So how do you prove, using strictly logic, that god exists?
Premise: Life is too complex to have developed on its own.
Conclusion: Therefore, a supernatural being must exist who have developed said life.
?
Of course it gets pretty complicated if you start questioning if that supernatural being is also included in "life" because you simply move away one level and can now ask who or what created the supernatural being just as you asked who or what created life.
Personally i would start at the deluge-ark myth wich is quite common. The Sumerians wrote about it. The Inca, Atztec and Maya have their version. Christians, Moslems and Yews have theirs. And Hindu. And the Egyptians. Names change, but the story remains the same in its essence. Now that IS unsettling.
Of course my concept of a "god" is quite different from that of 99% of the common conception, so i am working from a different perspective here. For me gods are very real, there are too much matching ancient texts about it. However i do not think about them as omnipotent beings capable of anything. I belive we are looking at mystified technology here.
Are you aware that Pacific islanders worship Japanese and Americans as their returned ancestors? They were impressed by their airstrips in WW2 and as they left developed a cult in mimicking airstrips so the ancestors would return. The made aircraft from wood and raidio equipment from coconuts. The westeners are practically worshipped as gods there. Misunderstood technology.
I feel this happened at another point in human history much earlier. Judging from the ancient texts i would say ten to thirty thousand years ago. That is of course a very daring interpretation to say at least.
So yes, i think we are able to prove the existance of gods. Of course the definition of what we refer to as a god alters in the process drastically, completely demystifying the incident - wich is quite offensive to a lot of people i guess.
So how do you prove, using strictly logic, that god exists?
Premise: Life is too complex to have developed on its own.
Conclusion: Therefore, a supernatural being must exist who have developed said life.
?
That wouldn't work, since life is demonstrably not too complex to have developed on its own.
Right, but according to Podly that doesn't matter, since we're apparently making a distinction between pure logic and reason. So one of the premises being demonstratably false (using reason/evidence) does not mean the statement itself is not logical (again, according to Podly).
Personally i would start at the deluge-ark myth wich is quite common. The Sumerians wrote about it. The Inca, Atztec and Maya have their version. Christians, Moslems and Yews have theirs. And Hindu. And the Egyptians. Names change, but the story remains the same in its essence. No that IS unsettling.
Unless ... the cultures in question copied the myth from earlier cultures.
You know, like how the Bible's laws and other mythological stories are lifted out of the nascent Mesopotamian culture from which the Hebrews emerged.
Or that the "Christian" and "Moslem" versions of the flood story are based on ... I mean, I shouldn't even need to respond to this.
And the native American flood myths are not at all similar to ANE flood myths.
Personally i would start at the deluge-ark myth wich is quite common. The Sumerians wrote about it. The Inca, Atztec and Maya have their version. Christians, Moslems and Yews have theirs. And Hindu. And the Egyptians. Names change, but the story remains the same in its essence. No that IS unsettling.
Unless ... the cultures in question copied the myth from earlier cultures.
You know, like how the Bible's laws and other mythological stories are lifted out of Mesopotamian culture.
Or that the "Christian" and "Moslem" versions of the flood story are based on ... I mean, I shouldn't even need to respond to this.
And the native American flood myths are not at all similar to ANE flood myths.
Well all of them include an "ark" (the Inca text translates to "wooden box" but it has the same meaning). They are similar. And now would you care to explain how the ancient Egyptians copied the text from pre-Inca ancient Americans. No offence, but i know very well what i am talking about. It is far from being that easy.
I wanted this to be an interesting thread about athiesm and agnosticism, but it turned out to be 41 pages of words about words =(
Welcome to D&D where people argue about the definition of the word "word".
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
Well the problem is how you can disprove a statement. Sometimes it's easy. For instance, if I say
Major premise: If phlogiston causes fire, I will give you a million dollars.
Minor premise: phlogiston causes fire.
Conclusion: I will give you a million dollars.
