Doubt it, otherwise we'd all be living in fear, as what is (not asked to 'live in fear' but rather to possess knowledge or 'fear of God'). I look at it all as more of a test to see who takes care of the business when the boss ain't looking, hence the importance of 'faith' which by definition couldn't exist with proof. But that's tired reasoning at this point to a skeptic so I'll give it a shot.
Just imagine. The vastness of the universe. Trillions of light years of rock, void, and various gases. With radar we can see Alpha Centauri, over 25 trillion miles away. In fact we can detect systems even further, such as MACS0647-JD, being over 13 billion light years away. And still, no signs of intelligent life. But let's look a bit closer at our own solar system. Eight (or nine if you're old school) heavenly bodies perfectly suspended by just enough gravity to stay in sync without either drifting too close to the sun or too far away into the void of space. Something to marvel at in it's own respect. But let's look even closer, on our planet. Intelligent life, with no rival or anything that even comes close. Plants have been here since the beginning, with reptiles not being far behind. Only mammals possess some inkling or resemblance of intelligence, but is exponentially dwarfed with our modern marvels and society (such as they can bring or be at times). Why don't we have other species, mammals even with societies that remotely resemble ours? Not detectable billions of light years away, nor right here at home. If this isn't at least a starting point for the case of intelligent design, I frankly don't know what is!
[hide="Reveal"]That was my documentary style narration in accordance to your OP. Hope you liked it. :grin:[/hide]
I believe in an "ether". A culmination of consciousness adding and subtracting as individuals become aware or die (respectively). I call it "IT" and we talk! I think people put their own name on it to ease their minds that something more HAS to exsist to explain the unexplainable or just to give peace. Jesus, Muhamad, Buddha, God, all are the same to me... IT.
CallMeDiracNovember 21, 2020 at 06:09#4732270 likes
I do not believe the universe is a purposeless accidental event.
I tend to think (if there is a divine) it acts through the processes of nature.
The divine in my mind is the tendency of nature to self organize and the increasing creativity, complexity and experiential aspect of life over time and evolution.
I do not believe in heaven or hell or even think that there is any God that concerns itself much with human morality or even human survival.
Creativity, novelty and experience are the divine drives.
that entails there are more than a billion gods...
Only one. You are only one, and what is most important to you is singular. Don't worry about everyone else, unless humanity is the most important thing in which case it is still one god. Everyone else may give importance to trivia... Indeed, if you look around there are worshippers of money, power, beauty, tradition, science, sex... too bad for them, and not worth further consideration.
god must be atheistNovember 22, 2020 at 16:46#4736140 likes
Less transparency. Support from facts other than just stating the conclusion in the premis. Support form things independent from the idea of god that still support the existence of god.
I can build a counter argument, and see what you say abou it. This is how it goes:
God does not exist. Therefore god does not exist.
The is above is structured the same way as your proof. The premise contains the conclusion.
How come your proof is not congruent with my proof? They are both logically sound, and they both satisfy the criteria you set for a proof. Yet one is complete opposite of the other.
Your proof is not superior to mine, and mine is not superior to yours.
What to do make of this? I think what i make is that both are unsound as proofs. The logic is right, but the premise can't be accepted readily, since it is NOT proven at the state when they are a part of the premise.
unenlightenedNovember 22, 2020 at 18:23#4736290 likes
Reply to god must be atheist I do not need to be convinced of the fatuity of all such existence arguments. If you can find a valid proof of the existence of any damn thing that does not include its conclusions in its premises, then you either won't have noticed that it is so contained, or you won't have noticed it's invalidity. However, my argument at least has the merit of bearing some relation to something that believers might claim - that their god is the most important thing in their life.
It may be that the non-existence of god is the most important thing in your life, in which case you would have to disagree with my definition of what god is. But then nothing you might say will be on the same topic as what any religious person is talking about. and that is a problem I might have too, because while a believer might agree that god is the most important thing in their life, the would not accept that god is whatever you or I think is the most important thing, but rather, they would claim to know better. But I am a democrat, and must allow every worshipper an equal vote.
I have my keys in my pocket. If you were present here, I could get them out and show you, If you doubted they were my keys, I could show how they open my front door, and if you doubted that, I could introduce you to the neighbours, etc. This is not called 'proof' in philosophy, but demonstration and evidence. It is what one might wish for, but it is unavailable. My keys exist in my pocket, but there can be no cunning arrangement of words that obliges this to be the case, or convinces the skeptic that it is the case.
god must be atheistNovember 22, 2020 at 18:44#4736320 likes
If you can find a valid proof of the existence of any damn thing that does not include its conclusions in its premises
All humans like bananas.
Paul is a human.
Therefore Paul likes bananas.
Here, each premise (either one of them) does not contain the conclusion.
Together, with the combining force of reason, form a conclusion.
Let god exists
Therefore god exists
Is an argumen in which the premise contains the conclusion.
In my argument above neither of the two separate premise hold the conclusion.
This is a noteworthy difference.
--------------------
If you insist in saying that my argument also contained the conclusion in the premises, you are not taking into consideration that they only do that via a process of logic. Without logic neither contains the conclusion.
If you say "let god exist, therefore god exists", the premise does not need logic or anything else to state the conclusion.
This is a noteworthy difference.
god must be atheistNovember 22, 2020 at 18:47#4736330 likes
You said find a proof for the existence of something, and I gave a proof not complying with that.
All healthy Humans have a nose.
Alfred is a healthy human.
Therefore Alfred's nose exists.
There.
Neither of the premises contain the conclusion,yet the two together, after manipulatin or understanding by applying logic, prove the existence of something.
unenlightenedNovember 22, 2020 at 20:22#4736550 likes
All unicorns have a single horn. Nico is a unicorn.
Therefore Nico's unicorn horn exists.
Happy days! I'm sure i can come up with one for god on the same basis.
All unenlightened philosophers have Gods.
Unenlightened is an unenlightened philosopher.
There unenlightened's god exists.
If only I'd known how easy proofs were.
god must be atheistNovember 22, 2020 at 20:47#4736580 likes
Your second premise is wrong. Nico is only a unicorn if he or she exists. But flying spaghetty monsters don't exist, and there are no unicorn fossils either. It is not enough to be logically correct; for the conclusion to be true, the logic has to be right, and all the premises must be true.
You failed to have all your premises to be true.
If only you knew how easy proofs are.
god must be atheistNovember 22, 2020 at 20:51#4736600 likes
All unenlightened philosophers have Gods.
Unenlightened is an unenlightened philosopher.
There unenlightened's god exists.
Obiously you are hugely unenlightened. :-)
But don't let my destroying your arguments deter you.
All unenlightened philosophers have gods -- not a true, not a false statement. It requires further proof. All unenlgihtened philosophers believe in gods is also not a necessarily true statement. But your first premise involves the claim that a god or more gods exist. Therefore your premise contains your conclusion. Therefore your proof is not a proof.
If only you knew how easy proofs are.
unenlightenedNovember 23, 2020 at 11:06#4737740 likes
But don't let my destroying your arguments deter you.
Deter me from what? You destroy my arguments like I was making them for real, rather than parodying your arguments. You seem not to have noticed in your urgency to win, that we do not even disagree.
god must be atheistNovember 23, 2020 at 15:13#4738230 likes
You seem not to have noticed in your urgency to win, that we do not even disagree.
I am sorry. So the first quote in this post, where I quoted you, was made in jest, as a parody? How would I know that? Because I certainly disagree with the conlcusion of the first quote. I assert that that argument is not valid. So... you wrote it as a parody?
unenlightenedNovember 23, 2020 at 17:43#4738680 likes
I am sorry. So the first quote in this post, where I quoted you, was made in jest, as a parody? How would I know that? Because I certainly disagree with the conlcusion of the first quote. I assert that that argument is not valid. So... you wrote it as a parody?
Good grief! That is a really terrible way to do philosophy. I will not engage with you further.
god must be atheistNovember 24, 2020 at 02:47#4739850 likes
I am sorry. So the first quote in this post, where I quoted you, was made in jest, as a parody? How would I know that? Because I certainly disagree with the conlcusion of the first quote. I assert that that argument is not valid. So... you wrote it as a parody?
Good grief! That is a really terrible way to do philosophy. I will not engage with you further.
Hehe. Do you even bother to read, remember, or consider anything you, yourself write?
Count Timothy von IcarusNovember 24, 2020 at 03:05#4739980 likes
Don't know about God, but a quick look at our world, of the cruelty of sticking qualia into a being whose actions are ruled by determinism, of shoving Atman into a sea of Prakrati, definitely demonstrates the existence of Yaldaboath.
Maybe this topic is the best place to ask my question:
What was the traditional belief and actually your idea of ??God? (that is, the belief that every person has had under the influence of the environment in which he was raised, before he encountered any wise thoughts about God)
Has this belief changed now?
- If the answer is yes, how did this new belief evolve and under what ideas were the experiences? I mean, what happened that you came to the conclusion that this belief must be changed? And how did you transform it? And what is your belief now?
- If the answer is no, why do you think that the traditional belief (in the sense of what you have accepted in the past) does not need to be transformed?
These guys named Peter, Mark, Luke, Matthew, John - they saw a guy hung to death on a cross, definitely dead, and buried, and then saw his body was missing from the tomb, and then saw him walking around talking. This was after seeing a whole bunch of crazy things like walking on water. So those guys have “proof” I guess.
That does us absolutely no good here.
But, can you prove the existence of say, your own body, or Donald Trump (his skin color makes me wonder if he is a mannequin), but can you prove the existence of mannequins?
“Proof for the existence of….”
…has always been a misplaced exercise.
We prove how existing things relate. Proofs sit in between existing things. We have to take the existing things for granted before we can start to prove the reasonable relations their existence entails.
Like you prove in a right triangle that the squares of the two shorter sides equal the square of the longest side. Give me the two short side lengths, and I will tell you the length of the long side, and I can prove it to you over and over again. But you can’t prove there is a single triangle out in the world, or prove there is a long side, or prove the existence of anything. (Descartes thinks he proved he alone existed. Maybe. But that doesn’t prove to me that Descartes existed.)
I put it as, we prove things about the essence of things. We don’t prove existence.
Like if you assume God exists, you might prove he can’t be mortal (but then Jesus’ death throws a wrinkle into that picture), or that God must be capable of doing anything (so why would we suffer)…….bottomless pit without any revelation or experience. No real proof available.
You would be better off trying to pray for the answer. Then you might have your own experience if God chose to drop by. Then you would have objects to “prove”.
Experience first. Then proof about what you experience.
We should ask, how do I get experience with God?
What would happen if someone proved that Jesus was God - wouldn’t that mean we better immediately make sure we are doing everything the Bible says? If Jesus was “proven” with absolute scientific certainty - like proof the Big Bang was the first event of this universe, and it was caused by a person with power to cause such things. All of a sudden scientists, news media, everyone “we have absolute, scientific proof, God exists and created this vast universe!” And further absolute proof that Jesus was this God who decided to become a human being so that he could tell human beings about who he was, and what we can do with our lives to live forever. Proof. Imagine this as proven.
Now what? Do I immediately give all possessions away to charity and focus on living a simple life of service and making sure everyone knows this “good news”.
Do we really even want proof? It would mean something in our lives.
Can you prove it is exhilarating to parachute jump for the first time? Prove it. Prove the feeling of exhilaration.
Or instead, I can just go up in a plane and jump with parachute for the first time.
Can you prove God exists? No. But maybe you can experience God and see for yourself.
Keep asking for sure. Don’t mean to discourage the place where the question comes from if it is an honest question.
As soon as you find God it will be in the last place on earth that you would expect, that will be your proof.
And that proof will only be for you, and it will be precariously held onto by faith.
When you expect God to be a powerful giant, he comes as a beggar, in need of your assistance. If you think God must be love and joy, He will be terrifying power. If you think God is completely other than you and incomprehensible, you will find God in yourself, intimately a part of your very life.
God is not what anyone can sum up, or prove.
There’s another thread on here trying to see if anyone can demonstrate the existence of an “object”. With questions like that in the mix, we aren’t going to prove any god exists.
If you can find a valid proof of the existence of any damn thing that does not include its conclusions in its premises, then you either won't have noticed that it is so contained, or you won't have noticed it's invalidity.
Exactly. There is no proof of existence. Only proofs about existing things that we lodge into the premises of our argumentative proofs.
I think @unenlightened is taking the only remotely promising approach, and that is to stipulate a God-idea and then check the world (in a broad sense of 'check') for a corresponding reality.
Reply to Outlander I do believe in a God, but your point doesn’t hold so much weight because OF COURSE It doesn’t have solar system is unusual. Otherwise, we couldn’t have ended up here. Every solar system that has intelligent life has to be unusual, so what makes ours special?
Maybe it is special, but without these qualities it isn’t, so the same argument could be made of any solar system containing intelligent life.
It’s possible I explained this poorly, so this might be a bit confusing.
What question is not begged (is not fallaciously answered) by "a mystery"? None.
How is anything explained by or justified with "a mystery"? They are not.
If "god is the ultimate mystery", then a godly (i.e. inexplicable and unjustified) world is indistinguishable from a godless world (which is, after all, more parsimonious (begging fewer questions) than the "godly").
What was the traditional belief and actually your idea of ??God? (that is, the belief that every person has had under the influence of the environment in which he was raised, before he encountered any wise thoughts about God)
Has this belief changed now?
I was brought up in the Baptist tradition. But I was never able to belive in gods, even as a child. You either believe or you don't. For me the idea of gods or 'a god' is incoherent - whether it's literalism or a more nebulous philosophical theism. Belief seems to me to be like sexual attraction, a preference you either have or don't. The arguments or justifications come post hoc.
Reply to CallMeDirac Even if someone had the perfect proof it wouldn't change a thing. Why? Because many of the reasons or causes for believing or not believing in God have nothing to do with logic. Most of our beliefs are the result of culture, peer pressure, psychological predispositions, and a host of other reasons or causes. So, again, no proof, even if perfect would change a thing. Most people would still reject it. It's not a given that people would recognize good logic even if they saw it, and this is true even for people who have studied logic. Remember that most of the premises in an argument can be twisted this or that way. The arguments over the concepts alone can go on for years, and they have.
That said, I do think there are answers to some of these questions, but they raise other questions more difficult to answer.
If you believe we live in a simulation, or likely, what follows? God the simulator.
Not god necessarily. Here's what a currently limited AI thinks (ChatGPT)
The idea that we might be living in a simulation is a hypothesis explored in various philosophical, scientific, and popular culture contexts. If we consider the simulation hypothesis seriously, several speculative answers emerge regarding who might be behind it:
Advanced Civilization: One of the most popular ideas is that a highly advanced civilization, possibly our future descendants or an alien species, has created the simulation. This advanced civilization would have immense computational power and technological sophistication, allowing them to simulate entire universes.
Superintelligent AI: Another possibility is that a superintelligent artificial intelligence has created the simulation. This AI might have been developed by an advanced civilization or could have arisen independently. It could be running the simulation for purposes of research, entertainment, or some other reason beyond our understanding.
Post-Humanity: This idea suggests that future humans, who have reached a post-human stage of evolution and possess extraordinary technological capabilities, are running the simulation. They could be simulating past eras, including their own ancestors, to study historical events or for other purposes.
Extraterrestrial Beings: The simulation could be the work of an advanced extraterrestrial species. These beings might be curious about human behavior, evolution, or society, and are conducting a large-scale experiment by simulating our universe.
God or Deity: In a more theological or metaphysical context, some might equate the creator of the simulation to a god or deity. This aligns with certain religious and philosophical views where the universe is crafted by a higher power for reasons that might be unknowable to us.
Self-Simulating Universe: A more abstract idea is that the universe itself is a self-simulating entity. This concept suggests that the universe has the intrinsic capability to simulate itself through natural laws and processes, with no distinct external creator.
@Fire Ologist @Igitur @180 Proof @Tom Storm @Sam26@Richard B @bert1
Thank you for your participation. @Fire Ologist Your point of view is interesting, that instead of proving God, we should deal with the feeling of God, and I am not looking to prove God, but I am looking to clarify this issue and find or build my relationship (as a human being) with it.
In my opinion, the most important human problem is "God's problem".
Maybe this post didn't get a lot of feedback (although people's views on this matter are very important to me because I'm going through a mental transition) because I didn't answer his questions myself. Now I will answer it myself, maybe more people will contribute maybe the path is clarified a little.
First question: What was the traditional belief and actually your idea of ??God?
My answer: God, in the traditional attitude and the personal and social conditions in which I was brought up, is an all-knowing and all-powerful being who is able to intervene in the affairs of his servants, and whenever I have prayed to him and he has answered, have mercy on me. He said, and if he did not answer, it was because of his wisdom. Although this God cannot be seen on earth, he is omnipotent on earth and does whatever he wants. And it seems to me that this unlimited knowledge and this unlimited power that I have imagined for God has formed in me in a negative way. Because wherever I have not been able to solve a problem, I have sought to attract his ability in my favor by praying.
Second question: Has this belief changed now?
My answer: My belief in God is changing, which means I want to change this traditional belief, which in my opinion is wrong and based on "self-will" rather than "pure truth", that's why I seek to understand people's attitudes.
My answer: God, in the traditional attitude and the personal and social conditions in which I was brought up, is an all-knowing and all-powerful being who is able to intervene in the affairs of his servants, and whenever I have prayed to him and he has answered, have mercy on me. He said, and if he did not answer, it was because of his wisdom.
I have no belief in a 'sky wizard' or 'magic man'. My thinking about gods hasn't changed much since I was around 8. The idea simply doesn't resonate in any form.
A more sophisticated theology as expressed by, say, Paul Tillich, David Bentley Hart or Richard Rohr are much more interesting to me, but I am still not a customer, just an interested bystander.
Of course, I have examined the arguments used to defend various accounts of gods - since they are impossible to avoid if you talk or read about this subject. I find none of the arguments especially compelling.
I want to change this traditional belief, which in my opinion is wrong and based on "self-will" rather than "pure truth", that's why I seek to understand people's attitudes.
The truths I recognise are contingent products of language and culture. I do not believe that humans can have certain knowledge (or capital T truth) of the universe or that there is a transcendent realm we can know. The quest to discover 'reality' as it really is, seems to have become a god substitute for many people. This is the one area where I have changed. I used to think that science would build us ultimate knowledge and that we would come to know everything.
Can anyone prove a god, I enjoy debates and wish to see the arguments posed in favour of the existence of a god.
To prove from what?
There is no context-free proof. A thing like that does not exist. You always need system-wide premises, i.e. an axiomatic theory that you first accept without proof.
If the next question is going to be, Yes, but how do you prove your system-wide premises? then we have landed in the middle of a pointless exercise in infinite regress.
In "Posterior Analytics", Aristotle already pointed out why you will eventually always have to accept unproven system-wide premises. After the 2500 years since Aristotle, this will obviously not stop infinite regressionists from engaging in their favorite exercise, i.e. infinite regression.
Kurt Gödel has proven the existence of a godlike entity from five axioms in higher-order modal logic:
It means that the belief in a godlike entity is equiconsistent with the belief in five axiomatic modal expressions.
The standard criticism on Gödel's proof is obvious and should be expected:
Most criticism of Gödel's proof is aimed at its axioms: as with any proof in any logical system, if the axioms the proof depends on are doubted, then the conclusions can be doubted. It is particularly applicable to Gödel's proof – because it rests on five axioms, some of which are considered questionable. A proof does not necessitate that the conclusion be correct, but rather that by accepting the axioms, the conclusion follows logically.
Every proof implies at best equiconsistency with the system-wide premises explicitly relied on in the proof. A proof can never mean more than that. There simply does not exist a proof that embodies more truth than that. That is simply not possible.
Still, Gödel's proof has the merit of raising the bar.
Instead of attacking the notion of Godlike entity, one must now first learn higher-order modal logic and attack the five axiomatic expressions in his proof. Atheist often seem to believe that they are smarter than religious people. Fine, in that case, show us your mettle and try to meaningfully attack Gödel's subtleties in higher-order modal logic.
Numbers are not "real". They are abstractions. Their use ultimately requires faith in Peano's axioms. So, you can't do math without faith. In all practical terms, you can't do science or technology without at least some math.
Hence, you can't live as a human without faith. Can you live as an animal without faith? No, because animals also use if only very basic arithmetic for their survival.
In fact, proving the existence of something is much easier than proving the impossibility that it would exist. In the first case, you only need to locate a suitable entity, just like Gödel did. In the second case, you need to inspect all possible candidates and demonstrate that they are unsuitable. Hence, you need to be an omniscient being in order to prove that an omniscient entity does not exist. Hence, only God can prove atheism.
So, the correct statement is:
Only a god can disprove the existence of God.
That would obviously lead to an interesting contradiction.
Not god necessarily. Here's what a currently limited AI thinks (ChatGPT)
I think “God” is a vague enough term that it fits pretty much all of these examples with the exception of the last. As for the last, well, all of our understanding of simulations is they are created by a simulator(s), but if one is attached to the idea that with infinite amount of time something like this will randomly happen, sure.
Numbers are not "real". They are abstractions. [s]Their use ultimately requires faith in Peano's axioms.[/s] So, you can't do math without faith.
:roll:
By "faith" I mean worship of supernatural mysteries e.g. "a god" (re: OP), not mere (un/warranted) trust in a usage or practice. Context matters.
Gödel has proved the existence [of] a Godlike entity from higher-order modal logic.
"Godlike" (e.g. Spinoza's metaphysical Deus, sive natura) is not equivalent to any supernatural god (e.g. "God of Abraham") so this "proof" is theologically irrelevant. More specifically, his argument consists of some undecidable (i.e. disputable) formal axioms and, even if valid, it is notsound; therefore, nothing nonformal, or concrete, is "proven". Same failing as Anselm's ontological arguments – "Gödel's proof" is, at best, a "higher-order modal" tautology. Again, sir, context matters.
proving the existence of something is much easier than proving the impossibility that it would exist
Besides this equivocation (re: existence is not a predicate, etc) ... you find it more difficult "proving the impossibility" that "something" which (e.g.) both is itself and is not itself simultaneously "exists" – or, more simply, that (e.g.) "Godzilla exists" – than "proving a god" (not merely a tautologous "godlike entity") "exists"? :eyes:
There are a few arguments for God. Here's a layman's breakdown to read. https://18forty.org/articles/3-arguments-for-gods-existence/
If you want to go more in depth, pick one of the arguments and ask why it works/doesn't work. In general, none of the arguments for God have been proven as true, but thinking about them can give you a better idea of why.
"Godlike" (e.g. Spinoza's metaphysical Deus, sive natura) is not equivalent to any supernatural god (e.g. "God of Abraham") so this "proof" is theologically irrelevant.
More specifically, his argument consists of some undecidable (i.e. disputable) formal axioms
Axioms are not undecidable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undecidable_problem
In computability theory and computational complexity theory, an undecidable problem is a decision problem for which it is proved to be impossible to construct an algorithm that always leads to a correct yes-or-no answer.
The standard truth status of axioms is not characterized as undecidable.
Proof only exists in mathematics, which is never about the physical universe. Therefore, it is impossible to prove anything "concrete". That is not how proof works.
Numbers are not "real". They are abstractions. Their use ultimately requires faith in Peano's axioms. So, you can't do math without faith. In all practical terms, you can't do science or technology without at least some math.
Is this an example of faith? We know numbers work and can demonstrate their efficacy on demand. No one can do this with gods. I wonder if this is an equivocation on the word faith? In mathematics, "faith" in axioms is more about agreement on foundational principles rather than belief without evidence. Faith in gods is the excuse people give for believing in something when they don't have a good reason. One can't demonstrate the existence of gods. But we have good reasons to believe in the existence of math. Whatever the nature of numbers - which may well be convenient fictions for talking about collections of objects or properties of objects, rather than having an independent existence.
So, confirming you do not even know what you are talking about, Gödel only proves a mathematical expression and not, as you've claimed, "that god exists".
So, confirming you do not even know what yoi are talking about, Gödel only proves a mathematical expression and not, as you've claimed, "that god exists".
Every proof does only that. In that case, why ask for "proof", if proof can never be satisfactory?
Reply to Tarskian No one has asked for a "mathematical proof" – only you have offered one that amounts to nothing more than a "higher-order modal" tautology.
There is no other "proof" than mathematical proof. The OP asks "Can anyone prove a god?"
Well, Gödel gave mathematical proof. And now suddenly, no one asked for it!
In mathematics, "faith" in axioms is more about agreement on foundational principles rather than belief without evidence.
Faith in axioms still requires belief without evidence. Religious people also agree on the foundational principles of their faith. What's the difference?
Faith in axioms still requires belief without evidence. Religious people also agree on the foundational principles of their faith. What's the difference?
The difference is it misses a key factor. Demonstration of effectiveness. We have good reasons to accept math and the axioms because we can demonstrate their effectiveness. Anyone can do this at any time.
We can't do the same with any gods. We can't even agree on which gods or why gods or how gods. As an axiom, god is like an empty vase in which believers arrange the flowers.
The difference is it misses a key factor. Demonstration of effectiveness. We have good reasons to accept math and the axioms because we can demonstrate their effectiveness. Anyone can do this at any time.
So how big is the historical corpus of mathematics? There’ve probably been about 3 million mathematical papers published altogether—or about 100 million pages, growing at a rate of about 2 million pages per year. And in all of these papers, perhaps 5 million distinct theorems have been formally stated.
The overwhelmingly vast majority of these 5 million theorems are useless and irrelevant. In what way would they be effective?
We can't even agree on which gods or why gods or how gods.
There are alternative religions, just like there are alternative foundations for math. Two billion people agree on Christianity. Two billion on Islam. A similarly large number on Buddhism. There are obscure religions with a small number of followers, just like there are obscure math theories.
Furthermore, religion can be very effective. It can successfully prevent governments from overruling the laws of nature. It can also be effective at motivating individuals and stimulate their survival instinct. It can motivate individuals to maintain faith in life and in the future and keep reproducing from generation to generation. The birth rate for atheists may be crashing and burning, but religious communities keep going strong.
Dunning-Kruger is about people who think that they know but in fact they don't. Since atheism requires omniscience while faith in God does not, doesn't Dunning-Kruger rather describe atheists and not religious people?
There are alternative religions, just like there are alternative foundations for math. Two billion people agree on Christianity. Two billion on Islam. A similarly large number on Buddhism. There are obscure religions with a small number of followers, just like there are obscure math theories.
Furthermore, religion can be very effective. It can successfully prevent governments from overruling the laws of nature. It can also be effective at motivating individuals and stimulate their survival instinct. It can motivate individuals to maintain faith in life and in the future and keep reproducing from generation to generation.
Nicely put. But unconvincing.
The quesion we are addressing is - is there good reason to belive in god the way there are good reasons to believe in math? We haven't even addressed the matter of which gods.
Whether there are many obscure math theories doesn't cancel the effectiveness of math in general.
Religion being an effective political group is not the same thing as assessing the effectiveness of the god hypothesis. This would seem to be another equivocation. Religion all over the world behaves like a political party - theism being incidental to its machinations.
Dunning-Kruger is about people who think that they know but in fact they don't. Since atheism requires omniscience while faith in God does not, doesn't Dunning-Kruger rather describe atheists and not religious people?
Omniscience? Straw man, there. As an atheist I put it: I do not belive the proposition that gods exist. I have heard no good reason to accept it and the idea of gods do not assist me to make sense of my experince. This is how many contemporary atheists view the subject. We do not say there is no god, that would be making a positive claim. For many, atheism is about belief not knowledge. But this entire 'gods or not gods' is a really boring debate. Let's not let a little thing like gods come between us. :wink:
The quesion we are addressing is - is there good reason to belive in god the way there are good reasons to believe in math?
The reasons are similar. The belief in Peano's axioms allows you to use arithmetic theory and maintain consistency in downstream applications. The belief in religion creates a common understanding between billions of people that constitute a political counterweight to prevent governments from overruling the laws of nature. Different tools for different purposes.
Religion all over the world behaves like a political party - theism being incidental to its machinations
Politics is unavoidable. The government is essentially a monopoly on violence. There needs to be a mechanism to suspend this monopoly when the government abuses it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven
The Mandate of Heaven (Chinese: ??; pinyin: Ti?nmìng; Wade–Giles: T'ien1-ming4; lit. 'Heaven's command') is a Chinese political ideology that was used in Ancient China and Imperial China to legitimize the rule of the king or emperor of China.[1] According to this doctrine, Heaven (?, Tian) bestows its mandate[a] on a virtuous ruler. This ruler, the Son of Heaven, was the supreme universal monarch, who ruled Tianxia (??; "all under heaven", the world).[3] If a ruler was overthrown, this was interpreted as an indication that the ruler was unworthy and had lost the mandate.[4]
The so-called democratic voting circus was advertised as being capable of achieving this but it has now become obvious that it has failed at doing so. We are now effectively in the long run of all the past short-termism.
We do not say there is no god, that would be making a positive claim.
There are three possibilities concerning the belief in God: true, false, indeterminate. Religion believes it is true. Atheism believes that it is false. Agnosticism is indeterminate.
Atheism is defined as a positive claim. It is agnosticism that refuses to make a claim. While agnosticism makes perfect sense, atheism doesn't.
If we look at the JTB account for knowledge, then knowledge is defined as a particular kind of belief:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem
The JTB account holds that knowledge is equivalent to justified true belief; if all three conditions (justification, truth, and belief) are met of a given claim, then we have knowledge of that claim.
There is no knowledge without belief. Furthermore, at the foundationalist core of knowledge you always find necessarily unjustifiable beliefs. Rejecting the foundation of unjustifiable beliefs amounts to rejecting the entire edifice of knowledge. If you can't have faith, you cannot know either.
There are three possibilities concerning the belief in God: true, false, indeterminate. Religion believes it is true. Atheism believes that it is false. Agnosticism is indeterminate.
From American Atheists website:
To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.
It's important to understand how people use words.
I would call myself an agnostic atheist - A fairly common category these days. I can't know there is no god. I don't believe there is a god. Atheism is not necessarily a knowledge claim.
Now one might claim we can know there is no Zeus, Ganesh, Zoroaster or Jesus. But we can't know whether or not there is some unspecified theistic entity (whatever that might look like).
There is no knowledge without belief. Furthermore, at the foundationalist core of knowledge you always find necessarily unjustifiable beliefs. Rejecting the foundation of unjustifiable beliefs amounts to rejecting the entire edifice of knowledge. If you can't have faith, you cannot know either.
I'm not a foundationalist.
All this is a distraction. We still can't demonstrate that there are any gods. We can demonstrate that math works. We seem unable to get past this point.
In that case, you will need to reject mathematics as it is staunchly foundationalist, i.e. axiomatic. Since science is not viable without math, you will also need to reject science.
Even animals use some basic arithmetic for reasons of survival. Hence, an anti-foundationalist animal cannot survive.
Again, every living creature needs to have at least some faith in order to survive.
But then again, with the birth rate collapsing, atheist populations are in the long run not surviving. Indeed, why would they? In the end, you still need some faith to believe that it would be meaningful to begin with. There is no compulsion in religion. Therefore, they are indeed at liberty to die out.
As usual, the proof will be in the pudding. Atheism will disappear. Only religion will survive. That is how it has always been. Nothing new there.
Yes, it can be but that formulation is not popular – though it's formerly my preferred position (while quite reasonable, it's too narrow in scope):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.
In my opinion, the difference between "absence of belief" and "disbelief" is just language engineering.
It implies that the position could also be indeterminate. However, we already have a term for that position, i.e. agnosticism.
Why would there be a need to create that ambiguous overlap between atheism and agnosticism? It merely mixes up the underlying truth values. A logic sentence is true, false, or indeterminate. Why deviate from standard logic. To what benefit?
He hasn't. Read the Reddit article you yourself linked.
You misunderstand what the Wikipedia page on the matter says. Godel has perfectly demonstrated the equiconsistency between his theorem and the axioms that he used. What else does any proof do, if not exactly that?
We still can't demonstrate that there are any gods. We can demonstrate that math works. We seem unable to get past this point.
You need to compare apples to apples:
- We can demonstrate that math works.
- We can demonstrate that religion works.
That is the fair comparison. Or even:
- We still can't demonstrate that there are any gods.
- We still can't demonstrate that Peano's successor function exists as mentioned in the axioms of arithmetic.
That is another fair comparison.
What you are doing, is comparing apples to oranges.
In that case, you will need to reject mathematics as it is staunchly foundationalist, i.e. axiomatic. Since science is not viable without math, you will also need to reject science.
Not so. We accept science and math because they work pragmatically, subject to contingent factors like communities of practice, culture and language. Science doesn't uncover reality, it gives us reliable and tentative models which are iterative and replaced when better models come forward. I suspect this process is never complete. Math can be understood in numerous ways including intuitionism, formalism, constructivism, Platonism, empiricism, not to mention postmodern accounts of math.
What you are doing, is comparing apples to oranges.
So your argument is that religion doesn't work and god can't be demonstrated, but we should believe it anyway because it is an orange and ideas like 'demonstration' are apples?
I'm not interested in an undergraduate debate about religion or gods. My point is that math demonstrates its utility, god can't even demonstrate it's existence. Hence faith. I don't think there's much point going on in this way. Take care.
Can anyone prove a god, I enjoy debates and wish to see the arguments posed in favour of the existence of a god.
Ok,
Even if I'm late to this discussion and haven't looked it through, here's my five cents:
If the difference between faith and reason isn't obvious to people, I urge people first to go and read their actual field manuals here: if you are Christian, read the Bible, if you are a Muslim, read the Quran or if you are a Jew, read the Torah. Now, do any of these Holy Scriptures insist and demand that in order for to find God you just have "really think it through" or "reason it out"? That you'll find God if you just reason enough and think about it? Or is it about faith, something like "taking Jesus to your heart" as in the Christian manual? Fun fact, the difference between the expressions of taking something into your heart or it being an issue of the heart or using your brain is quite old.
And since part of us are interested in the Abrahamic religions here (that I admit, I barely know), they don't actually like worshipping idols. Now ask yourself, if there would be a "proof" of God, what need there would be for the Bible or the Torah or the Quran? You have this proof! Here's the proof, there's God, and that's it!
So wouldn't the this proof be an Idol?
In my opinion, It sure would be. So those trying to prove God are trying to build Idols.
We take a snapshot of a presumably ane society along with its rules and call that our scripture. Now we have a benchmark to compare our own society to, as well as where it is heading. Next, we threaten the government to stop overruling the laws of nature and of a sane society, and make it cave in.
What is there about religion that does not work? In my opinion, the tool is perfectly suitable for purpose.
Religion also demonstrates its utility. The government fears us more than the result of its elections. So, the tool achieves its goal.
You see, when the Taliban unceremoniously deported NATO from Kabul airport, they achieved something that nobody else was able to do. Or do you think that you can do that too?
If the difference between faith and reason isn't obvious to people
Knowledge is fundamentally foundationalist:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundationalism
Identifying the alternatives as either circular reasoning or infinite regress, and thus exhibiting the regress problem, Aristotle made foundationalism his own clear choice, positing basic beliefs underpinning others.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_belief
Beliefs therefore fall into two categories:
- Beliefs that are properly basic, in that they do not depend upon justification of other beliefs, but on something outside the realm of belief (a "non-doxastic justification").
- Beliefs that derive from one or more basic beliefs, and therefore depend on the basic beliefs for their validity.
Without basic beliefs, reason is not possible.
Therefore, there is no such sharp distinction between reason and faith. Reason allows us to reach derived beliefs. However, their ultimate justification can only be found in properly basic beliefs
We are talking about god and math. Religion is politics. Forget it. To call religion effective is an equivocation fallacy. It's not the same kind of demonstration of effectiveness as math. Math axioms can be shown to work. Religion cannot demonstrate gods. All it can do is what secular humanists or even communists might do - organize.
Religion also demonstrates its utility. The government fears us more than the result of its elections. So, the tool achieves its goal.
I would call that evidence of religion's disfunction. Biblically literalists, highjacked by corporate power - who are, incidentally, also scorned by vast numbers of members within the same religion are simply fearful of modernity and are retreating into strident accounts of their myths. This disorganized shambles is well understood. Even religious scholar and religious apologist, Karen Armstrong presents this hypothesis.
You see, when the Taliban unceremoniously deported NATO from Kabul airport, they achieved something that nobody else was able to do. Or do you think that you can do that too?
You make me laugh. We know that people can be galvanized by deception and undemonstrated beliefs. A crowd that believes something is just a crowd that believes something. Truth is a separate matter. Or do you think the supposed truths held by Marxists, Hare Krishna, Scientologists are all 'really' true because each of these groups has been effective in significant ways?
We know that people can be galvanized by deception and undemonstrated beliefs.
Undemonstrated beliefs are the foundation of all knowledge. That is exactly what Aristotle pointed out in Posterior Analytics. If nothing is assumed then nothing can be concluded. Furthermore, the ability to galvanize is exceptionally meritorious. Motivating people is not easy. It is no small feat if you manage to do it. It is also the biggest failure of any manager, if he cannot galvanize his people. Humanity is a social species, which means that leadership is a pressing requirement. If you can galvanize other people, then you can achieve greater things. If you are critical about that, you simply do not understand how human organizations work.
In my opinion, the difference between "absence of belief" and "disbelief" is just language engineering.
If your opinion is that there is no valid distinction between lack of belief and active disbelief, then your opinion is based on insufficient thought.
An atheistic can quite coherently say they see no reason to believe in a god, and yet that they cannot rule it out. They are a-theistic in an analogous sense in which someone may be a-sexual—in the latter case they have no sexual disposition and in the former case they have no theistic disposition.
Agnosticism is different —it is about knowing not believing—an agnostic says we cannot know God, which means we cannot know whether God exists, whereas a gnostic says we can know God.
That said most agnostics today probably don't believe in God, simply because they don't know. But in the original sense of the word, one could be an agnostic theist, and in fact most sensible theists are agnostic, in the sense that they acknowledge that one cannot know whether there is a god, and they acknowledge that it is a matter of faith, not knowledge.
In my opinion, the difference between "absence of belief" and "disbelief" is just ...
I.e. you can't tell the difference between ~b(G) and b(~G)? :pray:
It implies that the position could also be indeterminate.
This is only so for someone who (analogously) cannot differentiate 'nonassent from dissent' or 'remaining silent from spoken denial' or 'indifference from rejection'.
Why would there be a need to create that ambiguous overlap between atheism and agnosticism?
Right, there's no "need" for the muddle confusing you, Tarskian. Consider –
Given that (theistic) agnosticism denotes 'the truth-value of theism (claim that at least one providential/creator deity** exists) is unknown (or unknowable)':
(A) if theism is antirealist-noncognitive (i.e. belief in a deity** that does not entail truth-claims), then (theistic) agnosticism is incoherent ...
