Let's try things from another approach.
Dustin, you say you are an evangelical Christian now. Evangelical Christians are characterized by a conservative view of Christianity, and a belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, in particular, of the Gospels and N.T., and in general, of the Bible as a whole work.
Now, if you want to prove God, and keep to your newly proclaimed faith, you must prove the God of the Bible. In order to do that, you must prove the Bible to be True first, and then we may be able to accept the Truth of God.
It's pretty plain to see that no one here is in any way swayed or convinced by ANY of your arguments. Your terms are ill-defined, if at all, and your logical structures are erroneous. Many of your logical structures are circular, and most of them include unstated premises. So we'll toss out your OP as being pretty useless.
Instead, let's work on a proof of God starting from the angle of proof of the Bible. Do you think you can manage that?
And furthermore, let's take this proof one step at a time, so that we can curtail the present situation.
Does that sound good?
Or shall we return to the paragraph wherein I first perceived a problem, which was this one:
The next step is examining our own experiences of the apparent world around us. Currently in our endeavor we have proven our own personal and individual existence through the fact that we are ‘thinking things’ however we have yet to prove that our personal experiences of the world around us are legitimate experiences of something ‘out there’ opposed to hallucinations distinctly inside of our own consciousness. In order for our experiences to exist they must have an origin whether the origin is our own unconscious mind or something separate from us (Perhaps Descartes demon, or perhaps God). We now have to look at our two possibilities and discern the most rational one from the most irrational one, or maybe they both lead to the same conclusion. If our experiences of the world around us originates from our own minds then they must have a cause thereof. Rationally every event precedes a prior cause and if we are experiencing something (let’s say a tree) then our thoughts of the tree whether real or delusional must have been preceded by a cause which brought about the experience of the tree. That cause could not have been ourselves because then we face the regress problem and are forced to come to the conclusion that the cause of our experiences are outside of our own minds. If we are experiencing a tree and the cause of that experience exists within our own unconscious minds then that cause of that experience must itself have a previous cause which itself has a previous cause, etc. This would result in a never-ending chain of causes and effects all inside of our unconscious minds and nothing to distinguish between unconscious causes and conscious effects (such as the aforementioned tree) which would be impossible.
Let's take the bolded part above. "If our experiences of the world around us originates from our own minds then they must have a cause thereof."
Here are several unstated premises. The only thing we've agreed to prior to this in your argument is that a thinking being exists. We haven't determined the nature or origin of thought, the cause and effect relationship, the nature or existence of mind... indeed, many unstated things are simply being glossed over to assert, with some error I think, that if experience originates in the mind it must have a cause.
So to simplify your overblown statements to this point, we have (and forgive me for not using logical annotation):
1) I - whatever I am - have experiences.
2) An experiencer, by definition, is that which has experiences.
3) Conclusion: Whatever I am, I am an experiencer.
From here, you've leapt to:
??) If our experiences of the world around us originates from our own minds then they must have a cause thereof.
Each colored bit above represents undefined terms or conditions. 'The world around us' has not yet been addressed; indeed, the world could be, as solipsists and acosmists believe, within us. 'Originates' itself is an as yet undefined concept. What in our logical syllogism so far, prevents spontaneous experience, existing on its own, without origin or causation? Nothing in the argument.
'Own minds'... Again, undefined terms. Mind? And what do we mean if we say, our own mind? So far, all we've determined is that an experiencer exists. Now we have a part of an experiencer which is dedicated to thought, or to originating experience, or to experiencing experience... what is this 'mind', and where does it work into the argument? How do we even know the mind exists? All we know is that an experiencer exists.
And finally, the crux of the problem, 'they must have a cause thereof'. We've never determined a THING about causal relationships. Indeed, our mind could be the First Cause. Or our mind could be capable of infinite regression of causes. Or perhaps nothing needs a cause, and we've made a mistake in observing cause-effect relationships.
Your argument in no way addresses any of this.
And aside from the semantical nitpicking, you have given no reason to assume that our mind is incapable of causing an experience. As I argued earlier, dreams, thoughts, memories, etc. all come from within the mind - where mind is defined as brain and its associated properties thereof. Of course, we can also arbitrarily insist on following the causal chain backwards from an experience, through the mind generating that experience, backwards to the initial set of conditions that allowed the brain to have the necessary means to generate the experience in the first place - but if we continue following this causal chain, we wind up at the moment of creation, or in a system of infinite regress - neither of which is particularly useful for discussion.
But we cannot even argue for or against any of this, without first addressing the leaps and bounds in your statement above.
...
Anyway, I've set aside my disdain for you and my agitation, and am willing to start fresh and new. You may choose either way, or none, of course - reapproach your attempt at proof from an evangelical point of view, or address, systematically, every error and fallacy we believe we have found in your arguments.
Or, of course, you could just admit that you're attempting to rationalize a newfound faith in the Bible in order to comfort yourself and reaffirm your beliefs. That would be the most mature thing to do, and would earn you mad respect from some of us here... not that our respect matters.
I eagerly await your response. (And I mean, let's start anew - none of this, "I replied to this already" silliness.)