Now it's pretty clear that phlogiston does not cause fire, and thus I am saved of having to go into debt to pay off my claim. However, the claim that "Life is too complex to have evolved on its own" is pretty hard to disprove. It seems like there's a good case for evolution, so it is reasonable to believe in it over the claim "God created life in 6 days 6,000 years ago." However, it is much harder to thoroughly invalidate the claim.
That's why Kant's critique of the ontological argument is pretty brilliant. It's hard to critique the Major premise, because that's true by definition. Nobody had done a good job of attacking the minor premise, and Kant did so with much success -- existence is not a predicate, and thus can be contained in no being, let alone God.
Well all of them include an "ark" (the Inca text translates to "wooden box" but it has the same meaning). They are similar. And now would you care to explain how the ancient Egyptians copied the text from pre-Inca ancient Americans. No offence, but i know very well what i am talking about. It is far from being that easy.
You're a bit too silly of a goose for me to bother responding to you anymore, I'm afraid.
So how do you prove, using strictly logic, that god exists?
Premise: Life is too complex to have developed on its own.
Conclusion: Therefore, a supernatural being must exist who have developed said life.
?
Of course it gets pretty complicated if you start questioning if that supernatural being is also included in "life" because you simply move away one level and can now ask who or what created the supernatural being just as you asked who or what created life.
Personally i would start at the deluge-ark myth wich is quite common. The Sumerians wrote about it. The Inca, Atztec and Maya have their version. Christians, Moslems and Yews have theirs. And Hindu. And the Egyptians. Names change, but the story remains the same in its essence. Now that IS unsettling.
Of course my concept of a "god" is quite different from that of 99% of the common conception, so i am working from a different perspective here. For me gods are very real, there are too much matching ancient texts about it. However i do not think about them as omnipotent beings capable of anything. I belive we are looking at mystified technology here.
Are you aware that Pacific islanders worship Japanese and Americans as their returned ancestors? They were impressed by their airstrips in WW2 and as they left developed a cult in mimicking airstrips so the ancestors would return. The made aircraft from wood and raidio equipment from coconuts. The westeners are practically worshipped as gods there. Misunderstood technology.
I feel this happened at another point in human history much earlier. Judging from the ancient texts i would say ten to thirty thousand years ago. That is of course a very daring interpretation to say at least.
So yes, i think we are able to prove the existance of gods. Of course the definition of what we refer to as a god alters in the process drastically, completely demystifying the incident - wich is quite offensive to a lot of people i guess.
Just a quick question, but how many ancient texts have you studied? Just reading them casually doesn't count. You can read the Hebrew Bible with no prior knowledge and completely miss the four source hypothesis, for example.
I think if you actually studied the texts, you'd probably not hold the same position.
There are similarities between ancient religious texts, but there are more rational explanations than simply "supernatural things must have caused it!" That mistake is almost as uninformed as someone looking at nature and deciding that supernatural beings made it, even though there's a more rational explanation there too.
You're basically using the god-of-the-gaps fallacy (a.k.a. argument from ignorance) on religious texts, which is really boring.
But no such reason can be given; that is the whole point of "proof of a universal negative is impossible". There is no reason for a thing's not being included; there are only reasons for a thing's inclusion.
That isn't really an argument so much as a restatement. It's also not true. If it were, we would have an insane ontology, where Russel's teapot claimed a place at the table next to dogs and cats.
I'm not advocating some extreme or ridiculous reductionism, where everything either has to be quarks and spin or it can't exist. I'm instead making the quite modest claim that theoretical virtues like simplicity, power, and explanatory depth do, in fact, constrain what it is reasonable to believe.
Teeeeeeeechnically, were God to exist, he would be simplicity. And power too.
Would it thus be reasonable to believe in him?
Your conception of a god doesn't fail for the same reason that most theist conceptions do, but it nonetheless does manage to fail for reasons all of its own. Ironically, those reasons are precisely simplicity and power: your positing of a single indivisible substance which undergirds the universe is needlessly complicating and unmotivated.