... in other words, to say 'I do not know whether noncognitive theism is true or false'. :roll:
(B) however, if theism is realist-cognitive°° (i.e. belief in a deity** that entails truth-claims), and using the natural world to search for truth-makers, I/we can show that theism is not trueReply to 180 Proof°° and therefore, (theistic) agnosticism is unwarranted ...
... in other words, to say 'I do not know whether cognitive theism is true or false.' :yawn:
It depends on b() whether they are different or the same. It is a similar situation as whether a ?b is equal to b ? a. It depends on the properties of ?.
In this case, they are clearly the same. The expression:
Ok, Heyting logic does indeed work like that, with (true,false,not-true) truth values, while the Kleene, Priest, and ?ukasiewicz logics stick to (true,false,uinknown). After having spent decades fiddling with SQL and years fiddling with javascript, I subconsciously tend to revert to (true,false,null). I wonder if Heyting logic is even implemented anywhere? Is there a programming language that uses it?
Proof only exists in mathematics, which is never about the physical universe. Therefore, it is impossible to prove anything "concrete". That is not how proof works.
100 %.
We don’t prove existence. We prove relations among the existing things we posit, or assume, or hypothesize, or believe, or know. You don’t prove the existence of a premise; you need a premise first to prove something in conclusion. Or you aren’t doing proof.
We might be able to prove a god wouldn’t struggle, or a god wouldn’t need sleep, but we can’t prove that struggle-free, always awake god exists.
We don’t prove existence ... We might be able to prove a god wouldn’t struggle, or a god wouldn’t need sleep, but we can’t prove that struggle-free, always awake god exists.
Gödel's ontological proof is a formal argument by the mathematician Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) for the existence of God.
The proof[8][10] uses modal logic, which distinguishes between necessary truths and contingent truths.
Gödel's proof is considered mathematically unobjectionable. That is why the only mathematical criticism is that it merely proves equiconsistency between the theorem and its axioms:
Most criticism of Gödel's proof is aimed at its axioms.
Furthermore, we can certainly prove existence or non-existence.
Existence. Kakutani's fixed-point theorem proves the existence of a fixed point. So does Brouwer's fixed-point theorem.
Non-existence. Abel-Ruffini theorem proves the non-existence of a solution in radicals for quintic polynomials or higher degrees. Fermat's Last Theorem proves the non-existence of particular three-tuples of natural numbers.
In predicate logic, an existential quantification is a type of quantifier, a logical constant which is interpreted as "there exists", "there is at least one", or "for some". It is usually denoted by the logical operator symbol ?, which, when used together with a predicate variable, is called an existential quantifier ("?x" or "?(x)" or "(?x)").
the Taliban unceremoniously deported NATO from Kabul airport, they achieved something that nobody else was able to do. Or do you think that you can do that too?
- might have been done by any number of fanatics (Castro, Hitler, Putin, whoever). And why ask me if I can do this? I am not an organisation. Nor do I belong to any organisation. Strange.
No, they can't. There is no justification for axioms. If an axiom can be justified, it is not a legitimate axiom.
Religion cannot demonstrate gods.
— Tom Storm
Math cannot demonstrate its axioms either.
The effectiveness of math can be demonstrated through its consistency and predictability. Religions by contrast are a mess of contradictory and conflicting beliefs, with no agreed upon goals or values - even within the single religion. It is unpredictable and inconsistent. To say religion is 'effective' in the way you are doing is to say that an atomic bomb is a good way to keep your lawn short.
But what about religion? You can't even demonstrate that religion (whichever one you pick) has anything to do with a gods. Even if a god or ten exist, there is no way of demonstrating which religion is true and reflects the will of that god.
Reply to Tarskian If that's it, then you're not philosophizing, as I see it, just misusing (e.g. reifying) logic. I prefer to use reality instead of existence (just as I prefer mind to consciousness / mindbody to subject) because the latter tends to be less dynamic and less contingent than the former.
The effectiveness of math can be demonstrated through its consistency and predictability.
Concerning the consistency of any theory such as PA (Peano arithmetic theory), it is merely an assumption. Gödel's second incompleteness theorem proves that if a mathematical system is capable of proving its consistency, it is necessarily inconsistent.
Therefore, the consistency of PA is based on faith alone.
Of course, we use PA to maintain consistency in downstream applications, and it works surprisingly well, but it is certainly not a provable property of PA.
Concerning the predictability of PA, whenever there exist true but unprovable theorems in a system, they massively outnumber the provable ones.
Hence, PA is mostly unpredictable.
According to Stephen Hawking, the unpredictability of the universe is tightly connected to the unpredictability of PA:
What is the relation between Godel’s theorem and whether we can formulate the theory of the universe in terms of a finite number of principles? One connection is obvious. According to the positivist philosophy of science, a physical theory is a mathematical model. So if there are mathematical results that can not be proved, there are physical problems that can not be predicted.
PA is predictable in one direction, with provable implying true. However, when you look at the universe of true facts in PA, it is not predictable, because true rarely implies provable. PA is highly chaotic, albeit in a deterministic way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics. It focuses on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. These were once thought to have completely random states of disorder and irregularities.[1] Chaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnection, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals and self-organization.[2]
PA is a chaotic complex system without initial conditions.
even within the single religion. It is unpredictable and inconsistent.
PA is also mostly unpredictable and its consistency is at best a statement of faith.
Therefore, there is no such sharp distinction between reason and faith.
Yet when you reason, you can change your beliefs. Naturally we do start from our premises, the things we assume to be true. But if by reasoning we come to the conclusion that our starting assumptions were wrong, we change them.
With something like faith, and to love something, that's not so.
Reply to Tarskian No, I have not and it doesn't. That the conclusions follow from the premises can be said about every fiction book — and yet we can't cast Avada Kedavras. If you had actually read the "article" you linked, you would know that Gödel's original axioms are inconsistent — the solution to that exists, but I will let you scurry for it instead of giving it for sophists to abuse.
Instead of reading through some web article anyone can edit and that no academic uses for research for its extremely poor quality, I have gone through the original papers for the proofs. There are positive, non-arbitrary, reasons why we may want to reject the axioms of the argument, even in its consistent form.
You abuse every source you can get your hands on to support the conclusion you started with before researching the arguments, like a politician would. If it is not some dumb ontological argument from the Middle Ages or some toddler-ish question like "Uh where does the big bang come from", the religious sophists will latch onto whatever they can find next.
In that sense, I suggest you go spill your drivel somewhere other rather than a philosophy forum, which is not a debate forum, but perhaps the other users will be eager to waste time on your sophistry.
Aren't these the "initial conditions"...? These are the Peano axioms:
Zero is a natural number.
Every natural number has a successor in the natural numbers.
Zero is not the successor of any natural number.
If the successor of two natural numbers is the same, then the two original numbers are the same.
If a set contains zero and the successor of every number is in the set, then the set contains the natural numbers.
It's far from obvious what this has to do with chaotic systems.
I'm not following Tarskian's argument at all.
A chaotic system is one that follows a seemingly random path albeit deterministic. If you repeat the path with exactly the same initial conditions, it will follow exactly the same path.
Example:
Initial condition: "hello world"
sha256 hash: b94d27b99...
sha256 hash: 049da0526...
and so on (you keep feeding the output as new input)
If you change one letter to the initial seed, the path will change completely.
This is a chaotic complex system. Its facts look random. If you don't know the initial seed, it is for all intents and purposes effectively random.
Since most facts in arithmetic (PA), i.e. the arithmetical truth, are unprovable from the axioms, it has similar characteristics to the example system.
However, there is no initial seed in PA. The chaos in PA is caused by another phenomenon. Provable statements in PA are not merely true in the model/universe of the natural numbers. They are also true in an unlimited number of nonstandard models/universes of arithmetic. Most of its true facts are, however, not true in all its models/universes. That would be a precondition for their provability/predictability. That is why most facts in arithmetic are not predictable/provable from theory.
In mathematical logic, a non-standard model of arithmetic is a model of first-order Peano arithmetic that contains non-standard numbers. The term standard model of arithmetic refers to the standard natural numbers 0, 1, 2, …. The elements of any model of Peano arithmetic are linearly ordered and possess an initial segment isomorphic to the standard natural numbers. A non-standard model is one that has additional elements outside this initial segment. The construction of such models is due to Thoralf Skolem (1934).
This phenomenon explains why PA is incomplete (i.e. having unprovable truths) or inconsistent (i.e. provable falsehoods) or even possibly both.
Hence, the nature of the majority of facts in arithmetic is chaotic, i.e. unpredictable (unprovable).
PA is a chaotic complex system without initial conditions. — Tarskian
looks a bit... overstated.
I have just found an interesting paper that elaborates on why the overwhelming majority of true statements in arithmetic are unprovable -- and therefore unpredictable. In fact, most truth in PA is simply ineffable.
We have come a long way since Gödel. A true but unprovable statement is not some strange, rare phenomenon. In fact, the opposite is correct. A fact that is true and provable is a rare phenomenon. The collection of mathematical facts is very large and what is expressible and true is a small part of it. Furthermore, what is provable is only a small part of those.
Reply to Banno Some thing that I noticed in the article is the trouble around "positive properties". A comment in K. Gödel, Appx.A: Notes in Kurt Gödel’s Hand, 144–145 says that "positive property" is to be interpreted in a moral-aesthetic sense only — which by itself is troublesome. Nonetheless, the argument may be rejected for other, better, reasons. Contrary to what the weekly sophist implies, choice of axioms is not arbitrary.
In terms of logic, we have: yes, no, maybe. The view you describe is a maybe. In my opinion, that is perfectly fine.
What you are missing is the possibility that an atheist, having no disposition towards theism at all, may not take up any of the positions you characterize by "yes, no, maybe" that is they may not believe, disbelieve or suspend judgement in relation to the question, but simply give it no thought whatsoever, perhaps on account of not acknowledging it is as a question, thinking of it as incoherent or a non-question, or perhaps due simply to a complete lack of interest.
As previously stated, you have not read the article you yourself linked. Congrats.
That is classical non sequitur. Again some word-salad nonsense.
Godel flawlessly proved the equiconsistency between his theorem and the axioms from which it follows. Godel's proof is therefore mathematically unobjectionable. Of course, Godel did not prove the axioms themselves. But then again, he is not even supposed to.
Your arguments amount to just a bit of black mouthing and shit talking. That says much more about you than about Godel's work.
Reply to Tarskian For the indifferent or one who finds the question incoherent it is not a matter of truth value, and that is the point. So, @Joshs "none of the above": seems most apt.
For the indifferent or one who finds the question incoherent it is not a matter of truth value, and that is the point. So, Joshs "none of the above": seems most apt.
That point of view is not a problem.
Only a 'yes' or 'no' answer constitutes a real commitment.
For 'yes' answer, you need to locate a constructive witness. This is possible. Gödel did exactly that. For 'no' answer, the default situation is that you generally need omniscience.
In fact, impossibility proofs do exist. They are not completely impossible. However, they typically require discovering a structural constraint that could never be satisfied by any possible witness.
A good example is the Abel-Ruffini theorem. There is no solution in radicals to general polynomial equations of degree five or higher. It took centuries to prove this because at first glance it requires omniscience. It required discovering the Galois correspondence as a structural constraint that any solution would violate. Fermat's last theorem is another good example. Without the modularity theorem, it would also require omniscience to prove this impossibility. It took over 350 years to pull off the proof.
Where is the structural constraint that makes a "no" answer to the "Does God exist?" question viable without requiring omniscience? Proving an impossibility is substantially harder than locating a suitable witness for a theorem. That is why a proof for atheism is several orders of magnitude more unlikely than a proof for religion.
Rather, contenders include, say, the Vedic Shiva, the Avestan Ahura Mazda, the Biblical Yahweh, and a few others, where adherents/believers go by rituals, commands/rules, fate designations, speak of divine intervention/participation, etc. These are of concern to the various adherents/believers of course, and also to others due to proselytizers indoctrinators discrimination conquerors (concerted organized efforts), their political influences, and impact on societal affairs (other peoples' lives).
Shouldn't be difficult to find people with a laissez-faire (or "who knows") sort of attitude towards the former (vague unknown), and an attitude of disbelief towards whatever deities of the latter. It's a difference that makes a difference.
The existential claim carries the onus probandi (generally, existential claims are verifiable and not falsifiable, universal claims are falsifiable and not verifiable), it's not for someone else to disprove. Upon repeated failure, expect disregard/dismissal of the claim (until further notice perhaps). Though not deductive, it's a rational, reasonable response just the same, happens all the time.
The existential claim carries the onus probandi (generally, existential claims are verifiable and not falsifiable, universal claims are falsifiable and not verifiable), it's not for someone else to disprove.
Since we are talking about proof, it is the mathematical view on the subject that matters. Everybody else should avoid using the term ¨proof¨. What they produce as justification, is at best "evidence". It is never proof.
Existential proofs are much easier to produce than impossibility proofs. Gödel successfully produced one. It does require higher-order modal logic, but that is still trivially simple compared to what impossibility proofs typically rest on.
If you want to prove an impossibility, you need to painstakingly discover and make use of a structural constraint that will successfully reject every possible witness. In absence of such structural constraint, you would need omniscience.
There are impossibility proofs. For example, Abel-Ruffini theorem rests on the Galois correspondence as a structural constraint, while Fermat's last theorem rests on the modularity theorem. So, it is possible. There are impossibility proofs, but non-trivial ones typically took centuries to discover.
Therefore, you probably understand now that impossibility is not the default in mathematics. On the contrary, it is the result of centuries of hard work. Gödel successfully did his work and produced an existential proof. Where can we see the commendable mathematical work produced by an atheist in which he supports his impossibility claim?
By the way, atheists really need to prove that they are not making use of omniscience for their impossibility claim that an omniscient entity does not exist. This burden is on them and not on us.
By the way, atheists really need to prove that they are not making use of omniscience for their impossibility claim that an omniscient entity does not exist. This burden is on them and not on us.
I’ve not met many atheists who would argue this. How would we know? Atheism is as botched and bungled as any religion in its range of strident and moderate advocates. I’ve met atheists who believe in ghosts, fairies and Bigfoot. Perhaps be a bit more cautious about your characterisation of atheists. I don’t consider all theists to be stupid rubes.
Out of interest, what type of believer are you? Muslim or Christian, or something less specific?
Out of interest, what type of believer are you? Muslim or Christian, or something less specific?
Originally born a Catholic. In the meanwhile, I came to the conclusions that Christians no longer intend to use the rules in the scripture as a benchmark to assess societal sanity. So, my sympathies are definitely much more Muslim nowadays. So, the problem is not necessarily Christianity but the lack of enthusiasm of the Christians. But then again, they completely mishandled the reformation too. The following was clearly not the solution either:
Charles V's "Edict of Blood" of 1550 in the Burgundian Netherlands
No one shall print, write, copy, keep, conceal, sell, buy or give in churches, streets, or other places, any book or writing made by Martin Luther, John Oecolampadius, Huldrych Zwingli, Martin Bucer, John Calvin, or other heretics reprobated by the Holy Church.
...
That such perturbators of the general quiet are to be executed, to wit: the men with the sword and the women to be buried alive, if they do not persist in their errors; if they do persist in them, then they are to be executed with fire; all their property in both cases being confiscated to the crown.
This approach failed in the Burgundian Netherlands but it actually succeeded in France. After successfully eradicating the reformation in France, the Catholic Church probably thought that they were good to go, only to later on end up with the French revolutionaries who did not even try to reform the religion but got rid of it altogether. Forcing everybody to join your club is clearly not a good idea.
Existential proofs are much easier to produce than impossibility proofs.
A model just requires a counter-example and it's out.
If existential proofs are the easier parts, then why do less than half the world's population believe that the Biblical Yahweh is real?
Gödel did exactly that. He provided a mathematically unobjectionable proof. Of course, math never does more than advertised. The witness for the existential theorem has successfully been supplied. Next.
So, my sympathies are definitely much more Muslim nowadays. So, the problem is not necessarily Christianity but the lack of enthusiasm of the Christians. But then again, they completely mishandled the reformation too.
Thanks for the background. I thought as much. You're definitely interesting, even if we disagree about many things. I appreciate your generally good nature and politeness. Some folks get pretty abusive on here sometimes.
Godel flawlessly proved the equiconsistency between his theorem and the axioms from which it follows. Godel's proof is therefore mathematically unobjectionable. Of course, Godel did not prove the axioms themselves. But then again, he is not even supposed to.
Why are you using "equiconsistency" when referring to a set of theorems and their axioms? Gödel did not prove anything "mathematically" but using higher-order logic. Gödel's proof is inconsistent stemming from D2, it took other people to fix the inconsistency in his proof just to then generate further issues in these updated proofs. It is not "unobjectionable".
Who has issues with Gödel here is you, misrepresenting the work not only of Gödel but of the field.
it took other people to fix the inconsistency in his proof just to then generate further issues in these updated proofs.
Modal collapse is not an inconsistency. Who told you that?
It just means that the proof reverts to standard non-modal logic.
Since non-modal logic is the default logic anyway, does that mean that pretty much all proofs in mathematics are inconsistent?
In modal logic, modal collapse is the condition in which every true statement is necessarily true, and vice versa; that is to say, there are no contingent truths, or to put it another way, that "everything exists necessarily".
Since standard logic does not even distinguish between necessary and contingent truth, what is supposedly the big problem?
Furthermore, Anderson has fixed the issue and removed the modal collapse. This is not essential at all. It is just nice to have and not more than that.
In fact, it may even be a good thing. It means that the proof works, even without using modal modifiers. So, the proof would be valid, even in plain, standard logic.
How is the world without God?
From a thoughtful and philosophical perspective
From a personal and psychological perspective
From the collective and sociological perspective
Furthermore, Anderson has fixed the issue and removed the modal collapse. This is not essential at all. It is just nice to have and not more than that.
Anderson himself along with Gettings argued in 1996 that his version can be defeated using the same arguments as Gaunilo against Anselmo.
Anderson and Gettings:We suggest that the G?delian Ontological Arguer should simply admit that neither the possibility of God nor the truth of the axioms used to "prove" that possibility are self-evident. And he might just maintain that the less evident axioms, for example that a conjunction of positive properties is positive, is an assumption which he adopts on grounds of mere plausibility and is entitled to accept until some incompatibility between clearly positive properties is discovered.
You still don't realise that it has been proven that Gödel's version of the proof is inconsistent.
For a starters, the alleged inconsistency detected by Christoph Benzmüller and Bruno Woltzenlogel-Paleo cannot be duplicated with automated provers. Secondly, Melvin Fitting's reformulation addresses this concern anyway.
You are merely haphazardly copying excerpts from the ongoing investigation and conversation on Gödel's proof.
Of course, there are concerns about the nitty-gritty details in the proof. You are desperately fishing for evidence that there would be something wrong with Gödel's work without being a constructive participant in any shape, way, or fashion.
The people that you quote mention possible concerns with a view on improving the original and making progress, while you are sitting on the fence, overhearing fragments of their conversation, with only negativity and foregone conclusions in mind. If you were physically present in the meeting room, they would tell you to leave the room because you are not adding any value with your non-constructive negativity.
There is something interesting that arises from considering the possible proof of God: Why do we believe that God is something that can be proven?
A Proof belongs to a context of interpretation that delimits its conditions of possibility. But isn't that precisely a form of conditioning? For example, when we understand God as the creator of the universe, as a kind of origin of everything that exists, aren’t we subjecting His concept to linear causality, to His physical intervention in the creation of matter and energy? Isn't it paradoxically a subsumption of God to physical causation rules that He does not dominate? The same can be said of a logical proof or a moral proof: Can God not be contradictory? Can God not do evil?
In each case, the nature of God is subordinated to a context that betrays His nature by conditioning Him. This is the old issue of how a finite being can access the infinite and even relate to it. Or how the unconditioned can relates the conditioned. It is the issue of why it seems that the idea of God is problematic in itself as it relates to the ineffable and that which is unconditioned. Ironically, according to the above, it can be said that if God exists, He cannot be proven. God would be beyond reason and will always be a mystery.
It is the issue of why it seems that the idea of God is problematic in itself as it relates to the ineffable and that which is unconditioned. Ironically, according to the above, it can be said that if God exists, He cannot be proven.
God cannot be proven from the theory of the physical universe (ToE), simply because we do not even have a copy of that theory.
But then again, we can certainly replace the logic sentence denoting God by five axiomatic expressions in higher-order modal logic. That is what Gödel did. Hence, God is not ineffable. Where is the proof that God would be ineffable? Furthermore, God can be proven from carefully chosen axioms because that is exactly what Gödel did.
The rhetoric about "there is no proof for God" basically keeps ignoring Gödel's mathematically unobjectionable work. So, even when the greatest mathematician of all times gives a proof, an atheist will still reject it.
In fact, there is nothing -- no argument whatsoever -- that could ever convince an atheist that God exist. You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep. That is the real value of Gödel's proof. In the end, he was not even trying to prove something about God. He was trying to prove something about atheists.
Why do we believe that God is something that can be proven?
I suppose this is reasonably assumed whenever "God" is ascribed (according to tradition, scripture, doctrine, testimony) properties, or predicates, which entail changes to the observable universe: those "God"-unique changes either are evident or they are absent, ergo "God" so described either exists or does not exist, no?
What question is not begged (is not fallaciously answered) by "a mystery"? None.
Naturalists offer explanationsi nterms of natural laws, but the laws themselves are taken to be brute and inexplicable, no? A mystery that answers questions.
So, again, no proof, even if perfect would change a thing.
I don't think that's entirely right. Reason does change people's views, but slowly, and very occasionally quickly. The rationale lodges in some deep recess of the brain, and slowly starts rearranging neurons around it I reckon, although may never reach a critical mass. Admittedly there are much quicker ways to influence the beliefs on another.
Can anyone prove a god, I enjoy debates and wish to see the arguments posed in favour of the existence of a god.
If cosmopsychism is true (panpsychism with an emphasis on the macro rather than the micro), and at the moment I think it probably is, then we have a very large (possibly infinite) and powerful conscious blob. Should we call it God? Who knows. But it's a possible candidate for Goddishness. Does it mean we should believe in miracles, hate fags, give it a name and then stone people who say the name out loud, start wars in its name, try to make out that it is really really bothered about which ethnic group should have rights to a piece of land on one tiny planet in an infinite universe, use it to explain odd things that sometimes happen, and otherwise make up stories (that coincidentally happen to align with our interests) about what it wants? Probably not.
[physical] laws themselves are taken to be brute [s]and inexplicable[/s], no?
No. Physical laws are mathematical (computable) generalizations of precisely observed regularities or structures in nature and they are only descriptive (constraints), not themselves explanatory (theories).
Reply to bert1 Scientists and scientifically literate persons do not misuse (misinterpret) physical laws that way – and obviously, bert, you're neither a scientist nor scientifically literate if you believe nature's regularities / structures are "inexplicable" (akin to supernatural mysteries ... miracles, woo-of-the-gaps, etc).
Scientists and scientifically literate persons do not misuse (misinterpret) physical laws that way – and obviously, bert, you're neither a scientist nor scientifically literate if you believe nature's regularities / structures are "inexplicable" (akin to supernatural mysteries ... miracles, woo-of-the-gaps, etc).
If you keep asking 'Yes but why?' eventually even scientifically literate people like yourself, will say 'That's just how it is'. That's a mystery. I make no claim to it being akin to 'supernatural mysteries ... miracles, woo-of-the-gaps, etc'
What is the need for God?
Is God a legacy of the past that remains to this day? Or is it a natural concept that will remain with humans forever?
Is man able to solve the "problem of God"?
You are merely haphazardly copying excerpts from the ongoing investigation and conversation on Gödel's proof.
Hilarious coming from the individual quoting Wikipedia to falsely claim "Godel proved God's existence" and realising only 5 posts in that I am not talking about modal collapse when saying "inconsistency".
You are desperately fishing for evidence that there would be something wrong with Gödel's work without being a constructive participant in any shape, way, or fashion.
Taking the accusation I correctly raised against you twice and putting a "no u" spin on it. Boring.
Secondly, Melvin Fitting's reformulation addresses this concern anyway.
It is not Fitting's reformulation that addresses that. Fitting's addresses the modal collapse, the inconsistency had been solved before people were ever aware of a modal collapse.
And the fact some reformulations avoid modal collapse and are valid does not matter for the crankery you are trying to push.
If there is any such proof of God, it would not be the case that across the globe philosophers (outside of “philosophy of religion”) are overwhelmingly atheists, and that the more prestige a scientist in the physical sciences has the more likely he is to be an atheist. It is also not a coincidence that IQ is a useful predictor of atheism and religious attendance. But yet the crank thinks he has stumbled upon something that everybody else is ignorant of. Here we see how the religious crank manipulates information to push his pathological dogma:
In fact, there is nothing -- no argument whatsoever -- that could ever convince an atheist that God exist.
It is even more telling when the crank abuses the work of people who themselves do not think the argument even in its valid shape proves anything — the delusion that tautologies within one logical language among many others is able to prove something metaphysical.
He then pretends to be humble and be "participating" in a discussion he is thoroughly abusing and misuing:
The rhetoric about "there is no proof for God" basically keeps ignoring Gödel's mathematically unobjectionable work.
He did not know that Gödel's proof is not consistent until I informed him of such. It is visible when he kept thinking of modal collapse when I used the word "inconsistency".
Then, we have more abuse and lies about scholars long dead:
That is the real value of Gödel's proof. In the end, he was not even trying to prove something about God. He was trying to prove something about atheists.
Being established that the sophist is doing exactly what I described or what he used for “no u”, and up to reasonable people to see through it, I am removing this thread from my browser to not provide any more ammunition to the crank.
Hilarious coming from the individual quoting Wikipedia to falsely claim "Godel proved God's existence" and realising only 5 posts in that I am not talking about modal collapse when saying "inconsistency".
There is no inconsistency in the version tested by Christoph Benzmüller and Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo:
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/141495131.pdf
Science and Spiritual Quest 2015
Experiments in Computational Metaphysics:
Gödel’s Proof of God’s Existence
The findings from these experiments on Scott’s variant were manifold (they were
obtained on a standard MacBook):
i. The axioms (and definitions) are consistent. This was confirmed by
Nitpick, which presented a simple model within a few seconds.
ii. Theorem T1 follows from Axioms A1 and A2 in modal logic K (and hence
also in stronger modal logics such as KB, S4 and S5). 3 This was proved
by LEO-II and Satallax in a few milliseconds. In fact, the left to right
direction of the equivalence in A1 is sufficient to prove T1.
iii. Corollary C follows from T1, D1 and A3, again already in modal logic K.
This was proved by LEO-II and Satallax in a few milliseconds.
iv. Theorem T2 follows from A1, D1, A4 and D2 in modal logic K. Again, the
provers got this result quickly, Satallax within milliseconds and LEO-II
within 20s.
v. Theorem T3, necessary existence of a God-like entity, follows from D1, C,
T2, D3 and A5. Again, this was proved by LEO-II and Satallax in a few
milliseconds. However, this time modal logic KB was required to obtain
the result. KB strengthens modal logic K by postulating the B axiom
scheme. In modal logic K, theorem T2 does not follow from the axioms
and definitions. This was confirmed by Nitpick, which reported a counter
model.
You keep nonsensicalizing about inconsistencies that are not there.
Reply to Deleted user For heaven's sake, who even cares that some past draft version of the proof, that had not even gone through peer review, contained an inconsistency? The people who actually worked on the proof are very different from you. When there is a problem, they fix it. You, on the other hand, you are incessantly looking for reasons to dismiss Gödel's work on futile details instead of doing constructive work. You excel in obstructive negativity!
But then again, we can certainly replace the logic sentence denoting God by five axiomatic expressions in higher-order modal logic. That is what Gödel did. Hence, God is not ineffable. Where is the proof that God would be ineffable? Furthermore, God can be proven from carefully chosen axioms because that is exactly what Gödel did.
I think you are misleading my argument. A proof like Gödel's continues in this step of enclosing God through logic. Again, can't God be contradictory? When we talk about an incapacity, aren't we betraying the nature of God? What happens is that by trying to conceptualize God [whether through Gödel's axiomatic expressions] we enclose the very concept within a context that conditions it [Gödel's proof does not prove the moral God, nor the creator God].
For me, the important thing is to show how our proofs, precisely because they are proofs, miss the mark, thereby showing that the concept of God is so plural that it is difficult to see how a valid proof can even be conceived. If I choose unconditionality as an attribute of God [why shouldn't I choose it?], the matter is practically closed. Then there is no proof sufficiently exhaustive that could work.
I would like to show that the idea of God is closely related to the idea of limit. And that because of this relationship, a huge problem arises that overwhelms the capacity of any proof. However, the idea of God is necessarily linked to the idea of limit. This is the reason why God, in my view, is related to the ineffable, as philosophies like those of Levinas or Kierkegaard have done. But then it is not a moral God, not a physical God, not a logical God, etc. God would be the limit of his own definitions.
Well, according to my view the idea of God is located at de limits of the reasonable. Just because is a limit-idea which overflows any context of a posible proof.
Gödel's proof does not prove the moral God, nor the creator God
Indeed, he didn't. But then again, he doesn't have to. Gödel did not seek to give a complete description of God. He merely defined an object to be Godlike if it has all positive properties. A proof of God does not seek to be a complete description of God.
Since this was in one of my browser tabs, I will make one last post.
NOTE: When I say OP, I am referring to the person I am talking to, not to the first poster of this thread.
As if it hadn't been proven that OP does not care about the discussion around Gödel's ontological proof, and only abuses it to prove "atheists are in denial", the source he himself quotes contradicts him.
It is true that it says:
i. The axioms (and definitions) are consistent. This was confirmed by Nitpick, which presented a simple model within a few seconds.
OP however still does not understand that we are talking about Gödel's original axioms — which are inconsistent. The fragment he quotes however is not talking about Gödel's original axioms. The very paper he quotes in fact includes a quote stating, again, that Gödel original axioms are inconsistent (he would know if he read (past tense) past page 6):
To study the consequences, we have replayed the experiments as reported above, but this time for the varied definition D2. Interestingly, the model finder Nitpick failed to report a model. To assess the situation, we subsequently tried to use the HOL theorem provers to prove the inconsistency of the modified set of axioms and definitions. To our surprise, the prover LEO-II indeed succeeded (in about 30 seconds) in doing so. We have both not been aware of this inconsistency. In fact, related comments in philosophy papers often classify Scott’s modification only as a ‘cosmetic’ change to what is often addressed as a minor oversight by Gödel.
d. Axiom A5 “Necessary existence is a positive property”, theorem T1 and Lemma 2 now imply falsehood.
If Gödel's axioms are inconsistent, it cannot be that Gödel provided a valid proof of a God-like being. The ones who did are those that display consistent axioms. Therefore, Gödel did not prove, "objectionably" or not, that there is a God-like being.
Once again, he is maliciously putting words into the mouths of serious scholars.
Furthermore, in the discussion of the paper, the scholars themselves say:
In philosophical circles, the debate is not yet settled and the allurement of ontological arguments seems far from fading.
However, the media writers are also to be blamed, because of their apparent interest in creating ‘headline stories’, and in copying, nitpicking and obfuscating text passages from each other instead of presenting unbiased, properly investigated and individually prepared information.
However, when the news subsequently made its way to the US, some intentionally (and very naively) obfuscated headlines appeared such as “Researchers say they used MacBook to prove Gödel’s God theorem” or “God exists, say Apple fanboy scientists”.
Moreover, there clearly are theologically and metaphysically relevant objections, including the modal collapse, which are not yet fully settled
There are consistent axiomatizations that non-trivially entail the necessary existence of a God-like being. As for any axiomatization, and not only those with a religious theme, it often remains a ’matter of faith’ to believe in the truth of the proposed axioms in the actual universe.
Our core contribution is a technological approach and machinery that, as has been well demonstrated here, can fruitfully support further logical investigations in this area
Extremely ironic for the sophist, to say the least.
OP does not address any of the contradictions I point out in his insipid posts. He zeroes in on one single point where he may be able to wiggle out and throw smoke screens and goes with it. He did not care at all to address the fact that Anderson himself, one of the people whose work he abuses, defended that the consistent form of the argument is refutable. He also does not care that Fitting's proof reformulates Gödel's argument to talk about extensional properties, while it is believed that Gödel had intensional properties in mind. He does not care about any of that because he does not argue in good-faith.
Pardon, but I'm concerned with a social "view of the idea of God" preached in religious traditions and actually worshipped (i.e. idolized) by congregants. It's this totalitarian "view of idea of God" that significantly affects cultures and politics and pacifies collective existential angst (e.g. excuses social scapegoating, martyrdom, holy warfare, missionary imperialism, etc) rather than anyone's speculative "view of the idea of God" (such as yours, JuanZu, or my own Reply to 180 Proof).
Fear of the unknown (ergo 'god-of-the-gaps'), or uncertainty (i.e. angst).
Is God a legacy of the past that remains to this day?
It is atavistic like ghosts (or shadows), "a legacy" of every human's infancy:magical thinking.
Or is it a natural concept that will remain with humans forever?
"God" is a supernatural fantasy (i.e. fetish-idol ... cosmic lollipop) that many, clearly not all, thoughtful and/or well-educated humans outgrow.
Is man able to solve the "problem of God"?
I suppose solving the problem of mortality (or scarcity) will consequently dissolve "the problem of God" (i.e. this may be the meaning of humans expelled from "Eden" in order to keep us from eating from the "Tree of Life" so that we "know death" and "fear God" (re: Genesis 3:22)).
BitconnectCarlosJune 30, 2024 at 16:54#9134390 likes
I urge people first to go and read their actual field manuals here: if you are Christian, read the Bible, if you are a Muslim, read the Quran or if you are a Jew, read the Torah. Now, do any of these Holy Scriptures insist and demand that in order for to find God you just have "really think it through" or "reason it out"?
He's assumed to exist. To be the ultimate cause behind natural events -- often misfortunates such as snakes and plagues entering the Israelite camp or the STD outbreak that resulted when the Israelite men went after the women of another tribe (Midianite, IIRC?) There seems to be a formula behind it: Irresponsible/bad behavior -> Misfortunate, which is a manifestation of divine displeasure/disfavor. This link is established early in the OT and leads to a certain self-reflective attitude and caution of the divine. On the flip side, good/moral behavior is generally linked with progeny and abundance -- divine favor. This a general trend in the OT but there are works that buck this trend - see book of Job.
From reading the Bible one gets the sense that there is a divine plan unfolding through history - reminds me of Heidegger in a way.
He's assumed to exist. To be the ultimate cause behind natural events
Yes, that's magical thinking (e.g. "The Great OZ" behing the curtain), or the cross-cultural god-of-the-gaps (i.e. appeal to ignorance) fallacy. More than "assumed", such a "God" is worshipped (ritually mass-deluding). Bronze & Iron Age religious traditions consecrated their naturalistic and moral ignorance by magically denying it and naming that supernatural denial "God". :sparkle: :eyes: :pray:
.
Act righteously and divine favor will follow. "Reasoning God's existence" is not a biblical concern at all.
Exactly. So I'm puzzled by those who want to give a proof of God, because they usually are religious people. Why not simply follow the given manuals and act righteously?
So I'm puzzled by those who want to give a proof of God, because they usually are religious people. Why not simply follow the given manuals and act righteously?
Godel wrote his proof of God for the same reason as why he wrote all his other proofs: because he could.
I would not do it for a rather similar reason: because I can't.
Why not simply follow the given manuals and act righteously?
Because it's stupid and pointless if there is no God. So you need to figure out if God is real, and if so it is the God of the bible, and if so is the bible literal, and if so, it might make sense to follow the rules (or it might not, the moral thing might be to fight God the evil basted and his bastard children and curse him even if it is futile).
Reply to ssu I only say that because it was the reason given in the setup. You were discussing why a person who is already religious would wonder why God exists, why not just follow the rules. So the reason for following the rules assumes the existence of God, in this setup, no? Maybe I misunderstood. But the existence of God is an important factor here because the assumption of his existence is behind the drive to follow the rules. This drive would be on a much more certain footing if God's existence could be established rather than being assumed. Maybe I'm overlooking the importance of faith.
Of course, I don't believe, even if I were a theist, that source of my morality would be in God's will, however revealed. It is in my will. Then God and I can have a fight, or we can negotiate, or agree, or I can submit, or whatever.
Independent Confirmation for Gödel's "Proof" of Existence of God
Scientists at Freie Universität and TU Vienna Use Computers to Check Reasoning of Austrian Mathematician
? 308/2013 from Oct 17, 2013
Scientists at Freie Universität Berlin and the Vienna University of Technology have succeeded in checking and confirming a so-called “proof of God” by the Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel (1906-1978). Christoph Benzmüller from the Dahlem Center for Intelligent Systems and his Viennese colleague Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo succeeded, using computer programs, so-called “theorem provers,” in verifying with the highest mathematical precision the logical correctness of Godel’s proof of God. A short preliminary version of this work is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.4526. The formalization and verification of the proof are online at https://github.com/FormalTheology/GoedelGod.
The consistency of the basic assumptions made by Gödel was confirmed by the computer. Furthermore, the scientists were able to demonstrate that the nontrivial proof was, for the most part, able to be generated automatically by the computer. They had not expected that to be the case.
So, according to you, what's wrong with this German report?
The criticism mentioned in the report is the same as for every other math proof in existence:
The age-old question of God's existence of course remains unanswered and depends on the meaningfulness and reference to reality of the chosen axioms. Gödel's reasoning, however, in the opinion of the computer scientists has been proven to be correct, as demonstrated by the computer.
A proof only demonstrates the equiconsistency between a theorem and its axioms. Nothing more. Nothing less. Hence, Gödel's proof is as succesful or unsuccessful as any other proof in mathematics.
So, according to you, what's wrong with this German report?
You are wrong and a news piece is not a reliable source.
Finding: The theorem prover LEO-II showed that the axioms and definitions in Gödel’s original proof script are inconsistent. This result was new to us.
You are wrong and a news piece is not a reliable source.
Can you send a message to the "Office of Communication and Marketing" of the "Freie Universität Berlin" to confirm with you that they are publishing what according to you are errors?
You can contact them using the following information:
Press inquiries
Press and Communication Team
Tel.: +49 (0)30 838 731 80
Email: [email protected]
In the meanwhile, we can obviously give them the benefit of the doubt. They have spent a lot of time and effort preparing their press release while your being obstructive and negative about the achievements of their university, is at best cheap and easy.
