Presup Talk with Chris May on God's existence

So tell me, what made you respond to the video that I put up?

Well, I've been kind of interested in the presuppositional argument. I guess that would be the main thing we'll get into. I find it interesting. I understand why Christians and apologists use it to a degree.

I can see the appeal to it. I think there's some issues to it.

Sure. I think every view has issues and needs to be examined. It's good when people get together and start asking each other questions, because that's what helps hone us in and really examine our own view and work it out better.

What Chris Finds Appealing and Problematic About Presuppositionalism

So would you consider yourself an atheist, agnostic, theist? Where are you on the spectrum?

I definitely don't consider myself an atheist. I would say I'm more of an explorer, I would say. I'm open. I'm fairly skeptical, but I'm not a materialist. I am certainly open to spiritual. It's more so I don't really like classifications and categories.

I'm not one to quickly identify with any ideology.

Have you read any of the Old or New Testaments?

Absolutely. It's one of my main interests. I love studying the biblical texts. In fact, I think the Bible is a great, great piece of literature. I think there's a lot in there that's interesting, even from a historical perspective.

It also is kind of the foundation of Western culture. It's kind of hard to read other literature or anything without understanding biblical references. Even if you didn't have an interest in it, other than that, it would be worth reading and understanding.

But yeah, I do. I actively read it.

Would you consider Jesus a historical figure that actually existed?

That's an interesting question. I don't put so much emphasis on even if Jesus is historical or not. I think, you know, like any religious figure, I think so much gets kind of wrapped around a certain person.

It's hard to separate what is the theology versus what is the historical part. So I don't necessarily deny that a historical person that could be identified somewhat with Jesus of Nazareth existed. I think it's possible.

I mean, if you look at all the different work and research and scholarship, I mean, there's as many theories about Jesus as there are. I mean, obviously, the New Testament has its own perspective. Some of the outside sources are fairly limited.

Jesus, History, and the Resurrection

Right. Well, in fact, we just celebrated the resurrection. I had done a couple of presentations on that at church and actually in one of my Bible studies. And you've heard of Bart Ehrman?

Yes.

Yeah. Bart Ehrman is a New Testament scholar. He professed to be a Christian at one point in time and then walked away from the faith. He says he's agnostic now. And as a New Testament scholar who studied under Bruce Metzger, who was probably the foremost New Testament scholar of our time, he says that it's an absolute historical fact that Jesus existed and died on a Roman cross.

Yeah, I'm familiar with his book. I don't have a copy of it. I've read three parts of it. I know he's very, you know, staunch on the idea that he is a historical figure. You know, I know he really is against the Mythicist position and, you know, he speaks out against that.

It would be really, really difficult for the movement called Christianity to be in existence without Christ, without Jesus. I don't even know how it would have came about as in just a mythical sense or a fairy tale story told, how people would, you know, actually give their lives up for something like that, especially when they claim to.

Well, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Especially given the New Testament record, given the fact that it is considered eyewitness evidence. And as far as a piece of history goes, it's attested to by 10 different secular sources that corroborate at least a dozen facts that happened at that time.

You know, you have Tacitus, you have Pliny the Younger, the Jewish Talmud, Suetonius, Josephus. You have all these writings that testify of things that happened during that period of time that the New Testament also testifies to.

Now, that doesn't mean that the New Testament is true. But when you look at the way, let's say, take, for instance, Luke, how he starts the beginning of his gospel. In the opening five verses, he gives a dozen facts about the period of time.

He talks about Tiberius Caesar. He talks about Elizabeth and her husband from the tribe of, I forget what it is, but he lists 12 different facts. It doesn't sound like a story that somebody was making up.

It sounds like he was trying to record history that was going on at that time.

Well, it's definitely rooted in, I mean, it's rooted in the time of Pontius Pilate. You mentioned under the reign of Tiberius, which they, you know, John the Baptist is said to have been executed under that time.

I don't know if you're familiar with like Richard Carrier, right, would be one of the mythicist type scholars. So, you know, I think Richard Carrier sometimes goes a little bit too far. However, I know he roots a lot of his, you know, work in the fact that Paul, I mean, openly admits he never met the historical Jesus.

So, you know, I know that's a problem for, that's a problem somewhat for establishing a historical Jesus in the sense that, you know, the earliest writings that most scholars say are attributed to Paul, right, about somewhere 20 years after the crucifixion, 25 years, something like that.

