Logical proofs for God

Dades

transperson wrote:

i think maybe we should leave it at that, im kinda repeating myself

anyway cheers The Atheist it wasnt a bad discussion

Maybe a good idea before the temperature rises . We're both repeating ourselves.

It's patent that our two plains of thought are incompatible.
And as usual certain definitions prove to be a sticky patch on the road agreement...
I'll therefore resist the urge to get a final spoke in.

Would like to see other thoughts though, rather than let the thread die.

transperson

Bonkey

I'm tending to disagree with the notion that their ultimate conclusions coinciding with the seperately-arrived-at conclusions of eastern philosophy and belief is necessarily meaningful

Schopeanhaur arrived at his philosophy by developing Kant and in his early life. he then proceeded to perfect this philosophy throughout the rest of his life and after he had discovered the Vedas -the most philosophical of the Indian scriptures. he said that he had devised his philosophy before encountering these scriptures. my knowledge ill admit quite scant of eastren philosophy scripture and myth [the Vedas, Bagavah Gita, other hindu buddhist teaching-not original scripture but second hand reports] is fundamentally in agreement with Schopeanhaurs philosophy. the fact is that schopeanhaur is a direct continuation of Kant and the whole tradition of westren philosophy. so in my opinion it is significant that both indian and westren philosophy converged so well.

So, just taking that as an example....the coincidence of conclusion (or belief) does not in any way suggest to me that there is a God. Now, assume I've done that with every argument for the existence of God that I can find or conceive, and every time I've come up blank. SHould I be agnostic, or atheist

i think the answer you gave is what i would say.they should be Agnostic but they can still believe that God doesnt exist, in which case they are atheist. this belief maybe right or wrong we cannot know.

That would also be true, however, of anyone who had looked at the evidence and come to the overwhelming conclusion that there must be a God. They are again basing a belief/concusion on - for lack of a better term - faith, and should equally admit the possibility that they may be wrong. Does that make them agnostic as well?

if they examine the same evidence they should come to the same conclusion considering they use the same methods normally rational and empirical ones. but they can still believe in God just as the atheist can still believe in the lack of God.

The same The same argument can surely be applied from a start-point of agnosticism.

if this agnostic examines the same evidence with the same methods then he should reach the same conclusion. in which case he will continue to suspend his belief in a God.

If one can look at the evidence and arguments for a God and say "I don't believe they point to a God, but rather to aspects of the human psyche which are creating fiction to avoid dealing with scary thoughts"....are you not in effect arguing against the existence of God?

this is a case of examining the basis of the phenomenal occurences relating to God[worship by people, theology, mystical experience, scriptures, traditions, organised religion etc]

all a phenomonal investigation can wield is phenomenal answers

nothing can be said in this investigation of the noumenal

no conclusive knowledge can be arrived at regarding the noumenal

conclusive knowledge can be arrived at about the phenomenal, namely empirical or rational explainations of the phenomenal occurences relating to God. this will be accurate in the phenomenal domains.

you are arguing against God as an actual phenomenal truth with a rational or empirical basis.

you cannot argue against God as an actual noumenal truth, you cannot know of the noumenal using reason or sensation.

so again you must suspend judgment on the ultimate existance of God and be agnostic unless of course you choose to believe something about the noumenal with no rational or empirical basis.

pedantic but accurate i think

transperson

just reread them

f**kin overkill :eek: :eek: :eek: :rolleyes:

i apologise.

they are logical and if you read them they will make sence.

Dades

transperson wrote:

they are logical and if you read them they will make sence.

And I thought your selling point was that logical argument is useless in this area.

Before you dropped by, I thought noumenon was a famous song from the Muppets.

I'm really not that much the wiser.

WHEELER4

We don't prove the existence of God.

God chooses us. Birds of a feather flock together. Like attracts like.

Most of the Atheists I have met are leading sinful lives. They want to lead sinful lives and they cannot acknowledge God since it leads to them having to reform their lives. God attracts like souls. God seeks all men but only attracts those that are like him. Like attracts like.

Thrasher

WHEELER4 wrote:

Most of the Atheists I have met are leading sinful lives. They want to lead sinful lives and they cannot acknowledge God since it leads to them having to reform their lives. God attracts like souls. God seeks all men but only attracts those that are like him. Like attracts like.

Well, I pity anyone who doesn´t believe in your God. Isn´t tolerance a Christian value any more?

Come on, in any argument regarding the existance of a God, don´t use "faith" as a trump card. It´s flawed, naive and patronising.