BitconnectCarlosJuly 01, 2024 at 13:59#9137480 likes
Exactly. So I'm puzzled by those who want to give a proof of God, because they usually are religious people. Why not simply follow the given manuals and act righteously?
It can be interesting to consider how far philosophy/rationality can lead us towards an understanding of God. Perhaps some type of prime mover necessarily exists.
BitconnectCarlosJuly 01, 2024 at 14:01#9137490 likes
Regarding your first answer, the question is that if the theism is the result of fear of the end that will happen, why do religious theists continue to commit sin despite the warnings of religion? Fear as a natural mechanism always prevents a person from danger, but sin is a selective act. which occurs despite the presence of fear.
Regarding your second answer, the question is why "evolution", which has changed everything, has not changed this concept? We are witnessing both the spread of the modern attitude towards this concept and the primitive attitude towards it.
Regarding your third answer, one can also ask why Spinoza was theistic if consciousness mainly leads to the passing of this concept. Was Descartes a theist? And even today, many thinkers are theists, although many are not theists.
Regarding the fourth answer, the question is that if the issue of death and the concept of immortality is the key to solving the "problem of God", then how can the phenomenon of suicide be justified? Not all people have a desire for immortality, and death is not a natural event, and sometimes it is a choice.
Pardon, but I'm concerned with social "view of the idea of God" preached in religious traditions and actually worshipped (i.e. idolized) by congregants. It's this totalitarian "view of idea of God" that significantly affects cultures and politics and pacifies collective existential angst (e.g. excuses social scapegoating, martyrdom, holy warfare, missionary imperialism, etc) rather than anyone's speculative "view of the idea of God" (such as yours, JuanZu, or my own
It is not essential to religion that it build the “totalitarian” and “social scapegoating” and “warfare” and “imperialism”.
Whatever club or faction or group of people gathers in a herd, you get the same exact risks of “totalitarian” and “social scapegoating” and “warfare” and “imperialism”.
These are essential to being a human sheep, as so many are, jumping on the bandwagon of naziism, Leninism, colonialism, communism, capitalism, etc.
How many atheists would be fine if all the theists could be rounded up and sent to some colony for the delusional for the greater good of mankind? I’m sure a leader, using the latest political science and social reconstructions could produce cheering and promote mass killing with such a plan (oh right, Russia, China).
Religion and God can be an answer to human bad tendency. I happen to think God is the only answer, our only hope.
Nothing has changed among humans in 10,000 years. Even with religion. But if you look in the rubble of human history, it’s we who destroy each other, again and again. So the only hope for us has to come from outside. Nothing has changed with regard to that either.
It can be interesting to consider how far philosophy/rationality can lead us towards an understanding of God. Perhaps some type of prime mover necessarily exists.
The study of religion is bit different from the attempt to prove God's existence. The questioning doesn't even start from the obvious question: Is there a God?
BitconnectCarlosJuly 01, 2024 at 17:01#9137780 likes
AFAIK virtually all ancient societies were theistic -- mostly polytheistic, but in the Hebrew Bible we see this shift from an anthropomorphized conception of Yahweh as a warrior-storm God to aniconic monotheism. I think "is there a God" is an obvious question to modern audiences, but it wasn't to the ancients.
Aren't you forgetting the oldest monotheistic religion, the one of the oldest Empires and Rome's old nemesis, the Fire worshipping Persians? Zoroastrianism is the oldest monotheistic religion as it is roughly 500 years older than the Jewish religion. But because Islam conquered the Sassanid Empire, we don't hear much about them. But there are a few still even today alive and worshipping the old religion.
I'm always fascinated by the idea that even if there wouldn't be Islam, or the Sassanid and Byzantine empires had stopped the spread of Islam, Iranian still today would be seen as different from us, the Western people as likely they would be all Zoroastrians.
BitconnectCarlosJuly 01, 2024 at 20:23#9138370 likes
Zoroastrianism is dualistic envisioning a cosmic struggle between a good divine being and an evil one. In Judaism there is no such struggle. God is unquestionably sovereign. I am not too familiar with zoroastrianism/pre-islamic Iran but I'd be interested to learn more.
In Islam God is also unquestionably sovereign. Christianity has elements of dualism (God v. Satan) but it's unclear whether Jesus really preached this or whether it was later addition/extrapolation. Early Christians wrestled with this issue.
The oldest religion is mesopotamian religion which goes back some ~10,000 years. Their god Marduk emerged victorious over the divine pantheon of lesser gods through brute force. Unsurprisingly mesopotamian civilizations were often imperialistic and brutal, particularly the Assyrians.
Nothing has changed among humans in 10,000 years. Even with religion. But if you look in the rubble of human history, it’s we who destroy each other, again and again. So the only hope for us has to come from outside. Nothing has changed with regard to that either.
Seems to me gods don't offer any more help than 'utopian' political systems. Whether we opt for the magic space wizard or the leader of the glorious revolution, we're probably fucked.
What makes you think gods comes from the outside? Are they not human creations, as fraught and manufactured as any ideology?
Reply to Tarskian I cannot because the article is from 11 years ago. The "mistake" the article makes is not crucial for a news piece, but it is for the bullshit you are trying to push. Nonwithstanding, you are wrong and dishonest, completely ignorant of the context and work around Gödel's work, as it has been proven several times here — a crazy individual abusing mathematical and logical language in an attempt to put on make-up on whatever insanity it is you are devising next.
I think "is there a God" is an obvious question to modern audiences, but it wasn't to the ancients.
Epicuros, despite believing in (pagan) gods, was an ancient Greek materialist (SEP, Sep 2021). U74, U75, and U76 fragments:
"the nature of existence is atoms and void"
"the nature of the whole universe is atoms and void"
SEP:they [Epicureans] held the gods to be immortal and indestructible (how this might work in a materialist universe remains unclear)
SEP:Ancient critics thought the Epicurean gods were a thin smoke-screen to hide Epicurus’ atheism, and difficulties with a literal interpretation of Epicurus’ sayings on the nature of the gods (for instance, it appears inconsistent with Epicurus’ atomic theory to hold that any compound body, even a god, could be immortal) have led some scholars to conjecture that Epicurus’ ‘gods’ are thought-constructs, and exist only in human minds as idealisations, i.e., the gods exist, but only as projections of what the most blessed life would be.
SEP:Many pantheists argue that physical conceptions are adequate to explain the entire cosmos. This is an ancient form of pantheism, found for example in the Stoics, for whom only bodies can be said to exist. [...] Such worldviews make no ontological commitments beyond those sanctioned by empirical science.
[...]
More specifically, God is identical with one of the two ungenerated and indestructible first principles (archai) of the universe. One principle is matter which they regard as utterly unqualified and inert. [...] The designing fire is likened to sperm or seed which contains the first principles or directions of all the things which will subsequently develop.
The Charvaka were an Indian philosophical school which was strictly materialistic, atheistic, and antidogmatic. They pitched against the Vedic religion and priests that "it could not be proven; it had to be accepted on faith and that faith was encouraged by a priestly class which was clearly benefiting from it at the expense of others" (WHE, Sep 2021). The Ajikiva too did not believe in a particular creator god.
Jainism, one of the oldest documented religions in the world, was actually a godless religion, believing in the holiness of the soul and higher (though mortal) beings.
In his Visuddhimagga, Theravada philosopher Buddhaghosa states "For there is no god Brahma. The maker of the conditioned world of rebirths. Happenings alone flow on. Conditioned by the coming together of causes.".
If you keep asking 'Yes but why?' eventually even scientifically literate people like yourself, will say 'That's just how it is'. That's a mystery.
Such asking of why is inappropriate in that it presupposes there must be a reason. Such asking generates pseudo-mystery. Real mystery exists when there is an answer which is not known, not when there cannot be a knowable answer.
If the university believed that their press release was expired, they would retract it or publish a rectification.
It does not matter what the press says, especially when the researchers involved specifically say in their articles that the press has misrepresented their research several times. What matters is what I have quoted multiple times from the paper itself that says the exact contrary of your uneducated proselytising — wrong, from the several papers from different scholars that repeat over and over that Gödel's original axioms are inconsistent. Go send them an email and ask if Gödel's original axioms are consistent. They are not. You are wrong and you don't know what you are talking about.
How many times have you been kicked out of a meeting for exactly this reason?
So, tell us, when did you lose your job?
It wasn't the economy. We can all see what it really was.
It is actually pointless for you to look for a new job because history is simply going to repeat itself.
You'd better look for a job in which you don't have to interact with anyone, if a thing like that even exists.
Laughably pathetic attempt at a character attack. In the real world I do not have to deal with schizoid incompetents with delusions of grandeur like you babbling about things they are two degrees away from studying, no such issues follow.
In the real world I do not have to deal with schizoid incompetents with delusions of grandeur like you babbling about things they are two degrees away from studying, no such issues follow.
You really don't know the real world, do you?
Of course the customer is incompetent. Otherwise, he wouldn't need you. But then again, it is obvious that he will ask the company for someone else to deal with the case, while you can pack your bags and go.
How many times do you think that you can do that before your company pulls the plug on you? That is why I am so sure that they have done it already!
My point about ancient human societies being theistic is a general truth -- there were certainly individuals and perhaps ancient movements who sort of bucked this trend like Epicurus, but Roman society -- as ancient societies were generally -- were polytheistic except strange cults like Judaism who practiced monotheism. Jainism, btw, is not atheistic. Of course a diversity of thought exists though. Maybe we could find a few ancient societies constructed on atheism/a rejection of theism but those would be the exception.
The Charvaka were an Indian philosophical school which was strictly materialistic, atheistic, and antidogmatic.
So they insist on a strict materialism and reject of the divinity yet remain non-dogmatic :brow:
I would say they are atheistic but spiritual. Labels aside, this is how the World History Encyclopaedia puts it:
It is a nontheistic religion in that it does not advocate a belief in a creator god but in higher beings (devas), which are mortal, and in the concept of karma directing one's present life and future incarnations; the devas have no power over a person, however, and are not sought for guidance or assistance in freeing one's self from karmic bondage. In Jainism, it is up to each individual to attain salvation – defined as release from the cycle of rebirth and death (samsara) - by adhering to a strict spiritual and ethical code of behavior.
For the connection between Jainism and Buddhism, you may be interested in this article https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/History/World_History/Early_World_Civilizations_(Lumen)/06%3A_Early_Civilizations_in_the_Indian_Subcontinent/6.02%3A_Buddhism
BitconnectCarlosJuly 02, 2024 at 04:18#9139910 likes
Interesting. ChatGPT describes it as theistic yet agrees that Jainism does not believe in a creator god. Mesopotamian religion and other ancient polytheistic systems also didn't have creator gods -- there was the primordial realm out from all things came including the other minor gods (higher beings) who were still subject to karma/fate/cycle of rebirth/etc. Israelite religion was unique in that it broke from this conception but this conception is very ancient. It's the idea of a single creator god that is new, relatively speaking.
What makes you think gods comes from the outside? Are they not human creations, as fraught and manufactured as any ideology?
If God isn’t other than us, then aren’t we already doomed, right? Why would we who create the world’s biggest problems along with false ideologies to build the factions that get to kill the unbelievers think we might make the world a better place, when today is always same as yesterday anyway? Some of us live a little longer today. More time maybe per life than 10,000 years ago. Otherwise just more time to find a faction to fight and kill and live and die for among the rubble.
The only hope, I see, is something else.
Doesn’t mean this world and each one of us isn’t worth saving. Just that we can’t do it alone. More like we won’t do it alone. We all think only some of us and some of the world is worth saving, and that shows none of us are capable of doing what it might take to save any of us, let alone all of us.
God is our last hope, and not if he or she is just one of us.
Reply to Fire Ologist I guess I'm not as pessimistic as you seem to be. I don't think we are doomed, but who would know? I tend to think of 'last hopes' as wish fulfillment fantasies. In such situations, God becomes a kind of Marvel superhero who rescues us in the last 15 minutes of the story. These tropes - doom and saving - don't entirely resonate with me, but I understand their attractions, and of course, they've been a part of human storytelling for millennia.
Reply to Janus I think you're right, I do presuppose a reason, and maybe that is just a bad habit. However if there is, in fact, an unknown reason, then we have a natural mystery that explains the phenomena we experience.
I’m not pessimistic. I just mean we will never end war, end murder, end lying, end hurting each other and ourselves. We will never build a utopia, never end poverty. There will always be self-absorbed people, there will always arise a tyrant, there will always be infidelity and betrayal.
But life on balance is good, and it’s worth trying to love and live, and teach and learn, and seek to be good, and be better.
Just being realistic. All of human history so far shows nothing changes.
Reply to Tarskian, as mentioned, some (supposed) vague unknown isn't of particular concern here. By the way, are you sure you want to define your supposed deity/deities by these apologist arguments? There could be (unforeseen) implications.
As an aside, the modal logic comes up every now and then. [sup](e.g. 2021Jul7, 2021Jul5)[/sup] Possible worlds are, in short, self-consistent wholes. Necessities hold for all of them. Possibilities hold for (at least) one. Contingency and impossibility are derived from there, which rounds up the typical four subjunctive modalities. So, anyway, whatever necessity would be common to all possible worlds. Coffee doesn't figure in Euclidean space, R[sup]3[/sup], which is a self-consistent whole, hence coffee is not necessarily around. Well, it is a necessity to me, so this is offensive. ;) I'm not seeing "the Vedic Shiva, the Avestan Ahura Mazda, the Biblical Yahweh, and a few others", either.
It becomes difficult to see the point of a proof of God's existence when it is construed as a proof of an individual's existence. Does one use arguments to become acquainted with an individual? Either that individual exists or it doesn't, and experience alone can tell us which. The project of a proof of God's existence thus ironically comes to appear meaningless to contemporary philosophers of religion.
I’m not pessimistic. I just mean we will never end war, end murder, end lying, end hurting each other and ourselves. We will never build a utopia, never end poverty. There will always be self-absorbed people, there will always arise a tyrant, there will always be infidelity and betrayal.
I wouldn't call this optimism. :wink: I don't think we can say 'never'. It's too definitive. But certainly it is unlikely. Who knows? The broader question is will we wipe ourselves out before we can get to some more beneficial way of being with each other? That's my trope.
Valid observation. I’m actually optimistic. Just not in our ability to truly care for one another on any kind of scale larger than the people we happen to like in our living rooms and backyards.
Reply to Fire Ologist We care about those we naturally care about in a "visceral" way, but we can also learn to care for those we are not familiar with in an intellectual way.
Reply to bert1 I imagine there may be unknown factors in play that we may later come to know about. Will there always be more unknown factors to discover? It seems plausible to think that there will be, and in any case how could we ever know if we have discovered all the factors in play or not? Is there any reason to believe that nature should be 100% intelligible to us?
We can't even agree on which gods or why gods or how gods.
Sure we can - it’s possible. It’s called a religious sect, or maybe a Church. Some ideas are stupid, and others ring true. Same for ideas of God. Same for all ideas.
It’s like you are looking for someone else to tell you where God is, before you will even look for God in the first place.
Even those who see God can’t tell you where God is, for you. Your own eyes alone see God. I can only tell you where God is, for me.
For instance, I can tell, God is in your life. I see it in your posts (some of them).
I wonder if there is some way of avoiding the dichotomy of traditional religious God vs the universe as pointless accident theory.
TBH, I think the universe simply coming into being pointlessly is the height of absurdity and would render reality fundamentally unintelligible. The only way a scientific cosmology could avoid that would be to accept a tenseless theory of time along with some sort of eternal universe.
I like Paul Davies idea that the only things that can possibly exist are things that explain themselves, some sort of self-contained intelligibility, so that the universe and the reason for its existence must be co-emerging or co-creating somehow. A constructivist metaphysics I lean towards would consider this viable.
Tom StormSeptember 11, 2024 at 07:53#9313280 likes
I wonder if there is some way of avoiding the dichotomy of traditional religious God vs the universe as pointless accident theory.
Yes. My favourite, when it comes to explaining the universe is, 'I don't know'. Even if one takes the god hypothesis seriously, the problem with it is that god has no explanatory power. We have no why or how or who - it's just a claim, bereft of detail.
I think the universe simply coming into being pointlessly is the height of absurdity and would render reality fundamentally unintelligible.
If this leads you to gods then you're surely making a textbook fallacy - an argument from incredulity? As an aside, what makes you think reality is intelligible? Might it not be that humans merely construct a view (which we dub reality) based on contingent factors like perception, culture and linguist practices. Some ideas in this constructivist melange are more useful for certain purposes than others.
The only way a scientific cosmology could avoid that would be to accept a tenseless theory of time along with some sort of eternal universe.
I see no reason to rule out that the universe, or some part of it is eternal. I think some physicists (like Sean Carroll) have entertained this possibility. Can we demonstrate that it isn't?
This is why I prefer, 'I don't know.' And most likely neither does anyone else, even those qualified to make better guesses than anyone here.
I wonder if there is some way of avoiding the dichotomy of traditional religious God vs the universe as pointless accident theory.
I think the universe simply coming into being pointlessly is the height of absurdity and would render reality fundamentally unintelligible.
Once you've gotten past the silly, creaky "why is there something rather than nothing" question, the universe can't be an "accident." It's inevitable. As for pointless, why does the universe owe you intelligibility or a point. That's your job as a conscious entity - tacking on intelligibility, meaning, purpose, and point.
The only way a scientific cosmology could avoid that would be to accept a tenseless theory of time along with some sort of eternal universe.
By "tenseless" do you mean that there would be no direction to time? What does that have to do with intelligibility or purpose? As for an eternal universe, what's wrong with that? What else could it be? I think time is likely just another one of those things we tack on.
I like Paul Davies idea that the only things that can possibly exist are things that explain themselves, some sort of self-contained intelligibility, so that the universe and the reason for its existence must be co-emerging or co-creating somehow.
I think the universe explains itself by evolving consciousness to gussy itself all up with intelligibility and meaning.
Can anyone prove a god, I enjoy debates and wish to see the arguments posed in favour of the existence of a god.
Can anyone prove the existence of their self? (I mean Descartes thought he did, but he only proved his self to his self. He didn’t prove Descartes existed to any of us.)
Can anyone prove the existence of the philosophy forum?
I don’t think existence is subject to proof. All of the philosophers who assert existence as a conclusion at the end of an argument are wrong, or they are really talking about what the essence of some existing thing is, rather than the existence of that thing.
Proofs are about what a thing is and what it is not, not whether a thing is or whether it is not.
The only proof for God’s existence (or the existence of any particular object) would come from one individual’s experience and would only serve as “proof” to that particular individual about the existence of some particular thing.
We don’t prove existence. We assert “if X exists…” and then make proofs concerning attributes about X. But X might not exist and can never be made into a proof.
180 ProofSeptember 12, 2024 at 18:41#9315710 likes
Reply to Fire Ologist Afaik,"God" is an empty name that "exists" only in the heads of religious believers (i.e. superstitious, magical thinkers).
Fire OlogistSeptember 12, 2024 at 19:17#9315780 likes
"God" is an empty name that "exists" only in the heads
Right. That’s your experience. You talk about essential features such as “name” and “empty” in reference to a “God” and the assert it exists in heads. That’s a common experience (or lack thereof).
My point is that if God is sitting anywhere, in a head occupying an empty placeholder space or on a throne in heaven, the existence of this God itself cannot be proven. We are only able to use proofs to prove WHAT a God is (such as an empty name), but you can’t prove the existence of this thing, be it a God or an emptiness in a head.
Proof is for drawing connections/relations between things that we otherwise assume or assert exist. Proof doesn’t come to a conclusion showing that one of these assumptions must exist absent its relation to anything.
I can prove if 2 is added with 2 you get 4. I can’t prove 2 exists. Or addition. Or 4.
180 ProofSeptember 12, 2024 at 19:29#9315810 likes
Reply to Fire Ologist "Existence of God" (false predication) =/= "God exists" (re: matter of fact). You equivocate those phrases and thereby confuse the issue, FO. Btw, "proof" pertains only to logic and mathematics, not to matters of fact which, however, can be shown to be the case or not to be the case. "God exists" can be shownnot to be the case.
Fire OlogistSeptember 12, 2024 at 20:23#9315890 likes
”proof" pertains only to logic and mathematics, not to matters of fact,
That’s my point. I took the OP to be asking for someone to argue (provide words) whose conclusion is “therefore God exists.” (More words).
RelativistSeptember 12, 2024 at 21:49#9315960 likes
Very little can be "proven" in the way mathematical theorems are proven: through deduction based only on axioms that are intuitively true. So neither the existence nor nonexistence of gods can be proven.
Questions that could instead be asked:
-Can you rationally justify your belief in god(s)?
-Can you show it to be more like than not that god(s) exist?
-Can you show that god(s) are the best explanation (among available options) for the uncontroversial facts of the world?
The converse questions to atheists (like me) are equally fair:
-Can you rationally justify your belief that gods don't exist?
-Can you show it to be more like than not that gods don't exist?
-Can you show that an absence of gods best explain the uncontroversial facts of the world?
(The questions could be reworded to apply to those who reserve judgement).
If God wanted to prove to anyone that he exists he could easily do that but he doesn’t and in this way he remains mysterious to his beings who are free to doubt, deny or affirm his existence.
Proof though is in the pudding, that is existence itself perhaps a manifestation of his being without taking the credit that it was him who created the world yet something inferred from believers who see the manifestation of a great intelligence at work vis-a-vis nature.
If evolution is blind and purposeless apart from the perpetuation of the organism through many generations than we could see that it’s not mere blind chance, there’s definitely an intelligence in action here not just by looking at the end product of what evolution is able to turn out. Abiogenesis which still largely confounds scientists has no logical explanation and certainly giving rise to complex organisms means we have barely scratched the surface when it comes to explanation.
It seems to me that this intelligence which is manifested in nature must be pre-existing and has been expressed through evolution reasons unknown.
There are bigger mysteries too. Something cannot come from nothing which implies that something has always existed ad infinitum in one form or another and whether this something through the aeons of time could produce a God is highly plausible.
RelativistSeptember 13, 2024 at 02:30#9316320 likes
There are bigger mysteries too. Something cannot come from nothing which implies that something has always existed ad infinitum in one form or another and whether this something through the aeons of time could produce a God is highly plausible.
It's trivially true that "something cannot come from nothing", but that does not entail an infinite past.
It's logically impossible for nature to "produce a God" if "God"= a creator.
Abiogenesis which still largely confounds scientists has no logical explanation and certainly giving rise to complex organisms means we have barely scratched the surface when it comes to explanation.
We may never figure out how life began. That doesn't justify believing it was not natural abiogenesis. Quoting kindred
If God wanted to prove to anyone that he exists he could easily do that but he doesn’t and in this way he remains mysterious to his beings who are free to doubt, deny or affirm his existence.
This implies that IF there is a God, he probably doesn't give a shit whether we believe in him.
Abiogenesis which still largely confounds scientists
Have you looked at the scientific discussion of abiogenesis? It's just one more of the questions for which there are hypotheses but no accepted theory. Other examples - a theory that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics, dark matter and energy, and the manifestation of experience from neurological processes. Do you think those questions "confound" scientists? If so, well, that's just how science works.
Reply to CallMeDirac If included in the definition of God is a thing transcending the mundane; and if proof is a thing of the mundane, then you're not going to reach any certainty regarding God by proving it.
javi2541997September 15, 2024 at 04:41#9320490 likes
Reply to ENOAH Good point. I always thought proving the existence of God was a waste of time because atheists will always deny it and believers will always give God's existence as granted.
180 ProofSeptember 15, 2024 at 05:29#9320590 likes
Reply to javi2541997 Some of us affirm "god exists" only in the heads of it's believers and nowhere else.
javi2541997September 15, 2024 at 06:03#9320600 likes
Reply to 180 Proof True, I agree. It's interesting to imagine that those people ("believers") believe that "God exists" is also a fact in our minds since they can't accept that God exists in some minds but not in others.
Reply to javi2541997 No. I don't think it's possible to affirm anything outside of the minds affirming. Does that mean there is no other access to "X"? In other words is "X" only real if a human mind can affirm it? Or, if "X" is real, must it only be accessible as real to the human mind? I hypothesize that the "flaw" in proving God is not necessarily to be focused on God, but rather on the proving, and the idea that our flaws in proving "X" somehow seal the fate of "X".
javi2541997September 16, 2024 at 06:45#9322700 likes
I hypothesize that the "flaw" in proving God is not necessarily to be focused on God, but rather on the proving, and the idea that our flaws in proving "X" somehow seal the fate of "X".
I agree. Good points and argumentation, ENOAH. :up:
180 ProofSeptember 16, 2024 at 10:02#9322890 likes
Reply to ENOAHIs theism 'either true or not true'? If yes, then this can be soundly demonstrated. However, if no, then theism is noncognitive (i.e. figurative, analogical, mythopoetic).
NB: I'm using 'theism' in this context to mean 'sine qua non properties attributed to g/G' such as
(1) an/the ultimate mystery
(2) that created the whole of existence
(3) and uniquely intervenes in (re: "providence") – causes changes to (re: "miracles") – the observable universe (i.e. nature).
Deleted UserSeptember 16, 2024 at 18:55#9324140 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
Reply to 180 Proof No offense but how can "theism be true? As in ultimately/absolutely, independently of humans. We made it up. I like your definition, I agree with the point you're making, Im just also taking a step back and saying, we can't grasp its truth by thinking about it. I'm not in a position to doubt whatever it is that is [more] real than us. So I don't. If that's just agnostic, so be it. But I'm also saying I'm not in a position to grasp its reality with my little language box. In my readings etc. that there is such a Truth not accessible to us through our minds seems inevitably to come up. I see the inescapable paradox. I think we all do but we yammer on; its what we are. Anyway, that's what draws me (and presumably many) to whatever it is that is [more] real than us. But I recognize that I can't access that with my mind. My mind inevitably makes stuff up (like theism); albeit functional and valuable in our own world. They necessarily can't surpass the gap from their constructedness to whatever that reality is.
That's why I initially said, and still think, you cannot access "God" by any method of proof.
180 ProofSeptember 17, 2024 at 00:32#9324830 likes
Reply to ENOAH Well, if theism is not true or noncognitive, then "God" conceived of this way is factually disproven (i.e. demonstrably not the case, nonexistent).
Reply to 180 Proof If that's the result in logic, I accept. Now how to answer the residual unresolved question? How then is [only so called for a point of mutual focus] God to be conceived of, absolutely? I.e., where we are not left with any risk of elimination by a simple sweep of logic.
What is a "logical" explanation? You seem to be making a categorical distinction: how does an explanation differ from a logical explanation? - Assuming that by "explanation" we mean something that makes sense as opposed to something that does not or cannot make sense.
You’re right of course the word logical was not necessary unless invoking a non-logical explanation such as god did it or other supernatural explanation.
180 ProofSeptember 17, 2024 at 02:34#9325160 likes
Reply to T Clark When you say the universe is inevitable, how do you mean? Do you mean it is non-contingent or metaphysically necessary?
Because that's definitely contentious. I would be hard pressed to find any philosopher who argues the universe is necessary. I would believe atheist philosophers would simply accept its brute contingency. If you want to argue its necessity in some sense, you would be pitched right back into the nature of metaphysical necessity and the contingency argument for God.
IMO, necessity demands ontological non-composition and non-changeability. I don't think we can ascribe those to the universe, since the universe is a set of space-time events with no substantial existence beyond its components.
When you say the universe is inevitable, how do you mean? Do you mean it is non-contingent or metaphysically necessary?
How could there possibly be nothing? Not nothing like the inside of an empty box with all the air removed and shielded against radiation, but nothing nothing. Not even a quantum vacuum. What does that even mean? How can you have nothing without something to compare it with? Is that metaphysics? I'm not sure.
javi2541997September 23, 2024 at 14:44#9340950 likes
I think the only way to get to "nothing nothing" might be using zero. "0" comes from Arabic ?ifr, which means empty. While Greeks never had zero on mind, Arabian mathematicians used zero to represent emptiness, but took it into consideration and in their calculus. Then, zero is countable, although it is empty. So, "nothing nothing" might go beyond something empty. Maybe this would be the place where metaphysics was born...
I think the only way to get to "nothing nothing" might be using zero.
We are not talking about mathematical nothing, at least I'm not. We're talking about actual nothing - no matter, no energy, no fields, no quantum vacuum, no space, no time. Nothing.
180 ProofSeptember 23, 2024 at 16:32#9341090 likes
How could there possibly be nothing? [ ... ] Not even a quantum vacuum. What does that even mean?
:100:
Reply to Bodhy I agree 'the universe is contingent' (i.e. necessarily non-necessary) but the universe – any existent – is only a property of existence (not the other way around) and is not itself existence as such (which is necessarily non-contingent (i.e. existence = not-nonexistence / not-nothingness)).
javi2541997September 23, 2024 at 16:55#9341140 likes
Reply to T Clark I know you were not talking about math. I tried to see whether nothing is identifiable or not. As zero can represent emptiness and it can help us to understand facts, I wonder what represents the absence of those elements (no time, no matter, no fields, no energy).
I will be clear: when you think in absolute nothing, what comes to your mind? Everything white? A sparkle? A very deep, dark, and cold ambient?
Tom StormSeptember 23, 2024 at 22:57#9342510 likes
I will be clear: when you think in absolute nothing, what comes to your mind? Everything white? A sparkle? A very deep, dark, and cold ambient?
You are imagining something. Nothing is the absence of any qualities or attributes. It can't be imagined because by that very act you are imagining something.
Do we have any evidence that there was ever such a thing as nothing? As far as human experince is concerned the term 'nothing' is incoherent unless it is attached to a sentence like 'nothing up my sleeve' :wink:
I agree, and I think this is where we're headed into Christian metaphysics, the realisation that Being in some sense is necessary, there cannot be existential null. This is just the basic thrust of Christian metaphysics - no particular thing is necessary, but "Is" Is necessary, as if Being has no negation.
So, Being isn't a rug which we need to throw over a "nothing" like what Bergson said.
180 ProofSeptember 24, 2024 at 04:21#9343140 likes
Fyi: I derive 'necessary non-contingency' of existence (i.e. no-things) from the "metaphysics" of classical atomism (re: void) that predates Aristotlean 'substance' by a few centuries, Christianity by several centuries, and Anselm's 'necessary being' by about a millennium and a half.
javi2541997September 24, 2024 at 05:10#9343200 likes
You are imagining something. Nothing is the absence of any qualities or attributes. It can't be imagined because by that very act you are imagining something.
I wholeheartedly agree, Tom. Then, when I think of 'nothing' I only can imagine in the letters that form the word: N - O - T - H - I - N - G. What else can come to mind about nothingness? Because we agree with the difference between that and emptiness, right?
Not sure how it could be. The concept of God, in any defendable form, is unfalsifiable from within the Universe - seems baked-in to it, and the reason it gets taken seriously.
Can anyone prove a god, I enjoy debates and wish to see the arguments posed in favour of the existence of a god.
It depends on what the definition of God is. If it were like me, my definition of God is, a word in English which spells GOD, and has many meanings and many types depending on what religion or concept it comes from. Hence it is quite straightforward to prove the existence of God under the definition.
Whenever I type G O D, a word God appears on the screen GOD. Here is a God. Here is another God.
You are seeing two Gods on the screen. An object can be said to exist when it is visible to the perceiver in space and time. I am seeing the word God in the space where the monitor is located at this particular moment.
Therefore it is conclusively true that God exists.
If your definition of God is different from mine, you would have a different method of proof. Whatever the case, your mileage may vary.
There are three possibilities concerning the belief in God: true, false, indeterminate. Religion believes it is true. Atheism believes that it is false. Agnosticism is indeterminate.
Due to your ignorance, you're comparing apples, red delicious, and red apples and using their differences as a method of determining whether a fruit is an apple or not an apple.
[QUOTE]
Atheism is defined as a positive claim. It is agnosticism that refuses to make a claim. While agnosticism makes perfect sense, atheism doesn't.[/quote]Reply to Tarskian
What you said above, ?? is wrong. You don't have to take my word for it, your words below says it all. ??
If we look at the JTB account for knowledge, then knowledge is defined as a particular kind of belief:
With all that being said, because agnosticism specifically deals with knowledge, we must utilize the label properly, placing it in the appropriate category. This makes agnosticism a particular kind of atheism and theism.
It depends on what the definition of God is. If it were like me, my definition of God is, a word in English which spells GOD, and has many meanings and many types depending on what religion or concept it comes from. Hence it is quite straightforward to prove the existence of God under the definition.
Whenever I type G O D, a word God appears on the screen GOD. Here is a God. Here is another God.
You are seeing two Gods on the screen. An object can be said to exist when it is visible to the perceiver in space and time. I am seeing the word God in the space where the monitor is located at this particular moment.
Therefore it is conclusively true that God exists.
If your definition of God is different from mine, you would have a different method of proof. Whatever the case, your mileage may vary.
Reply to Corvus I do agree that the numerous definitions of gods will "require" different proofs. Having said that, more importantly metaphysical entities (which the vast majority of god definitions are) defy purely physical proof.
You didn't prove that the word exists. All you did was proved that the representation of the word exists.
Every time words are spoken, written or typed out, they are real as bricks. Bricks that make up the sentences, which are propositions, statements or claims in the real world. For instance, God is great, or Oh my God, you took my money, but didn't let me win the lottery jackpot. Don't worry, God will save you. etc etc. These are the real life examples of solid manifestation and materialization and utilization of the words.
Having said that, more importantly metaphysical entities (which the vast majority of god definitions are) defy purely physical proof.
Yeah, but having said that, isn't metaphysical entities a contradiction anyway? Metaphysical entities lack entities. Metaphysical entities with no entities are nothing. In Kant, it is Thing-in-Itself. They don't defy proofs. They don't have proofs.
Is Germany an entity? How about Apple corporation? How about the US dollar's value? Intersubjective entities are entities.
They are not metaphysical entities, are they? They have clear definitions, location and boundaries of their HQs and their presence, clearly set duties and activities, aims of their existence, and set of the members within the corporations and nations as well as the traditions and cultures within the entities, which are readily identifiable in physical and abstract manner.
God doesn't have any of those properties. God only exists in word.
God doesn't have any of those properties. God only exists in word.
Reply to Corvus
Yes, the dollar's value can be "readily identifiable" after the fact, just as believers of gods can agree upon dogmatic properties of their gods. That's neither my point nor THE point.
Rather, the dollar only has value because the vast majority of humans consciously agree that it has value, that is, it has no intrinsic or objective value. Similarly, gods definitely exist as entities through agreed human belief that is, as intersubjective entities (like nations, corporations and economies), though not objective entities, as you noted.
Rather, the dollar only has value because the vast majority of humans consciously agree that it has value, that is, it has no intrinsic or objective value. Similarly, gods definitely exist as entities through agreed human belief that is, as intersubjective entities (like nations, corporations and economies), though not objective entities, as you noted.
You seem to be confusing between value and existence. Agreed human beliefs alone don't warrant or prove the existence of God.
Reply to Corvus I believe by "existence" you mean objective existence, which in the case of gods (or any other entity that only exists inter-subjectively) is, of course true (as I said). My point is that many things we deal with routinely and without controversy also don't possess objective existence.
My point is that many things we deal with routinely and without controversy also don't possess objective existence.
OK, but your point is not a proof. 100 billion agreed believers have no proof. The OP was asking for a proof of the existence of God. Proof involves presenting arguments with evidence and conclusion from the argument.
Reply to Corvus Agreed, that's why my first post in this thread noted that it is a fool's errand to search for physical evidence to provide proof of a metaphysical entity.
Every time words are spoken, written or typed out, they are real as bricks. Bricks that make up the sentences, which are propositions, statements or claims in the real world.For instance, God is great, or Oh my God, you took my money, but didn't let me win the lottery jackpot. Don't worry, God will save you. etc etc. These are the real life examples of solid manifestation and materialization and utilization of the words.
For your information, "brick" was a figure of speech called simile in my sentence.
Simile is
"a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g. as brave as a lion )." - Oxford Dictionary.
As to whether gods are metaphysical, they are by my understanding,
You need to clarify what your definition of God is. Your proof of God would only make sense when you have a clear definition of God. The premises of your proof can only start from a solid definition. Then the logical proof could progress.
And then you must define what you mean by existence. Does everything you say as existing, exist in physical entity? There are also many objects which exists in conceptual entities. Then what you do you mean by existence?
Reply to Corvus Huh? I've spent considerable energy in this thread arguing against the concept of physically "proving" metaphysical entities, like gods. So, no, I don't need to define anything, since I'm not proving anything.
For your information, "brick" was a figure of speech called simile in my sentence.
Simile is
"a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g. as brave as a lion )." - Oxford Dictionary.
And yet, you didn't understand that, "the bricks that make up the sentences are not the actual words themselves," was a figure of speech :chin:
You didn't understand what the figure of speech meant, and kept repeating "the representation of the word". So I gave you the explanation what figure of speech means, and the concept of simile which was in the figure of speech.
Reply to Leontiskos
That isn't how that works. I could say if p, then q. Just because q is true doesn't mean p is also true, just that if p is true, then q is also true. These statements don't work when flipped. I am saying that most atheists wouldn't be atheists if God could be proven to exist.
Reply to night912 If you accept God itself is a being with omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence, then it is not a contradiction. In the world of God itself under this definition, even contradiction is truth.
You need to accept there are many different definitions of God. Depending on the definition, proof methods will differ.
If you accept God itself is a being with omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence, then it is not a contradiction. In the world of God itself under this definition, even contradiction is truth.
If you have some supposed deduction that concludes "contradiction is truth", then your argument is invalid.
If you have some supposed deduction that concludes "contradiction is truth", then your argument is invalid.
If you accept the definition of God with omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, then your omnipotent God can make contradiction into truth. He can do anything. Miracles, magic, afterlife and heaven and hell, resurrections are all possible and truths.
If you have some supposed deduction that concludes "contradiction is truth", then your argument is invalid.
[b]If God is omnipotent, then God can turn contradiction into truth.
God is omnipotent. (under the definition)
Therefore God can turn contradiction into truth.[/b]
It may not be a true argument, but it certainly looks valid.
RelativistNovember 21, 2024 at 18:08#9492450 likes
If God is omnipotent, then God can turn contradiction into truth.
God is omnipotent. (under the definition)
Therefore God can turn contradiction into truth.
Your conclusion contradicts the law of non-contradiction. That makes it a fallacy, even though it has a valid form.
The problem is your first premise: there's no basis for claiming omnipotence implies God can do this. William Lane Craig (for example) asserts that omnipotence entails the ability to do everything that is logically possible.