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
Podly is the strongest force for changing my labeling of myself from agnostic to atheism.
Podly is the strongest force for changing my labeling of myself from agnostic to atheism.
Doesn't really matter one way or another, in my opinion. The distinction is not worth arguing about since it has very little practical consequences.
Would you live your life differently if you were an atheist as opposed to agnostic? Probably not. Whereas things would be quite different if you were religious vs. agnostic/atheist.
So how do you prove, using strictly logic, that god exists?
Premise: Life is too complex to have developed on its own.
Conclusion: Therefore, a supernatural being must exist who have developed said life.
?
well the famous one is the ontological argument. Kant really did that one in by saying existence is not a predicate, but Heidegger (an atheist) got a ton of ground out of that and showed how, if this is the case, then any thinking being believes in God.
There are no 100% successful syllogistic arguments for the existence of god, but there are also no 100% successful ones against his existence, either.
Isn't that because you can only prove the non-existence of something by showing it to be impossible? I've yet to meet a person who claimed that the idea of a god in general was actively logically impossible.
I mean, there are also no 100% successful arguments against the existence of unicorns, dragons, chupacabras, sasquatch, or fascinating religion threads.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
But no such reason can be given; that is the whole point of "proof of a universal negative is impossible". There is no reason for a thing's not being included; there are only reasons for a thing's inclusion.
That isn't really an argument so much as a restatement. It's also not true. If it were, we would have an insane ontology, where Russel's teapot claimed a place at the table next to dogs and cats.
I'm not advocating some extreme or ridiculous reductionism, where everything either has to be quarks and spin or it can't exist. I'm instead making the quite modest claim that theoretical virtues like simplicity, power, and explanatory depth do, in fact, constrain what it is reasonable to believe.
Teeeeeeeechnically, were God to exist, he would be simplicity. And power too.
Would it thus be reasonable to believe in him?
Your conception of a god doesn't fail for the same reason that most theist conceptions do, but it nonetheless does manage to fail for reasons all of its own. Ironically, those reasons are precisely simplicity and power: your positing of a single indivisible substance which undergirds the universe is needlessly complicating and unmotivated.
Couldn't one try to argue that the physical universe as we know it contains no plausible means of self-causation, and then define God as a being capable of such? I mean, it certain makes sense to argue against the needless existence of God in a "turtles all the way down" sort of way, but that only works if each level of your turtle tower is similarly incapable of self-causation.
(Note: I'm not trying to make such an argument here - largely because it's not an argument I'm interested in having - I'm just wondering what you would think of such a tack.)
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
The response to that argument, ElJeffe, is that if God didn't need a need an outside force to begin to exist, why did the the universe? Quick application of Occam's Razor, and there you go.
So how do you prove, using strictly logic, that god exists?
Premise: Life is too complex to have developed on its own.
Conclusion: Therefore, a supernatural being must exist who have developed said life.
?
well the famous one is the ontological argument. Kant really did that one in by saying existence is not a predicate, but Heidegger (an atheist) got a ton of ground out of that and showed how, if this is the case, then any thinking being believes in God.
There are no 100% successful syllogistic arguments for the existence of god, but there are also no 100% successful ones against his existence, either.
Isn't that because you can only prove the non-existence of something by showing it to be impossible? I've yet to meet a person who claimed that the idea of a god in general was actively logically impossible.
There are proofs against gods with certain specific capabilities. Like, against omnipotence and such.
But in general, they're poor proofs. I think the more complex gods can be argued against better. An omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, perfect god is hard to reconcile with an imperfect, suffering world.
But again, most weaker gods are not logically disprovable. There's nothing inconsistent with Zeus, for example. Well, other than him not being on Mt. Olympus.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
No offense but the god Podly worships is the only deity on record to have advocated genocide
Not true. I am fairly sure that Thor advocated the extermination of giants.