Biologic

I'm an atheist but don't lead a sinful life. I know I'm a good person. I don't need to believe that someone is watching me 24/7 for me to do good. Just because we can't explain our existance doesn't mean God did it. It's the same as when people believed in Norse Gods of weather etc. just because they couldn't explain the process.

Fysh

WHEELER4 wrote:

Most of the Atheists I have met are leading sinful lives. They want to lead sinful lives and they cannot acknowledge God since it leads to them having to reform their lives. God attracts like souls. God seeks all men but only attracts those that are like him. Like attracts like.

Yes, that's what it is. Recognizing god would make me give up masturbation/drinking/whateverhobbyIhavethathe's banned. That must be the reason for all atheists.

Because, you know, it's beyond the realm of possibility that people might have just decided, for themselves, that god and religion are concepts they have no interest in and derive no benefit from. Oh no. It's all about fear of reform.

*sigh*

I think I preferred you when you were spouting meaningless nonsense about philosophy creating life or whatever it was...

transperson

I thought your selling point was that logical argument is useless in this area

:rolleyes:

if you understood what i was saying then you probaly wouldnt say that

my arguement is in fact logical.

but my arguement is not for God.

i said that one cannot know of God within the rational and empirical and so cannot argue for him.

i acknowledged the possibility of trancendental knowledge of God[eg meditation] while maintaining that we cannot know empirically or rationally.

Most of the Atheists I have met are leading sinful lives

pure unadulterated ignorance, if you dont mind me saying.

Dades

WHEELER4 wrote:

God seeks all men but only attracts those that are like him. Like attracts like.

So you must enjoy watching a large percentage of the earth's population die of starvation and disease, just like GOD.

I still think you're a troll.

Edited to say: Wasn't Abe Lincoln an Atheist?!

Drummer

p= actual
not p = possible

Why doesn't a=actual and p=possible ? Let's at least get that straight.

Fysh

drummer wrote:

p= actual
not p = possible

Why doesn't a=actual and p=possible ? Let's at least get that straight.

That's my same question. When you're talking about "actual" and "possible" the first thing to realise is that "actual" must be a subset of "possible", otherwise they could not be "actual". Therefore considerations of what lies outside actual necessarily includes not only things that are possible but also things that are impossible. A black & white conclusion cannot therefore be drawn, imo.

Phil_321

@transperson: Can you summarize your point in one small paragraph in plain English please. Thanks.

transperson

transperson: Can you summarize your point in one small paragraph in plain English please. Thanks

sure,

my point is that...

...if we accept that we cannot know of anything beyond our percieved reality-the phenomenal. since God would be beyond the phenomenal we can never know if there is a God or if there is no God.so we must suspend judgement.


PS i included the thought that we can know beyond our percieved reality by other means-and get trancendental knowledge of the ultimate reality [the metaphenonemal in the jargon] as the mystical traditions maintain.

When you're talking about "actual" and "possible" the first thing to realise is that "actual" must be a subset of "possible",

absolutely right.

there is a set of actualised possibility.
there is a set of not-actualised possibility.
there is a set of not-actualised impossibility

Impossibility is a subset of the not actualised. [notP subset notA]
actualised is a subset of the possibility. [A subset P]

the full set of actual and not-actual equals the full set possible and not possible. [A union notA = P union notP]

the not actual is the the set of the impossible and the set of the not-actualised possibility.

the possible is the set of the actual and the not actualised possibility

p= actual
not p = possible

the set of not actualised possibility is being left out. this cannot be done. that proposition is wrong.

the not-actualised possibility is the overlap being ignored.

ExOffender

neuro-praxis wrote:

I was not saying that something that is impossible is actual: I was saying that impossibility exists in the realm of actuality. Basically, the idea of impossibility must belong with actuality, because it cannot be in the realm of the possible if it is in fact, impossible. Anything that is impossible can only exist in the idea of concept and as such, it exists with actuality. It is an actual concept: it is an impossibility.

Stipulate: nothing impossible exists.
Hence, yes, the concept of impossibility exists in the realm of actuality (ie I can think about a pig flying) but the concept of impossibility is not impossibility (there are no flying pigs). I think you are confusing the word with what the word describes.

ExOffender

there is a set of not-actualised possibility.

I don't believe this to be the case. I think the possible and the actual are one and the same. This runs into big problems with (read: 'gets laughed at by') quantum heads, but it's always seemed to me to be that way.

WHEELER4 wrote:

Most of the Atheists I have met are leading sinful lives.