So, you know, when he openly says that he really just encountered Jesus, right, on the road to Damascus, it wasn't a, he wasn't meeting a flesh and bones Jesus. There's no indication that he saw Jesus preach or that he really knew any of the disciples at that time period.

I mean, he does talk about that he went and saw Peter, that he went and saw James, that he, you know, was part of the Jerusalem church and went out and did his evangelization to the Gentiles and that kind of stuff.

But it seems to be that he's basing it on, and I think this is where Carrier is kind of getting that, you know, that it seems to be kind of a celestial kind of Jesus or it's a, he's not interested really in anything about Jesus's earthly ministry, really.

It's more of a, you know, it's more of a theological kind of basis where it's not like, you know, he said this, he taught this ethic, you know, it's kind of like, hey, this is the savior of mankind.

I think after, you know, he had the Damascus road experience, his life was radically changed. Obviously, you know, he went and an isolated hands on him, you know, because he lost his sight, he regained his sight and he goes now instead of persecuting the people who were Christians, he now becomes one of them.

Something had to radically change his mind to go from being a devout Jew, you know, a Pharisee of Pharisees, teacher of the law, blameless, you know, Hebrew, Hebrews, all those things, to now a follower of Jesus.

And he preaches the same gospel that the apostles did because when he goes back to Jerusalem to meet with them, they give him the right hand of fellowship because he's preaching the same gospel and say, okay, you go preach to the Jews, to the Gentiles.

Now Peter's going to go preach to the Jews. So also in the book of Acts, it says twice that that he didn't meet the risen Lord. Now, whether you whether you take that as a historical fact or not, it's a different story, but the Bible does testify the fact that he met, was it a celestial Jesus, I think it was a Jesus in his in his glorified body so that might be a little different.

Even the disciples didn't recognize him when he when he rose from the dead, he looked like the gardener and on the road to Emmaus, the two people who were walking with him didn't quite notice him until he started saying certain things.

So there might have been some ambiguity in how they perceived him, but it was undoubted that it was him. Again, they met him. Thomas put his fingers in the holes in his hands. Okay, they witnessed, there's an empty tomb.

You know, the question for history has never been, was the tomb empty? The question has always been, why was the tomb empty? You know, the Jews, the Jews wanted Jesus dead. So if they stole the body, this would mitigate against their position.

I mean, they, they did not think Jesus was the Messiah, and seeing him dead would just prove their point and put an end to the movement immediately. The Romans didn't want Jesus dead. I mean, Jesus was charged for the crime of sedition, right, claiming to be a king.

When Caesar was the only king, then they crucify him, which they were very good at. They put him in a tomb guarded by two Roman soldiers. Right, so if Jesus is not in the tomb, somebody stole the body and got around the Roman soldiers, it would be quite embarrassing for them.

And again, this would lend credibility to the myth that Jesus has risen from the dead and is a king. The disciples didn't have motivation to steal the body unless they, they thought a good benefits package would be, you know, getting beaten, persecuted, thrown out of their homes, thrown out of the synagogue, you know, basically exiled from, from where they lived.

So they didn't have motive to, to steal the body. So, you know, again, the scripture says, again, from a presuppositional standpoint, I believe that that's the word of God, and if it's the word of God, then it can't be wrong.

The word of God says that Jesus rose from the dead, and it fulfills several prophecies in the Old Testament. I think I've talked enough, Gad, you can go.

Paul, the Empty Tomb, and the Resurrection Accounts

Well, you said a lot. Going back to Paul, so, you know, there were, there are several different versions of how he saw Jesus. There's, you know, he saw a light, he heard something, right? They're kind of hard to, now, you know, I don't make a big deal necessarily of things that appear to be contradictions in the New Testament.

I mean, I don't think, you know, if you read the Hebrew scriptures, there's a lot of parallel verses and things that appear to not be telling the same fact. I think it was purposely written in some senses to have multiple, what's the best word, attestations or multiple versions of an event.

I don't think they were that concerned. So going to, like, the tomb, you know, and only one gospel, I think it's Matthew, right, where it's being guarded by Roman soldiers. So, you know, that's not mentioned in every gospel.

Each gospel has a different version of kind of what happened, you know, the day of the resurrection. So, and it's kind of hard, though, to really combine them and make them into a coherent whole. I mean, I know people have tried to do that.