There's also a pragmatic problem with your first premise: in deductive logic, the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. Your premise implies conclusions are not necessarily true, because there's always a background contingency on God's will. This invalidates the use of deductive logic - so the argument is self-defeating.
There's also a pragmatic problem with your first premise: in deductive logic, the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. Your premise implies conclusions are not necessarily true, because there's always a background contingency on God's will. This invalidates the use of deductive logic - so the argument is self-defeating.
You were quite correct to point out the unsound premise, and rejected it. Even if the argument was valid, it is unsound. The conclusion is self-defeating therefore is a nonsense.
Reply to LuckyR It was a possible scenario post when you chose the definition of God with omnipotence. It was not my own definition of God. Remember my definition of God was God in the word God? You seem to be too prejudging without knowing what is going on in the posts.
You still have not given out what your definition of God is.
Uummm... I was pointing out that humans invented the concept of omnipotent gods relatively recently, that is: for a long time gods weren't omnipotent. Thus it isn't MY choosing a single "scenario".
From a functional standpoint god definitions are essentially subjective, since each religion, and each worshipper within the religion, gets to decide what THEIR god means to them, essentially their "definition" of god, that you are focused upon. Just as we all decide what we find beautiful, we all get to decide what our god is or isn't like.
Since subjectivity exists in human minds, not in the objective universe, "proving" subjective entities "exist" is possible, yet meaningless. I'm convinced beauty exists, so does my neighbor, BUT what I find beautiful is totally different from what he does. We're both "right", yet being so correct doesn't further anyone's understanding of anything. It's just a word game, leading nowhere.
Uummm... I was pointing out that humans invented the concept of omnipotent gods relatively recently, that is: for a long time gods weren't omnipotent. Thus it isn't MY choosing a single "scenario".
Your claim here is ambiguous. You seem to be saying if something was invented by humans recently, then it is not something. Is it correct? Could you justify your premise and argument? It seems unsound and not even valid, and is discarded as nonsense.
I am not sure what God you are talking about, but if we talk about the Christianity, then omnipotence of God is evidently implied in the Bible describing the creation of the world and humans by the God. God can also allow people to resurrect after their deaths ... etc. It sounds too naive to say that omnipotence of God is recently invented by humans, therefore not omnipotence. It screams a loud contradiction here.
Unless you are talking about a woman you met recently as your God, it is quite reasonable to assume religious Gods are omnipotent.
From a functional standpoint god definitions are essentially subjective, since each religion, and each worshipper within the religion, gets to decide what THEIR god means to them, essentially their "definition" of god, that you are focused upon. Just as we all decide what we find beautiful, we all get to decide what our god is or isn't like.
This is not making sense either. Religion is not something that you take up, and fantasise about the God. If you decided to take up a religion, then you would be expected to read up on the principles and traditions of the religion. and study the objective definition of God, and be knowledgeable about the God.
Once you take up a religion, then that would be your religion for the rest of your life accepting all the code of conducts, principles and definition of the God. Having done all that, you wouldn't be going out comparing your God with the other religious Gods criticising, judging or doubting them.
Since subjectivity exists in human minds, not in the objective universe, "proving" subjective entities "exist" is possible, yet meaningless. I'm convinced beauty exists, so does my neighbor, BUT what I find beautiful is totally different from what he does. We're both "right", yet being so correct doesn't further anyone's understanding of anything. It's just a word game, leading nowhere.
But from non religious philosophical point of view on religion, we could still study the different religions on their definition of Gods, principles, the religious claims etc from the academic angle investigating logically and metaphysically. It is the oldest human mental and metaphysical tradition and phenomenon.
To say that God is a subjective entity, impossible to prove, therefore meaningless sounds meaningless and shallow thinking.
Reply to CallMeDirac Which god are you talking about? I am cool with logos, reason, the controlling force of the universe, but I do not believe the god who walked with Adam and Eve in the Graden of Eden is believable.
Reply to Corvus That's a red herring. I'm referring to your definition, not someone's else's definition. You're arguing that God is the word God and not the word God, which is a contradiction. The evidence of this is by your demonstration, differentiating between "God" and "the word God." So, how about you defend your argument instead of presenting a red herring.
You're arguing that God is the word God and not the word God, which is a contradiction.
You seem to be confused with God and the word God. They are not the same. God is the god, and his residence is in the word "God". You are not able to distinguish between the two i.e. God and the word God. They are different concept.
God manifests into the physical space and time whenever it is called by the word God. We know God by the word, but when we make up the sentences with the word God, it is not the same concept. The word God then become a metaphysical entity in the sentence where it instantiates.
The evidence of this is by your demonstration, differentiating between "God" and "the word God." So, how about you defend your argument instead of presenting a red herring.
There are many passages in the Bible suggesting the God is the word, which seem to be paralleling and echoing to my proof.
[b]John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God".
Revelation 19:16: The Word is named "King of kings and Lord of lords"
Psalm 19:14 NASB
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.
Hebrews 11:3
"God spoke the world into being by the power of His words"[/b]
QuestionerNovember 26, 2024 at 21:46#9502100 likes
The answer so much depends on your understanding of what God "is."
If your belief is that he is a supernatural being, then, no, evidence will not be available to us in the earthly sphere. Science is limited to what can be observed and measured, and by its very definition the supernatural cannot be.
But if you are a pantheist, like me, you see God in everything that exists. God is nature, God is the universe.
Uummm... I was pointing out that humans invented the concept of omnipotent gods relatively recently, that is: for a long time gods weren't omnipotent. Thus it isn't MY choosing a single "scenario".
In the Christian bible, God is also depicted as "Almighty" in various parts. It proves the concept of God has been linked with the property of omnipotence from the ancient times. Not relatively recently.
You seem to be confused with God and the word God. They are not the same. God is the god, and his residence is in the word "God". You are not able to distinguish between the two i.e. God and the word God. They are different concept.
God manifests into the physical space and time whenever it is called by the word God. We know God by the word, but when we make up the sentences with the word God, it is not the same concept. The word God then become a metaphysical entity in the sentence where it instantiates.
Another red herring. Bible verses is irrelevant to what I pointed out about your argument. So, how about you defend your argument instead of presenting a red herring.
Actually, you were the who demonstrated that you don't understand by arguing that you can prove that God exists by typing "g" "o" "d".
So what is the part of the proof you didn't understand? Please explain your points on which point of the proof was not making sense to you providing some details and examples related to the points, and I will try to explain with more depth.
I don't know, could the reason for why it's irrelevant is because the "god" in your argument has nothing to do with the Christianity and its god? :chin:
PoeticUniverseNovember 29, 2024 at 06:23#9506740 likes
Can't have a 'God'-Being as First and Fundamental; any being is a system, its constituents having to come before, so a being can't be fundamental. Look to the future for higher beings, not to the past.
I don't know, could the reason for why it's irrelevant is because the "god" in your argument has nothing to do with the Christianity and its god? :chin:
It made my proof more probable, so it is very relevant. Remember no proof is 100% true especially when it is about the existence of God. If the proof collects more evidence from the popular main religious holy scriptures supporting its conclusion, then it is relevant.
You should make statements on these points with solid logical or evidential arguments. You cannot say the proof or points in the proof or other people's arguments are wrong, irrelevant or red herring, when you don't have any reason or ground in saying so. It will look as if you are blurting out your emotional state rather than making philosophical statements.
I have been making this same point to @Amad in the other thread, when he kept coming back and saying my point is just wrong and not supported without giving out his reasons, grounds or arguments why it is wrong and not supported.
I am not sure what God you are talking about, but if we talk about the Christianity, then omnipotence of God is evidently implied in the Bible describing the creation of the world and humans by the God. God can also allow people to resurrect after their deaths ... etc. It sounds too naive to say that omnipotence of God is recently invented by humans, therefore not omnipotence. It screams a loud contradiction here.
Unless you are talking about a woman you met recently as your God, it is quite reasonable to assume religious Gods are omnipotent
Okay. Now, "what god"? All gods (that is all 10,000 of them). Are you limiting your discussion/understanding to a single god? How quaint.
Animistic deities were definitely not omnipotent and animism started over 14,000 years ago. Polytheistic gods are also not omnipotent. Omnipotence, as you noted was invented by monotheistic religions about 3500 years ago, but had only minor, regional popularity. Monotheism didn't really take off until about 1500 years ago. So yes, omnipotence of gods is a relatively recent invention.
If you decided to take up a religion, then you would be expected to read up on the principles and traditions of the religion. and study the objective definition of God, and be knowledgeable about the God.
Once you take up a religion, then that would be your religion for the rest of your life accepting all the code of conducts, principles and definition of the God
First the overwhelming majority of theists dont "decide to take up a religion" in particular. Rather they are indoctrinated into the religion of their family from early childhood, no requirement to "read up" and study anything. What you're describing are what adult converts tend to do, but they make up a tiny fraction of the religious.
Second, even a simpleton knows that if you ask 10 members of a religion the details of their personal belief system, there will NOT be a universal concensus on codes of conduct, priciples and definitions of the qualities of their god. The beliefs of American Catholics on divorce and birth control are only the most obvious example of this reality.
Okay. Now, "what god"? All gods (that is all 10,000 of them). Are you limiting your discussion/understanding to a single god? How quaint.
If you insist going back to the times when there is no written records on the theistic studies, then it is not philosophical topic we would be discussing. It would be then shamanism, totems and superstitions you would be talking about. They are subjects for parapsychology, occultism, esotericism, anthropology or historical discussions at best.
There would be nothing for you to find there apart from the superstitious customs, and shamanic beliefs on the prehistorical hypotheses bereft of any meat for philosophical or logical discussions.
First the overwhelming majority of theists dont "decide to take up a religion" in particular. Rather they are indoctrinated into the religion of their family from early childhood, no requirement to "read up" and study anything. What you're describing are what adult converts tend to do, but they make up a tiny fraction of the religious.
Second, even a simpleton knows that if you ask 10 members of a religion the details of their personal belief system, there will NOT be a universal concensus on codes of conduct, priciples and definitions of the qualities of their god. The beliefs of American Catholics on divorce and birth control are only the most obvious example of this reality.
My point was, for anyone to be able to engage in a logical proof of God, he / she must start with some sort of definition of God. I was expecting you to come up with your own definition of God, and premises for your own arguments for the proof of God.
If you insist going back to the times when there is no written records on the theistic studies, then it is not philosophical topic we would be discussing. It would be then shamanism, totems and superstitions you would be talking about. They are subjects for parapsychology, occultism, esotericism, anthropology or historical discussions at best.
What do you mean by this? It doesn't sound intelligible, relevant or meaningful for supporting your points. Could you further elaborate with some more detail?
In classical theism, God is not an entity, a thing, an object, or something which may or may not exist. Classical Christian metaphysics understands that for any created thing, there is a difference between what a thing is and that it is.
I.E There is a thing's essence, and its act of existence. Nothing about the essence of a blueberry bush tells you if it exists or not, so it requires an act of existence over and above its essence, its form, its source of individuality and intelligibility.
God is Being Itself, that for whom essence and existence are identical. God cannot not be. God is that-ness. God donates that-ness in limited forms and you get a creature, some constrained form of existence.
In the bible it states that Sin is opposite to God. Sin is the things we do that benefit our pleasure sense, often things that have negative associations like greed making us obese or consuming too much from the land; lust, provoking us to commit crimes against fellow men, or again do something wrong where resource management is concerned; and more.
If God isn't considered a deity, which in some people's views God is not, then I would prove God by saying, it's opposite to Sin, so it would be the things we can do which prevent us from taking pain, in effect helping us to survive. These things can happen, so there is God proven.
It sounds like a grammatical mistake in the statement. God doesn't like sin, or God doesn't approve sin sounds more intelligible. Sin is opposite to God sounds unintelligible.
God is a concept in the bible, and in the bible it says "sin is opposite to God". I'm just putting 2 and 2 together. Nothing unintelligible about it, I understand what's opposite to Sin. That's not to mention the word God is close to the word good, considering the lexis of both words. It seems the authors of the bible are referring to something related to good; in my eyes, the consistent good, that is, the higher need for beneficent behaviour where living is concerned, is what God originally meant. We need to act in accord with what's beneficent, otherwise we will fail to survive. Again, it even mentions in the bible, "sin is opposite to God".
I don't really care for the book, if anything, I'd put it in my own words. Do I regard highly that which is opposite to Sin? Yes. It is necessary for us to benefit ourselves.
God is a concept in the bible, and in the bible it says "sin is opposite to God". I'm just putting 2 and 2 together. Nothing unintelligible about it,
Some parts of the bible need sensible interpretation using your reasoning. You cannot make up your own subjective claims using the word by word citation from the bible, and say it says in the Bible so it must be true. Remember only a statement or proposition can be true or false, when it corresponds to the fact in the real world.
When you say, Sin is opposite to God, it sounds so abstract, ambiguous and empty, no one will understand what you mean.
The concept of sin changes through time and cultures in the world, and the pleasure senses are not regarded all negative as you try to make out.
Reply to Corvus
1. It doesn't make any less sense it being abstract, must we fear the abstract?
2. I never said pleasure sense is all negative, I said it has negative associations.
1. It doesn't make any less sense it being abstract, must we fear the abstract?
When it is abstract, it must be also intelligible or logical supporting the abstractness. Being abstract, unintelligible and illogical all at once is not acceptable.
Pleasure is associated with sin - take greed for example - the want for more of something(some pleasurable source).
I wouldn't even call God under the meaning I have subjected it to is even abstract at all - it's simply the things we do which are good. Can be thought of as 'little good', or that which must be taken care of properly with consistent good behaviour.
Pleasure is associated with sin - take greed for example - the want for more of something(some pleasurable source).
One example of greed is not a sufficient reason for all pleasure senses to be defined as sin. Pleasure senses are also vital factor in survival for the bodily and psychological well-being for the biological agents.
I wouldn't even call God under the meaning I have subjected it to is even abstract at all
When you said, "opposite of sin is God", at first glance, it sounds abstract. People would wonder how God could be opposite of sin? But when they think about it further, they immediately would realise that is nonsense, illogical and unintelligible. Opposite of sin could be many different things. No one really would know what you mean by the statement. Defining God is identical with opposite of sin, and saying God is proven sounded absurd.
Just like the world, God is perceived in different ways to mind.
When one sees God in his dreams, illusion or hallucination, it is a Mind-Created God.
When one reads about God in the Bible or Philosophical texts, and think about the God, it is an abstract God, or Metaphysical God.
When one goes into the computer, types GOD on the keyboard, GOD appears on the screen visible and readable, then it is a physical or material God. It is the most material and physical way one can get to God.
In the beginning there was nothing. Then something came into existence. Whatever created existence is the god that still exists. We are all literally a part of that god. The hydrogen atoms in our body are billions of years old, going back to the "Big Bang" (inaccurate but cute name).
In my view the universe displays signs of intelligence through its beings which would imply intrinsic intelligence embedded within it from the start, probably pointing towards a creator God. As to his reasons or motivations for creating, they cannot be inferred without resorting to scriptures.
RelativistDecember 19, 2024 at 21:46#9546850 likes
In my view the universe displays signs of intelligence through its beings which would imply intrinsic intelligence embedded within it from the start,
Are you saying the "signs of intelligence" in the universe are...us?
Either way, how does that imply "intrinsic intelligence" embedded in the universe?
The gradual development of intelligent beings, somewhere in an old, vast universe seems much more plausible than an intelligence just happening to exist, uncaused and without a prior history of development.
The gradual development of intelligent beings, somewhere in an old, vast universe seems much more plausible than an intelligence just happening to exist, uncaused and without a prior history of development.
My view of intelligence is that it has always existed and what we observe in nature and us is just it manifesting itself. So it precedes us.
My view of intelligence is that it has always existed and what we observe in nature and us is just it manifesting itself. So it precedes us.
This thread is about "proving" God. I hope you can see that you're not doing that. I'm fine with people having faith-based beliefs, but they shouldn't fool themselves into thinking it's based in reason.
My beliefs are based on observation of the natural world which as I’ve stated before shows signs of intelligence, design whatever you wanna call it. This to me constitutes evidence of God.
The non god alternative is that these manifestations of intelligence occurred through dumb luck, which is not possible. It’s like 10,000 monkeys randomly typing on a keyboard and creating the complete works of Shakespeare. Just not possible.
My beliefs are based on observation of the natural world which as I’ve stated before shows signs of intelligence, design whatever you wanna call it. This to me constitutes evidence of God.
Compositional fallacy —> (believer's) confirmation bias. Also: your "creator deity / intelligent design" belief, sir, is refuted by the argument from poor design.
Whether the design is poor or optimal is irrelevant, the point is to prove that there is (any) design, which would lead to a designer. If there was no design in nature there would just be primordial matter and nothing else but the fact that nature for example is able to invent/evolve such processes as photosynthesis shows intelligence in action and the tell tale signs of on overarching intelligence in action such as that of a God.
When looking at natures inventiveness/evolution at problem solving and coming up with solutions to environmental requirements this exhibits intelligence, no? What is it that is happening then ? Evolution, yes? Of course, yet why are there these types of interactions occurring here in the first place?
Well do you hold the idea that 10,000 monkeys could write the completed works of Shakespeare through random chance, what logic would you use to support this idea?
RelativistDecember 20, 2024 at 01:13#9547250 likes
My beliefs are based on observation of the natural world which as I’ve stated before shows signs of intelligence, design whatever you wanna call it. This to me constitutes evidence of God.
There is no evidence that entails God.
Your observations of the world are seen through the prism of your belief in God. The signs you see of intelligence are explainable by natural means. If you haven't given serious consideration to the alternative, you haven't "proven" anything - you've just rationalize what you believe.
The non god alternative is that these manifestations of intelligence occurred through dumb luck, which is not possible.
What occurs, including what comes to exist, could very well be the product of chance. We exist as a consequence of the way the world happens to be. If it is actually possible for the world to have differred, other sorts of things might have existed. How does low probability consequence imply luck? Luck generally entails a contestant happening to be the beneficiary of chance. There is no set of contestants who participated in a contest to pick a winner. You could conjecture that our existence is low probability, but that gets you nowhere- low probability things happen all the time.
If you think intelligence is something special that requires design to produce it, then how do you account for an intelligent creator to produce the design? That's why I previously pointed out that it seems much more likely that intelligence is the product of chance events in a universe of vast size and age, rather than just happening to exist in an uncaused being (a "god"). So this line of reasoning seems self-defeating.
What occurs, including what comes to exist, could very well be the product of chance. We exist as a consequence of the way the world happens to be. If it is actually possible for the world to have differred, other sorts of things might have existed.
So you think processes such as cell replication or photosynthesis come to be by pure chance? A designer would have better explanatory power here. Labelling it as evolution does not rule out god because they set the laws that govern and allow evolution to take place. Without a designer matter would just remain stagnant and nothing would have happened or emerged, no life and certainly no intelligence. Again you might say well it’s just biochemistry and matter will interact with other matter or its environment to create different processes given the right environmental conditions but again I ask you why has it produced something useful like a plant alongside the innate rock? There are many factors which need to combine to create even the simplest life and although they could have come to be through chance to me it implies that there are intelligent rules or laws which enables such life to form.
then how do you account for an intelligent creator to produce the design?
Existence is eternal therefore it’s possible that such a being could have emerged with capabilities to express his will through his creation as he sees fit. Or another explanation which you might not like is that such a being has always existed and is uncreated.
Reply to kindred You made the claim so you have the burden of proof. Believe whatever you fancy, sir – apparently, you don't understand the argument from poor design. or why your "belief" is fallacious as I've pointed out Reply to 180 Proof.
RelativistDecember 20, 2024 at 02:41#9547350 likes
So you think processes such as cell replication or photosynthesis come to be by pure chance? A designer would have better explanatory power here.
So you think intelligence, and knowledge just happens to exist uncaused?
To your question: entropy is a measure of the number of different ways that a set of objects can be arranged. One of the ways fundamental particles can be arranged is in the configuration of a self-replicating molecule. That is sufficient to start evolution. It is very low probability that this would occur by pure chance in any one suitable event, but in a vast, old, universe - it becomes likely to occur at least once. Evolution has all the explanatory power needed to explain everything that life develops into.
Without a designer matter would just remain stagnant and nothing would have happened or emerged, no life and certainly no intelligence.
Whatever gives you that silly idea? It's clear the universe evolves per laws of nature, and it's
reasonable to view these as part of the fabric of reality.
why has it produced something useful like a plant alongside the innate rock?
As I said, because it's possible - and sufficiently probable to occur at least once in a vast, old universe in which a enormous number of (individually) improbable things occur.
There are many factors which need to combine to create even the simplest life and although they could have come to be through chance to me it implies that there are intelligent rules or laws which enables such life to form.
Non-sequitur. The probability is extremely low in any specific time or place, but again- a vast, old universe provides a sufficient number of chances for it to occur at least once.
Existence is eternal therefore it’s possible that such a being could have emerged with capabilities to express his will through his creation as he sees fit. ...
Emerged from what? You claim the conditions needed for intelligence to emerge in the universe imply an intelligence behind it. So you'd have to assume the same thing for a God-like intelligence to emerge- thus an vicious, infinite regress.
[Quote]Or another explanation which you might not like is that such a being has always existed and is uncreated.[/quote]
Explain how this is more plausible than intelligence gradually emerging. It entails magical knowledge- knowing without a process of developing knowledge.
PoeticUniverseDecember 20, 2024 at 03:28#9547400 likes
The non god alternative is that these manifestations of intelligence occurred through dumb luck, which is not possible. It’s like 10,000 monkeys randomly typing on a keyboard and creating the complete works of Shakespeare. Just not possible.
In terms of probability, it's as unlikely as any other character sequence of that length.
Equally unlikely, equally possible.
By the way, something similar applies to other (long) event sequences.
Favoritism looks like bias.
I’m not denying evolution or entropy nor how life came to be through such processes but they happen because the laws of nature allow evolution to occur by enabling organisms to adapt to their environment.
The point is none of these interactions that created life could occur if there were not some laws of biochemistry or physics that dictate how particles interact with each other to give rise to abundant complexity. Without these interactions there would no life and it’s precisely these laws of nature which need explanation not just the end result (life) whilst the latter can be explained by pure chance the former would need an explanation of where these laws came from.
It makes sense then to attribute intelligent laws to an intelligent agent or lawmaker hence my argument.
RelativistDecember 20, 2024 at 16:08#9548240 likes
It makes sense then to attribute intelligent laws to an intelligent agent or lawmaker hence my argument.
It makes sense to you because you believe God created everything. Here's a more general metaphysical perspective.
Unless one accepts an infinite series of causes, there is a first cause - that exists without explanation. This could be a God, but it could also be an initial state of material reality. There's no objective basis to exempt God from requiring an explanation while insisting a natural first cause requires one.
A natural first-cause would be comprised of the fundamental material of reality (physicists think quantum fields may be the fundamental material, but it doesn't matter to the metaphysical analysis). Natural laws would be part of the fabric of this fundamental material, and would be the ultimate ground of all laws that we see manifested.
So the question is: which is more plausible? A being of infinite complexity, with magical knowledge of everything it could do and it's consequences OR a natural state of affairs that evolves due to its internal characteristics? Each is uncaused and exists without deeper explanation. Which is the more parsimonious, and thus better, explanation?
NotAristotleDecember 24, 2024 at 15:00#9554410 likes
Here is an argument for the existence of God:
1. If anything exists, then there must be something that exists.
2. If something depends on another for its existence and the second thing exists, then so must the first.
3. If everything depended on another for its existence, then nothing would exist.
4. Therefore, if anything exists, and there exist things that depend on another for their existence, or not, there must exist something that does not depend on another for its existence.
5. Consequently, if anything exists, there must exist something that does not depend on another.
6. Something does exist.
7. So, there must exist something that does not depend on another.
Note: this argument is similar to the "argument from being" formulated by Norman Geisler.
RelativistDecember 27, 2024 at 17:58#9559100 likes
1. If anything exists, then there must be something that exists.
2. If something depends on another for its existence and the second thing exists, then so must the first.
3. If everything depended on another for its existence, then nothing would exist.
4. Therefore, if anything exists, and there exist things that depend on another for their existence, or not, there must exist something that does not depend on another for its existence.
5. Consequently, if anything exists, there must exist something that does not depend on another.
6. Something does exist.
7. So, there must exist something that does not depend on another.
The argument doesn't prove a "God" exists. It proves there is an autonomous, bottom layer of reality. This is metaphysical foundationalism.
So the question is: which is more plausible? A being of infinite complexity, with magical knowledge of everything it could do and it's consequences OR a natural state of affairs that evolves due to its internal characteristics? Each is uncaused and exists without deeper explanation. Which is the more parsimonious, and thus better, explanation?
The physicists say back at the beginning, there should have been an equal number of matter and antimatter particles created, which should have prevented matter from predominating. They do not know why matter particles came to outnumber antimatter particles. Before I wonder about everything that came after, I wonder why the matter particles won. Did a being of infinite complexity rig the game, or does a "natural" state of affairs prefer matter over antimatter?
RelativistDecember 27, 2024 at 21:52#9559750 likes
Reply to alleybear It's the job of physicists to figure out why there's an imbalance between particles and antiparticles. It doesn't make much sense to attribute every unsolved problem to God; it certainly doesn't "prove" Goddidit- that would be an argument from ignorance.
So the question is: which is more plausible? A being of infinite complexity, with magical knowledge of everything it could do and it's consequences OR a natural state of affairs that evolves due to its internal characteristics? Each is uncaused and exists without deeper explanation. Which is the more parsimonious, and thus better, explanation
You’re making an assumption about the nature of god, instead I would argue for divine simplicity instead of complexity.
According to the classical theism of Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas and their adherents, God is radically unlike creatures and cannot be adequately understood in ways appropriate to them. God is simple in that God transcends every form of complexity and composition familiar to the discursive intellect. One consequence is that the simple God lacks parts. This lack is not a deficiency but a positive feature. God is ontologically superior to every partite entity, and his partlessness is an index thereof.
The issue of course is one of proof, and to account for an explanation of how the universe has developed to create and imbue creatures with intelligence one has to ask if this intelligence or consciousness has not always existed in the form of god (of divine simplicity) and life is merely a manifestation of one of its facets.
Feel free to read more on the above quote: https://plato.stanford.edu/ENTRIES/divine-simplicity/
Mapping the MediumDecember 28, 2024 at 00:10#9560090 likes
Perhaps the striving of all 'being' is to process what living allows it to process and reach for becoming whatever it can become. There is so much to process! The autopoietic, recursive, folding and unfolding of the striving would generate unfathomable combinations of creative manifestations, some more successful than others, but ultimately looping back in to encourage striving and further processing. ... Pretty glorious and amazing, from my perspective.
RelativistDecember 28, 2024 at 01:32#9560160 likes
I think that largely depends on what someone considers "god." However, in a similar vein, I think it's possible to prove the "soul" exists.
Assuming that the souls is:
1) an invisible force inside but separate from your body that
2) makes you who you are and
3) leaves your body upon death
then I think the "soul" can pretty easily be interpreted as the electricity in your body and the interplay it has with your various biological processes.
It's the job of physicists to figure out why there's an imbalance between particles and antiparticles. It doesn't make much sense to attribute every unsolved problem to God; it certainly doesn't "prove" Goddidit- that would be an argument from ignorance.
The only unsolved problem that could truly be blamed on a god is the problem of how existence was created. All other "unsolved problems" are just detritus from the opening act. And perhaps it's the job of philosophers to figure out why there's an imbalance between particles and antiparticles.
The only unsolved problem that could truly be blamed on a god is the problem of how existence was created.
It's logically impossible for existence to be created.
[Quote]All other "unsolved problems" are just detritus from the opening act. And perhaps it's the job of philosophers to figure out why there's an imbalance between particles and antiparticles.[/quote]
Philosophers can only speculate. Physicists engage in speculations too, but then they test them.
Complex to us, perhaps, yet omniscience is not a property of god but rather it is God as explained by the article I posted in my previous post and here, divine simplicity explains omniscience as per below:
God is omniscient, then, not in virtue of instantiating or exemplifying omniscience — which would imply a real distinction between God and the property of omniscience — but by being omniscience. And the same holds for each of the divine omni-attributes: God is what he has as Augustine puts it in The City of God, XI, 10. As identical to each of his attributes, God is identical to his nature. And since his nature or essence is identical to his existence, God is identical to his existence. This is the doctrine of divine simplicity
It's logically impossible for existence to be created.
You're absolutely, positively undisputedly correct...yet existence is created everyday. Just depends on what existence you're talking about. It's kinda a philosophical thing and a laboratory thing. Both the scientist and the philosopher are trying to get past the "Big Bang". Personally, I think the three or four or whatever dimensions we exist in don't allow for that revelation. Both the philosopher and the scientist will be speculating on that without any "proof" as long as we exist (if we can agree we exist - lol).
RelativistDecember 28, 2024 at 17:48#9561730 likes
Reply to kindredOmniscience+omniscience has infinite explanatory scope - so it's certainly a convenient assumption. But it's an enormous assumption that's as implausible as it is convenient. All evidence points to knowledge being something that is accumulated over time, that it consists of organized data, and data is encoded. So the notion that a being just happens to exist who happens to have infinite knowledge, that has neither been developed over time nor is encoded, is grossly implausible: it's magic. Theists are conditioned to unquestionably accept omniscience on faith. Believe what you like, but accept the fact that there's no rational reason to believe omniscience exists.
RelativistDecember 28, 2024 at 18:19#9561860 likes
There is a Totality of Existence (TOE), and that is what I was treating as "existence". It's the TOE that could not have been created.
The material world could have been created only if TOE encompasses more than the material world (such as an immaterial God). But it's possible TOE=the material world, in which case it was not created.
Believe what you like, but accept the fact that there's no rational reason to believe omniscience exists.
Well that is the question of this topic, whether God or omniscience exists. And I accept your disbelief in it so we differ there. Indeed there may not be any grounds to believe in God as we cannot truly provide conclusive proof that such a being exists yet here we are existing as intelligent beings and this to me constitutes proof that there are probably other intelligent beings out there even as far as the ultimate being who embodies or is identical to omniscience as per my earlier article on divine simplicity attested to. That such a being has always existed is what is implausible to you.
However because the world, the universe or this reality exhibits order, complexity and purpose it’s not too far fetched to attribute the cause to a designer or omnipotent being.
Sure this order and complexity could have arisen by chance and though plausible it’s equally plausible to attribute it to a higher being. The laws of physics seem to be very finely tuned in order to support life and again it could be that it is by pure fluke and chance but then again it could easily be explained in terms of a higher being who set the conditions for life to emerge rather than not emerge.
RelativistDecember 28, 2024 at 21:45#9562270 likes
yet here we are existing as intelligent beings and this to me constitutes proof that there are probably other intelligent beings out there even as far as the ultimate being who embodies or is identical to omniscience as per my earlier article on divine simplicity attested to. That such a being has always existed is what is implausible to you
[U]Omniscience[/u] is implausible to me. Yoy don't seem to agree, so why don't you explain why you find it plausible - addressing the objections I raised. On a possibly related note, I believe the past is finite.
We are intelligent creatures, and there may indeed b?e others in this vast universe - but in all these cases, I expect they developed over the course of billions of years through a series of events that led to their existence; their knowledge is acquired over time, and it exists in some form of physical encoding.
However because the world, the universe or this reality exhibits order, complexity and purpose it’s not too far fetched to attribute the cause to a designer or omnipotent being.
I disagree. The overwhelmingly simpler explanation for order is the existence of laws of nature. Again, you're just treating omniscience as no big deal, when it's an enormously big assumption.
The laws of physics seem to be very finely tuned in order to support life and again it could be that it is by pure fluke and chance but then again it could easily be explained in terms of a higher being who set the conditions for life to emerge rather than not emerge.
A fine-tuning argument depends on circular reasoning. The unstated premise is that life was some sort of teleological goal. That assumption entails a designer. A materialist would consider our existence as simply a consequence of the way the world happens to be. Plus: if intelligence requires a designer, then God requires one.
You made the claim so you have the burden of proof. Believe whatever you fancy, sir – apparently, you don't understand the argument from poor design. or why your "belief" is fallacious as I've pointed out ?180 Proof.
The argument from poor design ignores the fact that evolution is an ongoing process whose sole aim is to enable organisms to adapt to their environment. I believe in evolution and a deity, they’re not mutually exclusive in my world view yet despite some examples of poor design as a result of evolution (e.g various cancers) and types of suboptimal creatures they’re outnumbered by designs that more than meets the environmental requirements required of it.
You might say that if the designer/God is perfect then so should his creation but this is a poor argument because it would exclude diversity and the end product would be one perfect creature, but that already exists in the form of God, and since god is all things he is perfection and imperfection at the same time.
I disagree. The overwhelmingly simpler explanation for order is the existence of laws of nature. Again, you're just treating omniscience as no big deal, when it's an enormously big assumption.
And where did these laws of nature come from? Just chance that they happen to be so as to allow life to emerge in the world? I think this is equally implausible as that of an eternal omnipotent, omniscient being which could explain why there are laws of nature in the first place.
Plus: if intelligence requires a designer, then God requires one.
A common misconception which would lead to infinite regress of prior causes. God is assumed to have no predecessors before him, he just happens to be so eternally (and having existed infinitely) thus the only issue I see here is one of proof. And as I stated before the fact that the laws of nature allow order, complexity and purpose to arise it points towards these attributes being pre existing before they manifested, and they were pre existing in the form of God.
RelativistDecember 28, 2024 at 22:57#9562400 likes
And where did these laws of nature come from? Just chance that they happen to be so as to allow life to emerge in the world?
The best explanation for laws of nature is law-realism: a law reflects a relation between universals. In simpler terms: they are part of the fabric of material reality.
Where does anything come from, ultimately? Answer: a metaphysically necessary, autonomous brute fact. That's true of any metaphysical foundation of existence, even a God.
Just chance that they happen to be so as to allow life to emerge in the world?
"Allow?" I assume you mean: why did it happen to be possible for life to develop? The answer is: because that is the way the world happens to be. Why think life is anything other than an unintended consequence of the way the world happens to be? This points to the fundamental error that fine-tuning enthusiasts make: they treat life as a design objective, such that the universe had to be finely tuned to achieve it. Drop that unstated premise, and there's no argument.
[Quote]I think this is equally implausible as that of an eternal omnipotent, omniscient being which could explain why there are laws of nature in the first place.[/quote]
That makes sense if and only if you consider omniscience plausible. You are taking it for granted (as I expect any theist would), rather than explaining why it is perfectly reasonable to accept the existence of infinite knowledge that is unencoded and not a product of learning over time. Why is THAT brute fact more reasonable to assume than a brute fact material foundation wherein laws of nature are present because there exists universals with causal relations between them? It seems pretty clear that the material world exists, that laws of nature exist, and that they seem to fully account for the evolution of the universe- including the development of intelligent life. Why think there is magic in the world, when there's no empirical evidence of it?
The best explanation for laws of nature is law-realism: a law reflects a relation between universals. In simpler terms: they are part of the fabric of material reality.
Where does anything come from, ultimately? Answer: a metaphysically necessary, autonomous brute fact. That's true of any metaphysical foundation of existence, even a God.
There are multiple explanations for the origins of the laws of nature and the theistic one is one of many with the others being platonic and naturalist (or scientific).
Sure, God can be subject to the same metaphysical investigation of where it came from as much as the laws of nature themselves yet equating god with the laws of nature vis-a-vis divine simplicity solves this problem.
Why think there is magic in the world, when there's no empirical evidence of it?
In a sense the ability for life to emerge from non-organic matter to being fully bipedal, conscious and intelligent is truly remarkable perhaps even magical whether you believe in god or not.
RelativistDecember 29, 2024 at 01:22#9562760 likes
Sure, God can be subject to the same metaphysical investigation of where it came from as much as the laws of nature themselves yet equating god with the laws of nature vis-a-vis divine simplicity solves this problem.
It seems to me that "solving the problem" entails rationalizing - showing it possible, not showing it's plausible, or better yet- that it's the best explanation.
I'm perfectly fine with someone believing in a God for the personal benefits they get from it. No one can prove you wrong.But don't fool yourself into thinking there's an objective, rational basis that can prove you right.
Reply to kindred The furthest and most solid evidence and proof I got on the existence of God was the word God, which I can see, read and type on the computer screen. All else with the existence of God is a matter of conjecture and personal faith.
It is an illogical statement to say God exists. The correct way of saying that statement is, one believes in God.
PoeticUniverseDecember 29, 2024 at 06:46#9563120 likes
the existence of God is a matter of conjecture and personal faith.
It is an illogical statement to say God exists. The correct way of saying that statement is, one believes in God.
Now, that's an honest way of speaking.
Intellectual Dishonesty:
The preachers claim ‘perhaps’ as fact and truth.
Their ingrained beliefs the priests’ duly preach,
As if notions were truth and fact to teach.
Oh, cleric, repent; at least say, ‘Have faith’;
Yet, of unknowns ne’er shown none can e’er reach.
Unfortunately, for believers, a being cannot be First and Fundamental; look to the more complex future for higher beings, not to the simpler and simpler past.
Unfortunately, for believers, a being cannot be First and Fundamental; look to the more complex future for higher beings, not to the simpler and simpler past.
Beings can be non-existence like from Meinong's beingless objects. They belong to the domain of faith, conjecture, thought and belief.
Beliefs don't mean they are inferior to knowledge. They are actually precondition of knowledge. If you know something then you also believe in something too. And if you believe in something, then you are possible to know it too. Not necessarily all the time, but the possibility exists.
I believe that Australia exists, but I have never been in the place. It is only a belief, but I cannot deny it exist, just because I have never been in the place, and never seen any part of the land in my real experience.
My belief of its existence is as firm as any other knowledge I have for certain.
Therefore some beliefs have a high certainty as knowledge. It depends on what evidence and reasoning, or just guessing or blind faith the belief is based on.
Therefore it could be the case that some religious beliefs based on strong and deep faith could offer high certainty of knowledge of God, albeit it might be a false knowledge, illusion or even delusion.
Mapping the MediumDecember 29, 2024 at 14:19#9563480 likes
My belief of its existence is as firm as any other knowledge I have for certain.
We can deduce a Permanent Eternal Something that rearranges itself to form the temporaries, its state ever remaining the same, the elementary 'particles' not being new substance, but direct and rather stable lumps of It, so then, poetically:
Permanent Presence, through transient veins,
Running Quicksilver-like, fuels our gains—
Taking all the temporary shapes as
They change and perish all—but It remains.
