence is said to be:

• Outside space and time,
• Non-material,
• Non-contingent,
• Inaccessible to ordinary empirical investigation.

At that point, the distinction between:

• God exists as an actual being

and

• God exists as a concept or abstract being

Becomes philosophically unclear, because the ordinary criteria by which we separate actual existence from conceptual/abstract existence no longer seem applicable.

This does not prove that God is merely conceptual or that the assertion is that God must be empirically/scientifically accessible. Rather, it raises the question of what modes/methods remain for distinguishing existential claims of actuality from claims about abstract or conceptual entities.

To me things look very similar to a Motte-and-Bailey styled presentation of "exist" at the end of arguments for God. Where the most of common understanding of "exist" is assumed, but when pressed on clarification on this existence, it gets swapped out for a different type of "exist" that doesn't share those same properties and is arguably indistinguishable from abstraction and purely conceptual. Hence the equivocation.

In other words:

To avoid equivocation; If a purportedly actual being lacks the features that ordinarily differentiate actuality from abstraction, then additional justification seems necessary to explain in what sense the being is said to "actually exist" rather than merely conceptually.

Where I can play graphic intensive games like Hell Let Loose on high graphics and it runs fine. It used to be mangeable, but since this latest update. Whenever I look into the distance, my frames just crash. Surely, a game with graphics like this, shouldn't be tressing a modern gaming PC?

I want to clarify that I’m referring to actual existence as opposed to something being purely hypothetical, fictional, or conceptual.

It seems that our concept of something "existing" is formed through our human experience of reality. In practice, we treat something as existing when it has features like being temporally located, contingent, or in principle observable or interactable. These features appear to be tied to the kind of world we inhabit and the way we have come to understand it.

However, many philosophical arguments for God’s existence conclude that God exists while also attributing properties such as being non-contingent, atemporal, immaterial or outside causal interaction which are features that differ significantly from those that seem to ground our ordinary concept of existence.

For comparison, when we say something like “a narwhal exists,” we rely on well-established ways of demonstrating existence (e.g., observation, physical evidence and it obviously being temporal etc.).

This raises an issue: if to “exist” is brought about and grounded in a human understanding of the reality we are in, namely something in a reality that is combination of contingent, temporal and material. Then how to avoid equivocation when using the term "exist" when arguing for God's existence?