It's really difficult when you actually look at what's said. It's hard to make it into some coherent. It's not just that one event was reported in one gospel. Another event was reported, but both events could be the same.

There's some problems, I think, with the way it's reported. But again, I don't build a case on that. It's not true because it's hard to reconcile the events that were reported, right?

Sure, sure.

You could have people report events that are not accurate, yet the big picture is accurate, you know.

True.

Yeah, I think if it was reported in every gospel and basically was the same wording each time, people would say, well, they colluded. They came up with the story and everybody stuck to it. And that's why it's identical.

When a detective goes in and there's a crime committed, they immediately separate the witnesses and they ask them each what happened and they all give their version. And they're all different with the same basic facts, hopefully, if they all saw the same thing.

So I think that's what the New Testament does. I forget which gospel is in, but one account says that there was one angel at the tomb. Another account says that there's two angels at the tomb.

Right.

People like to say, well, that's a contradiction. But if, you know, if I was there and I said, Chris, I saw an angel at the tomb. And then another guy comes and says, I saw two. It's not a contradiction.

It's just a different point of view. I was emphasizing one angel. He was emphasizing two, you know.

Well, what about, though? You know, who did Jesus appear to you first? Those are not the same. The Gospels report different locations.

Do you have the verse? Because I can look it up.

Yeah.

If you look at the, well, first of all, I mean, Mark doesn't actually report anything. In the earliest manuscripts, it actually cuts off. The verses, you know, that were added to Mark were not found in the earliest manuscripts.

Matthew is kind of really the first gospel that, you know, really reports the full resurrection. And then the appearing of Jesus after to the disciples. And then Luke follows, you know, and then obviously John has a reporting.

But they contradict in where he appears first. If you look at, if you go look at just the locations and things like that, they're hard to reconcile in the sense of. But, again, I don't make a huge deal of that.

I mean.

Right. Well, the question is, it's the question is, does does the scripture say Jesus first appeared here? Let's say, you know, New York and in another gospel, say Jesus first appeared in New Jersey. That would be a contradiction.

But if I said, you know, I met Chris in New Jersey. And then somebody says, I met Chris in New York. Those aren't two contradictory statements. That's just when they first appeared to to that particular person.

It would have to it would have to directly contradict itself in order to for what you're saying to be to be true.

I think the way it's implied, it's saying these were the first disciples to see Jesus. OK, and there's different locations, but I don't want to you know, I don't want to get stuck on that too much. OK, because it's just simply no worse.

Trinity, the Divine Council, and the Old Testament

Did you did you want to. Did you have questions with regards to like the presuppositional method?

Like, did you not so much the method? So if you remember, the first question I asked you is, what God are you presupposing?

Right. The God of the Old and New Testament.

I said, OK. Yeah, they're trying God. So I think my first my first contention and big issue would be that I don't see the trying God in the Old Testament or to not. And I would say every devout Jew or if we could go back to, you know, an Israelite or would not recognize God as a trying God.

I think that's a you can make an argument and say that, you know, they did somehow recognize it or they just didn't understand it fully or. But I think that's a really difficult argument to make. And if you speak to any modern day Jews, they will absolutely deny that God is trying.

They deny the Trinity up and down. They don't accept Jesus as divine. They even don't accept Jesus as the Messiah in many cases. Right. And that's being liberal. That's that's assuming that there is something like a messianic Jew who's really not just a Christian.

Right. Right. I don't know any messianic Jew that's really not a Christian. That's just another title for it. Right.

There are writings from Jews who believed that God was a plurality, a compound unity. When I mean, scripturally, when when when the scripture says, let us make man in our image. Traditionally, Jews say that God could be a compound unity.

So yes, I would say that's God talking to the he's part of the divine council. I don't know if you've read any of Michael Heiser's work. So he goes really in depth than that. And make in our image is a plural referring to the fact that God is the head of.

Right. He's the highest God in this sense. And he's speaking to the other gods that are kind of under him. It's kind of that, you know, it goes back to the whole the Canaanite religion, all the surrounding Semitic.

Tribes and nations had similar pantheons where they had gods that were considered the chief God. And then there were the other gods that served in their council. So I think the make in our image is referring to that there were other deities that were associated with Yahweh.

All right. So now Jews don't see any Trinitarian or any way that you can possibly interpret that as.