We can deduce a Permanent Eternal Something that rearranges itself to form the temporaries,
My inference that Australia exists is based on the real experience of meeting some folks from the land, that they are from the countries, and they spoke to me with funny English accents in my good old days in the international high school in Jakarta Indonesia when my father was working in the place.
I recall the tall Australian guy Steve, who used to say Hi to me, then asked to teach him Tae Kwon Do, so I taught him some Tae Kwon Do movements. In return he taught me some tricks in playing basketball which he was very good at.
There was also this beautiful blond girl called Ingrid from Australia who came and sat beside me at lunch time, and we used to have sandwiches and hamburgers together. When we went to Bandung for the school trip, she sat beside me in the bus, and fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, which I still recall.
Plus I saw some youtube bits on the places supposedly taken in the places, and they just looked like any place on the earth, but with loads of bushes and fields and some beaches with the folks which looked realistic. Therefore my belief that Australia exists is as firm and certain as my knowledge that the Earth rotates around the Sun. However I have no clue what it would be like living in the place under the scorching Sun during the winter months where I am, because still I have never been in the place in real life.
But in the case of deducing something Permanent and Eternal being, I have no real life experience pertaining to the concept, hence I am not sure what could be the basis for such deduction or inference.
PoeticUniverseDecember 31, 2024 at 05:01#9569160 likes
But in the case of deducing something Permanent and Eternal being, I have no real life experience pertaining to the concept, hence I am not sure what could be the basis for such deduction or inference.
‘Nothing’ cannot even be meant, as per Parmedies’ philosophy; therefore, the Ultimate Something has no opposite, and as such it has no alternative; so, it has to be.
Fundamental First philosophy indicates that the Ultimate Something cannot have parts, lest the parts be even more fundamental; thus the Ultimate Something must consist only of itself, thus being unmakeable and unbreakable, which tells us that it is Eternal.
Science shows us a simpler and simpler basis underlying the universe’s present complexity, on down to the elementary ‘particles’ that have wave-field-like properties of a further Something beneath; so, this accords with our philosophy, so far, we now suspecting the wave-field as the prospective Ultimate Something, but we cannot see it directly.
We make an educated philosophical guess that waves make up the Something, since waves have no parts and also because waves are ubiquitous everywhere we look, because, again, science has confirmed a wave nature.
Waves are 2D but make for fields in 3D; a field has a value at every point, such as with a temperature field.
If we can model these quantum fields and then build working devices from the model, then we have the quantum field theory (QFT), and our guess was correct. This has been done and it is the most successful theory in the history of science!
The modeling, in short, has to do with all kinds of waves moving about being shown to be equivalent to sinusoidal waves, via a Fourier Transform. A property of this situation is that the elementary ‘particles’ will form at stable rungs of quanta energy, such as when an electron in an atom, when receiving energy, can only quantum jump to a multiple of its energy level, showing the quantum discreteness. Good guess!
The elementaries are directly field quanta; they are not new substance. There is only the Permanent and the Temporary.
The Temporary can only be made by the arrangements of the Permanent, just as we thought, via logical philosophy, since the permanent must ever remain as Itself. Science confirms the lumps of quanta. Philosophy is not dead.
This has not shown ‘God’ in the way we think He ought to be, but at least it points to an Ultimate Eternal Something, which could be called ‘the G.O.D.’ (the Ground Of Determination).
An Eternal Basis has to be so,
For a lack of anything cannot sow,
Forcing there to be something permanent,
As partless, from which composites can grow.
There can’t be other directions given,
To that which no start; it is undriven;
So, it is as Everything possible,
Either as linear or as all at once.
(We don’t know the mode of Time.)
Consider quantum fields of waves atop
One another: waves are continuous,
And so qualifiy as Fundamental;
Quanta lumps make ‘particles’, and us.
The temp-forms last from unit charge or strength;
The Basis is coterminal with them.
The information content of the
All of Everything
Is the same as Null!
There is no meaning.
There is no place or before to impart
Direction to what is Eternal.
Note that there is no other remaining theory:
Newton’s fixed space and time got Einstein’s boot;
Particle spigots making fields went mute;
Classic fields had no fundamental loot.
‘Nothing’ cannot even be meant, as per Parmedies’ philosophy;
I think I can understand Nothing better. In math, it is simple. 1-1 =0. 0 is nothing. There was 1, but 1 was subtracted from 1 or taken away from 1, hence 0, Nothing.
the Ultimate Something has no opposite, and as such it has no alternative; so, it has to be.
I had problems trying to understand the Ultimate Something there. But after some reflection,
I understand the Ultimate Something as death. Eventually everything and every life dies by the natural law. Hence we could say Death is the Ultimate Something.
The Ultimate Something has no opposite? I agree. Death has no opposite. Death is nothing. The opposite of Death is life, but once dead, it is impossible to go back to life, no alternative.
PoeticUniverseJanuary 02, 2025 at 03:49#9575910 likes
But after some reflection,
I understand the Ultimate Something as death. Eventually everything and every life dies by the natural law. Hence we could say Death is the Ultimate Something.
The Ultimate Something has no opposite? I agree. Death has no opposite. Death is nothing. The opposite of Death is life, but once dead, it is impossible to go back to life, no alternative.
The Permanent Ultimate Something is not alive, but as we see, the potential for life was there for the Temporaries.
FrankGSterleJrJanuary 02, 2025 at 05:46#9576050 likes
“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living and, above all, those who live without love” (spirit of school headmaster Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2).
The greatest gift life offers many people is that someday, likely preferably sooner rather than later, they get to die. Perhaps worsening matters for them is when suicide is simply not an option, for whatever reason(s), meaning there’s little hope of receiving an early reprieve from their literal life sentence.
Many chronically and pharmaceutically untreatable depressed and/or anxiety-ridden people won’t miss this world when they finally pass away. It’s not that they necessarily want to die per se; it’s more that they want their (seemingly) pointless corporeal suffering to end.
.
.
[i]I awoke from another very bad dream, a reincarnation nightmare / where having thankfully died I’m still bullied towards rebirth back into human form / despite my pleas I be allowed to rest in permanent peace. // …
… // Each second that passes I should not have to repeat and suffer again. / I cry out ‘give me a real purpose and it’s not enough simply to live / nor that it’s a beautiful sunny day with colorful fragrant flowers!’ //
I’m tormented hourly by my desire for both contentedness and emotional, material and creative gain / that are unattainable yet ultimately matter naught. My own mind brutalizes me like it has / a sadistic mind of its own. I must have a progressive reason for this harsh endurance! //
Could there be people who immensely suffer yet convince themselves they sincerely want to live when in fact / they don’t want to die, so greatly they fear Death’s unknown? //
No one should ever have to repeat and suffer again a single second that passes. / Nay, I will engage and embrace the dying of my blight![/i]
Many chronically and pharmaceutically untreatable depressed and/or anxiety-ridden people won’t miss this world when they finally pass away.
But from logical point of view, if we don't know what the state of death is, could we be sure that death will end the sufferings?
If the state of death has some sort of continuation of after-life consciousness, perception or feelings, could you be certain that the suffering might not even get worse or permanent during and after death?
If that is the case, there is no point of death, hence living forever is best? No?
Arcane SandwichJanuary 02, 2025 at 14:32#9576460 likes
But from logical point of view, if we don't know what the state of death is, could we be sure that death will end the sufferings?
If the state of death has some sort of continuation of after-life consciousness, perception or feelings, could you be certain that the suffering might not even get worse or permanent during and after death?
If that is the case, there is no point of death, hence living forever is best? No?
I am not quite sure what the presenter is trying to say in his video.
I believe he is saying more or less one of the things that I have been saying in another thread: not everything is possible, not even at the level of pure theory, not even at the level of pure metaphysical speculation. The basilisk that he's talking about is like the example of the statue of a dragon that has a mechanism for producing fire, like you showed me. That was not a living dragon, it was just an inanimate object with a mechanism for making flames. Similarly, the "informational basilisk", or "Basilisk A.I." is impossible, such a thing could not exist in the real world, just as Pegasus does not exist in the real world (i.e., there is no such thing as a living, breathing, winged horse located somewhere on planet Earth).
PoeticUniverseJanuary 03, 2025 at 00:03#9577730 likes
What could transform the potential for life into life?
Time and stardust made us Earth’s living guest,
When quick death sifted the rest from the best.
Those three, our birthright, write our epitaph:
RIP; time expires, death comes, dust is left.
I believe he is saying more or less one of the things that I have been saying in another thread: not everything is possible, not even at the level of pure theory, not even at the level of pure metaphysical speculation.
Thank you for your clarification on the point. I disagree with the point totally. Because whether something is alive or not, if something is imaginable, thinkable and conceivable, then it is possible to discuss about them.
If you deny that, then discussions on the mental activities or operations would be impossible limiting the discussions only to the daily physical objects in space and time. Well some folks live like that i.e. mundane, dry and materialistic only being aware of the materialistic objects in the world.
But there are vast majority of people in the world who are imaginative, creative and metaphysical and believe in the abstract existence, which means non living and non existent objects could be still very meaningful to discuss and think about.
If you still deny that, then no artistic, creative, idealistic activities would be possible. There would be no movies, novels, poems, abstract paintings and sculptures available in the world. There would be no religions. Is it the case? I certainly don't think so.
Arcane SandwichJanuary 03, 2025 at 16:47#9579020 likes
Thank you for your clarification on the point. I disagree with the point totally.
You're welcome. And yes, you're free to disagree with the point totally, as you say. That is what Metaphysics is all about (well, that's what Philosophy is all about, really).
whether something is alive or not, if something is imaginable, thinkable and conceivable, then it is possible to discuss about them.
I agree. We can talk about anything. The problem is, that there's a point where out words just stop making sense, even to ourselves. Remember one of the games that we all played at some point: pick a word, any word, and say it out loud, and repeat that for a few minutes. For example, let's pick the word "tree". Now, say "tree" over and over again, for several minutes. At some point, you will notice a psychological effect occurring "somewhere in your mind", in which everything is normal, except for the word "tree", which just stopped making sense because you repeated it so much. Well, that sort of psychological phenomena can be scientifically investigated. And I, as a metaphysican, can talk about all that: but only up to a certain point, because if I continue to talk as a metaphysician on that point, my words start seeming like what happened with the word "tree" in the previous example. In other words, you can't do metaphysics in isolation: you need many other Academic disciplines to complement it, if you want to get any substantial metaphysical work done.
But there are vast majority of people in the world who are imaginative, creative and metaphysical and believe in the abstract existence,
Some professional philosophers agree with that as well: that there is such a thing as abstract existence. I'm not sure what to think of that myself, honestly. It seems false to me, just from an intuitive standpoint. But, sadly, our intuitions sometimes are mistaken.
There would be no movies, novels, poems, abstract paintings and sculptures available in the world. There would be no religions. Is it the case? I certainly don't think so.
Hmmm... I'm not sure, really. I dont know "what to make of it", as some people say. Can you explain to me why you certainly don't think so? Thanks in advance.
PoeticUniverseJanuary 04, 2025 at 02:23#9580600 likes
What could transform the potential for life into life?
To the Quantum Depths of the Poetic Universe:
Lost in the Haystack?
[i]What great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
The strands of the quantum fields’ types of waves
To weave the warp, weft, and woof of our ‘verse
Into being’s fabric of living braids?[/i]
From quantum non-locality and entanglement, we know that information is more primary than distance, and that things don’t have to have the appearance of being near each other to be related or to cause an effect.
Everything connected to everything would seem to be a rudimentary 'perception’ as far as one could be had by that network. The all-at-once connections, as like in a hologram, might seem to provide for for the direction of what goes on in the overall information process. I am thinking like a yogi and a guru, the entire cosmos situated within me.
Quantum non-locality seems to imply that every region of space is in instant and constant contact with every other, perhaps even in time as well, and so the holistic universe is governed by the property of the solitary whole; so that could be the underlying guidance principle. An individual particle might know’ something about what to do, acting according to all the others.
Thus both our connections and the holistic universe’s, each having a singular nature, might be the clue. Perhaps they are of the same basis of connections’ doings, but separate as two manifestations, each pertaining to a different realm, internal and external, our internal connections giving us 'future’, and the external connections granting 'future’ to the universe. I don’t know which has the tougher job.
Lee Smolin has it that qualia are intrinsic, as fundamental, and Chalmers has it that information is fundamental and can express itself in two ways, in consciousness and in matter.
Quantum entanglement suggests that each particle has the entire 3-D or 4-D map of the universe, the information ever updated, the universe being as a single entity. While this may not be perception at the level we have, it may help the universe accomplish something of the movements of particles and fields in their energy, mass, and momentum, in some global way that goes forward overall.
This may not seem to be saying a whole lot, in depth, but since the quantum realm is beneath everything then one would surmise that it must have all to do with everything that goes on.
It is still that the apparent atoms and molecules make the happenings, via physical-chemical reactions; however, this observation cannot be equated to an 'explanation’, for we must wonder what underlies the chemical mattering and reacting that seems to have a unity of direction to it.
I had finished with the yogis and the gurus, and the seers and the oracles only know of the future; so, I surmised, to uncover the deepness of the present, for nature and the conscious animates, I must seek out Nature’s Great Poet in her Uni-verse, in order to fully apprehend the ethereal phantasms of the entangled and enchanted branches in the forest of nature, bringing them into the light.
Hmmm... I'm not sure, really. I dont know "what to make of it", as some people say. Can you explain to me why you certainly don't think so? Thanks in advance.
It was an inference from your claim that there is no point or possibility for discussing demons or fire breathing dragons in Metaphysics because they don't exist in the external world.
My points were,
1. There is no ultimate proof that demons don't exist. Could you prove demons and dragons don't exist?
2. Even if demons don't exist (lets presume that they don't exist), the fact that demons don't exist doesn't stop people imagining and thinking about them. People have been talking about demons and fire breathing dragons for thousands of years, and still will be doing so until the end of human civilization creating them in art form i.e. movies, novels, paintings and sculptures.
3. The fact that people imagine, think and talk about demons implies that abstract existence has significant meanings in the human mind, which suggests that abstract objects can exist. Perhaps abstract objects exist in different forms, and should it be said that abstract objects axist? instead of exist (in physical objects?) :)
Of course my points are just assumptions and inferences from your claims. You can disagree, if they don't make sense. But it is interesting to see different opinions on these aspects of existence.
It seems clear that even if God existed, God doesn't intervene human affairs based on the history of the world and the current affairs on what's happening in the world. There is nothing one can do about that.
And from my observations, experiences and reasoning, the only place where God exist is the word God. Nowhere else in the external world I could observe God at all. Therefore my proof God exists in the keyboard of my computer still stands.
Arcane SandwichJanuary 04, 2025 at 14:46#9581130 likes
My points were,
1. There is no ultimate proof that demons don't exist. Could you prove demons and dragons don't exist?
I'm trying! That is indeed one of the things that I have been working on for the past year and a half, more or less. To prove, logically, definitively, that demons, dragons and other fictional entities do not exist. But it's a really difficult thing to prove, because that discussion is about the concept of existence itself. Mario Bunge, my philosophical hero, says that fictional entities (such as Pegasus, demons, dragons, ghosts, God, angels, etc.) have "conceptual existence", while ordinary objects such as this table or this computer have "real existence". Unlike Bunge, I want to prove that fictional entities do not exist, not even conceptually.
2. Even if demons don't exist (lets presume that they don't exist), the fact that demons don't exist doesn't stop people imagining and thinking about them. People have been talking about demons and fire breathing dragons for thousands of years, and still will be doing so until the end of human civilization creating them in art form i.e. movies, novels, paintings and sculptures.
Indeed. And I, as a metaphysician, should be able to talk about all of that, in a way that makes sense to the common person as well as the philosopher and the scientist.
3. The fact that people imagine, think and talk about demons implies that abstract existence has significant meanings in the human mind, which suggests that abstract objects can exist. Perhaps abstract objects exist in different forms, and should it be said that abstract objects axist? instead of exist (in physical objects?) :)
Hmmm... this is where the discussion gets extremely complicated, because it has to do with the very concept of existence, it has to do with what the word "existence" means, and that is not an easy thing to understand. The easiest solution is to use a dictionary, for example an online dictionary, and look at the definition of the word "existence". But that's very basic. Philosophers have some very complicated things to say about existence, and they don't agree with each other on that point.
Of course my points are just assumptions and inferences from your claims. You can disagree, if they don't make sense. But it is interesting to see different opinions on these aspects of existence.
They make perfect sense. The problem is that these problems (i.e., the problems about existence) are not easy to solve.
Philosophers have some very complicated things to say about existence, and they don't agree with each other on that point.
Yes, this is true. Existence is an interesting topic. We could further analyse and discuss on the nature of Existence. If you would open an OP, I would follow, read and try to contribute if I have any relating ideas cropping up in my head.
Arcane SandwichJanuary 04, 2025 at 15:32#9581200 likes
Yes, this is true. Existence is an interesting topic. We could further analyse and discuss on the nature of Existence. If you would open an OP, I would follow, read and try to contribute if I have any relating ideas cropping up in my head.
Thanks, but I already have 3 Threads that I started, and I don't want to monopolize the main page with my presence. Perhaps if you began the Thread about Existence yourself, I could contribute to it, to the best of my ability.
javi2541997January 04, 2025 at 16:07#9581270 likes
You both share informative, pleasing, and detailed posts. I wouldn't see myself taking part in a thread started by one of you because a philosophical content such as 'existence' holds a lot of complexity in it. Yet I always tend to read your debate, although I don't post a reply ever.
But, as a reminder folks -- God's existence depends more on the encouragement of the believers to believe rather than the existence itself.
Arcane SandwichJanuary 04, 2025 at 16:16#9581290 likes
And from my observations, experiences and reasoning, the only place where God exist is the word God. Nowhere else in the external world I could observe God at all. Therefore my proof God exists in the keyboard of my computer still stands.
Yes, all we have is a Ground Of Determination - the Quantum 'vacuum'.
PoeticUniverseJanuary 04, 2025 at 23:30#9582430 likes
That is indeed one of the things that I have been working on for the past year and a half, more or less. To prove, logically, definitively, that demons, dragons and other fictional entities do not exist. But it's a really difficult thing to prove, because that discussion is about the concept of existence itself.
There are no mythological creatures yet.
There is only the Permanent Existence; its rearrangements into temporaries are still It.
Arcane SandwichJanuary 05, 2025 at 00:23#9582650 likes
Reply to NotAristotle Not specifically, but it seems more plausible that it be something natural than for it to be some sort of complex intelligence with vast knowledge and power that just happens to exist uncaused.
Reply to Relativist I would think that the metaphysical foundation of everything must be different than what it is the foundation of. If it were not, then the metaphysical foundation would not be a foundation at all. Put another way, if "A" changes, then there must be something that changes "A," but in that case "A" would not be the foundation because there would be something else changing it of which it is not the foundation. What do you think?
Point being: "A" would have to creatively make everything else in order to be a veritable metaphysical foundation. A mere alteration of "A" would render it no longer foundational.
Reply to Relativist Because I think change or alteration implies a kind of dependence on another. If the foundation merely changes form, then it is dependent on what changes it and so is not really a foundation. That is why I think a metaphysical foundation has to create, not merely transform.
Reply to Relativist And that pure quantum system can be applied to God, right? Or the candidates you were thinking of.
Reply to NotAristotle What if we focus on epistemology instead of metaphysics in order to understand this question? We can use propositional knowledge or practical knowledge in the form of skills with the point of proving God's existence. I mean, what if we try to prove it through belief, truth, or justification instead of focusing only on the origin of God?
Reply to NotAristotle I would like to know if it is plausible to prove God's existence through belief, truth, or justification and then elaborate an argument. This is why I asked if God's existence can be approached by epistemology. :sweat:
Because I think change or alteration implies a kind of dependence on another.
Conceptually, change only depends on time. And time depends on change - it's a mutual dependence. What neither concept requires is a magic man pulling the strings from behind a curtain.
Reply to javi2541997 Seems plausible to me although I do not have a specific argument in mind.
Reply to SophistiCat You say that change depends on time, I don't see why that would be wrong. But it also seems to me that a specific thing or substance cannot change itself and must rely on something else to change it.
For example, when a billiard ball moves and changes position, it does not do so of its own accord, but because another billiard ball has imparted motion to it. Similarly, and in accordance with Newton's (1st?) Law, the billiard ball will remain moving unless it strikes another ball or hits the boundary of the table, or encounters friction. And so, all change (of some thing) really depends on another to change it.
Reply to NotAristotle A quantum system evolves (from one state to another) in a manner than can be described by a Schroedinger equation. A "pure" state means there are no entanglements (interactions) with anything outside the quantum system.
And that pure quantum system can be applied to God, right? Or the candidates you were thinking of.
Not sure what you mean. Are you suggesting God could be a quantum system?
The only candidate I had in mind was the hypothesis that the universe is fundamemtally a quantum system. Some refer to this as the "wave function of the universe". But it's just a candidate; my only point is that it's not unreasonable to think a fundamental layer of reality could evolve from an initial state, without an external cause.
Reply to Relativist Yes, I am suggesting that, but only if we try to prove God's existence from a metaphysical point of view though. I agree with you that a fundamental layer of reality (God?) could evolve from an initial state without an external cause. But I would like to stop here because, as far as I am concerned, it is not plausible to approach God through a fundamental or quantum system because God is not a set of elements. This is why I stated that we might be able to approach his existence through belief or any kind of epistemology. Sadly, I don't have a strong argument to convince you.
For example, when a billiard ball moves and changes position, it does not do so of its own accord, but because another billiard ball has imparted motion to it. Similarly, and in accordance with Newton's (1st?) Law, the billiard ball will remain moving unless it strikes another ball or hits the boundary of the table, or encounters friction. And so, all change (of some thing) really depends on another to change it.
The orthodox thinking in Western philosophy used to maintain that what we now call inertial motion (such as that of a billiard ball rolling on a flat surface) required a motive force, like everything else. You seem to have internalized Galilean relativity, but otherwise retained the same intuitions regarding motion (change).
But the Galilean revolution (I am using the term loosely) was more thoroughgoing than just admitting the autonomy of inertial motion. People have come to realize that we don't need to appeal to external agent causation in every instance. The world can go about its business absent any will to push it around.
Reply to Relativist I am a novice with quantum mechanics, and it has been awhile since I've seen Schrodinger's wavefunction equation. Could you spell out what you mean by "evolves" and "quantum state?" It will help me evaluate the implications of your statement.
Going to have to disagree with you here as it appears to me that all motion, including inertial motion (by which I understand you to mean constant velocity) depends to some degree on another. In fact, all motion is relative motion and insofar as it is relative to another, all motion, including inertial motion, depends on another. But then all that means is that the metaphysical foundation of everything, God, cannot be in motion.
Reply to NotAristotle
From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger_equation --
[I]"Conceptually, the Schrödinger equation is the quantum counterpart of Newton's second law in classical mechanics. Given a set of known initial conditions, Newton's second law makes a mathematical prediction as to what path a given physical system will take over time. The Schrödinger equation gives the evolution over time of the wave function, the quantum-mechanical characterization of an isolated physical system. "[/i]
Going to have to disagree with you here as it appears to me that all motion, including inertial motion (by which I understand you to mean constant velocity) depends to some degree on another. In fact, all motion is relative motion and insofar as it is relative to another, all motion, including inertial motion, depends on another. But then all that means is that the metaphysical foundation of everything, God, cannot be in motion.
You seem to be equivocating between "dependence" as being a function of something else and being grounded in something else. And your conclusion doesn't seem to follow from anything.
The point I was trying to make is that in citing the example of a billiard ball, you seemed to be satisfied that it can move of its own accord, as long as it doesn't alter its motion. That's the Galilean insight, which diverges from the Aristotelian doctrine that prevailed earlier.
You seem to be equivocating between "dependence" as being a function of something else and being grounded in something else.
Sorry to interrupt. I believe I also confuse the use of "dependence" as being a function or as being grounded in something else. This is metaphysics, and I am aware that it holds a lot of complexity to reach a clear conclusion. But I would like to know if understanding the distinction between "dependence" in terms of function or grounded could help us approach God's existence from a metaphysical view. Is this where we should start?
Reply to javi2541997 There is a sense in which the motion of a body depends on other bodies in both senses: If there was only one body in the world, then the very idea of motion would be senseless, since there would be nothing against which motion could be detected. So, for there to be any motion, there has to be more than one thing. But as long as that basic condition is satisfied, you don't necessarily need anything else, any other, to bring about and sustain motion. A planetary system, for example, can spin all on its own, without anyone pushing planets around. And the same is true for just about any dynamical system, be it mechanical motion, temperature changes, chemical reactions, or anything else.
As I shared previously, it could be hard to approach God in any kind of system. Your example could fit in order to try to prove his existence from a metaphysical perspective. God could be that planet that spins all on its own, and "we" orbit around him due to motion or due to how he makes us spin or move in any other mechanical motion.
But I still believe that my point above can't approach God's existence; if we accept God is a thing with a system himself, then it means he is a set of elements, and if an element is left behind, then God is at risk to no longer existing or working. As I understand it, it seems that set (as the planetary system) works because the elements are always together.
According to many believers, God is above all that. It is more abstract than a set of quantum elements. For this motive, I believe that God's existence could be understood in an epistemological view.
Then, I think we should try to elaborate an argument using epistemology. Whether with truth, belief, or justification. I don't have the necessary and sufficient knowledge to elaborate on this. Probably in the near future.
HallucinogenNovember 17, 2025 at 15:11#10254190 likes
Because that's definitely contentious. I would be hard pressed to find any philosopher who argues the universe is necessary. I would believe atheist philosophers would simply accept its brute contingency. If you want to argue its necessity in some sense, you would be pitched right back into the nature of metaphysical necessity and the contingency argument for God.
IMO, necessity demands ontological non-composition and non-changeability. I don't think we can ascribe those to the universe, since the universe is a set of space-time events with no substantial existence beyond its components.
Good comment. In my experience, atheist philosophers don't provide any justification either for the possibility of brute contingencies, nor for the assertion that the universe is one. The notion of brute contingency is as far as I can see, a contradiction.
IMO, necessity demands ontological non-composition and non-changeability.
I'd be interested in hearing why you think this? I'd agree that necessity implies that it doesn't change since necessity means to have no alternate truth value. But a necessary structure could have stratified levels of organization, such that variables are included. The structure itself would be necessary, but the values of the variables would be contingent.
What I'm more interested in though is why necessity implies non-composition? I say this because it doesn't seem that composition entails dependency. A structure could have composite parts, but the parts could be recursively defined, like sets and relations. Or, like the relationship between logical negation and either of the laws of noncontradiction and that of the excluded middle. By recursive definition between parts, I'm talking about a composite structure where each part requires the others for the structure to work, where the parts collectively constitute the "necessary structure".
Comments (427)
Just imagine. The vastness of the universe. Trillions of light years of rock, void, and various gases. With radar we can see Alpha Centauri, over 25 trillion miles away. In fact we can detect systems even further, such as MACS0647-JD, being over 13 billion light years away. And still, no signs of intelligent life. But let's look a bit closer at our own solar system. Eight (or nine if you're old school) heavenly bodies perfectly suspended by just enough gravity to stay in sync without either drifting too close to the sun or too far away into the void of space. Something to marvel at in it's own respect. But let's look even closer, on our planet. Intelligent life, with no rival or anything that even comes close. Plants have been here since the beginning, with reptiles not being far behind. Only mammals possess some inkling or resemblance of intelligence, but is exponentially dwarfed with our modern marvels and society (such as they can bring or be at times). Why don't we have other species, mammals even with societies that remotely resemble ours? Not detectable billions of light years away, nor right here at home. If this isn't at least a starting point for the case of intelligent design, I frankly don't know what is!
[hide="Reveal"]That was my documentary style narration in accordance to your OP. Hope you liked it. :grin:[/hide]
It is always good to argue against yourself, you would be, if not already are, a good debater.
The lack of intelligent life is only proof of our own inadequecy which discounts the latter half
Sorry, I don't listen to inadequate responses.
[hide="Reveal"]/sarc :grin: got you there though...[/hide]
I didnt see the answer tab and thought you were being an arse.
alternate idea:
What are your arguments for or against the existence of one or more etherial beings.
I tend to think (if there is a divine) it acts through the processes of nature.
The divine in my mind is the tendency of nature to self organize and the increasing creativity, complexity and experiential aspect of life over time and evolution.
I do not believe in heaven or hell or even think that there is any God that concerns itself much with human morality or even human survival.
Creativity, novelty and experience are the divine drives.
IF you exist the most important thing, person, idea, or principle in your life exists.
You exist.
THEREFORE God exists.
Only one. You are only one, and what is most important to you is singular. Don't worry about everyone else, unless humanity is the most important thing in which case it is still one god. Everyone else may give importance to trivia... Indeed, if you look around there are worshippers of money, power, beauty, tradition, science, sex... too bad for them, and not worth further consideration.
Let god exist. Therefore god exists.
Let god be something for which there can be no evidence, totally beyond experience.
Therefore there can be no proof that God exists.
Choose your gods choose your proofs.
Less transparency. Support from facts other than just stating the conclusion in the premis. Support form things independent from the idea of god that still support the existence of god.
I can build a counter argument, and see what you say abou it. This is how it goes:
God does not exist. Therefore god does not exist.
The is above is structured the same way as your proof. The premise contains the conclusion.
How come your proof is not congruent with my proof? They are both logically sound, and they both satisfy the criteria you set for a proof. Yet one is complete opposite of the other.
Your proof is not superior to mine, and mine is not superior to yours.
What to do make of this? I think what i make is that both are unsound as proofs. The logic is right, but the premise can't be accepted readily, since it is NOT proven at the state when they are a part of the premise.
It may be that the non-existence of god is the most important thing in your life, in which case you would have to disagree with my definition of what god is. But then nothing you might say will be on the same topic as what any religious person is talking about. and that is a problem I might have too, because while a believer might agree that god is the most important thing in their life, the would not accept that god is whatever you or I think is the most important thing, but rather, they would claim to know better. But I am a democrat, and must allow every worshipper an equal vote.
I have my keys in my pocket. If you were present here, I could get them out and show you, If you doubted they were my keys, I could show how they open my front door, and if you doubted that, I could introduce you to the neighbours, etc. This is not called 'proof' in philosophy, but demonstration and evidence. It is what one might wish for, but it is unavailable. My keys exist in my pocket, but there can be no cunning arrangement of words that obliges this to be the case, or convinces the skeptic that it is the case.
All humans like bananas.
Paul is a human.
Therefore Paul likes bananas.
Here, each premise (either one of them) does not contain the conclusion.
Together, with the combining force of reason, form a conclusion.
Let god exists
Therefore god exists
Is an argumen in which the premise contains the conclusion.
In my argument above neither of the two separate premise hold the conclusion.
This is a noteworthy difference.
--------------------
If you insist in saying that my argument also contained the conclusion in the premises, you are not taking into consideration that they only do that via a process of logic. Without logic neither contains the conclusion.
If you say "let god exist, therefore god exists", the premise does not need logic or anything else to state the conclusion.
This is a noteworthy difference.
All healthy Humans have a nose.
Alfred is a healthy human.
Therefore Alfred's nose exists.
There.
Neither of the premises contain the conclusion,yet the two together, after manipulatin or understanding by applying logic, prove the existence of something.
All unicorns have a single horn.
Nico is a unicorn.
Therefore Nico's unicorn horn exists.
Happy days! I'm sure i can come up with one for god on the same basis.
All unenlightened philosophers have Gods.
Unenlightened is an unenlightened philosopher.
There unenlightened's god exists.
If only I'd known how easy proofs were.
You failed to have all your premises to be true.
If only you knew how easy proofs are.
Obiously you are hugely unenlightened. :-)
But don't let my destroying your arguments deter you.
All unenlightened philosophers have gods -- not a true, not a false statement. It requires further proof. All unenlgihtened philosophers believe in gods is also not a necessarily true statement. But your first premise involves the claim that a god or more gods exist. Therefore your premise contains your conclusion. Therefore your proof is not a proof.
If only you knew how easy proofs are.
Deter me from what? You destroy my arguments like I was making them for real, rather than parodying your arguments. You seem not to have noticed in your urgency to win, that we do not even disagree.
Quoting unenlightened
I am sorry. So the first quote in this post, where I quoted you, was made in jest, as a parody? How would I know that? Because I certainly disagree with the conlcusion of the first quote. I assert that that argument is not valid. So... you wrote it as a parody?
Good grief! That is a really terrible way to do philosophy. I will not engage with you further.
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting god must be atheist
Quoting unenlightened
Hehe. Do you even bother to read, remember, or consider anything you, yourself write?
:cool:
What was the traditional belief and actually your idea of ??God? (that is, the belief that every person has had under the influence of the environment in which he was raised, before he encountered any wise thoughts about God)
Has this belief changed now?
- If the answer is yes, how did this new belief evolve and under what ideas were the experiences? I mean, what happened that you came to the conclusion that this belief must be changed? And how did you transform it? And what is your belief now?
- If the answer is no, why do you think that the traditional belief (in the sense of what you have accepted in the past) does not need to be transformed?
That does us absolutely no good here.
But, can you prove the existence of say, your own body, or Donald Trump (his skin color makes me wonder if he is a mannequin), but can you prove the existence of mannequins?
“Proof for the existence of….”
…has always been a misplaced exercise.
We prove how existing things relate. Proofs sit in between existing things. We have to take the existing things for granted before we can start to prove the reasonable relations their existence entails.
Like you prove in a right triangle that the squares of the two shorter sides equal the square of the longest side. Give me the two short side lengths, and I will tell you the length of the long side, and I can prove it to you over and over again. But you can’t prove there is a single triangle out in the world, or prove there is a long side, or prove the existence of anything. (Descartes thinks he proved he alone existed. Maybe. But that doesn’t prove to me that Descartes existed.)
I put it as, we prove things about the essence of things. We don’t prove existence.
Like if you assume God exists, you might prove he can’t be mortal (but then Jesus’ death throws a wrinkle into that picture), or that God must be capable of doing anything (so why would we suffer)…….bottomless pit without any revelation or experience. No real proof available.
You would be better off trying to pray for the answer. Then you might have your own experience if God chose to drop by. Then you would have objects to “prove”.
Experience first. Then proof about what you experience.
We should ask, how do I get experience with God?
What would happen if someone proved that Jesus was God - wouldn’t that mean we better immediately make sure we are doing everything the Bible says? If Jesus was “proven” with absolute scientific certainty - like proof the Big Bang was the first event of this universe, and it was caused by a person with power to cause such things. All of a sudden scientists, news media, everyone “we have absolute, scientific proof, God exists and created this vast universe!” And further absolute proof that Jesus was this God who decided to become a human being so that he could tell human beings about who he was, and what we can do with our lives to live forever. Proof. Imagine this as proven.
Now what? Do I immediately give all possessions away to charity and focus on living a simple life of service and making sure everyone knows this “good news”.
Do we really even want proof? It would mean something in our lives.
Can you prove it is exhilarating to parachute jump for the first time? Prove it. Prove the feeling of exhilaration.
Or instead, I can just go up in a plane and jump with parachute for the first time.
Can you prove God exists? No. But maybe you can experience God and see for yourself.
Keep asking for sure. Don’t mean to discourage the place where the question comes from if it is an honest question.
As soon as you find God it will be in the last place on earth that you would expect, that will be your proof.
And that proof will only be for you, and it will be precariously held onto by faith.
When you expect God to be a powerful giant, he comes as a beggar, in need of your assistance. If you think God must be love and joy, He will be terrifying power. If you think God is completely other than you and incomprehensible, you will find God in yourself, intimately a part of your very life.
God is not what anyone can sum up, or prove.
There’s another thread on here trying to see if anyone can demonstrate the existence of an “object”. With questions like that in the mix, we aren’t going to prove any god exists.
Exactly. There is no proof of existence. Only proofs about existing things that we lodge into the premises of our argumentative proofs.
Maybe it is special, but without these qualities it isn’t, so the same argument could be made of any solar system containing intelligent life.
It’s possible I explained this poorly, so this might be a bit confusing.
How is anything explained by or justified with "a mystery"? They are not.
If "god is the ultimate mystery", then a godly (i.e. inexplicable and unjustified) world is indistinguishable from a godless world (which is, after all, more parsimonious (begging fewer questions) than the "godly").
I was brought up in the Baptist tradition. But I was never able to belive in gods, even as a child. You either believe or you don't. For me the idea of gods or 'a god' is incoherent - whether it's literalism or a more nebulous philosophical theism. Belief seems to me to be like sexual attraction, a preference you either have or don't. The arguments or justifications come post hoc.
That said, I do think there are answers to some of these questions, but they raise other questions more difficult to answer.
Not god necessarily. Here's what a currently limited AI thinks (ChatGPT)
@Igitur
@180 Proof
@Tom Storm
@Sam26@Richard B
@bert1
Thank you for your participation.
@Fire Ologist Your point of view is interesting, that instead of proving God, we should deal with the feeling of God, and I am not looking to prove God, but I am looking to clarify this issue and find or build my relationship (as a human being) with it.
In my opinion, the most important human problem is "God's problem".
Maybe this post didn't get a lot of feedback (although people's views on this matter are very important to me because I'm going through a mental transition) because I didn't answer his questions myself. Now I will answer it myself, maybe more people will contribute maybe the path is clarified a little.
First question: What was the traditional belief and actually your idea of ??God?
My answer: God, in the traditional attitude and the personal and social conditions in which I was brought up, is an all-knowing and all-powerful being who is able to intervene in the affairs of his servants, and whenever I have prayed to him and he has answered, have mercy on me. He said, and if he did not answer, it was because of his wisdom. Although this God cannot be seen on earth, he is omnipotent on earth and does whatever he wants. And it seems to me that this unlimited knowledge and this unlimited power that I have imagined for God has formed in me in a negative way. Because wherever I have not been able to solve a problem, I have sought to attract his ability in my favor by praying.
Second question: Has this belief changed now?
My answer: My belief in God is changing, which means I want to change this traditional belief, which in my opinion is wrong and based on "self-will" rather than "pure truth", that's why I seek to understand people's attitudes.
I have no belief in a 'sky wizard' or 'magic man'. My thinking about gods hasn't changed much since I was around 8. The idea simply doesn't resonate in any form.
A more sophisticated theology as expressed by, say, Paul Tillich, David Bentley Hart or Richard Rohr are much more interesting to me, but I am still not a customer, just an interested bystander.
Of course, I have examined the arguments used to defend various accounts of gods - since they are impossible to avoid if you talk or read about this subject. I find none of the arguments especially compelling.
