But it might be, if God allowed it.

In other words, if God wanted it, it would be logically clear.

One simple deduction of the existence of God can be achieved by removing an assumption from the question. The assumption is that "God" refers to the god of Abraham. If we do not make that assumption we can use this definition of god; the object of worship. Under that definition the only thing needed to prove the existence of any god is the existence of its worshippers. If people worship a god, then it exists as the object of that worship.

That is one way of looking at it. But the argument does not, I think, prove the actual (or real" existence of god, but only the existence of something-worshipped.
Putting it in another way, if no one worshipped god, then god would not exist, under this definition. In fact, the argument seems to prove the opposite, that god does not exist.
I am reminded of the words of Nietzsche's madman in the marketplace: don't these people realise that God is dead? We have killed him.
Zarathustra

The urgument does not prove that god doesn't exist, it merely points out that gods can exist as institutions. And that the question is inherently judeo-christian biased. Logically speaking, if we begin with the biblical paradigm, then it can be used in the urgument. For instance, it can be ascertained historically that a man lived who we now call Jesus. If Jesus is God (as the paradigm goes), then that proves the existence of God! Of course Jesus would also qualify as a "god" because he has worshippers. Likewise with Buddha, whose existence is attested to historically.

It may very well be that Jesus or the Buddha were actual historical figures. At the same time, though, neither of these left any writings directly attributable to them, and we are left with "eye-witness accounts" that may or may not correctly reflect their own views of who they were.

"If Jesus is God (as the paradigm goes), then that proves the existence of God!"
Both of their historical existences, then, is objective. But as you correctly point out, their deity is subjective and only valid from within the perspective/paradigm of the religion that grew around them. It would be completely reasonable, for an example, for someone to say that Jesus was an actual person, that there are contemporary accounts of him, but that he was not god. I think this is somewhat, as I understand it, the general position of the Jewish faith and the followers of Mohamed.
So we seem to remain in a confused and unsettled position about the truth of the premiss "If Jesus is God." Or "if the Buddha is God," for this depends on prior assumptions from within a particular system of religious faith, and these are unproven.
Z

We all recognize that "God" refers to Yahweh(the father, I AM, lord of hosts, etc.), not Vishnu or Zues. The orthodox Christian view is that the trinity are all one God, so there are three ways to try to prove God's existence. But that is precisely the difficulty with the question that you now seem to understand. We begin with someone's concept of God and then try to prove it. If we go with the Jewish "paradim", we could say God proved himself when he brought plagues upon Egypt. So somebody's concept of God may well depend upon their version of history (although I don't recall there being a different version to the Exodus story written by Egyptians, but who knows maybe there's version where Amen-Ra kicks the Jews out to racially cleanse Egypt).

I certainly agree with you about the concept of godhood being historically conditioned, and that is accounts for the many differing ideas about the nature of god. But doesn't this suggest that god's existence is on the same veridical level with the concept of a gryphen, that is, the existence of the object is purely linguistic?
And are we not talking about a different kind of existence here?
Z

If you want a satisfactory answer to the question the terms "God" and "existence" must be defined. As the question stands it is highly semantical (for instance, how could something not exist if we are discussing it? Is an idea a "thing" that exists?), and relies upon the common respondant to have a culture which defines "God" in the same way as the questioner.

"Truth begins with two."

You cannot have a private language.

Perhaps the confusion results from taking two different assertions:
Assertion 1. The idea (of) God exists, and this existent is dependent on man.
Assertion 2. God exists actually, and this existence is independent of man.

Bracketing for a moment any sort of definition of god and using that word in a everyday sense, if we consider the two different uses of "existence" then I am suggesting that Assertion2 cannot be proven by deduction.

Z

I understand your position, Z. Maybe you are right. As a person who went through agnosticism and atheism and arrived at Christianity, I believe that God is provable, but perhaps science or mathematics has not evolved to that point yet. So I have hopes for holo thoery or other unified field theories to eventually prove God. I wouldn't count God out as long as we cannot scientifically determine how the universe is put togehther (i.e., until we get a proven unified theory) Until then maybe this issue is in stalemate.

Individual perception and belief is individual reality. I perceive God exists. I believe God exists. Therefore, God exists.

Note of clarification: all of the quoted text in the above post (post #27) seems to be attributed to Zarathustra, while in fact only the first paragraph was written by him.

Z

Zarathrusta - my apologies for the quote layout - I messed up the "quote extract" bit and the whole thing was put out as a quote - you are perfectly correct, the first para only is yours - the rest is mine.. I'm still trying to over come an ingrained computer twit affliction!

Sometimes one's fingers and one's mind don't talk to one another, so don't worry about an honest mistake, Quiet Mike. I was not sure, but I thought that the other two paragraphs were probably your own thoughts, and I certainly could have written the last paragraph myself.

The existence of palpable evil in the world seems to present difficulties to anyone arguing for the existence of God. Either his existence involves allowing attributes which one does not want to apply to what-a-god-does/ or God's existence is completely and totally divorced from the universe in which case whether God exists or not is a "useless hypothesis."
The "third way" allowing the existence of evil as part of God's "plan" or of God's "testing" humanity, involving a tortuous and highly tenuous series of arguments, seems unsatisfactory because it relies primarily on textual interpretations and an anthropomorphic conception of the nature of God.

Regards,
Z