You know, I wasn't interpreting that as Trinitarian. I was interpreting that as God. Elohim is plural for God.

Right. Or gods.

Gods. Right. So do you believe there's one God or many gods?

Well, that gets into defining God. And that gets back to my question because I like the word deities because, you know, the ancient Near East, they believed in multiple deities. And the Israelites believed in multiple deities.

The first commandment wouldn't make any sense if they didn't believe in other deities.

Well, no, the first commandment is I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods. Right.

In other words, you should not be accepting any other gods. Right. It would be kind of silly for some for a God to say you should have no other gods. But actually, I'm the only God. Right.

Well, that's in Isaiah.

That would be like a wife saying you should have no other wives but me. But I'm the only wife that exists. Right.

Well, there's there's gods, God, and then there's false gods. In Isaiah, God says there is no God besides me. In other words, I am.

But when you say false gods, are you just talking about idols? Are you just talking about like statues that are not actually gods?

All of those. All of those things. Anything that any good thing that someone tries to make an ultimate thing becomes a God to them. Right. So money can be a God. Right. Sex can be a God. Right. Drugs can be a God.

And those things have a pull on the flesh.

But those are not God.

I agree. But I think that became more of a modern interpretation. I don't think that's at all does any justice to the ancient Israelite and ancient Near East belief system. They believed in multiple deities.

They believed in multiple gods. They believed in that the divine was full all about. It wasn't just one God that ruled over everything. I mean, if you think about the whole covenant is making an exclusive pact with that particular God.

Right.

Sure. I mean, again, I would I would say there is no other God in the sense that. OK, let me ask you this. The other gods that you say that the Jews believed in, were they created or uncreated?

From a Jewish perspective or from from a Jewish perspective. I think that the ancient Israelites were not exclusively monotheistic. I think many of them actually worship multiple gods. They worshipped the deities that were in the land that they inhabited.

They also took on, you know, kind of like the Romans did the Greeks. They took on multiple deities. Deities serve different functions. It was kind of like a pagan. I mean, right. It's paganism. I mean, I think that's the culture that ancient Israel came from.

I think monotheism, as we know it, is something that developed over a long period of time. And I think that was kind of like a it was kind of a fight between the priests and those who were exclusive to Yahweh versus just the common people.

I think the common people were not representative of the priests necessarily.

OK, so the gods that you're talking about. My question is, were they created by Yahweh or did they exist eternally alongside Yahweh?

I have I cannot answer that question because. OK, because that's assuming Yahweh is the creator of God. So that would be a hard question to answer. I can't. You know, well, I don't believe Yahweh is the creator God of all nations.

And now. So I don't believe that. But it's hard to say whether Yahweh, you know. So, so, I mean, getting into the idea of a creator God, the creator God didn't even necessarily have to be the highest or the most powerful God.

Right. You have the concept of like the Demiurge, like in Plato. You had a concept of a lower kind of being that just kind of fashion the materials.

Monotheism, Idolatry, and Competing Deities

And so, well, the question becomes, what does the scripture say? Right. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

I think the scripture is kind of. I don't think it's entirely consistent. I think there are a lot of characteristics. I know you would disagree, but I think there's a lot of characteristics that place Yahweh or Elohim or whatever name that they're applying, whichever writers, you know, calling him by.

Elohim, I believe, is one of the, you know, what they're calling him sometimes can also allude to a function of that particular. I don't know that there was one Yahweh, quite honestly, because a lot of gods were kind of part of.

They were they ruled over a particular territory. So like Baal, right. You think of Baal as like one God, but there were multiple Baals, right. Lords, they were considered. That's what the name Baal translates.

And they were kind of like over certain areas. But like using Baal as an example, if you look at the story right between the contest between Yahweh and Baal. If Baal didn't exist in the mind of the writers of the scripture, that would kind of be a silly story, wouldn't it?

Going against something that doesn't exist.

Well, yes, but I would say that there are other angelic beings that did have interaction with with humans. You look at Job. I mean, Satan, Satan, the adversary, was, you know, given to Job. God commissioned that to happen.

Right. Satan asked him, you know, can I touch Job? Yeah, go ahead.

So I think that's a good example of him being part of Yahweh's court or Yahweh's. Right. He was under Yahweh's command in a sense.

Right. But that doesn't mean he was a God. We know that Satan is.