Quoting Ali Hosein
The truths I recognise are contingent products of language and culture. I do not believe that humans can have certain knowledge (or capital T truth) of the universe or that there is a transcendent realm we can know. The quest to discover 'reality' as it really is, seems to have become a god substitute for many people. This is the one area where I have changed. I used to think that science would build us ultimate knowledge and that we would come to know everything.
To prove from what?
There is no context-free proof. A thing like that does not exist. You always need system-wide premises, i.e. an axiomatic theory that you first accept without proof.
If the next question is going to be, Yes, but how do you prove your system-wide premises? then we have landed in the middle of a pointless exercise in infinite regress.
In "Posterior Analytics", Aristotle already pointed out why you will eventually always have to accept unproven system-wide premises. After the 2500 years since Aristotle, this will obviously not stop infinite regressionists from engaging in their favorite exercise, i.e. infinite regression.
Kurt Gödel has proven the existence of a godlike entity from five axioms in higher-order modal logic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_ontological_proof
It means that the belief in a godlike entity is equiconsistent with the belief in five axiomatic modal expressions.
The standard criticism on Gödel's proof is obvious and should be expected:
Every proof implies at best equiconsistency with the system-wide premises explicitly relied on in the proof. A proof can never mean more than that. There simply does not exist a proof that embodies more truth than that. That is simply not possible.
Still, Gödel's proof has the merit of raising the bar.
Instead of attacking the notion of Godlike entity, one must now first learn higher-order modal logic and attack the five axiomatic expressions in his proof. Atheist often seem to believe that they are smarter than religious people. Fine, in that case, show us your mettle and try to meaningfully attack Gödel's subtleties in higher-order modal logic.
Whatever is real does not require faith and only a god can "prove a god".
Numbers are not "real". They are abstractions. Their use ultimately requires faith in Peano's axioms. So, you can't do math without faith. In all practical terms, you can't do science or technology without at least some math.
Hence, you can't live as a human without faith. Can you live as an animal without faith? No, because animals also use if only very basic arithmetic for their survival.
Quoting 180 Proof
Gödel has proved the existence of a Godlike entity from higher-order modal logic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_ontological_proof
Gödel wasn't a god.
In fact, proving the existence of something is much easier than proving the impossibility that it would exist. In the first case, you only need to locate a suitable entity, just like Gödel did. In the second case, you need to inspect all possible candidates and demonstrate that they are unsuitable. Hence, you need to be an omniscient being in order to prove that an omniscient entity does not exist. Hence, only God can prove atheism.
So, the correct statement is:
That would obviously lead to an interesting contradiction.
I think “God” is a vague enough term that it fits pretty much all of these examples with the exception of the last. As for the last, well, all of our understanding of simulations is they are created by a simulator(s), but if one is attached to the idea that with infinite amount of time something like this will randomly happen, sure.
:roll:
By "faith" I mean worship of supernatural mysteries e.g. "a god" (re: OP), not mere (un/warranted) trust in a usage or practice. Context matters.
"Godlike" (e.g. Spinoza's metaphysical Deus, sive natura) is not equivalent to any supernatural god (e.g. "God of Abraham") so this "proof" is theologically irrelevant. More specifically, his argument consists of some undecidable (i.e. disputable) formal axioms and, even if valid, it is not sound; therefore, nothing nonformal, or concrete, is "proven". Same failing as Anselm's ontological arguments – "Gödel's proof" is, at best, a "higher-order modal" tautology. Again, sir, context matters.
Besides this equivocation (re: existence is not a predicate, etc) ... you find it more difficult "proving the impossibility" that "something" which (e.g.) both is itself and is not itself simultaneously "exists" – or, more simply, that (e.g.) "Godzilla exists" – than "proving a god" (not merely a tautologous "godlike entity") "exists"? :eyes:
If you want to go more in depth, pick one of the arguments and ask why it works/doesn't work. In general, none of the arguments for God have been proven as true, but thinking about them can give you a better idea of why.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/653775
@CallMeDirac
Yes, so what's the difference?
Quoting 180 Proof
You did not prove this.
Quoting 180 Proof
Axioms are not undecidable.
The standard truth status of axioms is not characterized as undecidable.
Quoting 180 Proof
This argument can be made about every mathematical theorem, simply by rejecting the axioms on which the theorem rests.
Quoting 180 Proof
Proof only exists in mathematics, which is never about the physical universe. Therefore, it is impossible to prove anything "concrete". That is not how proof works.
Is this an example of faith? We know numbers work and can demonstrate their efficacy on demand. No one can do this with gods. I wonder if this is an equivocation on the word faith? In mathematics, "faith" in axioms is more about agreement on foundational principles rather than belief without evidence. Faith in gods is the excuse people give for believing in something when they don't have a good reason. One can't demonstrate the existence of gods. But we have good reasons to believe in the existence of math. Whatever the nature of numbers - which may well be convenient fictions for talking about collections of objects or properties of objects, rather than having an independent existence.
Quoting Tarskian
:roll:
So, confirming you do not even know what you are talking about, Gödel only proves a mathematical expression and not, as you've claimed, "that god exists".
Every proof does only that. In that case, why ask for "proof", if proof can never be satisfactory?
Accepting a truth without evidence is faith. Therefore, an axiom represents faith. If you are not willing to do that, then why do it in mathematics?
Quoting Tarskian
... is a stipulation, or working assumption.
That doesn't address my points. Equivocation. Have another look.
There is no other "proof" than mathematical proof. The OP asks "Can anyone prove a god?"
Well, Gödel gave mathematical proof. And now suddenly, no one asked for it!
Quoting 180 Proof
Gödel's proof is no more tautological than any other mathematical proof.
Faith in axioms still requires belief without evidence. Religious people also agree on the foundational principles of their faith. What's the difference?
As soon as you switch to personal attacks, it means that you feel that you are losing the debate.
The difference is it misses a key factor. Demonstration of effectiveness. We have good reasons to accept math and the axioms because we can demonstrate their effectiveness. Anyone can do this at any time.
We can't do the same with any gods. We can't even agree on which gods or why gods or how gods. As an axiom, god is like an empty vase in which believers arrange the flowers.
Observations of your poor reasoning and discursive failures are not "personal attacks". Grow up, kid.
Look at the size of the mathematical corpus:
The overwhelmingly vast majority of these 5 million theorems are useless and irrelevant. In what way would they be effective?
Quoting Tom Storm
There are alternative religions, just like there are alternative foundations for math. Two billion people agree on Christianity. Two billion on Islam. A similarly large number on Buddhism. There are obscure religions with a small number of followers, just like there are obscure math theories.
Furthermore, religion can be very effective. It can successfully prevent governments from overruling the laws of nature. It can also be effective at motivating individuals and stimulate their survival instinct. It can motivate individuals to maintain faith in life and in the future and keep reproducing from generation to generation. The birth rate for atheists may be crashing and burning, but religious communities keep going strong.
Ha ha ah! You have just made my point!
Dunning-Kruger is about people who think that they know but in fact they don't. Since atheism requires omniscience while faith in God does not, doesn't Dunning-Kruger rather describe atheists and not religious people?
Quoting Tarskian
Nicely put. But unconvincing.
The quesion we are addressing is - is there good reason to belive in god the way there are good reasons to believe in math? We haven't even addressed the matter of which gods.
Whether there are many obscure math theories doesn't cancel the effectiveness of math in general.
Religion being an effective political group is not the same thing as assessing the effectiveness of the god hypothesis. This would seem to be another equivocation. Religion all over the world behaves like a political party - theism being incidental to its machinations.
Omniscience? Straw man, there. As an atheist I put it: I do not belive the proposition that gods exist. I have heard no good reason to accept it and the idea of gods do not assist me to make sense of my experince. This is how many contemporary atheists view the subject. We do not say there is no god, that would be making a positive claim. For many, atheism is about belief not knowledge. But this entire 'gods or not gods' is a really boring debate. Let's not let a little thing like gods come between us. :wink:
The reasons are similar. The belief in Peano's axioms allows you to use arithmetic theory and maintain consistency in downstream applications. The belief in religion creates a common understanding between billions of people that constitute a political counterweight to prevent governments from overruling the laws of nature. Different tools for different purposes.
Quoting Tom Storm
Politics is unavoidable. The government is essentially a monopoly on violence. There needs to be a mechanism to suspend this monopoly when the government abuses it:
The so-called democratic voting circus was advertised as being capable of achieving this but it has now become obvious that it has failed at doing so. We are now effectively in the long run of all the past short-termism.
There are three possibilities concerning the belief in God: true, false, indeterminate. Religion believes it is true. Atheism believes that it is false. Agnosticism is indeterminate.
Atheism is defined as a positive claim. It is agnosticism that refuses to make a claim. While agnosticism makes perfect sense, atheism doesn't.
Quoting Tom Storm
If we look at the JTB account for knowledge, then knowledge is defined as a particular kind of belief:
There is no knowledge without belief. Furthermore, at the foundationalist core of knowledge you always find necessarily unjustifiable beliefs. Rejecting the foundation of unjustifiable beliefs amounts to rejecting the entire edifice of knowledge. If you can't have faith, you cannot know either.
From American Atheists website:
It's important to understand how people use words.
I would call myself an agnostic atheist - A fairly common category these days. I can't know there is no god. I don't believe there is a god. Atheism is not necessarily a knowledge claim.
Now one might claim we can know there is no Zeus, Ganesh, Zoroaster or Jesus. But we can't know whether or not there is some unspecified theistic entity (whatever that might look like).
Quoting Tarskian
I'm not a foundationalist.
All this is a distraction. We still can't demonstrate that there are any gods. We can demonstrate that math works. We seem unable to get past this point.
He hasn't. Read the Reddit article you yourself linked.
Quoting Tarskian
It is not. There have been some three threads in the past year about this very topic where this is debunked thoroughly.
Quoting Tarskian
Yes, it can be but that formulation is not popular – though it's formerly my preferred position (while quite reasonable, it's too narrow in scope):
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/901774
Quoting Tom Storm
:smirk:
In that case, you will need to reject mathematics as it is staunchly foundationalist, i.e. axiomatic. Since science is not viable without math, you will also need to reject science.
Even animals use some basic arithmetic for reasons of survival. Hence, an anti-foundationalist animal cannot survive.
Again, every living creature needs to have at least some faith in order to survive.
But then again, with the birth rate collapsing, atheist populations are in the long run not surviving. Indeed, why would they? In the end, you still need some faith to believe that it would be meaningful to begin with. There is no compulsion in religion. Therefore, they are indeed at liberty to die out.
As usual, the proof will be in the pudding. Atheism will disappear. Only religion will survive. That is how it has always been. Nothing new there.
In my opinion, the difference between "absence of belief" and "disbelief" is just language engineering.
It implies that the position could also be indeterminate. However, we already have a term for that position, i.e. agnosticism.
Why would there be a need to create that ambiguous overlap between atheism and agnosticism? It merely mixes up the underlying truth values. A logic sentence is true, false, or indeterminate. Why deviate from standard logic. To what benefit?
You misunderstand what the Wikipedia page on the matter says. Godel has perfectly demonstrated the equiconsistency between his theorem and the axioms that he used. What else does any proof do, if not exactly that?
You need to compare apples to apples:
- We can demonstrate that math works.
- We can demonstrate that religion works.
That is the fair comparison. Or even:
- We still can't demonstrate that there are any gods.
- We still can't demonstrate that Peano's successor function exists as mentioned in the axioms of arithmetic.
That is another fair comparison.
What you are doing, is comparing apples to oranges.
Not so. We accept science and math because they work pragmatically, subject to contingent factors like communities of practice, culture and language. Science doesn't uncover reality, it gives us reliable and tentative models which are iterative and replaced when better models come forward. I suspect this process is never complete. Math can be understood in numerous ways including intuitionism, formalism, constructivism, Platonism, empiricism, not to mention postmodern accounts of math.
Quoting Tarskian
So your argument is that religion doesn't work and god can't be demonstrated, but we should believe it anyway because it is an orange and ideas like 'demonstration' are apples?
I'm not interested in an undergraduate debate about religion or gods. My point is that math demonstrates its utility, god can't even demonstrate it's existence. Hence faith. I don't think there's much point going on in this way. Take care.
Ok,
Even if I'm late to this discussion and haven't looked it through, here's my five cents:
If the difference between faith and reason isn't obvious to people, I urge people first to go and read their actual field manuals here: if you are Christian, read the Bible, if you are a Muslim, read the Quran or if you are a Jew, read the Torah. Now, do any of these Holy Scriptures insist and demand that in order for to find God you just have "really think it through" or "reason it out"? That you'll find God if you just reason enough and think about it? Or is it about faith, something like "taking Jesus to your heart" as in the Christian manual? Fun fact, the difference between the expressions of taking something into your heart or it being an issue of the heart or using your brain is quite old.
And since part of us are interested in the Abrahamic religions here (that I admit, I barely know), they don't actually like worshipping idols. Now ask yourself, if there would be a "proof" of God, what need there would be for the Bible or the Torah or the Quran? You have this proof! Here's the proof, there's God, and that's it!
So wouldn't the this proof be an Idol?
In my opinion, It sure would be. So those trying to prove God are trying to build Idols.
I accept religion, also because it works.
We take a snapshot of a presumably ane society along with its rules and call that our scripture. Now we have a benchmark to compare our own society to, as well as where it is heading. Next, we threaten the government to stop overruling the laws of nature and of a sane society, and make it cave in.
What is there about religion that does not work? In my opinion, the tool is perfectly suitable for purpose.
Quoting Tom Storm
Religion also demonstrates its utility. The government fears us more than the result of its elections. So, the tool achieves its goal.
You see, when the Taliban unceremoniously deported NATO from Kabul airport, they achieved something that nobody else was able to do. Or do you think that you can do that too?
Knowledge is fundamentally foundationalist:
Without basic beliefs, reason is not possible.
Therefore, there is no such sharp distinction between reason and faith. Reason allows us to reach derived beliefs. However, their ultimate justification can only be found in properly basic beliefs
We are talking about god and math. Religion is politics. Forget it. To call religion effective is an equivocation fallacy. It's not the same kind of demonstration of effectiveness as math. Math axioms can be shown to work. Religion cannot demonstrate gods. All it can do is what secular humanists or even communists might do - organize.
Quoting Tarskian
I would call that evidence of religion's disfunction. Biblically literalists, highjacked by corporate power - who are, incidentally, also scorned by vast numbers of members within the same religion are simply fearful of modernity and are retreating into strident accounts of their myths. This disorganized shambles is well understood. Even religious scholar and religious apologist, Karen Armstrong presents this hypothesis.
Quoting Tarskian
You make me laugh. We know that people can be galvanized by deception and undemonstrated beliefs. A crowd that believes something is just a crowd that believes something. Truth is a separate matter. Or do you think the supposed truths held by Marxists, Hare Krishna, Scientologists are all 'really' true because each of these groups has been effective in significant ways?
No, they can't. There is no justification for axioms. If an axiom can be justified, it is not a legitimate axiom.
Quoting Tom Storm
Math cannot demonstrate its axioms either.
Quoting Tom Storm
No, it is its stated goal. The goal of religion is not what you would want it to be. That is wishful thinking.
Quoting Tom Storm
Marxism has collapsed. Some religions are unsustainable. Nobody urges you to choose one of those.
Quoting Tom Storm
Undemonstrated beliefs are the foundation of all knowledge. That is exactly what Aristotle pointed out in Posterior Analytics. If nothing is assumed then nothing can be concluded. Furthermore, the ability to galvanize is exceptionally meritorious. Motivating people is not easy. It is no small feat if you manage to do it. It is also the biggest failure of any manager, if he cannot galvanize his people. Humanity is a social species, which means that leadership is a pressing requirement. If you can galvanize other people, then you can achieve greater things. If you are critical about that, you simply do not understand how human organizations work.
If your opinion is that there is no valid distinction between lack of belief and active disbelief, then your opinion is based on insufficient thought.
An atheistic can quite coherently say they see no reason to believe in a god, and yet that they cannot rule it out. They are a-theistic in an analogous sense in which someone may be a-sexual—in the latter case they have no sexual disposition and in the former case they have no theistic disposition.
Agnosticism is different —it is about knowing not believing—an agnostic says we cannot know God, which means we cannot know whether God exists, whereas a gnostic says we can know God.
That said most agnostics today probably don't believe in God, simply because they don't know. But in the original sense of the word, one could be an agnostic theist, and in fact most sensible theists are agnostic, in the sense that they acknowledge that one cannot know whether there is a god, and they acknowledge that it is a matter of faith, not knowledge.
In terms of logic, we have: yes, no, maybe. The view you describe is a maybe. In my opinion, that is perfectly fine.
I.e. you can't tell the difference between ~b(G) and b(~G)? :pray:
This is only so for someone who (analogously) cannot differentiate 'nonassent from dissent' or 'remaining silent from spoken denial' or 'indifference from rejection'.
Right, there's no "need" for the muddle confusing you, Tarskian. Consider –
Given that (theistic) agnosticism denotes 'the truth-value of theism (claim that at least one providential/creator deity** exists) is unknown (or unknowable)':
(A) if theism is antirealist-noncognitive (i.e. belief in a deity** that does not entail truth-claims), then (theistic) agnosticism is incoherent ...
... in other words, to say 'I do not know whether noncognitive theism is true or false'. :roll:
(B) however, if theism is realist-cognitive°° (i.e. belief in a deity** that entails truth-claims), and using the natural world to search for truth-makers, I/we can show that theism is not true °° and therefore, (theistic) agnosticism is unwarranted ...
... in other words, to say 'I do not know whether cognitive theism is true or false.' :yawn:
Quoting Tarskian
More precisely +1, 0, -1 (true, unknown, not true).
It depends on b() whether they are different or the same. It is a similar situation as whether a ?b is equal to b ? a. It depends on the properties of ?.
In this case, they are clearly the same. The expression: is equivalent to . There is no difference.
Quoting 180 Proof
Ok, Heyting logic does indeed work like that, with (true,false,not-true) truth values, while the Kleene, Priest, and ?ukasiewicz logics stick to (true,false,uinknown). After having spent decades fiddling with SQL and years fiddling with javascript, I subconsciously tend to revert to (true,false,null). I wonder if Heyting logic is even implemented anywhere? Is there a programming language that uses it?
100 %.
We don’t prove existence. We prove relations among the existing things we posit, or assume, or hypothesize, or believe, or know. You don’t prove the existence of a premise; you need a premise first to prove something in conclusion. Or you aren’t doing proof.
We might be able to prove a god wouldn’t struggle, or a god wouldn’t need sleep, but we can’t prove that struggle-free, always awake god exists.
Gödel's proof is considered mathematically unobjectionable. That is why the only mathematical criticism is that it merely proves equiconsistency between the theorem and its axioms:
Furthermore, we can certainly prove existence or non-existence.
Existence. Kakutani's fixed-point theorem proves the existence of a fixed point. So does Brouwer's fixed-point theorem.
Non-existence. Abel-Ruffini theorem proves the non-existence of a solution in radicals for quintic polynomials or higher degrees. Fermat's Last Theorem proves the non-existence of particular three-tuples of natural numbers.
That's irrelevant. The point is that Marxism has had way more power than the Taliban. The point is that this -
Quoting Tarskian
- might have been done by any number of fanatics (Castro, Hitler, Putin, whoever). And why ask me if I can do this? I am not an organisation. Nor do I belong to any organisation. Strange.
Quoting Tarskian
The effectiveness of math can be demonstrated through its consistency and predictability. Religions by contrast are a mess of contradictory and conflicting beliefs, with no agreed upon goals or values - even within the single religion. It is unpredictable and inconsistent. To say religion is 'effective' in the way you are doing is to say that an atomic bomb is a good way to keep your lawn short.
But what about religion? You can't even demonstrate that religion (whichever one you pick) has anything to do with a gods. Even if a god or ten exist, there is no way of demonstrating which religion is true and reflects the will of that god.
Hitler tried and failed.
Quoting Tom Storm
Concerning the consistency of any theory such as PA (Peano arithmetic theory), it is merely an assumption. Gödel's second incompleteness theorem proves that if a mathematical system is capable of proving its consistency, it is necessarily inconsistent.
Therefore, the consistency of PA is based on faith alone.
Of course, we use PA to maintain consistency in downstream applications, and it works surprisingly well, but it is certainly not a provable property of PA.
Concerning the predictability of PA, whenever there exist true but unprovable theorems in a system, they massively outnumber the provable ones.
Hence, PA is mostly unpredictable.
According to Stephen Hawking, the unpredictability of the universe is tightly connected to the unpredictability of PA:
PA is predictable in one direction, with provable implying true. However, when you look at the universe of true facts in PA, it is not predictable, because true rarely implies provable. PA is highly chaotic, albeit in a deterministic way.
PA is a chaotic complex system without initial conditions.
PA is also mostly unpredictable and its consistency is at best a statement of faith.
Yet when you reason, you can change your beliefs. Naturally we do start from our premises, the things we assume to be true. But if by reasoning we come to the conclusion that our starting assumptions were wrong, we change them.
With something like faith, and to love something, that's not so.
Faith requires belief despite the evidence. Evidence is the Devil's doing.
Well,
Quoting Tarskian
looks a bit... overstated.
Aren't these the "initial conditions"...? These are the Peano axioms:
It's far from obvious what this has to do with chaotic systems.
I'm not following Tarskian's argument at all.
@TonesInDeepFreeze?
Instead of reading through some web article anyone can edit and that no academic uses for research for its extremely poor quality, I have gone through the original papers for the proofs. There are positive, non-arbitrary, reasons why we may want to reject the axioms of the argument, even in its consistent form.
You abuse every source you can get your hands on to support the conclusion you started with before researching the arguments, like a politician would. If it is not some dumb ontological argument from the Middle Ages or some toddler-ish question like "Uh where does the big bang come from", the religious sophists will latch onto whatever they can find next.
In that sense, I suggest you go spill your drivel somewhere other rather than a philosophy forum, which is not a debate forum, but perhaps the other users will be eager to waste time on your sophistry.
Because there is no argument. It is crankery and abuse of philosophy/logic worse than PL's.
See also https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/#Gdel , and the concluding observations.
A chaotic system is one that follows a seemingly random path albeit deterministic. If you repeat the path with exactly the same initial conditions, it will follow exactly the same path.
Example:
Initial condition: "hello world"
sha256 hash: b94d27b99...
sha256 hash: 049da0526...
and so on (you keep feeding the output as new input)
If you change one letter to the initial seed, the path will change completely.
This is a chaotic complex system. Its facts look random. If you don't know the initial seed, it is for all intents and purposes effectively random.
Since most facts in arithmetic (PA), i.e. the arithmetical truth, are unprovable from the axioms, it has similar characteristics to the example system.
However, there is no initial seed in PA. The chaos in PA is caused by another phenomenon. Provable statements in PA are not merely true in the model/universe of the natural numbers. They are also true in an unlimited number of nonstandard models/universes of arithmetic. Most of its true facts are, however, not true in all its models/universes. That would be a precondition for their provability/predictability. That is why most facts in arithmetic are not predictable/provable from theory.
This phenomenon explains why PA is incomplete (i.e. having unprovable truths) or inconsistent (i.e. provable falsehoods) or even possibly both.
Hence, the nature of the majority of facts in arithmetic is chaotic, i.e. unpredictable (unprovable).
Well no. You need to be quite sure that the book is about a sane society. You cannot just invent one. It needs to have historically existed.
Quoting Deleted user
They are not inconsistent. There may be an issue of modal collapse but Curtis Anderson proposed a fix for that. It is not a major problem.
I have just found an interesting paper that elaborates on why the overwhelming majority of true statements in arithmetic are unprovable -- and therefore unpredictable. In fact, most truth in PA is simply ineffable.
Most mathematical truth is unpredictably chaotic.
Quoting Tarskian
As previously stated, you have not read the article you yourself linked. Congrats.
What you are missing is the possibility that an atheist, having no disposition towards theism at all, may not take up any of the positions you characterize by "yes, no, maybe" that is they may not believe, disbelieve or suspend judgement in relation to the question, but simply give it no thought whatsoever, perhaps on account of not acknowledging it is as a question, thinking of it as incoherent or a non-question, or perhaps due simply to a complete lack of interest.
That is clearly a straw man. You are attacking an argument that I did not make. You are using Don Quichotte tactics. Who exactly is the sophist here?
Quoting Deleted user
That is classical non sequitur. Again some word-salad nonsense.
Godel flawlessly proved the equiconsistency between his theorem and the axioms from which it follows. Godel's proof is therefore mathematically unobjectionable. Of course, Godel did not prove the axioms themselves. But then again, he is not even supposed to.
Your arguments amount to just a bit of black mouthing and shit talking. That says much more about you than about Godel's work.
If someone is not interested in the issue, fine, but then his answer should still get mapped to the truth value unknown/maybe.
There is no need for an additional truth value to reflect this.
Again, the answer unknown/maybe is perfectly fine. Unlike the answer "no", it does not reflect a problem of omniscience.
So you would have 'don't care' mapped to unknown?
Or ‘none of the above’.
Well, how many additional truth values do we need to invent before all our needs for additional truth values will have been completely satisfied?
Seriously, it is a slippery slope. We are going to end up with more truth values than genders!
That point of view is not a problem.
Only a 'yes' or 'no' answer constitutes a real commitment.
For 'yes' answer, you need to locate a constructive witness. This is possible. Gödel did exactly that. For 'no' answer, the default situation is that you generally need omniscience.
In fact, impossibility proofs do exist. They are not completely impossible. However, they typically require discovering a structural constraint that could never be satisfied by any possible witness.
A good example is the Abel-Ruffini theorem. There is no solution in radicals to general polynomial equations of degree five or higher. It took centuries to prove this because at first glance it requires omniscience. It required discovering the Galois correspondence as a structural constraint that any solution would violate. Fermat's last theorem is another good example. Without the modularity theorem, it would also require omniscience to prove this impossibility. It took over 350 years to pull off the proof.
Where is the structural constraint that makes a "no" answer to the "Does God exist?" question viable without requiring omniscience? Proving an impossibility is substantially harder than locating a suitable witness for a theorem. That is why a proof for atheism is several orders of magnitude more unlikely than a proof for religion.
Rather, contenders include, say, the Vedic Shiva, the Avestan Ahura Mazda, the Biblical Yahweh, and a few others, where adherents/believers go by rituals, commands/rules, fate designations, speak of divine intervention/participation, etc. These are of concern to the various adherents/believers of course, and also to others due to proselytizers indoctrinators discrimination conquerors (concerted organized efforts), their political influences, and impact on societal affairs (other peoples' lives).
Shouldn't be difficult to find people with a laissez-faire (or "who knows") sort of attitude towards the former (vague unknown), and an attitude of disbelief towards whatever deities of the latter. It's a difference that makes a difference.
The existential claim carries the onus probandi (generally, existential claims are verifiable and not falsifiable, universal claims are falsifiable and not verifiable), it's not for someone else to disprove. Upon repeated failure, expect disregard/dismissal of the claim (until further notice perhaps). Though not deductive, it's a rational, reasonable response just the same, happens all the time.
Since we are talking about proof, it is the mathematical view on the subject that matters. Everybody else should avoid using the term ¨proof¨. What they produce as justification, is at best "evidence". It is never proof.
Existential proofs are much easier to produce than impossibility proofs. Gödel successfully produced one. It does require higher-order modal logic, but that is still trivially simple compared to what impossibility proofs typically rest on.
If you want to prove an impossibility, you need to painstakingly discover and make use of a structural constraint that will successfully reject every possible witness. In absence of such structural constraint, you would need omniscience.
There are impossibility proofs. For example, Abel-Ruffini theorem rests on the Galois correspondence as a structural constraint, while Fermat's last theorem rests on the modularity theorem. So, it is possible. There are impossibility proofs, but non-trivial ones typically took centuries to discover.
Therefore, you probably understand now that impossibility is not the default in mathematics. On the contrary, it is the result of centuries of hard work. Gödel successfully did his work and produced an existential proof. Where can we see the commendable mathematical work produced by an atheist in which he supports his impossibility claim?
By the way, atheists really need to prove that they are not making use of omniscience for their impossibility claim that an omniscient entity does not exist. This burden is on them and not on us.
I’ve not met many atheists who would argue this. How would we know? Atheism is as botched and bungled as any religion in its range of strident and moderate advocates. I’ve met atheists who believe in ghosts, fairies and Bigfoot. Perhaps be a bit more cautious about your characterisation of atheists. I don’t consider all theists to be stupid rubes.
Out of interest, what type of believer are you? Muslim or Christian, or something less specific?
YES?
Originally born a Catholic. In the meanwhile, I came to the conclusions that Christians no longer intend to use the rules in the scripture as a benchmark to assess societal sanity. So, my sympathies are definitely much more Muslim nowadays. So, the problem is not necessarily Christianity but the lack of enthusiasm of the Christians. But then again, they completely mishandled the reformation too. The following was clearly not the solution either:
This approach failed in the Burgundian Netherlands but it actually succeeded in France. After successfully eradicating the reformation in France, the Catholic Church probably thought that they were good to go, only to later on end up with the French revolutionaries who did not even try to reform the religion but got rid of it altogether. Forcing everybody to join your club is clearly not a good idea.
A model just requires a counter-example and it's out.
If existential proofs are the easier parts, then why do less than half the world's population believe that the Biblical Yahweh is real?
But ...
Quoting above
... was the main point. Ball's still in your court.
Gödel did exactly that. He provided a mathematically unobjectionable proof. Of course, math never does more than advertised. The witness for the existential theorem has successfully been supplied. Next.
Thanks for the background. I thought as much. You're definitely interesting, even if we disagree about many things. I appreciate your generally good nature and politeness. Some folks get pretty abusive on here sometimes.
Me accusing you of not reading what you yourself linked, which you haven't, is a "non-sequitur" and "word-salad"? Are you a bot?
Quoting Tarskian
Why are you using "equiconsistency" when referring to a set of theorems and their axioms? Gödel did not prove anything "mathematically" but using higher-order logic. Gödel's proof is inconsistent stemming from D2, it took other people to fix the inconsistency in his proof just to then generate further issues in these updated proofs. It is not "unobjectionable".
Who has issues with Gödel here is you, misrepresenting the work not only of Gödel but of the field.
Modal collapse is not an inconsistency. Who told you that?
It just means that the proof reverts to standard non-modal logic.
Since non-modal logic is the default logic anyway, does that mean that pretty much all proofs in mathematics are inconsistent?
Since standard logic does not even distinguish between necessary and contingent truth, what is supposedly the big problem?
Furthermore, Anderson has fixed the issue and removed the modal collapse. This is not essential at all. It is just nice to have and not more than that.
In fact, it may even be a good thing. It means that the proof works, even without using modal modifiers. So, the proof would be valid, even in plain, standard logic.
From a thoughtful and philosophical perspective
From a personal and psychological perspective
From the collective and sociological perspective
Nobody, because I know it is not.
You still don't realise that it has been proven that Gödel's version of the proof is inconsistent. I am not talking about modal collapse.
Quoting Tarskian
Anderson himself along with Gettings argued in 1996 that his version can be defeated using the same arguments as Gaunilo against Anselmo.
For a starters, the alleged inconsistency detected by Christoph Benzmüller and Bruno Woltzenlogel-Paleo cannot be duplicated with automated provers. Secondly, Melvin Fitting's reformulation addresses this concern anyway.
You are merely haphazardly copying excerpts from the ongoing investigation and conversation on Gödel's proof.
Of course, there are concerns about the nitty-gritty details in the proof. You are desperately fishing for evidence that there would be something wrong with Gödel's work without being a constructive participant in any shape, way, or fashion.
The people that you quote mention possible concerns with a view on improving the original and making progress, while you are sitting on the fence, overhearing fragments of their conversation, with only negativity and foregone conclusions in mind. If you were physically present in the meeting room, they would tell you to leave the room because you are not adding any value with your non-constructive negativity.
There is something interesting that arises from considering the possible proof of God: Why do we believe that God is something that can be proven?
A Proof belongs to a context of interpretation that delimits its conditions of possibility. But isn't that precisely a form of conditioning? For example, when we understand God as the creator of the universe, as a kind of origin of everything that exists, aren’t we subjecting His concept to linear causality, to His physical intervention in the creation of matter and energy? Isn't it paradoxically a subsumption of God to physical causation rules that He does not dominate? The same can be said of a logical proof or a moral proof: Can God not be contradictory? Can God not do evil?
In each case, the nature of God is subordinated to a context that betrays His nature by conditioning Him. This is the old issue of how a finite being can access the infinite and even relate to it. Or how the unconditioned can relates the conditioned. It is the issue of why it seems that the idea of God is problematic in itself as it relates to the ineffable and that which is unconditioned. Ironically, according to the above, it can be said that if God exists, He cannot be proven. God would be beyond reason and will always be a mystery.
God cannot be proven from the theory of the physical universe (ToE), simply because we do not even have a copy of that theory.
But then again, we can certainly replace the logic sentence denoting God by five axiomatic expressions in higher-order modal logic. That is what Gödel did. Hence, God is not ineffable. Where is the proof that God would be ineffable? Furthermore, God can be proven from carefully chosen axioms because that is exactly what Gödel did.
The rhetoric about "there is no proof for God" basically keeps ignoring Gödel's mathematically unobjectionable work. So, even when the greatest mathematician of all times gives a proof, an atheist will still reject it.
In fact, there is nothing -- no argument whatsoever -- that could ever convince an atheist that God exist. You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep. That is the real value of Gödel's proof. In the end, he was not even trying to prove something about God. He was trying to prove something about atheists.
I suppose this is reasonably assumed whenever "God" is ascribed (according to tradition, scripture, doctrine, testimony) properties, or predicates, which entail changes to the observable universe: those "God"-unique changes either are evident or they are absent, ergo "God" so described either exists or does not exist, no?
Naturalists offer explanationsi nterms of natural laws, but the laws themselves are taken to be brute and inexplicable, no? A mystery that answers questions.
I don't think that's entirely right. Reason does change people's views, but slowly, and very occasionally quickly. The rationale lodges in some deep recess of the brain, and slowly starts rearranging neurons around it I reckon, although may never reach a critical mass. Admittedly there are much quicker ways to influence the beliefs on another.
If cosmopsychism is true (panpsychism with an emphasis on the macro rather than the micro), and at the moment I think it probably is, then we have a very large (possibly infinite) and powerful conscious blob. Should we call it God? Who knows. But it's a possible candidate for Goddishness. Does it mean we should believe in miracles, hate fags, give it a name and then stone people who say the name out loud, start wars in its name, try to make out that it is really really bothered about which ethnic group should have rights to a piece of land on one tiny planet in an infinite universe, use it to explain odd things that sometimes happen, and otherwise make up stories (that coincidentally happen to align with our interests) about what it wants? Probably not.
No. Physical laws are mathematical (computable) generalizations of precisely observed regularities or structures in nature and they are only descriptive (constraints), not themselves explanatory (theories).
If you keep asking 'Yes but why?' eventually even scientifically literate people like yourself, will say 'That's just how it is'. That's a mystery. I make no claim to it being akin to 'supernatural mysteries ... miracles, woo-of-the-gaps, etc'
Is God a legacy of the past that remains to this day? Or is it a natural concept that will remain with humans forever?
Is man able to solve the "problem of God"?
Hilarious coming from the individual quoting Wikipedia to falsely claim "Godel proved God's existence" and realising only 5 posts in that I am not talking about modal collapse when saying "inconsistency".
Quoting Tarskian
Taking the accusation I correctly raised against you twice and putting a "no u" spin on it. Boring.
Quoting Tarskian
It is not Fitting's reformulation that addresses that. Fitting's addresses the modal collapse, the inconsistency had been solved before people were ever aware of a modal collapse.
And the fact some reformulations avoid modal collapse and are valid does not matter for the crankery you are trying to push.
Quoting Tarskian
There is no "constructive participant", the people providing solutions to Gödel's proof themselves do not commit to the argument.
You do not know what you are talking about.
Quoting Tarskian
Quoting Tarskian
It is even more telling when the crank abuses the work of people who themselves do not think the argument even in its valid shape proves anything — the delusion that tautologies within one logical language among many others is able to prove something metaphysical.
He then pretends to be humble and be "participating" in a discussion he is thoroughly abusing and misuing:
Quoting Tarskian
If he cared about any investigation, he would not be spilling nonsense such as:
Quoting Tarskian
He did not know that Gödel's proof is not consistent until I informed him of such. It is visible when he kept thinking of modal collapse when I used the word "inconsistency".
Then, we have more abuse and lies about scholars long dead:
Quoting Tarskian
Being established that the sophist is doing exactly what I described or what he used for “no u”, and up to reasonable people to see through it, I am removing this thread from my browser to not provide any more ammunition to the crank.
There is no inconsistency in the version tested by Christoph Benzmüller and Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo:
You keep nonsensicalizing about inconsistencies that are not there.
Quoting Deleted user
More narcissistic manipulation and lying. I urge all honest persons to look up "taqiyya":
Quoting Tarskian
One can also go to the "Mathematical proof is not orderly" thread to see how OP does not know what he is talking about, as other posters show.
I think you are misleading my argument. A proof like Gödel's continues in this step of enclosing God through logic. Again, can't God be contradictory? When we talk about an incapacity, aren't we betraying the nature of God? What happens is that by trying to conceptualize God [whether through Gödel's axiomatic expressions] we enclose the very concept within a context that conditions it [Gödel's proof does not prove the moral God, nor the creator God].
For me, the important thing is to show how our proofs, precisely because they are proofs, miss the mark, thereby showing that the concept of God is so plural that it is difficult to see how a valid proof can even be conceived. If I choose unconditionality as an attribute of God [why shouldn't I choose it?], the matter is practically closed. Then there is no proof sufficiently exhaustive that could work.
I would like to show that the idea of God is closely related to the idea of limit. And that because of this relationship, a huge problem arises that overwhelms the capacity of any proof. However, the idea of God is necessarily linked to the idea of limit. This is the reason why God, in my view, is related to the ineffable, as philosophies like those of Levinas or Kierkegaard have done. But then it is not a moral God, not a physical God, not a logical God, etc. God would be the limit of his own definitions.
Well, according to my view the idea of God is located at de limits of the reasonable. Just because is a limit-idea which overflows any context of a posible proof.
Indeed, he didn't. But then again, he doesn't have to. Gödel did not seek to give a complete description of God. He merely defined an object to be Godlike if it has all positive properties. A proof of God does not seek to be a complete description of God.
NOTE: When I say OP, I am referring to the person I am talking to, not to the first poster of this thread.
As if it hadn't been proven that OP does not care about the discussion around Gödel's ontological proof, and only abuses it to prove "atheists are in denial", the source he himself quotes contradicts him.