I did not know that. I rescind my statement; Yahweh is one of two gods to advocate genocide, in his case the genocide of the the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, along with any cities in the holy land established post-genocide that revert to non-Hebrew religion; in Thor's case, the genocide of fictional giants.
So how do you prove, using strictly logic, that god exists?
Premise: Life is too complex to have developed on its own.
Conclusion: Therefore, a supernatural being must exist who have developed said life.
?
Of course it gets pretty complicated if you start questioning if that supernatural being is also included in "life" because you simply move away one level and can now ask who or what created the supernatural being just as you asked who or what created life.
Personally i would start at the deluge-ark myth wich is quite common. The Sumerians wrote about it. The Inca, Atztec and Maya have their version. Christians, Moslems and Yews have theirs. And Hindu. And the Egyptians. Names change, but the story remains the same in its essence. Now that IS unsettling.
Of course my concept of a "god" is quite different from that of 99% of the common conception, so i am working from a different perspective here. For me gods are very real, there are too much matching ancient texts about it. However i do not think about them as omnipotent beings capable of anything. I belive we are looking at mystified technology here.
Are you aware that Pacific islanders worship Japanese and Americans as their returned ancestors? They were impressed by their airstrips in WW2 and as they left developed a cult in mimicking airstrips so the ancestors would return. The made aircraft from wood and raidio equipment from coconuts. The westeners are practically worshipped as gods there. Misunderstood technology.
I feel this happened at another point in human history much earlier. Judging from the ancient texts i would say ten to thirty thousand years ago. That is of course a very daring interpretation to say at least.
So yes, i think we are able to prove the existance of gods. Of course the definition of what we refer to as a god alters in the process drastically, completely demystifying the incident - wich is quite offensive to a lot of people i guess.
Personally i would start at the deluge-ark myth wich is quite common. The Sumerians wrote about it. The Inca, Atztec and Maya have their version. Christians, Moslems and Yews have theirs. And Hindu. And the Egyptians. Names change, but the story remains the same in its essence. No that IS unsettling.
Unless ... the cultures in question copied the myth from earlier cultures.
You know, like how the Bible's laws and other mythological stories are lifted out of Mesopotamian culture.
Or that the "Christian" and "Moslem" versions of the flood story are based on ... I mean, I shouldn't even need to respond to this.
And the native American flood myths are not at all similar to ANE flood myths.
Well all of them include an "ark" (the Inca text translates to "wooden box" but it has the same meaning). They are similar. And now would you care to explain how the ancient Egyptians copied the text from pre-Inca ancient Americans. No offence, but i know very well what i am talking about. It is far from being that easy.
No, D&D, Spriggan was a documentary, and events happened in real time.
Qingu: Technically, Izanami-no-Mikoto threatened Genocide against the Human Race (or at least the Japanese, given the myth), and the fact that people die could, in the myth, could be considered attempted genocide against mankind
Qingu: Technically, Izanami-no-Mikoto threatened Genocide against the Human Race (or at least the Japanese, given the myth), and the fact that people die could, in the myth, could be considered attempted genocide against mankind
Threatened genocide of the entire human race is just par for the course with gods. Ishtar threatened a zombie apocalypse for crying out loud.
If thou openest not the gate to let me enter,
I will break the door, I will wrench the lock,
I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors.
I will bring up the dead to eat the living.
And the dead will outnumber the living
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
But no such reason can be given; that is the whole point of "proof of a universal negative is impossible". There is no reason for a thing's not being included; there are only reasons for a thing's inclusion.
That isn't really an argument so much as a restatement. It's also not true. If it were, we would have an insane ontology, where Russel's teapot claimed a place at the table next to dogs and cats.
I'm not advocating some extreme or ridiculous reductionism, where everything either has to be quarks and spin or it can't exist. I'm instead making the quite modest claim that theoretical virtues like simplicity, power, and explanatory depth do, in fact, constrain what it is reasonable to believe.
Teeeeeeeechnically, were God to exist, he would be simplicity. And power too.
Would it thus be reasonable to believe in him?