No, I'm not saying that that was a God. That was part of it. He was a functionary aspect. Right. Yahweh was like the adversary or Satan was the adversary or judge or he was the one who was persecuting Job.

Right. He's kind of testing him. So that was kind of like the function of that particular.

Right. But Satan couldn't do anything to Job that God didn't allow him to do.

The God. Correct. Correct. And that's the way he's under control.

There has to be one God if the term God, if he's universal, absolute, you know, all powerful. There can't be two all powerful gods that wouldn't be God. Right.

Well, if you look at. Yeah. But if you look at like Zoroastrianism, they actually did propose two equally powerful gods. That's a contradiction. They had Ahura Mazda and Ahura and Maanu. Right. Or Ahriman.

Yeah. I'm not too familiar with it, but to me, that's.

Yeah. So it was a dualistic system, you know, whereas one God created all the good. Ahriman created all what was considered evil or, you know, chaotic or, you know, so even like certain animals were attributed to Ahriman like snakes and wolves or whatever, like animals that they feared and that they thought, you know, were not quite normal and things like that.

So. OK, so I mean, that's an example of a dualistic system where there are two gods competing, you know.

Right. But what I'm saying is that's a that's a contradiction. God, by definition, is all powerful. By what definition? I would say by the Old Testament description of God who says, you know, I am I am God.

There is no other. But isn't that just presupposing that the Israelite God is. Yes. And that the Old Testament. Yes. Supposedly recording. And there's a lot of presuppositions that go into that to just deny.

I mean, there's a plethora of other creator gods that existed right throughout the world.

The One and the Many, Logic, and the Grounding of Truth

Right. I don't I would say I would say, again, being consistent with my worldview. In my worldview, there's one God. OK. In three persons based on the Old and New Testament scriptures, you would say that it could be Zoroastrianism.

It could be this. It could be that. What is your basis for that?

Do you believe that? Do I believe in in the Zoroastrian worldview? Yes. I don't necessarily believe in it. It's a possibility. It's just as open of a possibility to me as the. So you pre Israelite system.

I don't see any contradiction. I don't see any metaphysical reason it couldn't exist. I don't see any contradictions in the way that the world operates, that it isn't possible for it to exist. Do I think it's more likely?

No. OK.

So I think it's less likely. I don't know. In that world, in that worldview, what would be ultimate?

There could be an ultimate source of everything. A source could have birthed both gods. What is just any absolute source? Well, yeah.

So you're you're presupposing an absolute source that gives birth to these two gods.

Well, does everything have a source? Not everything.

That's why I asked you, what is ultimate? So when I'm talking about what is ultimate and fundamental to your metaphysic, to your your view of reality, the buck has to stop somewhere.

In my view, you're asking me, do I do I necessarily reject the Zoroastrian worldview? And I'm telling you, I can't reject it because I really don't have evidence for it or evidence against it.

It's OK. So what would you say?

But it's equally as plausible, in my view, as other ideas, other theological ideas. I mean, it's possible. I don't see anything that contradicts it.

OK, so but my question to you are supports it. OK, so my question to you is what would be ultimate in the Zoroastrian worldview? So we can see because rather than debating the leaves on the trees, let's go right to the root.

Let's go to the heart of the Zoroastrian worldview. It's it's an apocalyptic worldview. We're actually pretty similar to you in some senses to a Christian worldview in the sense that the Ahura Mazda eventually overthrows and is successful in reclaiming the world.

And, you know, over the Ahriman, which is like the demonic, satanic figure. Right. OK, so what? So it's kind of like a redemption.

Sounds familiar, right? What literature are you getting that from?

What literature? There's lots of Zoroastrian religion. The Persians left a lot of writings and stuff. In fact, the Jews, when they went to Babylonia, there's a lot of evidence that they were highly influenced by Persian writing.

And I mean, it's a, you know, it's a dualistic system that has some.

No, no, I understand what you're describing it as. My question is, why are you trusting these writings that you don't even know?

I don't trust it. I'm just saying it's another it's another option. I'm not saying it's the truth. Just like I would say the Bible is just another option. OK, so it's not it's not a it's all of them until proven to be absolutely true in some way.

Then we're all we're left with is just competing options, competing views. And we have to find a way then to sort out which is true and which holds merit.

Competing Worldviews, Zoroastrianism, and the Search for Certainty

Right. All right. This this this is this is a good segue into why I hold my worldview. How what worldview is it that can provide certainty for humanity? How how how can we have certainty in in a worldview?