It is true that it says:
OP however still does not understand that we are talking about Gödel's original axioms — which are inconsistent. The fragment he quotes however is not talking about Gödel's original axioms. The very paper he quotes in fact includes a quote stating, again, that Gödel original axioms are inconsistent (he would know if he read (past tense) past page 6):
If Gödel's axioms are inconsistent, it cannot be that Gödel provided a valid proof of a God-like being. The ones who did are those that display consistent axioms. Therefore, Gödel did not prove, "objectionably" or not, that there is a God-like being.
Once again, he is maliciously putting words into the mouths of serious scholars.
Furthermore, in the discussion of the paper, the scholars themselves say:
Extremely ironic for the sophist, to say the least.
OP does not address any of the contradictions I point out in his insipid posts. He zeroes in on one single point where he may be able to wiggle out and throw smoke screens and goes with it. He did not care at all to address the fact that Anderson himself, one of the people whose work he abuses, defended that the consistent form of the argument is refutable. He also does not care that Fitting's proof reformulates Gödel's argument to talk about extensional properties, while it is believed that Gödel had intensional properties in mind. He does not care about any of that because he does not argue in good-faith.
Pardon, but I'm concerned with a social "view of the idea of God" preached in religious traditions and actually worshipped (i.e. idolized) by congregants. It's this totalitarian "view of idea of God" that significantly affects cultures and politics and pacifies collective existential angst (e.g. excuses social scapegoating, martyrdom, holy warfare, missionary imperialism, etc) rather than anyone's speculative "view of the idea of God" (such as yours, JuanZu, or my own ).
Quoting Ali Hosein
Fear of the unknown (ergo 'god-of-the-gaps'), or uncertainty (i.e. angst).
It is atavistic like ghosts (or shadows), "a legacy" of every human's infancy: magical thinking.
"God" is a supernatural fantasy (i.e. fetish-idol ... cosmic lollipop) that many, clearly not all, thoughtful and/or well-educated humans outgrow.
I suppose solving the problem of mortality (or scarcity) will consequently dissolve "the problem of God" (i.e. this may be the meaning of humans expelled from "Eden" in order to keep us from eating from the "Tree of Life" so that we "know death" and "fear God" (re: Genesis 3:22)).
He's assumed to exist. To be the ultimate cause behind natural events -- often misfortunates such as snakes and plagues entering the Israelite camp or the STD outbreak that resulted when the Israelite men went after the women of another tribe (Midianite, IIRC?) There seems to be a formula behind it: Irresponsible/bad behavior -> Misfortunate, which is a manifestation of divine displeasure/disfavor. This link is established early in the OT and leads to a certain self-reflective attitude and caution of the divine. On the flip side, good/moral behavior is generally linked with progeny and abundance -- divine favor. This a general trend in the OT but there are works that buck this trend - see book of Job.
From reading the Bible one gets the sense that there is a divine plan unfolding through history - reminds me of Heidegger in a way.
Yes, that's magical thinking (e.g. "The Great OZ" behing the curtain), or the cross-cultural god-of-the-gaps (i.e. appeal to ignorance) fallacy. More than "assumed", such a "God" is worshipped (ritually mass-deluding). Bronze & Iron Age religious traditions consecrated their naturalistic and moral ignorance by magically denying it and naming that supernatural denial "God". :sparkle: :eyes: :pray:
.
And what is his follower assumed to do? To reason God's existence? Or perhaps to do something else?
Act righteously and divine favor will follow. "Reasoning God's existence" is not a biblical concern at all.
Exactly. So I'm puzzled by those who want to give a proof of God, because they usually are religious people. Why not simply follow the given manuals and act righteously?
Godel wrote his proof of God for the same reason as why he wrote all his other proofs: because he could.
I would not do it for a rather similar reason: because I can't.
Because it's stupid and pointless if there is no God. So you need to figure out if God is real, and if so it is the God of the bible, and if so is the bible literal, and if so, it might make sense to follow the rules (or it might not, the moral thing might be to fight God the evil basted and his bastard children and curse him even if it is futile).
Really?
Acting righteously, being good to other people all those things...you do because only because of God?
And without God it would be pointless?
Notice that he wasn't an atheist and he did believe in God.
Of course, I don't believe, even if I were a theist, that source of my morality would be in God's will, however revealed. It is in my will. Then God and I can have a fight, or we can negotiate, or agree, or I can submit, or whatever.
His proof is not successful and he wrote it because he was a theist and believed in an afterlife.
Gödel's proof is typically reported as "successful":
So, according to you, what's wrong with this German report?
The criticism mentioned in the report is the same as for every other math proof in existence:
A proof only demonstrates the equiconsistency between a theorem and its axioms. Nothing more. Nothing less. Hence, Gödel's proof is as succesful or unsuccessful as any other proof in mathematics.
You are wrong and a news piece is not a reliable source.
Can you send a message to the "Office of Communication and Marketing" of the "Freie Universität Berlin" to confirm with you that they are publishing what according to you are errors?
You can contact them using the following information:
Let us know how it went!
In the meanwhile, we can obviously give them the benefit of the doubt. They have spent a lot of time and effort preparing their press release while your being obstructive and negative about the achievements of their university, is at best cheap and easy.
It can be interesting to consider how far philosophy/rationality can lead us towards an understanding of God. Perhaps some type of prime mover necessarily exists.
Is self-actualization also myth? Or proper socialization? Or ancient history which the bible is a source of.
Thank you for your answers :pray:
Regarding your first answer, the question is that if the theism is the result of fear of the end that will happen, why do religious theists continue to commit sin despite the warnings of religion? Fear as a natural mechanism always prevents a person from danger, but sin is a selective act. which occurs despite the presence of fear.
Regarding your second answer, the question is why "evolution", which has changed everything, has not changed this concept? We are witnessing both the spread of the modern attitude towards this concept and the primitive attitude towards it.
Regarding your third answer, one can also ask why Spinoza was theistic if consciousness mainly leads to the passing of this concept. Was Descartes a theist? And even today, many thinkers are theists, although many are not theists.
Regarding the fourth answer, the question is that if the issue of death and the concept of immortality is the key to solving the "problem of God", then how can the phenomenon of suicide be justified? Not all people have a desire for immortality, and death is not a natural event, and sometimes it is a choice.
It is not essential to religion that it build the “totalitarian” and “social scapegoating” and “warfare” and “imperialism”.
Whatever club or faction or group of people gathers in a herd, you get the same exact risks of “totalitarian” and “social scapegoating” and “warfare” and “imperialism”.
These are essential to being a human sheep, as so many are, jumping on the bandwagon of naziism, Leninism, colonialism, communism, capitalism, etc.
How many atheists would be fine if all the theists could be rounded up and sent to some colony for the delusional for the greater good of mankind? I’m sure a leader, using the latest political science and social reconstructions could produce cheering and promote mass killing with such a plan (oh right, Russia, China).
Religion and God can be an answer to human bad tendency. I happen to think God is the only answer, our only hope.
Nothing has changed among humans in 10,000 years. Even with religion. But if you look in the rubble of human history, it’s we who destroy each other, again and again. So the only hope for us has to come from outside. Nothing has changed with regard to that either.
The study of religion is bit different from the attempt to prove God's existence. The questioning doesn't even start from the obvious question: Is there a God?
AFAIK virtually all ancient societies were theistic -- mostly polytheistic, but in the Hebrew Bible we see this shift from an anthropomorphized conception of Yahweh as a warrior-storm God to aniconic monotheism. I think "is there a God" is an obvious question to modern audiences, but it wasn't to the ancients.
Aren't you forgetting the oldest monotheistic religion, the one of the oldest Empires and Rome's old nemesis, the Fire worshipping Persians? Zoroastrianism is the oldest monotheistic religion as it is roughly 500 years older than the Jewish religion. But because Islam conquered the Sassanid Empire, we don't hear much about them. But there are a few still even today alive and worshipping the old religion.
I'm always fascinated by the idea that even if there wouldn't be Islam, or the Sassanid and Byzantine empires had stopped the spread of Islam, Iranian still today would be seen as different from us, the Western people as likely they would be all Zoroastrians.
Zoroastrianism is dualistic envisioning a cosmic struggle between a good divine being and an evil one. In Judaism there is no such struggle. God is unquestionably sovereign. I am not too familiar with zoroastrianism/pre-islamic Iran but I'd be interested to learn more.
In Islam God is also unquestionably sovereign. Christianity has elements of dualism (God v. Satan) but it's unclear whether Jesus really preached this or whether it was later addition/extrapolation. Early Christians wrestled with this issue.
The oldest religion is mesopotamian religion which goes back some ~10,000 years. Their god Marduk emerged victorious over the divine pantheon of lesser gods through brute force. Unsurprisingly mesopotamian civilizations were often imperialistic and brutal, particularly the Assyrians.
Seems to me gods don't offer any more help than 'utopian' political systems. Whether we opt for the magic space wizard or the leader of the glorious revolution, we're probably fucked.
What makes you think gods comes from the outside? Are they not human creations, as fraught and manufactured as any ideology?
:up:
Epicuros, despite believing in (pagan) gods, was an ancient Greek materialist (SEP, Sep 2021). U74, U75, and U76 fragments:
"the nature of existence is atoms and void"
"the nature of the whole universe is atoms and void"
The Charvaka were an Indian philosophical school which was strictly materialistic, atheistic, and antidogmatic. They pitched against the Vedic religion and priests that "it could not be proven; it had to be accepted on faith and that faith was encouraged by a priestly class which was clearly benefiting from it at the expense of others" (WHE, Sep 2021). The Ajikiva too did not believe in a particular creator god.
Jainism, one of the oldest documented religions in the world, was actually a godless religion, believing in the holiness of the soul and higher (though mortal) beings.
In his Visuddhimagga, Theravada philosopher Buddhaghosa states "For there is no god Brahma. The maker of the conditioned world of rebirths. Happenings alone flow on. Conditioned by the coming together of causes.".
If the university believed that their press release was expired, they would retract it or publish a rectification.
It is obviously still valid. If you don't believe that, ask them the question using the contact details that I have provided you with.
Quoting Deleted user
I am pretty much immune to ad hominem attacks. They say much more about you than about me.
Do you lack self-control? Are you so frustrated with your own inability that you find yourself completely lost in a fit of rage?
How many times have you been kicked out of a meeting for exactly this reason?
So, tell us, when did you lose your job?
It wasn't the economy. We can all see what it really was.
It is actually pointless for you to look for a new job because history is simply going to repeat itself.
You'd better look for a job in which you don't have to interact with anyone, if a thing like that even exists.
Such asking of why is inappropriate in that it presupposes there must be a reason. Such asking generates pseudo-mystery. Real mystery exists when there is an answer which is not known, not when there cannot be a knowable answer.
It does not matter what the press says, especially when the researchers involved specifically say in their articles that the press has misrepresented their research several times. What matters is what I have quoted multiple times from the paper itself that says the exact contrary of your uneducated proselytising — wrong, from the several papers from different scholars that repeat over and over that Gödel's original axioms are inconsistent. Go send them an email and ask if Gödel's original axioms are consistent. They are not. You are wrong and you don't know what you are talking about.
Quoting Tarskian
Laughably pathetic attempt at a character attack. In the real world I do not have to deal with schizoid incompetents with delusions of grandeur like you babbling about things they are two degrees away from studying, no such issues follow.
Come on. I've seen people getting kicked out of the meeting for less than that.
I'm still trying to think of an environment in which a character like you would manage to survive. I can't think of any. It is against human nature.
Quoting Deleted user
You really don't know the real world, do you?
Of course the customer is incompetent. Otherwise, he wouldn't need you. But then again, it is obvious that he will ask the company for someone else to deal with the case, while you can pack your bags and go.
How many times do you think that you can do that before your company pulls the plug on you? That is why I am so sure that they have done it already!
My point about ancient human societies being theistic is a general truth -- there were certainly individuals and perhaps ancient movements who sort of bucked this trend like Epicurus, but Roman society -- as ancient societies were generally -- were polytheistic except strange cults like Judaism who practiced monotheism. Jainism, btw, is not atheistic. Of course a diversity of thought exists though. Maybe we could find a few ancient societies constructed on atheism/a rejection of theism but those would be the exception.
So they insist on a strict materialism and reject of the divinity yet remain non-dogmatic :brow:
I thought that you wanted me to help you find a new job?
I am quite good at networking but not that good. So, give me some more time to pull off the impossible.
By the way, does anybody want to hire him?
He's been looking for a new job for ages now but he keeps failing at the first interview.
I would say they are atheistic but spiritual. Labels aside, this is how the World History Encyclopaedia puts it:
For the connection between Jainism and Buddhism, you may be interested in this article https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/History/World_History/Early_World_Civilizations_(Lumen)/06%3A_Early_Civilizations_in_the_Indian_Subcontinent/6.02%3A_Buddhism
Interesting. ChatGPT describes it as theistic yet agrees that Jainism does not believe in a creator god. Mesopotamian religion and other ancient polytheistic systems also didn't have creator gods -- there was the primordial realm out from all things came including the other minor gods (higher beings) who were still subject to karma/fate/cycle of rebirth/etc. Israelite religion was unique in that it broke from this conception but this conception is very ancient. It's the idea of a single creator god that is new, relatively speaking.
If God isn’t other than us, then aren’t we already doomed, right? Why would we who create the world’s biggest problems along with false ideologies to build the factions that get to kill the unbelievers think we might make the world a better place, when today is always same as yesterday anyway? Some of us live a little longer today. More time maybe per life than 10,000 years ago. Otherwise just more time to find a faction to fight and kill and live and die for among the rubble.
The only hope, I see, is something else.
Doesn’t mean this world and each one of us isn’t worth saving. Just that we can’t do it alone. More like we won’t do it alone. We all think only some of us and some of the world is worth saving, and that shows none of us are capable of doing what it might take to save any of us, let alone all of us.
God is our last hope, and not if he or she is just one of us.
I’m not pessimistic. I just mean we will never end war, end murder, end lying, end hurting each other and ourselves. We will never build a utopia, never end poverty. There will always be self-absorbed people, there will always arise a tyrant, there will always be infidelity and betrayal.
But life on balance is good, and it’s worth trying to love and live, and teach and learn, and seek to be good, and be better.
Just being realistic. All of human history so far shows nothing changes.
What’s your trope, Tom?
As an aside, the modal logic comes up every now and then. [sup](e.g. 2021Jul7, 2021Jul5)[/sup] Possible worlds are, in short, self-consistent wholes. Necessities hold for all of them. Possibilities hold for (at least) one. Contingency and impossibility are derived from there, which rounds up the typical four subjunctive modalities. So, anyway, whatever necessity would be common to all possible worlds. Coffee doesn't figure in Euclidean space, R[sup]3[/sup], which is a self-consistent whole, hence coffee is not necessarily around. Well, it is a necessity to me, so this is offensive. ;) I'm not seeing "the Vedic Shiva, the Avestan Ahura Mazda, the Biblical Yahweh, and a few others", either.
Quoting Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments In Philosophy (2019) by Joseph Koterski, Graham Oppy
I wouldn't call this optimism. :wink: I don't think we can say 'never'. It's too definitive. But certainly it is unlikely. Who knows? The broader question is will we wipe ourselves out before we can get to some more beneficial way of being with each other? That's my trope.
Valid observation. I’m actually optimistic. Just not in our ability to truly care for one another on any kind of scale larger than the people we happen to like in our living rooms and backyards.
We certainly can. But too few of us do.
Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. 2000 year old quotes.
Yes, that is the problem. What if the ideology of modern consumerism has a lot to do with that? A change of paradigm might help.
Well, Zoroastrianism is just as old if not older and has its own monotheistic creator God.
Sure we can - it’s possible. It’s called a religious sect, or maybe a Church. Some ideas are stupid, and others ring true. Same for ideas of God. Same for all ideas.
It’s like you are looking for someone else to tell you where God is, before you will even look for God in the first place.
Even those who see God can’t tell you where God is, for you. Your own eyes alone see God. I can only tell you where God is, for me.
For instance, I can tell, God is in your life. I see it in your posts (some of them).
I wonder if there is some way of avoiding the dichotomy of traditional religious God vs the universe as pointless accident theory.
TBH, I think the universe simply coming into being pointlessly is the height of absurdity and would render reality fundamentally unintelligible. The only way a scientific cosmology could avoid that would be to accept a tenseless theory of time along with some sort of eternal universe.
I like Paul Davies idea that the only things that can possibly exist are things that explain themselves, some sort of self-contained intelligibility, so that the universe and the reason for its existence must be co-emerging or co-creating somehow. A constructivist metaphysics I lean towards would consider this viable.
Yes. My favourite, when it comes to explaining the universe is, 'I don't know'. Even if one takes the god hypothesis seriously, the problem with it is that god has no explanatory power. We have no why or how or who - it's just a claim, bereft of detail.
Quoting Bodhy
If this leads you to gods then you're surely making a textbook fallacy - an argument from incredulity? As an aside, what makes you think reality is intelligible? Might it not be that humans merely construct a view (which we dub reality) based on contingent factors like perception, culture and linguist practices. Some ideas in this constructivist melange are more useful for certain purposes than others.
Quoting Bodhy
I see no reason to rule out that the universe, or some part of it is eternal. I think some physicists (like Sean Carroll) have entertained this possibility. Can we demonstrate that it isn't?
This is why I prefer, 'I don't know.' And most likely neither does anyone else, even those qualified to make better guesses than anyone here.
Once you've gotten past the silly, creaky "why is there something rather than nothing" question, the universe can't be an "accident." It's inevitable. As for pointless, why does the universe owe you intelligibility or a point. That's your job as a conscious entity - tacking on intelligibility, meaning, purpose, and point.
Quoting Bodhy
By "tenseless" do you mean that there would be no direction to time? What does that have to do with intelligibility or purpose? As for an eternal universe, what's wrong with that? What else could it be? I think time is likely just another one of those things we tack on.
Quoting Bodhy
I think the universe explains itself by evolving consciousness to gussy itself all up with intelligibility and meaning.
I'm a fan of "Who cares."
Yes, I sometimes pick that one too.
Can anyone prove the existence of their self? (I mean Descartes thought he did, but he only proved his self to his self. He didn’t prove Descartes existed to any of us.)
Can anyone prove the existence of the philosophy forum?
I don’t think existence is subject to proof. All of the philosophers who assert existence as a conclusion at the end of an argument are wrong, or they are really talking about what the essence of some existing thing is, rather than the existence of that thing.
Proofs are about what a thing is and what it is not, not whether a thing is or whether it is not.
The only proof for God’s existence (or the existence of any particular object) would come from one individual’s experience and would only serve as “proof” to that particular individual about the existence of some particular thing.
We don’t prove existence. We assert “if X exists…” and then make proofs concerning attributes about X. But X might not exist and can never be made into a proof.
Right. That’s your experience. You talk about essential features such as “name” and “empty” in reference to a “God” and the assert it exists in heads. That’s a common experience (or lack thereof).
My point is that if God is sitting anywhere, in a head occupying an empty placeholder space or on a throne in heaven, the existence of this God itself cannot be proven. We are only able to use proofs to prove WHAT a God is (such as an empty name), but you can’t prove the existence of this thing, be it a God or an emptiness in a head.
Proof is for drawing connections/relations between things that we otherwise assume or assert exist. Proof doesn’t come to a conclusion showing that one of these assumptions must exist absent its relation to anything.
I can prove if 2 is added with 2 you get 4. I can’t prove 2 exists. Or addition. Or 4.
We are actually agreeing here. The OP asks if anyone can “prove a god”.
Quoting 180 Proof
That’s my point. I took the OP to be asking for someone to argue (provide words) whose conclusion is “therefore God exists.” (More words).
Questions that could instead be asked:
-Can you rationally justify your belief in god(s)?
-Can you show it to be more like than not that god(s) exist?
-Can you show that god(s) are the best explanation (among available options) for the uncontroversial facts of the world?
The converse questions to atheists (like me) are equally fair:
-Can you rationally justify your belief that gods don't exist?
-Can you show it to be more like than not that gods don't exist?
-Can you show that an absence of gods best explain the uncontroversial facts of the world?
(The questions could be reworded to apply to those who reserve judgement).
If God wanted to prove to anyone that he exists he could easily do that but he doesn’t and in this way he remains mysterious to his beings who are free to doubt, deny or affirm his existence.
Proof though is in the pudding, that is existence itself perhaps a manifestation of his being without taking the credit that it was him who created the world yet something inferred from believers who see the manifestation of a great intelligence at work vis-a-vis nature.
If evolution is blind and purposeless apart from the perpetuation of the organism through many generations than we could see that it’s not mere blind chance, there’s definitely an intelligence in action here not just by looking at the end product of what evolution is able to turn out. Abiogenesis which still largely confounds scientists has no logical explanation and certainly giving rise to complex organisms means we have barely scratched the surface when it comes to explanation.
It seems to me that this intelligence which is manifested in nature must be pre-existing and has been expressed through evolution reasons unknown.
There are bigger mysteries too. Something cannot come from nothing which implies that something has always existed ad infinitum in one form or another and whether this something through the aeons of time could produce a God is highly plausible.
So... you believe nature manifesrs intelligence? If so, please provide your justification for believing that.
Quoting kindred
It's trivially true that "something cannot come from nothing", but that does not entail an infinite past.
It's logically impossible for nature to "produce a God" if "God"= a creator.
Quoting kindred
We may never figure out how life began. That doesn't justify believing it was not natural abiogenesis.
Quoting kindred
This implies that IF there is a God, he probably doesn't give a shit whether we believe in him.
Quoting kindred
That's logically possible. So is solipsism. Possibility (alone) does not justify belief.
Have you looked at the scientific discussion of abiogenesis? It's just one more of the questions for which there are hypotheses but no accepted theory. Other examples - a theory that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics, dark matter and energy, and the manifestation of experience from neurological processes. Do you think those questions "confound" scientists? If so, well, that's just how science works.
There is nowhere else to "affirm". Where outside of the heads of its believers is anything affirmed?
Again, (as I asked yesterday) is that even doable or possible at all?
I agree. Good points and argumentation, ENOAH. :up:
NB: I'm using 'theism' in this context to mean 'sine qua non properties attributed to g/G' such as
(1) an/the ultimate mystery
(2) that created the whole of existence
(3) and uniquely intervenes in (re: "providence") – causes changes to (re: "miracles") – the observable universe (i.e. nature).
That's why I initially said, and still think, you cannot access "God" by any method of proof.
You’re right of course the word logical was not necessary unless invoking a non-logical explanation such as god did it or other supernatural explanation.
Spinoza's Deus, sive natura is conceptually coherent enough for me (& Einstein).
Because that's definitely contentious. I would be hard pressed to find any philosopher who argues the universe is necessary. I would believe atheist philosophers would simply accept its brute contingency. If you want to argue its necessity in some sense, you would be pitched right back into the nature of metaphysical necessity and the contingency argument for God.
IMO, necessity demands ontological non-composition and non-changeability. I don't think we can ascribe those to the universe, since the universe is a set of space-time events with no substantial existence beyond its components.
How could there possibly be nothing? Not nothing like the inside of an empty box with all the air removed and shielded against radiation, but nothing nothing. Not even a quantum vacuum. What does that even mean? How can you have nothing without something to compare it with? Is that metaphysics? I'm not sure.
I think the only way to get to "nothing nothing" might be using zero. "0" comes from Arabic ?ifr, which means empty. While Greeks never had zero on mind, Arabian mathematicians used zero to represent emptiness, but took it into consideration and in their calculus. Then, zero is countable, although it is empty. So, "nothing nothing" might go beyond something empty. Maybe this would be the place where metaphysics was born...
We are not talking about mathematical nothing, at least I'm not. We're talking about actual nothing - no matter, no energy, no fields, no quantum vacuum, no space, no time. Nothing.
:100:
I agree 'the universe is contingent' (i.e. necessarily non-necessary) but the universe – any existent – is only a property of existence (not the other way around) and is not itself existence as such (which is necessarily non-contingent (i.e. existence = not-nonexistence / not-nothingness)).
I will be clear: when you think in absolute nothing, what comes to your mind? Everything white? A sparkle? A very deep, dark, and cold ambient?
You are imagining something. Nothing is the absence of any qualities or attributes. It can't be imagined because by that very act you are imagining something.
Do we have any evidence that there was ever such a thing as nothing? As far as human experince is concerned the term 'nothing' is incoherent unless it is attached to a sentence like 'nothing up my sleeve' :wink:
I agree, and I think this is where we're headed into Christian metaphysics, the realisation that Being in some sense is necessary, there cannot be existential null. This is just the basic thrust of Christian metaphysics - no particular thing is necessary, but "Is" Is necessary, as if Being has no negation.
So, Being isn't a rug which we need to throw over a "nothing" like what Bergson said.
Fyi: I derive 'necessary non-contingency' of existence (i.e. no-things) from the "metaphysics" of classical atomism (re: void) that predates Aristotlean 'substance' by a few centuries, Christianity by several centuries, and Anselm's 'necessary being' by about a millennium and a half.
I wholeheartedly agree, Tom. Then, when I think of 'nothing' I only can imagine in the letters that form the word: N - O - T - H - I - N - G. What else can come to mind about nothingness? Because we agree with the difference between that and emptiness, right?
I exist therefore I exist.
checks out.
It depends on what the definition of God is. If it were like me, my definition of God is, a word in English which spells GOD, and has many meanings and many types depending on what religion or concept it comes from. Hence it is quite straightforward to prove the existence of God under the definition.
Whenever I type G O D, a word God appears on the screen GOD. Here is a God. Here is another God.
You are seeing two Gods on the screen. An object can be said to exist when it is visible to the perceiver in space and time. I am seeing the word God in the space where the monitor is located at this particular moment.
Therefore it is conclusively true that God exists.
If your definition of God is different from mine, you would have a different method of proof. Whatever the case, your mileage may vary.
Due to your ignorance, you're comparing apples, red delicious, and red apples and using their differences as a method of determining whether a fruit is an apple or not an apple.
[QUOTE]
Atheism is defined as a positive claim. It is agnosticism that refuses to make a claim. While agnosticism makes perfect sense, atheism doesn't.[/quote]
What you said above, ?? is wrong. You don't have to take my word for it, your words below says it all. ??
With all that being said, because agnosticism specifically deals with knowledge, we must utilize the label properly, placing it in the appropriate category. This makes agnosticism a particular kind of atheism and theism.
You didn't prove that the word exists. All you did was proved that the representation of the word exists.
Every time words are spoken, written or typed out, they are real as bricks. Bricks that make up the sentences, which are propositions, statements or claims in the real world. For instance, God is great, or Oh my God, you took my money, but didn't let me win the lottery jackpot. Don't worry, God will save you. etc etc. These are the real life examples of solid manifestation and materialization and utilization of the words.
Yeah, but having said that, isn't metaphysical entities a contradiction anyway? Metaphysical entities lack entities. Metaphysical entities with no entities are nothing. In Kant, it is Thing-in-Itself. They don't defy proofs. They don't have proofs.
They are not metaphysical entities, are they? They have clear definitions, location and boundaries of their HQs and their presence, clearly set duties and activities, aims of their existence, and set of the members within the corporations and nations as well as the traditions and cultures within the entities, which are readily identifiable in physical and abstract manner.
God doesn't have any of those properties. God only exists in word.
Yes, the dollar's value can be "readily identifiable" after the fact, just as believers of gods can agree upon dogmatic properties of their gods. That's neither my point nor THE point.
Rather, the dollar only has value because the vast majority of humans consciously agree that it has value, that is, it has no intrinsic or objective value. Similarly, gods definitely exist as entities through agreed human belief that is, as intersubjective entities (like nations, corporations and economies), though not objective entities, as you noted.
You seem to be confusing between value and existence. Agreed human beliefs alone don't warrant or prove the existence of God.
OK, but your point is not a proof. 100 billion agreed believers have no proof. The OP was asking for a proof of the existence of God. Proof involves presenting arguments with evidence and conclusion from the argument.
As to whether gods are metaphysical, they are by my understanding, do you disagree?
If you demand proof for physical existence from metaphysical concept, are you not begging the question?
So you agree with me, the bricks that make up the sentences are not the actual words themselves. :up:
They are. If they are not, I wouldn't have understood you. I did understand what you typed, so they are as real as bricks.
For your information, "brick" was a figure of speech called simile in my sentence.
Simile is
"a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g. as brave as a lion )." - Oxford Dictionary.
You need to clarify what your definition of God is. Your proof of God would only make sense when you have a clear definition of God. The premises of your proof can only start from a solid definition. Then the logical proof could progress.
And then you must define what you mean by existence. Does everything you say as existing, exist in physical entity? There are also many objects which exists in conceptual entities. Then what you do you mean by existence?
You?
I was just suggesting a direction for you to take in case you are interested in seeing the physical proof of God's existence.
Quoting LuckyR
Since you have joined the thread, and spent your considerable energy arguing, you still need to prove why you are not proving anything.
Quoting LuckyR
I already gave out my proof.
You didn't prove that the word exists. All you did was proved that the representation of the word exists.
And yet, you didn't understand that, "the bricks that make up the sentences are not the actual words themselves," was a figure of speech :chin:
I am not sure what you mean by "the representation of the word". What is the difference between word and "the representation of the word"?
You didn't understand what the figure of speech meant, and kept repeating "the representation of the word". So I gave you the explanation what figure of speech means, and the concept of simile which was in the figure of speech.
Is God a metaphysical entity? What is the proof for that? Is word God a proper name for God? What does God mean, and which God does it mean?
If anyone could prove the existence of God, there would be very few atheists.
There are very few atheists.
Therefore, God exists.
:naughty:
If God exists, then God does not exist.
God exists.
Therefore God does not exist.
:nerd:
If God does not exist, then God exists.
God does not exist.
Therefore God exists. :smirk:
That isn't how that works. I could say if p, then q. Just because q is true doesn't mean p is also true, just that if p is true, then q is also true. These statements don't work when flipped. I am saying that most atheists wouldn't be atheists if God could be proven to exist.
One is the actual word and one is not.
So, you just confirmed that you only proved the word "god" and not God itself.
Which is a contradiction.
You need to accept there are many different definitions of God. Depending on the definition, proof methods will differ.
What is your definitions of God?
If you have some supposed deduction that concludes "contradiction is truth", then your argument is invalid.
If you accept the definition of God with omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, then your omnipotent God can make contradiction into truth. He can do anything. Miracles, magic, afterlife and heaven and hell, resurrections are all possible and truths.
[b]If God is omnipotent, then God can turn contradiction into truth.
God is omnipotent. (under the definition)
Therefore God can turn contradiction into truth.[/b]
It may not be a true argument, but it certainly looks valid.
Your conclusion contradicts the law of non-contradiction. That makes it a fallacy, even though it has a valid form.
The problem is your first premise: there's no basis for claiming omnipotence implies God can do this. William Lane Craig (for example) asserts that omnipotence entails the ability to do everything that is logically possible.
There's also a pragmatic problem with your first premise: in deductive logic, the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. Your premise implies conclusions are not necessarily true, because there's always a background contingency on God's will. This invalidates the use of deductive logic - so the argument is self-defeating.
The point was just to demonstrate how the valid logical arguments can have unsound conclusion, and not useful in practicality.
Validity in logic doesn't mean much apart from the fact that it proves the conclusion was followed from the premises, be it sound or unsound.
Why is it the case? How potent are they? or are they potent at all?
You were quite correct to point out the unsound premise, and rejected it. Even if the argument was valid, it is unsound. The conclusion is self-defeating therefore is a nonsense.
You still have not given out what your definition of God is.
Uummm... I was pointing out that humans invented the concept of omnipotent gods relatively recently, that is: for a long time gods weren't omnipotent. Thus it isn't MY choosing a single "scenario".
From a functional standpoint god definitions are essentially subjective, since each religion, and each worshipper within the religion, gets to decide what THEIR god means to them, essentially their "definition" of god, that you are focused upon. Just as we all decide what we find beautiful, we all get to decide what our god is or isn't like.
Since subjectivity exists in human minds, not in the objective universe, "proving" subjective entities "exist" is possible, yet meaningless. I'm convinced beauty exists, so does my neighbor, BUT what I find beautiful is totally different from what he does. We're both "right", yet being so correct doesn't further anyone's understanding of anything. It's just a word game, leading nowhere.
Your claim here is ambiguous. You seem to be saying if something was invented by humans recently, then it is not something. Is it correct? Could you justify your premise and argument? It seems unsound and not even valid, and is discarded as nonsense.
I am not sure what God you are talking about, but if we talk about the Christianity, then omnipotence of God is evidently implied in the Bible describing the creation of the world and humans by the God. God can also allow people to resurrect after their deaths ... etc. It sounds too naive to say that omnipotence of God is recently invented by humans, therefore not omnipotence. It screams a loud contradiction here.
Unless you are talking about a woman you met recently as your God, it is quite reasonable to assume religious Gods are omnipotent.
This is not making sense either. Religion is not something that you take up, and fantasise about the God. If you decided to take up a religion, then you would be expected to read up on the principles and traditions of the religion. and study the objective definition of God, and be knowledgeable about the God.
Once you take up a religion, then that would be your religion for the rest of your life accepting all the code of conducts, principles and definition of the God. Having done all that, you wouldn't be going out comparing your God with the other religious Gods criticising, judging or doubting them.
But from non religious philosophical point of view on religion, we could still study the different religions on their definition of Gods, principles, the religious claims etc from the academic angle investigating logically and metaphysically. It is the oldest human mental and metaphysical tradition and phenomenon.
To say that God is a subjective entity, impossible to prove, therefore meaningless sounds meaningless and shallow thinking.
You seem to be confused with God and the word God. They are not the same. God is the god, and his residence is in the word "God". You are not able to distinguish between the two i.e. God and the word God. They are different concept.
God manifests into the physical space and time whenever it is called by the word God. We know God by the word, but when we make up the sentences with the word God, it is not the same concept. The word God then become a metaphysical entity in the sentence where it instantiates.
There are many passages in the Bible suggesting the God is the word, which seem to be paralleling and echoing to my proof.
[b]John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God".
Revelation 19:16: The Word is named "King of kings and Lord of lords"
Psalm 19:14 NASB
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.
Hebrews 11:3
"God spoke the world into being by the power of His words"[/b]
If your belief is that he is a supernatural being, then, no, evidence will not be available to us in the earthly sphere. Science is limited to what can be observed and measured, and by its very definition the supernatural cannot be.
But if you are a pantheist, like me, you see God in everything that exists. God is nature, God is the universe.
In the Christian bible, God is also depicted as "Almighty" in various parts. It proves the concept of God has been linked with the property of omnipotence from the ancient times. Not relatively recently.
Actually, you were the who demonstrated that you don't understand by arguing that you can prove that God exists by typing "g" "o" "d".
Another red herring. Bible verses is irrelevant to what I pointed out about your argument. So, how about you defend your argument instead of presenting a red herring.
So what is the part of the proof you didn't understand? Please explain your points on which point of the proof was not making sense to you providing some details and examples related to the points, and I will try to explain with more depth.
Why is it irrelevant?
I don't know, could the reason for why it's irrelevant is because the "god" in your argument has nothing to do with the Christianity and its god? :chin:
It made my proof more probable, so it is very relevant. Remember no proof is 100% true especially when it is about the existence of God. If the proof collects more evidence from the popular main religious holy scriptures supporting its conclusion, then it is relevant.
You should make statements on these points with solid logical or evidential arguments. You cannot say the proof or points in the proof or other people's arguments are wrong, irrelevant or red herring, when you don't have any reason or ground in saying so. It will look as if you are blurting out your emotional state rather than making philosophical statements.
I have been making this same point to @Amad in the other thread, when he kept coming back and saying my point is just wrong and not supported without giving out his reasons, grounds or arguments why it is wrong and not supported.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Okay. Now, "what god"? All gods (that is all 10,000 of them). Are you limiting your discussion/understanding to a single god? How quaint.
Animistic deities were definitely not omnipotent and animism started over 14,000 years ago. Polytheistic gods are also not omnipotent. Omnipotence, as you noted was invented by monotheistic religions about 3500 years ago, but had only minor, regional popularity. Monotheism didn't really take off until about 1500 years ago. So yes, omnipotence of gods is a relatively recent invention.
Several things:
First the overwhelming majority of theists dont "decide to take up a religion" in particular. Rather they are indoctrinated into the religion of their family from early childhood, no requirement to "read up" and study anything. What you're describing are what adult converts tend to do, but they make up a tiny fraction of the religious.
Second, even a simpleton knows that if you ask 10 members of a religion the details of their personal belief system, there will NOT be a universal concensus on codes of conduct, priciples and definitions of the qualities of their god. The beliefs of American Catholics on divorce and birth control are only the most obvious example of this reality.
If you insist going back to the times when there is no written records on the theistic studies, then it is not philosophical topic we would be discussing. It would be then shamanism, totems and superstitions you would be talking about. They are subjects for parapsychology, occultism, esotericism, anthropology or historical discussions at best.
There would be nothing for you to find there apart from the superstitious customs, and shamanic beliefs on the prehistorical hypotheses bereft of any meat for philosophical or logical discussions.
My point was, for anyone to be able to engage in a logical proof of God, he / she must start with some sort of definition of God. I was expecting you to come up with your own definition of God, and premises for your own arguments for the proof of God.
Ah yes, the fallacy of the familiar. Predictable.
What do you mean by this? It doesn't sound intelligible, relevant or meaningful for supporting your points. Could you further elaborate with some more detail?
In classical theism, God is not an entity, a thing, an object, or something which may or may not exist. Classical Christian metaphysics understands that for any created thing, there is a difference between what a thing is and that it is.
I.E There is a thing's essence, and its act of existence. Nothing about the essence of a blueberry bush tells you if it exists or not, so it requires an act of existence over and above its essence, its form, its source of individuality and intelligibility.
God is Being Itself, that for whom essence and existence are identical. God cannot not be. God is that-ness. God donates that-ness in limited forms and you get a creature, some constrained form of existence.
What do you mean by Being itself? How can essence and existence be identical?
If God isn't considered a deity, which in some people's views God is not, then I would prove God by saying, it's opposite to Sin, so it would be the things we can do which prevent us from taking pain, in effect helping us to survive. These things can happen, so there is God proven.
It sounds like a grammatical mistake in the statement. God doesn't like sin, or God doesn't approve sin sounds more intelligible. Sin is opposite to God sounds unintelligible.
Quoting Barkon
God cannot be proven by the unintelligible, groundless and illogical statements.