All of the atheists you have met are, de facto, leading sinful lives.

solo1

Most of the Atheists I have met are leading sinful lives.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!

Fantastic! I haven't seen something like this since the last time I went to stormfront. Aha. Oh, that's great.

Heh heh.

I'm ok now.

No, here's more.... HEH HEHEHEHHEH

Now I'm ok.

Ah.

That's better.

Now, as for your actual / possible matrix of doubt, I implore you, before wasting more space on the impossibility of demonstrating the existence, or possibility of same, using Venn diagrams, to keep in mind that when you eventually do get around to a conclusion on the basis of what is actual and what is probable, I will post something about chickens and eggs that will both render your whole argument null, and make you look silly.

You have been warned.

Fysh

ExOffender wrote:

I don't believe this to be the case. I think the possible and the actual are one and the same. This runs into big problems with (read: 'gets laughed at by') quantum heads, but it's always seemed to me to be that way.

Not just quantum heads, although I'm polite enough to at least ask how this would work for you before guffawing

from a quantum perspective, it's still not entirely clear - multiverse theory holds that the possible and actual are the same (ie for every possibility there's a universe somewhere that it happens in); the problem is that the alternative is a singe universe in which quantum interactions are down to chance. And, given the lack of any evidence for our universe being part of a multiverse system, I think (although this may have changed recently) that the "chance" idea is more generally accepted than the multiverse. Although once someone starts seriously questioning how the chance part works, it gets messy.

ExOffender

Fysh wrote:

Not just quantum heads, although I'm polite enough to at least ask how this would work for you before guffawing.

All that is, is all that could ever have been. You rolled a die and threw a six (lucky you!). From the moment it left your hand, it was a six. From the moment you shook it, it was a six. Even before you picked it up, it was a six. It's the old unbroken-chain-of-events-leading-back-to-the-first-moment-of-existence jobbie. I guess really I'm rejecting the notion of 'the possible' itself, since that demands an 'impossible' negative.

cazeone

Fysh wrote:

from a quantum perspective, it's still not entirely clear - multiverse theory holds that the possible and actual are the same (ie for every possibility there's a universe somewhere that it happens in); the problem is that the alternative is a singe universe in which quantum interactions are down to chance. And, given the lack of any evidence for our universe being part of a multiverse system, I think (although this may have changed recently) that the "chance" idea is more generally accepted than the multiverse. Although once someone starts seriously questioning how the chance part works, it gets messy.

There is another possibility though, there could be a single universe where the possible is the actual, where the probibalistic outcomes are in fact deterministic, it's just that they are described by some non-local 'hidden variable' theory. This seems to be a common belief amongst physicsts. I think such a formulation may require some kind of timeless/static model.

There is also the possibility that the uncertainty in a given universe is a product of interactions between particles in a multiverse. You say there is no evidence for this, and while there is no experimental evidence there is certainly circumstantial evidence. String Theory (more precisely M-Theory) being the only current theory which manages to make a dent in the problems of uniting gravity and the quantum field, makes it possible or even preferable for different universes (with separate laws of physics) to exist (not necesarily an infinity of universes though, so actual and possible could be the same). I've never heard anything comparing the multiverse theories put forward by M-Theory and the many-worlds interpretation though, so I may be confusing two different concepts.

Also, it's possible to have infinity with limited posibilty. You can have an infinite set of 1s for instance. So there could be infinite copies of some of the universes, but not an infinite variation. And because the actual is constrained by the structure of each universe (what is permissable by the laws governing that universe) and it's interaction with other universes there is not an infinity of posibilty and it equals the actuality of the set of universes.

I've had to re-read that too many times, my brain hurts.

Fysh

cazeone wrote:

There is another possibility though, there could be a single universe where the possible is the actual, where the probibalistic outcomes are in fact deterministic, it's just that they are described by some non-local 'hidden variable' theory. This seems to be a common belief amongst physicsts. I think such a formulation may require some kind of timeless/static model.

Yes, but on the other hand no. See, for any given macro-world phenomenon I can think of two mutually exclusive possibilities, and check that they don't both happen. For the quantum world it's not so rigorous (we can't assume the state was present until we check) but, I tells you, if we find an electron is in orbital state A and not B by bouncing another electron off of it and working out the possible energy leves from Schrodinger's equation, it does not mean that the electron is also in the orbital state B. That's the whole damn point. Yes, it's undetermined until you look at it. But it can still be determined. "Everything happens somewhere" requires a multiverse.

cazeone wrote:

There is also the possibility that the uncertainty in a given universe is a product of interactions between particles in a multiverse. You say there is no evidence for this, and while there is no experimental evidence there is certainly circumstantial evidence. String Theory (more precisely M-Theory) being the only current theory which manages to make a dent in the problems of uniting gravity and the quantum field, makes it possible or even preferable for different universes (with separate laws of physics) to exist (not necesarily an infinity of universes though, so actual and possible could be the same). I've never heard anything comparing the multiverse theories put forward by M-Theory and the many-worlds interpretation though, so I may be confusing two different concepts.

