Whatever God is, the fact that the universe exists proves that God exists.
If only that was so - we wouldn't have 400+ pages in this thread.
We have no evidence of anything that can make the complexity and size of the universe. Whatever could do the making, would fit the general description and definition of God. If it didn't, it wouldn't be able to make something like the universe with all its "furnishings."
''We have no evidence of anything that can make the complexity and size of the universe.'' You are right badecker we don't, why do you claim you do then?
As you say, we don't have evidence of any thing that can make the complexity of the universe. That leaves room for God, only. God, not being a thing, or anything, has made the universe.
What proof do we have for empty space, which is essentially nothing at all? Does it really exist? Yes. We can tell that "nothing" exists by measuring the things that DO exist, and their relationships. In a similar way, even though we cannot directly "lay hands on God" to "measure" Him and prove Him thereby, we can prove He exists by measuring the complexity of the universe, especially with regard to cause and effect.
If we don't have evidence for what can make the universe then we don't.
If doesn't have anything to do with proof. Why bring it up?
You can't say we don't have evidence for what created the universe therefore god did it, do you not see how that makes no sense?
I used the example of "nothing," which is in the universe. Because you want to be deceptive, you ignored my example. We can easily say that we don't have an example of what created the universe
within the universe.I don't know who created this chair therefore my father did.
Since your real father is God, and since the material of the chair, AND, the cause and effect of the forming of it came from God, your father created the chair.
It leaves room to anything because we don't know what it was, you don't know if a being aware of himself made the universe or if is just another process that happened because outside our universe there are more universes or whatever, we can hypothesize as much as we want but there is no evidence for any of it.
That's not entirely correct. Because intelligence, self-awareness, emotion, thought, and all the "things" that we understand in the universe DO exist, God has these attributes within Himself. If He didn't, these things wouldn't exist. We have found nothing in the countless operations of the universe that arises spontaneously. Therefore these do not arise spontaneously either. They have a maker.
We can't call universes that exist outside our universe "universes," because they are so extremely different than our universe that we don't really know what they are. If they were like our universe, they would essentially be part of our universe, and they wouldn't be separate universes. We call them universes in an entirely abstract way, because we don't know that they exist, because "exist" might only be for our universe.
We don't have any evidence of an outside "universe" having anything to do with our universe. But if it was an outside universe that made our universe, then that outside universe is God, and maintains within Himself/Itself all the greatness that we have in our universe, but in far greater abundance, as evidenced by cause and effect and complexity.
Now, let's stick with the topic: the proof for or against God's existence.