Your conception of a god doesn't fail for the same reason that most theist conceptions do, but it nonetheless does manage to fail for reasons all of its own. Ironically, those reasons are precisely simplicity and power: your positing of a single indivisible substance which undergirds the universe is needlessly complicating and unmotivated.
while I love this discussion, with you more than most, this probably isn't the best thread for this, so I respectfully disagree.
Calling a single indivisible substance that makes up the universe "god" is just trying to attach cultural baggage to a physics concept, which makes me wary that the argument is not in good faith but rather the setup for some type of bait and switch.
Couldn't one try to argue that the physical universe as we know it contains no plausible means of self-causation, and then define God as a being capable of such? I mean, it certain makes sense to argue against the needless existence of God in a "turtles all the way down" sort of way, but that only works if each level of your turtle tower is similarly incapable of self-causation.
(Note: I'm not trying to make such an argument here - largely because it's not an argument I'm interested in having - I'm just wondering what you would think of such a tack.)
One could. Anything goes. But then you have to deal with the question why something as complex as an omnipotent being is capable of self-causation and much simpler concepts of life are not.
Its like expecting nuclear reactors to grow on trees but not expecting fruit to grow on trees.
Thats hard to swallow, especially if you look at concepts like evolution.
So how do you prove, using strictly logic, that god exists?
Premise: Life is too complex to have developed on its own.
Conclusion: Therefore, a supernatural being must exist who have developed said life.
?
well the famous one is the ontological argument. Kant really did that one in by saying existence is not a predicate, but Heidegger (an atheist) got a ton of ground out of that and showed how, if this is the case, then any thinking being believes in God.
There are no 100% successful syllogistic arguments for the existence of god, but there are also no 100% successful ones against his existence, either.
Isn't that because you can only prove the non-existence of something by showing it to be impossible? I've yet to meet a person who claimed that the idea of a god in general was actively logically impossible.
I mean, there are also no 100% successful arguments against the existence of unicorns, dragons, chupacabras, sasquatch, or fascinating religion threads.
Isn't Alvin Plantinga's modal ontological argument famous for being undefeated?
LoserForHireX on
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Plantinga himself agrees: the “victorious” modal ontological argument is not a proof of the existence of a being which possesses maximal greatness. But how, then, is it “victorious”? Plantinga writes: “Our verdict on these reformulated versions of St. Anselm's argument must be as follows. They cannot, perhaps, be said to prove or establish their conclusion. But since it is rational to accept their central premise, they do show that it is rational to accept that conclusion.” (Plantinga (1974, 221)).
It is pretty clear that Plantinga's argument does not show what he claims that it shows. Consider, again, the argument: “Either God exists, or 2+2=5. It is not the case that 2+2=5. So God exists.” It is just a mistake for a theist to say: “Since the premise is true (and the argument is valid), this argument shows that the conclusion of the argument is true”. No-one thinks that that argument shows any such thing. Similarly, it is just a mistake for a theist to say: “Since it is rational to accept the premise (and the argument is valid), this argument shows that it is rational to accept the conclusion of the argument”. Again, no one thinks that that argument shows any such thing. But why don't these arguments show the things in question? There is room for argument about this. But it is at least plausible to claim that, in each case, any even minimally rational person who has doubts about the claimed status of the conclusion of the argument will have exactly the same doubts about the claimed status of the premise. If, for example, I doubt that it is rational to accept the claim that God exists, then you can quite sure that I will doubt that it is rational to accept the claim that either 2+2=5 or God exists. But, of course, the very same point can be made about Plantinga's argument: anyone with even minimal rationality who understands the premise and the conclusion of the argument, and who has doubts about the claim that there is an entity which possesses maximal greatness, will have exactly the same doubts about the claim that there is a possible world in which there is an entity which possesses maximal greatness.
Podly is the strongest force for changing my labeling of myself from agnostic to atheism.
Doesn't really matter one way or another, in my opinion. The distinction is not worth arguing about since it has very little practical consequences.