Also, it's possible to have infinity with limited posibilty. You can have an infinite set of 1s for instance. So there could be infinite copies of some of the universes, but not an infinite variation. And because the actual is constrained by the structure of each universe (what is permissable by the laws governing that universe) and it's interaction with other universes there is not an infinity of posibilty and it equals the actuality of the set of universes.

I've had to re-read that too many times, my brain hurts.

Problem *right* there is in reconciling thermodynamics to this. I'm all for the idea of universes interacting - hey, if that's how it works, that's how it works - and the hidden variable idea isn't all that awkward, especially when it's possible that Time, that most misunderstood dimension, is one of these.

But.

If you have two or more universes interacting, they form part of a bigger system. Therefore the bigger system is governed by thermodynanic laws, and apparent violations of thermodynamic laws become possible in the subsystems because they are balanced over all. This also means that the idea of universes having specific and unshared internal logic becomes a bit more unlikely, since there has to be at least some sort of mutual grounds.

Separate points - the current vogue for reductive approaches (ie the search for the "Grand Unified Theory") isn't guaranteed to work. As studies of human development are starting to suggest, emergent properties are far more complex and difficult to understand than what you can gather from looking at the basic parts. The analogy I've always liked is that you can take a leopard to bits and find out that it's made of quarks and leptons and so on. Looking at a huge heap of quarks and leptons doesn't tell you much about the possibility of a leopard. The reason I mention this is that the justification of a theory as reconciling one or other of the "fundamental forces" to another doesn't, at least to me, hold much water.

Quite aside from all this, I suspect that, from the formulation presented of the Maynooth Dean's notion, the idea stemmed more from wordplay than advanced physical ideas. And as such, deserves to be dismissed without much further thought. I mean, the idea basically boils down to a formulation of "the world couldn't exist without god", backed up by inaccurate use of sets (which you are trying to defend by saying "well, maybe the universe is like that" - and this is fine, but frankly for the proof to have any weight behind it, strong evidence that the universe is like that should have accompanied it to begin with). Nice try, but next time try harder kind of thing.

cazeone

I think you misunderstood me there, I'm in agreement with you and not trying to argue his position!

For me what's possible and actual are more precisely stated as that which is physically possible and that which has actually happened. It is possible that under a hidden variables theory the only physical possibility is that which has happened/will happen. The possible isn't that which you can conceive of, just that which can happen. This kind of model would remove the need for a prime cause because there are no causes, only relations between different states (why I said it may require a static model). This is pure speculation though, and from someone who doesn't even have much mathematical understanding of the field.

ExOffender

ExOffender wrote:

All of the atheists you have met are, de facto, leading sinful lives.

-Just to clarify- this is not my actual feeling; I myself am an atheist. I just meant from his position.

Playboy

I dont know if anyone has mentioned Descartes's third meditation where he tries to logically prove the existence of God. Also Berkeley's essay "the pricples of human knowledge" where he argues against the existence of matter (argueing against Locke's position) in favour of 'spirit' and God is a fascinating and convincing read.

transperson

Descartes's third meditation

i would not put much weight on his proof from an atheists perspective, its only barely convincing if you already accept that God exists.

Berkeley

i agree he did have an interesting thesis. but again an atheist would not be convinced [what scientist would agree that matter does not exist and all reality is consiousness/es]. he reads best if you are sympathetic to the existence of an absolute beyond our perceptions.
BTW that same logical arguement had been made more than a thousand years before him by Buddhists.

Playboy

Im aware they are flawed arguements ... just pointing out they a great read if you are interested in this topic

Dades

transperson wrote:

he reads best if you are sympathetic to the existence of an absolute beyond our perceptions.

Are you suggesting that some of us aren't?

transperson

just pointing out they a great read if you are interested in this topic

true. true

padser

People...... x + n = B
Hence god must exist

As per Descartes.

Who are we to question the great man???

Dades

padser wrote:

Who are we to question the great man???

Who do we need to be?