On my worldview, I believe that we can have certainty because we have an omniscient being, God, who knows all things and reveals them to us such that we can know with certainty because we have an omniscient God who revealed them to us.

If you don't have an omniscient God to reveal facts to you or truth to you, how can you know anything with certainty on a different worldview?

Well, it could be possible you might not know anything with certainty. It could be possible that that's the case. I'm not saying it is. All right. But is that not possible that there could be a world where uncertainty is possible?

Or that we just don't have access to the certainty?

Not in the world we live in.

But you're basing that on, again, the presupposition that.

I'm basing I'm basing it on.

The Christian scriptures, the New Testament, Old Testament are, first of all, a unified piece of writing. Right. Which is a big assumption. It's a huge assumption. It's an assumption that the Jews who follow the Torah and the Tanakh don't agree with.

So you're you're and I would get into it. I would argue that you're actually pulling from other worldviews to form your worldview, which is the Christian worldview. But that's a separate part of it.

Sure. So I believe that Jesus is the incarnation of the one true God of the universe who revealed himself to mankind. We have the scriptures that attest to that fact. We have Old Testament prophecies fulfilled by Jesus in the New Testament.

The scriptures affirm this. Even atheistic and agnostic scholars agree that Jesus did did exist, did die on a cross. They believe the even the agnostic atheistic scholars say that they they recorded that the disciples believe that they saw the risen Christ.

We have the birth of Christianity in Jerusalem in the very place where Jesus supposedly rose from the dead. It could easily have been falsified. All they had to do was show the body. All of the followers of Jesus willingly went to their deaths, believing this and proclaiming it.

And Christianity still exists till today. Now, that is the evidence for my argument. But my argument begins with the triune God of the universe existing and the Bible being his word. This is the only way we can have certainty in in our world.

Now, you said you would need proof for something, you know, to have concrete, absolute, you know, trust or belief in something. I'm asking you what other worldview aside from the Christian worldview can give you that?

You could presuppose any of the deities that we talked about and just fill them in in the same sense that you did. OK, so all I would need to do is is find either already written scriptures or all I would need to do is create scriptures around it.

Right. No, no. So what I'm saying is you're basing your worldview on scriptures that were created. Well, first of all, let's go back to the creation of the scriptures where the scriptures written by men or by God.

They were written by men carried along by the Holy Spirit.

OK, so is that the same Holy Spirit that started from Genesis that ended all the way to Revelation? Yes. The exact same Holy Spirit. Yes. And every writer was equally inspired by.

I don't know what you mean by equally. They were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write these things that God wants to convey to us.

So I guess my first question is, how do we how would we ever know that that was the case? Or how could we prove that that. How could we prove that this writing was divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Verse the Koran or pick any other religious text? How could you say one was inspired by the Holy Spirit?

The other is you would have to do an internal critique of my worldview. In other words, you'd have to jump inside my worldview, presuppose everything I presuppose. See if it's coherent, OK, and consistent.

If it's consistent and coherent, OK, then it's true. If you jump into a different worldview, you'd have to see if it's coherent and consistent. Is it arbitrary? Does it provide the preconditions of intelligibility?

So right off the bat, when I when I look at a triune God versus a monad, you know, a single God. How do you explain the philosophical problem of the one in the many? Is everything just one or are there particulars that are in the world?

Which which do we hold as ultimate?

The Triune God and the Problem of the One and the Many

So so you're saying that the major advantage that might be the wrong word to use of the triune God is that it accounts for one and it accounts for many, many or variety. In other words, as opposed to the monad God of the Jewish people.

That is one God that creates creation, though, accounts for the many. I don't see a problem with.

Yeah, well, what what ties those many together? OK, how do you how do you have these particulars all unified? You know, it's a unity of diversity. That's where we get the word universe from. And again, the triune God provides unity in diversity.

You have unity in the sense that it's one God and diversity in the sense that you have Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Now, on my worldview, you have.

But they're made of the same substance, aren't they?

They're not made.

Were created of the same substance.

They're not created. They've got to exist. Deity exists for all time. Deity is being right. We exist. X means out is means being. We exist out of something.

Right.

We come out of something. God never came out of something.

So I'm using created purposely in this case because you're again assuming that Yahweh or the triune God is the absolute first cause of everything. And I don't see that substantiated. When I say created, we do.