Would you live your life differently if you were an atheist as opposed to agnostic? Probably not. Whereas things would be quite different if you were religious vs. agnostic/atheist.
Pretty much.
Is there something that agnostics do that is different from what atheists do?
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Couldn't one try to argue that the physical universe as we know it contains no plausible means of self-causation, and then define God as a being capable of such? I mean, it certain makes sense to argue against the needless existence of God in a "turtles all the way down" sort of way, but that only works if each level of your turtle tower is similarly incapable of self-causation.
(Note: I'm not trying to make such an argument here - largely because it's not an argument I'm interested in having - I'm just wondering what you would think of such a tack.)
There is one main line of objection here: if your only criteria of godhood is 'that which was the first cause,' then you're going to wind up calling the Big Bang god. In fact, when they are not presented carefully, theistic first cause arguments may well be valid--it's just that they don't establish the conclusion the theists are looking for. The point here is just that whatever the first cause happens to be, the theist has not presented any actual arguments that it must also be an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being that sent his only son to Jerusalem. Which exposes the intellectual vapidity of the whole affair, because of course that is what they want to establish, but because they can't establish it, they instead give an argument that, if it establishes anything, only establishes that something must have come first.
A closely related way of phrasing the same point is as such: "if god himself doesn't need an independent first cause, then why does the universe?" The only way a god-based explanation explains the origins of everything is by definitional fiat: we have defined him as a first cause. But such definitional fiat is not an explanation at all, it's just a rearrangement of words.
Would you live your life differently if you were an atheist as opposed to agnostic? Probably not. Whereas things would be quite different if you were religious vs. agnostic/atheist.
I'd agree with the former, but less so with the latter. There are so many different varieties of religious belief, and while I'd consider myself religious, in terms of practical everyday behaviour I'm pretty certain I'm much closer to a number of atheists I know than to a large part of practicing Christians.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Podly is the strongest force for changing my labeling of myself from agnostic to atheism.
Doesn't really matter one way or another, in my opinion. The distinction is not worth arguing about since it has very little practical consequences.
Would you live your life differently if you were an atheist as opposed to agnostic? Probably not. Whereas things would be quite different if you were religious vs. agnostic/atheist.
Pretty much.
Is there something that agnostics do that is different from what atheists do?
As best I know, neither of us do much of anything in any kind of patterned way that relates to the label. Other than argue on the internet about it.
Podly is the strongest force for changing my labeling of myself from agnostic to atheism.
Doesn't really matter one way or another, in my opinion. The distinction is not worth arguing about since it has very little practical consequences.
Would you live your life differently if you were an atheist as opposed to agnostic? Probably not. Whereas things would be quite different if you were religious vs. agnostic/atheist.
Pretty much.
Is there something that agnostics do that is different from what atheists do?
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Plantinga himself agrees: the “victorious” modal ontological argument is not a proof of the existence of a being which possesses maximal greatness. But how, then, is it “victorious”? Plantinga writes: “Our verdict on these reformulated versions of St. Anselm's argument must be as follows. They cannot, perhaps, be said to prove or establish their conclusion. But since it is rational to accept their central premise, they do show that it is rational to accept that conclusion.” (Plantinga (1974, 221)).
It is pretty clear that Plantinga's argument does not show what he claims that it shows. Consider, again, the argument: “Either God exists, or 2+2=5. It is not the case that 2+2=5. So God exists.” It is just a mistake for a theist to say: “Since the premise is true (and the argument is valid), this argument shows that the conclusion of the argument is true”. No-one thinks that that argument shows any such thing. Similarly, it is just a mistake for a theist to say: “Since it is rational to accept the premise (and the argument is valid), this argument shows that it is rational to accept the conclusion of the argument”. Again, no one thinks that that argument shows any such thing. But why don't these arguments show the things in question? There is room for argument about this. But it is at least plausible to claim that, in each case, any even minimally rational person who has doubts about the claimed status of the conclusion of the argument will have exactly the same doubts about the claimed status of the premise. If, for example, I doubt that it is rational to accept the claim that God exists, then you can quite sure that I will doubt that it is rational to accept the claim that either 2+2=5 or God exists. But, of course, the very same point can be made about Plantinga's argument: anyone with even minimal rationality who understands the premise and the conclusion of the argument, and who has doubts about the claim that there is an entity which possesses maximal greatness, will have exactly the same doubts about the claim that there is a possible world in which there is an entity which possesses maximal greatness.