God is a concept in the bible, and in the bible it says "sin is opposite to God". I'm just putting 2 and 2 together. Nothing unintelligible about it, I understand what's opposite to Sin. That's not to mention the word God is close to the word good, considering the lexis of both words. It seems the authors of the bible are referring to something related to good; in my eyes, the consistent good, that is, the higher need for beneficent behaviour where living is concerned, is what God originally meant. We need to act in accord with what's beneficent, otherwise we will fail to survive. Again, it even mentions in the bible, "sin is opposite to God".
I don't really care for the book, if anything, I'd put it in my own words. Do I regard highly that which is opposite to Sin? Yes. It is necessary for us to benefit ourselves.
Some parts of the bible need sensible interpretation using your reasoning. You cannot make up your own subjective claims using the word by word citation from the bible, and say it says in the Bible so it must be true. Remember only a statement or proposition can be true or false, when it corresponds to the fact in the real world.
When you say, Sin is opposite to God, it sounds so abstract, ambiguous and empty, no one will understand what you mean.
The concept of sin changes through time and cultures in the world, and the pleasure senses are not regarded all negative as you try to make out.
1. It doesn't make any less sense it being abstract, must we fear the abstract?
2. I never said pleasure sense is all negative, I said it has negative associations.
When it is abstract, it must be also intelligible or logical supporting the abstractness. Being abstract, unintelligible and illogical all at once is not acceptable.
Quoting Barkon
The problem here is that you associated pleasure sense with sin, which is nonsense.
Pleasure is associated with sin - take greed for example - the want for more of something(some pleasurable source).
I wouldn't even call God under the meaning I have subjected it to is even abstract at all - it's simply the things we do which are good. Can be thought of as 'little good', or that which must be taken care of properly with consistent good behaviour.
One example of greed is not a sufficient reason for all pleasure senses to be defined as sin. Pleasure senses are also vital factor in survival for the bodily and psychological well-being for the biological agents.
Quoting Barkon
When you said, "opposite of sin is God", at first glance, it sounds abstract. People would wonder how God could be opposite of sin? But when they think about it further, they immediately would realise that is nonsense, illogical and unintelligible. Opposite of sin could be many different things. No one really would know what you mean by the statement. Defining God is identical with opposite of sin, and saying God is proven sounded absurd.
When one sees God in his dreams, illusion or hallucination, it is a Mind-Created God.
When one reads about God in the Bible or Philosophical texts, and think about the God, it is an abstract God, or Metaphysical God.
When one goes into the computer, types GOD on the keyboard, GOD appears on the screen visible and readable, then it is a physical or material God. It is the most material and physical way one can get to God.
How did something come into existence from nothing?
Simple, a super ultra intelligent great being is needed to manage the world.
Can you make a case for your belief, or is it an article of faith?
In my view the universe displays signs of intelligence through its beings which would imply intrinsic intelligence embedded within it from the start, probably pointing towards a creator God. As to his reasons or motivations for creating, they cannot be inferred without resorting to scriptures.
Are you saying the "signs of intelligence" in the universe are...us?
Either way, how does that imply "intrinsic intelligence" embedded in the universe?
The gradual development of intelligent beings, somewhere in an old, vast universe seems much more plausible than an intelligence just happening to exist, uncaused and without a prior history of development.
Quoting kindred
So...the writers of scripture (2K+ years ago) were able to figure this out, but we can't.
Not just us but all life forms show intelligent processes in them such as plants through photosynthesis.
Quoting Relativist
My view of intelligence is that it has always existed and what we observe in nature and us is just it manifesting itself. So it precedes us.
Quoting Relativist
I don’t believe in scripture too much and much of it was speculation as to the reasons behind creation or motives of the creator.
This thread is about "proving" God. I hope you can see that you're not doing that. I'm fine with people having faith-based beliefs, but they shouldn't fool themselves into thinking it's based in reason.
My beliefs are based on observation of the natural world which as I’ve stated before shows signs of intelligence, design whatever you wanna call it. This to me constitutes evidence of God.
The non god alternative is that these manifestations of intelligence occurred through dumb luck, which is not possible. It’s like 10,000 monkeys randomly typing on a keyboard and creating the complete works of Shakespeare. Just not possible.
Compositional fallacy —> (believer's) confirmation bias. Also: your "creator deity / intelligent design" belief, sir, is refuted by the argument from poor design.
How do you/we know this?
Whether the design is poor or optimal is irrelevant, the point is to prove that there is (any) design, which would lead to a designer. If there was no design in nature there would just be primordial matter and nothing else but the fact that nature for example is able to invent/evolve such processes as photosynthesis shows intelligence in action and the tell tale signs of on overarching intelligence in action such as that of a God.
When looking at natures inventiveness/evolution at problem solving and coming up with solutions to environmental requirements this exhibits intelligence, no? What is it that is happening then ? Evolution, yes? Of course, yet why are there these types of interactions occurring here in the first place?
Quoting 180 Proof
Well do you hold the idea that 10,000 monkeys could write the completed works of Shakespeare through random chance, what logic would you use to support this idea?
There is no evidence that entails God.
Your observations of the world are seen through the prism of your belief in God. The signs you see of intelligence are explainable by natural means. If you haven't given serious consideration to the alternative, you haven't "proven" anything - you've just rationalize what you believe.
Quoting kindred
What occurs, including what comes to exist, could very well be the product of chance. We exist as a consequence of the way the world happens to be. If it is actually possible for the world to have differred, other sorts of things might have existed. How does low probability consequence imply luck? Luck generally entails a contestant happening to be the beneficiary of chance. There is no set of contestants who participated in a contest to pick a winner. You could conjecture that our existence is low probability, but that gets you nowhere- low probability things happen all the time.
If you think intelligence is something special that requires design to produce it, then how do you account for an intelligent creator to produce the design? That's why I previously pointed out that it seems much more likely that intelligence is the product of chance events in a universe of vast size and age, rather than just happening to exist in an uncaused being (a "god"). So this line of reasoning seems self-defeating.
So you think processes such as cell replication or photosynthesis come to be by pure chance? A designer would have better explanatory power here. Labelling it as evolution does not rule out god because they set the laws that govern and allow evolution to take place. Without a designer matter would just remain stagnant and nothing would have happened or emerged, no life and certainly no intelligence. Again you might say well it’s just biochemistry and matter will interact with other matter or its environment to create different processes given the right environmental conditions but again I ask you why has it produced something useful like a plant alongside the innate rock? There are many factors which need to combine to create even the simplest life and although they could have come to be through chance to me it implies that there are intelligent rules or laws which enables such life to form.
Quoting Relativist
Existence is eternal therefore it’s possible that such a being could have emerged with capabilities to express his will through his creation as he sees fit. Or another explanation which you might not like is that such a being has always existed and is uncreated.
So you think intelligence, and knowledge just happens to exist uncaused?
To your question: entropy is a measure of the number of different ways that a set of objects can be arranged. One of the ways fundamental particles can be arranged is in the configuration of a self-replicating molecule. That is sufficient to start evolution. It is very low probability that this would occur by pure chance in any one suitable event, but in a vast, old, universe - it becomes likely to occur at least once. Evolution has all the explanatory power needed to explain everything that life develops into.
Quoting kindred
Whatever gives you that silly idea? It's clear the universe evolves per laws of nature, and it's
reasonable to view these as part of the fabric of reality.
Quoting kindred
As I said, because it's possible - and sufficiently probable to occur at least once in a vast, old universe in which a enormous number of (individually) improbable things occur.
Quoting kindred
Non-sequitur. The probability is extremely low in any specific time or place, but again- a vast, old universe provides a sufficient number of chances for it to occur at least once.
Quoting kindred
Emerged from what? You claim the conditions needed for intelligence to emerge in the universe imply an intelligence behind it. So you'd have to assume the same thing for a God-like intelligence to emerge- thus an vicious, infinite regress.
[Quote]Or another explanation which you might not like is that such a being has always existed and is uncreated.[/quote]
Explain how this is more plausible than intelligence gradually emerging. It entails magical knowledge- knowing without a process of developing knowledge.
'Pure chance' is not the scientific alternative to Intelligent Design:
In terms of probability, it's as unlikely as any other character sequence of that length.
Equally unlikely, equally possible.
By the way, something similar applies to other (long) event sequences.
Favoritism looks like bias.
I’m not denying evolution or entropy nor how life came to be through such processes but they happen because the laws of nature allow evolution to occur by enabling organisms to adapt to their environment.
The point is none of these interactions that created life could occur if there were not some laws of biochemistry or physics that dictate how particles interact with each other to give rise to abundant complexity. Without these interactions there would no life and it’s precisely these laws of nature which need explanation not just the end result (life) whilst the latter can be explained by pure chance the former would need an explanation of where these laws came from.
It makes sense then to attribute intelligent laws to an intelligent agent or lawmaker hence my argument.
It makes sense to you because you believe God created everything. Here's a more general metaphysical perspective.
Unless one accepts an infinite series of causes, there is a first cause - that exists without explanation. This could be a God, but it could also be an initial state of material reality. There's no objective basis to exempt God from requiring an explanation while insisting a natural first cause requires one.
A natural first-cause would be comprised of the fundamental material of reality (physicists think quantum fields may be the fundamental material, but it doesn't matter to the metaphysical analysis). Natural laws would be part of the fabric of this fundamental material, and would be the ultimate ground of all laws that we see manifested.
So the question is: which is more plausible? A being of infinite complexity, with magical knowledge of everything it could do and it's consequences OR a natural state of affairs that evolves due to its internal characteristics? Each is uncaused and exists without deeper explanation. Which is the more parsimonious, and thus better, explanation?
1. If anything exists, then there must be something that exists.
2. If something depends on another for its existence and the second thing exists, then so must the first.
3. If everything depended on another for its existence, then nothing would exist.
4. Therefore, if anything exists, and there exist things that depend on another for their existence, or not, there must exist something that does not depend on another for its existence.
5. Consequently, if anything exists, there must exist something that does not depend on another.
6. Something does exist.
7. So, there must exist something that does not depend on another.
Note: this argument is similar to the "argument from being" formulated by Norman Geisler.
The argument doesn't prove a "God" exists. It proves there is an autonomous, bottom layer of reality. This is metaphysical foundationalism.
The physicists say back at the beginning, there should have been an equal number of matter and antimatter particles created, which should have prevented matter from predominating. They do not know why matter particles came to outnumber antimatter particles. Before I wonder about everything that came after, I wonder why the matter particles won. Did a being of infinite complexity rig the game, or does a "natural" state of affairs prefer matter over antimatter?
You’re making an assumption about the nature of god, instead I would argue for divine simplicity instead of complexity.
The issue of course is one of proof, and to account for an explanation of how the universe has developed to create and imbue creatures with intelligence one has to ask if this intelligence or consciousness has not always existed in the form of god (of divine simplicity) and life is merely a manifestation of one of its facets.
Feel free to read more on the above quote: https://plato.stanford.edu/ENTRIES/divine-simplicity/
Omniscience entails an infinitely complex set of knowledge, existing by brute fact. Divine simplicity doesn't deal with this.
I think that largely depends on what someone considers "god." However, in a similar vein, I think it's possible to prove the "soul" exists.
Assuming that the souls is:
1) an invisible force inside but separate from your body that
2) makes you who you are and
3) leaves your body upon death
then I think the "soul" can pretty easily be interpreted as the electricity in your body and the interplay it has with your various biological processes.
The only unsolved problem that could truly be blamed on a god is the problem of how existence was created. All other "unsolved problems" are just detritus from the opening act. And perhaps it's the job of philosophers to figure out why there's an imbalance between particles and antiparticles.
To paraphrase a scene from "The Graduate"
God: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Me: Yes, sir.
God: Are you listening?
Me: Yes, I am.
God: Fractals.
It's logically impossible for existence to be created.
[Quote]All other "unsolved problems" are just detritus from the opening act. And perhaps it's the job of philosophers to figure out why there's an imbalance between particles and antiparticles.[/quote]
Philosophers can only speculate. Physicists engage in speculations too, but then they test them.
Complex to us, perhaps, yet omniscience is not a property of god but rather it is God as explained by the article I posted in my previous post and here, divine simplicity explains omniscience as per below:
You're absolutely, positively undisputedly correct...yet existence is created everyday. Just depends on what existence you're talking about. It's kinda a philosophical thing and a laboratory thing. Both the scientist and the philosopher are trying to get past the "Big Bang". Personally, I think the three or four or whatever dimensions we exist in don't allow for that revelation. Both the philosopher and the scientist will be speculating on that without any "proof" as long as we exist (if we can agree we exist - lol).
There is a Totality of Existence (TOE), and that is what I was treating as "existence". It's the TOE that could not have been created.
The material world could have been created only if TOE encompasses more than the material world (such as an immaterial God). But it's possible TOE=the material world, in which case it was not created.
Well that is the question of this topic, whether God or omniscience exists. And I accept your disbelief in it so we differ there. Indeed there may not be any grounds to believe in God as we cannot truly provide conclusive proof that such a being exists yet here we are existing as intelligent beings and this to me constitutes proof that there are probably other intelligent beings out there even as far as the ultimate being who embodies or is identical to omniscience as per my earlier article on divine simplicity attested to. That such a being has always existed is what is implausible to you.
However because the world, the universe or this reality exhibits order, complexity and purpose it’s not too far fetched to attribute the cause to a designer or omnipotent being.
Sure this order and complexity could have arisen by chance and though plausible it’s equally plausible to attribute it to a higher being. The laws of physics seem to be very finely tuned in order to support life and again it could be that it is by pure fluke and chance but then again it could easily be explained in terms of a higher being who set the conditions for life to emerge rather than not emerge.
[U]Omniscience[/u] is implausible to me. Yoy don't seem to agree, so why don't you explain why you find it plausible - addressing the objections I raised. On a possibly related note, I believe the past is finite.
We are intelligent creatures, and there may indeed b?e others in this vast universe - but in all these cases, I expect they developed over the course of billions of years through a series of events that led to their existence; their knowledge is acquired over time, and it exists in some form of physical encoding.
Quoting kindred
I disagree. The overwhelmingly simpler explanation for order is the existence of laws of nature. Again, you're just treating omniscience as no big deal, when it's an enormously big assumption.
Quoting kindred
A fine-tuning argument depends on circular reasoning. The unstated premise is that life was some sort of teleological goal. That assumption entails a designer. A materialist would consider our existence as simply a consequence of the way the world happens to be. Plus: if intelligence requires a designer, then God requires one.
The argument from poor design ignores the fact that evolution is an ongoing process whose sole aim is to enable organisms to adapt to their environment. I believe in evolution and a deity, they’re not mutually exclusive in my world view yet despite some examples of poor design as a result of evolution (e.g various cancers) and types of suboptimal creatures they’re outnumbered by designs that more than meets the environmental requirements required of it.
You might say that if the designer/God is perfect then so should his creation but this is a poor argument because it would exclude diversity and the end product would be one perfect creature, but that already exists in the form of God, and since god is all things he is perfection and imperfection at the same time.
And where did these laws of nature come from? Just chance that they happen to be so as to allow life to emerge in the world? I think this is equally implausible as that of an eternal omnipotent, omniscient being which could explain why there are laws of nature in the first place.
Quoting Relativist
A common misconception which would lead to infinite regress of prior causes. God is assumed to have no predecessors before him, he just happens to be so eternally (and having existed infinitely) thus the only issue I see here is one of proof. And as I stated before the fact that the laws of nature allow order, complexity and purpose to arise it points towards these attributes being pre existing before they manifested, and they were pre existing in the form of God.
The best explanation for laws of nature is law-realism: a law reflects a relation between universals. In simpler terms: they are part of the fabric of material reality.
Where does anything come from, ultimately? Answer: a metaphysically necessary, autonomous brute fact. That's true of any metaphysical foundation of existence, even a God.
"Allow?" I assume you mean: why did it happen to be possible for life to develop? The answer is: because that is the way the world happens to be. Why think life is anything other than an unintended consequence of the way the world happens to be? This points to the fundamental error that fine-tuning enthusiasts make: they treat life as a design objective, such that the universe had to be finely tuned to achieve it. Drop that unstated premise, and there's no argument.
[Quote]I think this is equally implausible as that of an eternal omnipotent, omniscient being which could explain why there are laws of nature in the first place.[/quote]
That makes sense if and only if you consider omniscience plausible. You are taking it for granted (as I expect any theist would), rather than explaining why it is perfectly reasonable to accept the existence of infinite knowledge that is unencoded and not a product of learning over time. Why is THAT brute fact more reasonable to assume than a brute fact material foundation wherein laws of nature are present because there exists universals with causal relations between them? It seems pretty clear that the material world exists, that laws of nature exist, and that they seem to fully account for the evolution of the universe- including the development of intelligent life. Why think there is magic in the world, when there's no empirical evidence of it?
There are multiple explanations for the origins of the laws of nature and the theistic one is one of many with the others being platonic and naturalist (or scientific).
Sure, God can be subject to the same metaphysical investigation of where it came from as much as the laws of nature themselves yet equating god with the laws of nature vis-a-vis divine simplicity solves this problem.
Quoting Relativist
In a sense the ability for life to emerge from non-organic matter to being fully bipedal, conscious and intelligent is truly remarkable perhaps even magical whether you believe in god or not.
It seems to me that "solving the problem" entails rationalizing - showing it possible, not showing it's plausible, or better yet- that it's the best explanation.
I'm perfectly fine with someone believing in a God for the personal benefits they get from it. No one can prove you wrong.But don't fool yourself into thinking there's an objective, rational basis that can prove you right.
It is an illogical statement to say God exists. The correct way of saying that statement is, one believes in God.
Now, that's an honest way of speaking.
Intellectual Dishonesty:
The preachers claim ‘perhaps’ as fact and truth.
Their ingrained beliefs the priests’ duly preach,
As if notions were truth and fact to teach.
Oh, cleric, repent; at least say, ‘Have faith’;
Yet, of unknowns ne’er shown none can e’er reach.
Unfortunately, for believers, a being cannot be First and Fundamental; look to the more complex future for higher beings, not to the simpler and simpler past.
Beings can be non-existence like from Meinong's beingless objects. They belong to the domain of faith, conjecture, thought and belief.
Beliefs don't mean they are inferior to knowledge. They are actually precondition of knowledge. If you know something then you also believe in something too. And if you believe in something, then you are possible to know it too. Not necessarily all the time, but the possibility exists.
I believe that Australia exists, but I have never been in the place. It is only a belief, but I cannot deny it exist, just because I have never been in the place, and never seen any part of the land in my real experience.
My belief of its existence is as firm as any other knowledge I have for certain.
Therefore some beliefs have a high certainty as knowledge. It depends on what evidence and reasoning, or just guessing or blind faith the belief is based on.
Therefore it could be the case that some religious beliefs based on strong and deep faith could offer high certainty of knowledge of God, albeit it might be a false knowledge, illusion or even delusion.
Ah, yes. Great quote. :sparkle:
We can deduce a Permanent Eternal Something that rearranges itself to form the temporaries, its state ever remaining the same, the elementary 'particles' not being new substance, but direct and rather stable lumps of It, so then, poetically:
Permanent Presence, through transient veins,
Running Quicksilver-like, fuels our gains—
Taking all the temporary shapes as
They change and perish all—but It remains.
My inference that Australia exists is based on the real experience of meeting some folks from the land, that they are from the countries, and they spoke to me with funny English accents in my good old days in the international high school in Jakarta Indonesia when my father was working in the place.
I recall the tall Australian guy Steve, who used to say Hi to me, then asked to teach him Tae Kwon Do, so I taught him some Tae Kwon Do movements. In return he taught me some tricks in playing basketball which he was very good at.
There was also this beautiful blond girl called Ingrid from Australia who came and sat beside me at lunch time, and we used to have sandwiches and hamburgers together. When we went to Bandung for the school trip, she sat beside me in the bus, and fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, which I still recall.
Plus I saw some youtube bits on the places supposedly taken in the places, and they just looked like any place on the earth, but with loads of bushes and fields and some beaches with the folks which looked realistic. Therefore my belief that Australia exists is as firm and certain as my knowledge that the Earth rotates around the Sun. However I have no clue what it would be like living in the place under the scorching Sun during the winter months where I am, because still I have never been in the place in real life.
But in the case of deducing something Permanent and Eternal being, I have no real life experience pertaining to the concept, hence I am not sure what could be the basis for such deduction or inference.
‘Nothing’ cannot even be meant, as per Parmedies’ philosophy; therefore, the Ultimate Something has no opposite, and as such it has no alternative; so, it has to be.
Fundamental First philosophy indicates that the Ultimate Something cannot have parts, lest the parts be even more fundamental; thus the Ultimate Something must consist only of itself, thus being unmakeable and unbreakable, which tells us that it is Eternal.
Science shows us a simpler and simpler basis underlying the universe’s present complexity, on down to the elementary ‘particles’ that have wave-field-like properties of a further Something beneath; so, this accords with our philosophy, so far, we now suspecting the wave-field as the prospective Ultimate Something, but we cannot see it directly.
We make an educated philosophical guess that waves make up the Something, since waves have no parts and also because waves are ubiquitous everywhere we look, because, again, science has confirmed a wave nature.
Waves are 2D but make for fields in 3D; a field has a value at every point, such as with a temperature field.
If we can model these quantum fields and then build working devices from the model, then we have the quantum field theory (QFT), and our guess was correct. This has been done and it is the most successful theory in the history of science!
The modeling, in short, has to do with all kinds of waves moving about being shown to be equivalent to sinusoidal waves, via a Fourier Transform. A property of this situation is that the elementary ‘particles’ will form at stable rungs of quanta energy, such as when an electron in an atom, when receiving energy, can only quantum jump to a multiple of its energy level, showing the quantum discreteness. Good guess!
The elementaries are directly field quanta; they are not new substance. There is only the Permanent and the Temporary.
The Temporary can only be made by the arrangements of the Permanent, just as we thought, via logical philosophy, since the permanent must ever remain as Itself. Science confirms the lumps of quanta. Philosophy is not dead.
This has not shown ‘God’ in the way we think He ought to be, but at least it points to an Ultimate Eternal Something, which could be called ‘the G.O.D.’ (the Ground Of Determination).
An Eternal Basis has to be so,
For a lack of anything cannot sow,
Forcing there to be something permanent,
As partless, from which composites can grow.
There can’t be other directions given,
To that which no start; it is undriven;
So, it is as Everything possible,
Either as linear or as all at once.
(We don’t know the mode of Time.)
Consider quantum fields of waves atop
One another: waves are continuous,
And so qualifiy as Fundamental;
Quanta lumps make ‘particles’, and us.
The temp-forms last from unit charge or strength;
The Basis is coterminal with them.
The information content of the
All of Everything
Is the same as Null!
There is no meaning.
There is no place or before to impart
Direction to what is Eternal.
Note that there is no other remaining theory:
Newton’s fixed space and time got Einstein’s boot;
Particle spigots making fields went mute;
Classic fields had no fundamental loot.
I think I can understand Nothing better. In math, it is simple. 1-1 =0. 0 is nothing. There was 1, but 1 was subtracted from 1 or taken away from 1, hence 0, Nothing.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
I had problems trying to understand the Ultimate Something there. But after some reflection,
I understand the Ultimate Something as death. Eventually everything and every life dies by the natural law. Hence we could say Death is the Ultimate Something.
The Ultimate Something has no opposite? I agree. Death has no opposite. Death is nothing. The opposite of Death is life, but once dead, it is impossible to go back to life, no alternative.
The Permanent Ultimate Something is not alive, but as we see, the potential for life was there for the Temporaries.
The greatest gift life offers many people is that someday, likely preferably sooner rather than later, they get to die. Perhaps worsening matters for them is when suicide is simply not an option, for whatever reason(s), meaning there’s little hope of receiving an early reprieve from their literal life sentence.
Many chronically and pharmaceutically untreatable depressed and/or anxiety-ridden people won’t miss this world when they finally pass away. It’s not that they necessarily want to die per se; it’s more that they want their (seemingly) pointless corporeal suffering to end.
.
.
[i]I awoke from another very bad dream, a reincarnation nightmare / where having thankfully died I’m still bullied towards rebirth back into human form / despite my pleas I be allowed to rest in permanent peace. // …
… // Each second that passes I should not have to repeat and suffer again. / I cry out ‘give me a real purpose and it’s not enough simply to live / nor that it’s a beautiful sunny day with colorful fragrant flowers!’ //
I’m tormented hourly by my desire for both contentedness and emotional, material and creative gain / that are unattainable yet ultimately matter naught. My own mind brutalizes me like it has / a sadistic mind of its own. I must have a progressive reason for this harsh endurance! //
Could there be people who immensely suffer yet convince themselves they sincerely want to live when in fact / they don’t want to die, so greatly they fear Death’s unknown? //
No one should ever have to repeat and suffer again a single second that passes. / Nay, I will engage and embrace the dying of my blight![/i]
What could transform the potential for life into life?
But from logical point of view, if we don't know what the state of death is, could we be sure that death will end the sufferings?
If the state of death has some sort of continuation of after-life consciousness, perception or feelings, could you be certain that the suffering might not even get worse or permanent during and after death?
If that is the case, there is no point of death, hence living forever is best? No?
I am not quite sure what the presenter is trying to say in his video. But my point was this.
If dualism was true, then soul can survive the bodily death.
We don't know soul can survive bodily death.
Therefore we don't know Dualism is true.
There are many things in the universe, we don't know the answers.
I believe he is saying more or less one of the things that I have been saying in another thread: not everything is possible, not even at the level of pure theory, not even at the level of pure metaphysical speculation. The basilisk that he's talking about is like the example of the statue of a dragon that has a mechanism for producing fire, like you showed me. That was not a living dragon, it was just an inanimate object with a mechanism for making flames. Similarly, the "informational basilisk", or "Basilisk A.I." is impossible, such a thing could not exist in the real world, just as Pegasus does not exist in the real world (i.e., there is no such thing as a living, breathing, winged horse located somewhere on planet Earth).
Time and stardust made us Earth’s living guest,
When quick death sifted the rest from the best.
Those three, our birthright, write our epitaph:
RIP; time expires, death comes, dust is left.
Thank you for your clarification on the point. I disagree with the point totally. Because whether something is alive or not, if something is imaginable, thinkable and conceivable, then it is possible to discuss about them.
If you deny that, then discussions on the mental activities or operations would be impossible limiting the discussions only to the daily physical objects in space and time. Well some folks live like that i.e. mundane, dry and materialistic only being aware of the materialistic objects in the world.
But there are vast majority of people in the world who are imaginative, creative and metaphysical and believe in the abstract existence, which means non living and non existent objects could be still very meaningful to discuss and think about.
If you still deny that, then no artistic, creative, idealistic activities would be possible. There would be no movies, novels, poems, abstract paintings and sculptures available in the world. There would be no religions. Is it the case? I certainly don't think so.
You're welcome. And yes, you're free to disagree with the point totally, as you say. That is what Metaphysics is all about (well, that's what Philosophy is all about, really).
Quoting Corvus
I agree. We can talk about anything. The problem is, that there's a point where out words just stop making sense, even to ourselves. Remember one of the games that we all played at some point: pick a word, any word, and say it out loud, and repeat that for a few minutes. For example, let's pick the word "tree". Now, say "tree" over and over again, for several minutes. At some point, you will notice a psychological effect occurring "somewhere in your mind", in which everything is normal, except for the word "tree", which just stopped making sense because you repeated it so much. Well, that sort of psychological phenomena can be scientifically investigated. And I, as a metaphysican, can talk about all that: but only up to a certain point, because if I continue to talk as a metaphysician on that point, my words start seeming like what happened with the word "tree" in the previous example. In other words, you can't do metaphysics in isolation: you need many other Academic disciplines to complement it, if you want to get any substantial metaphysical work done.
Quoting Corvus
Some professional philosophers agree with that as well: that there is such a thing as abstract existence. I'm not sure what to think of that myself, honestly. It seems false to me, just from an intuitive standpoint. But, sadly, our intuitions sometimes are mistaken.
Quoting Corvus
That's an interesting argument. I'll have to consider it. Thank you very much for sharing it.
Quoting Corvus
Hmmm... I'm not sure, really. I dont know "what to make of it", as some people say. Can you explain to me why you certainly don't think so? Thanks in advance.
To the Quantum Depths of the Poetic Universe:
Lost in the Haystack?
[i]What great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
The strands of the quantum fields’ types of waves
To weave the warp, weft, and woof of our ‘verse
Into being’s fabric of living braids?[/i]
From quantum non-locality and entanglement, we know that information is more primary than distance, and that things don’t have to have the appearance of being near each other to be related or to cause an effect.
Everything connected to everything would seem to be a rudimentary 'perception’ as far as one could be had by that network. The all-at-once connections, as like in a hologram, might seem to provide for for the direction of what goes on in the overall information process. I am thinking like a yogi and a guru, the entire cosmos situated within me.
Quantum non-locality seems to imply that every region of space is in instant and constant contact with every other, perhaps even in time as well, and so the holistic universe is governed by the property of the solitary whole; so that could be the underlying guidance principle. An individual particle might know’ something about what to do, acting according to all the others.
Thus both our connections and the holistic universe’s, each having a singular nature, might be the clue. Perhaps they are of the same basis of connections’ doings, but separate as two manifestations, each pertaining to a different realm, internal and external, our internal connections giving us 'future’, and the external connections granting 'future’ to the universe. I don’t know which has the tougher job.
Lee Smolin has it that qualia are intrinsic, as fundamental, and Chalmers has it that information is fundamental and can express itself in two ways, in consciousness and in matter.
Quantum entanglement suggests that each particle has the entire 3-D or 4-D map of the universe, the information ever updated, the universe being as a single entity. While this may not be perception at the level we have, it may help the universe accomplish something of the movements of particles and fields in their energy, mass, and momentum, in some global way that goes forward overall.
This may not seem to be saying a whole lot, in depth, but since the quantum realm is beneath everything then one would surmise that it must have all to do with everything that goes on.
It is still that the apparent atoms and molecules make the happenings, via physical-chemical reactions; however, this observation cannot be equated to an 'explanation’, for we must wonder what underlies the chemical mattering and reacting that seems to have a unity of direction to it.
I had finished with the yogis and the gurus, and the seers and the oracles only know of the future; so, I surmised, to uncover the deepness of the present, for nature and the conscious animates, I must seek out Nature’s Great Poet in her Uni-verse, in order to fully apprehend the ethereal phantasms of the entangled and enchanted branches in the forest of nature, bringing them into the light.
(Perhaps continued another time.)
It was an inference from your claim that there is no point or possibility for discussing demons or fire breathing dragons in Metaphysics because they don't exist in the external world.
My points were,
1. There is no ultimate proof that demons don't exist. Could you prove demons and dragons don't exist?
2. Even if demons don't exist (lets presume that they don't exist), the fact that demons don't exist doesn't stop people imagining and thinking about them. People have been talking about demons and fire breathing dragons for thousands of years, and still will be doing so until the end of human civilization creating them in art form i.e. movies, novels, paintings and sculptures.
3. The fact that people imagine, think and talk about demons implies that abstract existence has significant meanings in the human mind, which suggests that abstract objects can exist. Perhaps abstract objects exist in different forms, and should it be said that abstract objects axist? instead of exist (in physical objects?) :)
Of course my points are just assumptions and inferences from your claims. You can disagree, if they don't make sense. But it is interesting to see different opinions on these aspects of existence.
It seems clear that even if God existed, God doesn't intervene human affairs based on the history of the world and the current affairs on what's happening in the world. There is nothing one can do about that.
And from my observations, experiences and reasoning, the only place where God exist is the word God. Nowhere else in the external world I could observe God at all. Therefore my proof God exists in the keyboard of my computer still stands.
I'm trying! That is indeed one of the things that I have been working on for the past year and a half, more or less. To prove, logically, definitively, that demons, dragons and other fictional entities do not exist. But it's a really difficult thing to prove, because that discussion is about the concept of existence itself. Mario Bunge, my philosophical hero, says that fictional entities (such as Pegasus, demons, dragons, ghosts, God, angels, etc.) have "conceptual existence", while ordinary objects such as this table or this computer have "real existence". Unlike Bunge, I want to prove that fictional entities do not exist, not even conceptually.
Quoting Corvus
Indeed. And I, as a metaphysician, should be able to talk about all of that, in a way that makes sense to the common person as well as the philosopher and the scientist.
Quoting Corvus
Hmmm... this is where the discussion gets extremely complicated, because it has to do with the very concept of existence, it has to do with what the word "existence" means, and that is not an easy thing to understand. The easiest solution is to use a dictionary, for example an online dictionary, and look at the definition of the word "existence". But that's very basic. Philosophers have some very complicated things to say about existence, and they don't agree with each other on that point.
Quoting Corvus
They make perfect sense. The problem is that these problems (i.e., the problems about existence) are not easy to solve.
Yes, this is true. Existence is an interesting topic. We could further analyse and discuss on the nature of Existence. If you would open an OP, I would follow, read and try to contribute if I have any relating ideas cropping up in my head.
Thanks, but I already have 3 Threads that I started, and I don't want to monopolize the main page with my presence. Perhaps if you began the Thread about Existence yourself, I could contribute to it, to the best of my ability.
You both share informative, pleasing, and detailed posts. I wouldn't see myself taking part in a thread started by one of you because a philosophical content such as 'existence' holds a lot of complexity in it. Yet I always tend to read your debate, although I don't post a reply ever.
But, as a reminder folks -- God's existence depends more on the encouragement of the believers to believe rather than the existence itself.
Yes, all we have is a Ground Of Determination - the Quantum 'vacuum'.
There are no mythological creatures yet.
There is only the Permanent Existence; its rearrangements into temporaries are still It.
Hmmm...
Yes, but not Himmm.
Gracias por tus amables palabras, amigo.
I don't have it, sir. Where can I find one?
Amazon has 'Quantum X Upright Water Filter Vacuum'.
How does it relate to the entity that you claimed that we have i.e. "a Ground of Determination"?
Are you suggesting any other candidates?
What if we focus on epistemology instead of metaphysics in order to understand this question? We can use propositional knowledge or practical knowledge in the form of skills with the point of proving God's existence. I mean, what if we try to prove it through belief, truth, or justification instead of focusing only on the origin of God?
If you have an argument for God's existence on the basis of belief, truth, or justification, I'm all ears.
Conceptually, change only depends on time. And time depends on change - it's a mutual dependence. What neither concept requires is a magic man pulling the strings from behind a curtain.
Quoting Relativist
You don't have to go as far as quantum mechanics to illustrate the idea. Galilean physics will do just as well.
You say that change depends on time, I don't see why that would be wrong. But it also seems to me that a specific thing or substance cannot change itself and must rely on something else to change it.
For example, when a billiard ball moves and changes position, it does not do so of its own accord, but because another billiard ball has imparted motion to it. Similarly, and in accordance with Newton's (1st?) Law, the billiard ball will remain moving unless it strikes another ball or hits the boundary of the table, or encounters friction. And so, all change (of some thing) really depends on another to change it.
Not sure what you mean. Are you suggesting God could be a quantum system?
The only candidate I had in mind was the hypothesis that the universe is fundamemtally a quantum system. Some refer to this as the "wave function of the universe". But it's just a candidate; my only point is that it's not unreasonable to think a fundamental layer of reality could evolve from an initial state, without an external cause.
The orthodox thinking in Western philosophy used to maintain that what we now call inertial motion (such as that of a billiard ball rolling on a flat surface) required a motive force, like everything else. You seem to have internalized Galilean relativity, but otherwise retained the same intuitions regarding motion (change).
But the Galilean revolution (I am using the term loosely) was more thoroughgoing than just admitting the autonomy of inertial motion. People have come to realize that we don't need to appeal to external agent causation in every instance. The world can go about its business absent any will to push it around.
Quoting SophistiCat
Going to have to disagree with you here as it appears to me that all motion, including inertial motion (by which I understand you to mean constant velocity) depends to some degree on another. In fact, all motion is relative motion and insofar as it is relative to another, all motion, including inertial motion, depends on another. But then all that means is that the metaphysical foundation of everything, God, cannot be in motion.
From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger_equation --
[I]"Conceptually, the Schrödinger equation is the quantum counterpart of Newton's second law in classical mechanics. Given a set of known initial conditions, Newton's second law makes a mathematical prediction as to what path a given physical system will take over time. The Schrödinger equation gives the evolution over time of the wave function, the quantum-mechanical characterization of an isolated physical system. "[/i]
You seem to be equivocating between "dependence" as being a function of something else and being grounded in something else. And your conclusion doesn't seem to follow from anything.
The point I was trying to make is that in citing the example of a billiard ball, you seemed to be satisfied that it can move of its own accord, as long as it doesn't alter its motion. That's the Galilean insight, which diverges from the Aristotelian doctrine that prevailed earlier.
Sorry to interrupt. I believe I also confuse the use of "dependence" as being a function or as being grounded in something else. This is metaphysics, and I am aware that it holds a lot of complexity to reach a clear conclusion. But I would like to know if understanding the distinction between "dependence" in terms of function or grounded could help us approach God's existence from a metaphysical view. Is this where we should start?
As I shared previously, it could be hard to approach God in any kind of system. Your example could fit in order to try to prove his existence from a metaphysical perspective. God could be that planet that spins all on its own, and "we" orbit around him due to motion or due to how he makes us spin or move in any other mechanical motion.
But I still believe that my point above can't approach God's existence; if we accept God is a thing with a system himself, then it means he is a set of elements, and if an element is left behind, then God is at risk to no longer existing or working. As I understand it, it seems that set (as the planetary system) works because the elements are always together.
According to many believers, God is above all that. It is more abstract than a set of quantum elements. For this motive, I believe that God's existence could be understood in an epistemological view.
Then, I think we should try to elaborate an argument using epistemology. Whether with truth, belief, or justification. I don't have the necessary and sufficient knowledge to elaborate on this. Probably in the near future.
Good comment. In my experience, atheist philosophers don't provide any justification either for the possibility of brute contingencies, nor for the assertion that the universe is one. The notion of brute contingency is as far as I can see, a contradiction.
Quoting Bodhy
I'd be interested in hearing why you think this? I'd agree that necessity implies that it doesn't change since necessity means to have no alternate truth value. But a necessary structure could have stratified levels of organization, such that variables are included. The structure itself would be necessary, but the values of the variables would be contingent.
What I'm more interested in though is why necessity implies non-composition? I say this because it doesn't seem that composition entails dependency. A structure could have composite parts, but the parts could be recursively defined, like sets and relations. Or, like the relationship between logical negation and either of the laws of noncontradiction and that of the excluded middle. By recursive definition between parts, I'm talking about a composite structure where each part requires the others for the structure to work, where the parts collectively constitute the "necessary structure".