My philosophy
(described from ontology)
This is a continuation of the description of my philosophy. Please read that first.
The Universe does not exist
I begin this discourse with a rather bold claim: the Universe does not exist.
This is not the tired argument of solipsism, that there is no way to prove that existence is not purely subjective. While I acknowledge readily the truth of our subjective perspective on reality, I am perfectly willing to accept objective realism as an axiom, and thus concede that I exist, and you exist, and the computer that I'm writing this on exists, and so on.
Yet, I still make the following claim, no less boldly than I did before: the Universe does not exist.
When I say that my computer exists, what does that actually mean? We could continue to work it out until the edge of current physics, which roughly says that the quantum fields in the region of my computer are excited in the particular way that manifests as the physical object which I call my computer.
That excitation of the quantum fields, or whichever level we would like to describe the existence of any object with, is a consequence of the rules of nature. But, those rules are the Universe. The Universe is not the stuff—my computer and the stars and the galaxies and the Earth beneath our feet—it is the laws of physics and the fabric of spacetime.
The Universe is the context in which existence is defined. One of the defining characteristics of the laws that govern reality is that some things exist and some things do not, but those laws are not a part of reality, they are reality. The Universe cannot be said to exist for the same reason as algebra is not, itself, true or false: it is the context in which things can be true or false.
When we attempt to understand the Universe by the mechanisms of reasoning that we have developed within the Universe, we are committing a logical error: we are attempting to use abstraction to apply a concept from one context in a different context, but it does not correctly apply there. The Universe does not need to exist; it is the context in which existence has meaning. Similarly, the Universe does not need to have a cause; it is the context in which causality is defined.
Isn't this just pedantry?
Of course, above, I've been using a very narrow definition of existence: physical reality. Does a mathematical theorem exist? Does a concept exist?
The reason mathematicians describe themselves as discovering theorems instead of inventing theorems is because the theorem is true regardless of whether any human being has thought about it or written it down. Through abstraction, we apply the concept of existence—a concept derived from the physical reality we occupy—to another context, mathematics. But, above, I argued that we had used abstraction incorrectly when we applied it to the Universe. Why is it fine and correct to apply this abstraction to mathematics, but not the Universe?
The answer is that mathematics itself is an invention, and is a context.
For the Universe itself, we have no context. The term “Universe” is often abused, and people talk about many universes in a multiverse, but used correctly, there is only one Universe; if we discover some greater context than the Universe as we currently understand it, then that is the Universe. Of course, you can use the term “Universe” however you wish, but my definition here will always apply to something, and that something will never have some surrounding context.
It's valid to apply ideas from one context to another context if those ideas apply, but we can say nothing about any context beyond the Universe itself. Indeed, even the word “beyond” is meaningless, as it's a concept from within the context of our Universe which we are trying to apply to the Universe itself.
Thus, the Universe does not exist, even if we accept a broad definition of “exist” which includes mathematical theorems, concepts, etc. If the Universe has some context in which to exist, then whence call it the Universe.
On profundity
If you accept my assertions above—and quite frankly, I don't care whether you do or not, as theological noncognitivism is a non-prosletyzing philosophy—then these observations have a profound impact on the very nature of knowledge and reasoning.
There will always be some context we can't peer out of. There is a horizon to knowledge, not just because of what information is available to us, but because even the reasoning by which some things are true and some things are false is contextual. It is not merely that we cannot know any facts beyond that horizon, it is that the very concept that there are facts is meaningful only within the horizon.
The Universe does not exist, but equally, the Universe does not not exist. It is not that the fact of its existence cannot be ascertained, it's that the question of its existence has no meaning, as it is the context by which things do or do not exist.
This horizon is the horizon of cognizability. Any thoughts we formulate about what is beyond it are necessarily incorrect, because thought is limited by the same horizon.
Or whence call him God
I argued above that if we find some context in which to define our Universe, then it is that context that is the Universe, and so ascribing ideas such as existence or nonexistence to the Universe itself will always be beyond the horizon of cognizability. The horizon of cognizability is not merely a horizon of what we can know, but a horizon of what it means for something to be true. Because the Universe is that context, we cannot apply the idea of truth or falsehood to the statement of the existence of the Universe.
Accepting all of that as background, it becomes immediately clear that we similarly cannot apply a truth value to the question of the existence of a god or gods. If God exists, then he is subject to existence, not master of it, and so whence call him God. If God is not subject to existence, then God neither exists nor does not exist; it is folly to attempt to ascribe specific meaning to anything beyond the horizon of cognizability.
God neither exists nor does not exist.
As a pragmatic matter, we can certainly say that Yahweh does not exist, and similarly all described gods of all religions do not exist. If it's folly to ascribe any meaning at all to anything beyond the horizon of cognizability, then it's even greater folly to anthropomorphize it. As such, as far as any member of any religion is concerned, I am certainly an atheist.
But, it is not true that God does not exist. It is not true that God does exist. These are attempts to peel back a veil which by its very existence can never be peeled back. Cognizability is not escapable, for if it were, then whatever we escape into would simply be the new cognizability, and if we find God there, then whence call him God.