I see. That makes sense.
I always considered the ontological argument to be strange because it doesn't actually provide you with a reason to believe. There's no actual persuasion happening. Very boring, dry, and academic argument.
LoserForHireX on
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
I wanted this to be an interesting thread about athiesm and agnosticism, but it turned out to be 41 pages of words about words =(
That's all this discussion can be.
This debate ought to be this forum's mascot. It comes up regularly without fail. This is probably the tenth distinct thread on this exact debate that I have posted in.
Anyway, it all comes down to how you define words like "truth," "knowledge," "belief," and "faith." Generally when you get into philosophical precision about those words, you find that there is in fact a nonsensical redundancy in how people differentiate agnosticism and differing types of atheism.
As for proving God... just make God's existence axiomatic to your system. Boom. God exists. That's basically what faith is anyway.
Now, questioning whether a deity(/ies), if it/they did indeed exist, deserve to be worshiped that I find fun in thinking about and arguing.
So far, the best answer I can think of is "no" and "what in the hell does it mean to 'worship' something?"
If Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost actually existed I would drop all my shit to worship them straightaway. I may not really appreciate their take on things, but I also don't really want to burn in hell for eternity.
Now, questioning whether a deity(/ies), if it/they did indeed exist, deserve to be worshiped that I find fun in thinking about and arguing.
So far, the best answer I can think of is "no" and "what in the hell does it mean to 'worship' something?"
If Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost actually existed I would drop all my shit to worship them straightaway. I may not really appreciate their take on things, but I also don't really want to burn in hell for eternity.
But that's the thing: You're basically worshiping a tyrant for the sole purpose of not incurring their wrath (which, incidentally, has been interpreted through various means over the years and various sects not even agreeing that the fire and brimstone hell is an accurate portrayal).
and of course, that doesn't even begin to touch on my feelings that an all-powerful, all knowing, all loving God is wholly incompatible with the state of life on earth and basic morality as informed by human empathy. As far as I'm concerned, you could have two out of the three, but not all three.
And then there's the issue of a creator demanding obedience from a species which he himself is supposed to have imbued with it's own will and capacity for reason
Now, questioning whether a deity(/ies), if it/they did indeed exist, deserve to be worshiped that I find fun in thinking about and arguing.
So far, the best answer I can think of is "no" and "what in the hell does it mean to 'worship' something?"
If Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost actually existed I would drop all my shit to worship them straightaway. I may not really appreciate their take on things, but I also don't really want to burn in hell for eternity.
But that's the thing: You're basically worshiping a tyrant for the sole purpose of not incurring their wrath (which, incidentally, has been interpreted through various means over the years and various sects not even agreeing that the fire and brimstone hell is an accurate portrayal).
and of course, that doesn't even begin to touch on my feelings that an all-powerful, all knowing, all loving God is wholly incompatible with the state of life on earth and basic morality as informed by human empathy. As far as I'm concerned, you could have two out of the three, but not all three.
And then there's the issue of a creator demanding obedience from a species which he himself is supposed to have imbued with it's own will and capacity for reason
well, if he's not actually answering prayers or even making a small effort towards world peace then I sure wouldn't worship the sumbitch. If anything we should make a concentrated effort to find a way to kill god before we get sent to hell because it would make an awesome action movie.
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Of course it gets pretty complicated if you start questioning if that supernatural being is also included in "life" because you simply move away one level and can now ask who or what created the supernatural being just as you asked who or what created life.
Personally i would start at the deluge-ark myth wich is quite common. The Sumerians wrote about it. The Inca, Atztec and Maya have their version. Christians, Moslems and Yews have theirs. And Hindu. And the Egyptians. Names change, but the story remains the same in its essence. Now that IS unsettling.
Of course my concept of a "god" is quite different from that of 99% of the common conception, so i am working from a different perspective here. For me gods are very real, there are too much matching ancient texts about it. However i do not think about them as omnipotent beings capable of anything. I belive we are looking at mystified technology here.
Are you aware that Pacific islanders worship Japanese and Americans as their returned ancestors? They were impressed by their airstrips in WW2 and as they left developed a cult in mimicking airstrips so the ancestors would return. The made aircraft from wood and raidio equipment from coconuts. The westeners are practically worshipped as gods there. Misunderstood technology.
I feel this happened at another point in human history much earlier. Judging from the ancient texts i would say ten to thirty thousand years ago. That is of course a very daring interpretation to say at least.
So yes, i think we are able to prove the existance of gods. Of course the definition of what we refer to as a god alters in the process drastically, completely demystifying the incident - wich is quite offensive to a lot of people i guess.
Right, but according to Podly that doesn't matter, since we're apparently making a distinction between pure logic and reason. So one of the premises being demonstratably false (using reason/evidence) does not mean the statement itself is not logical (again, according to Podly).
You know, like how the Bible's laws and other mythological stories are lifted out of the nascent Mesopotamian culture from which the Hebrews emerged.
Or that the "Christian" and "Moslem" versions of the flood story are based on ... I mean, I shouldn't even need to respond to this.
And the native American flood myths are not at all similar to ANE flood myths.
Well all of them include an "ark" (the Inca text translates to "wooden box" but it has the same meaning). They are similar. And now would you care to explain how the ancient Egyptians copied the text from pre-Inca ancient Americans. No offence, but i know very well what i am talking about. It is far from being that easy.
Welcome to D&D where people argue about the definition of the word "word".
Major premise: If phlogiston causes fire, I will give you a million dollars.
Minor premise: phlogiston causes fire.
Conclusion: I will give you a million dollars.
Now it's pretty clear that phlogiston does not cause fire, and thus I am saved of having to go into debt to pay off my claim. However, the claim that "Life is too complex to have evolved on its own" is pretty hard to disprove. It seems like there's a good case for evolution, so it is reasonable to believe in it over the claim "God created life in 6 days 6,000 years ago." However, it is much harder to thoroughly invalidate the claim.
That's why Kant's critique of the ontological argument is pretty brilliant. It's hard to critique the Major premise, because that's true by definition. Nobody had done a good job of attacking the minor premise, and Kant did so with much success -- existence is not a predicate, and thus can be contained in no being, let alone God.
Just a quick question, but how many ancient texts have you studied? Just reading them casually doesn't count. You can read the Hebrew Bible with no prior knowledge and completely miss the four source hypothesis, for example.
I think if you actually studied the texts, you'd probably not hold the same position.
There are similarities between ancient religious texts, but there are more rational explanations than simply "supernatural things must have caused it!" That mistake is almost as uninformed as someone looking at nature and deciding that supernatural beings made it, even though there's a more rational explanation there too.
You're basically using the god-of-the-gaps fallacy (a.k.a. argument from ignorance) on religious texts, which is really boring.
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Your conception of a god doesn't fail for the same reason that most theist conceptions do, but it nonetheless does manage to fail for reasons all of its own. Ironically, those reasons are precisely simplicity and power: your positing of a single indivisible substance which undergirds the universe is needlessly complicating and unmotivated.
Doesn't really matter one way or another, in my opinion. The distinction is not worth arguing about since it has very little practical consequences.
Would you live your life differently if you were an atheist as opposed to agnostic? Probably not. Whereas things would be quite different if you were religious vs. agnostic/atheist.
Isn't that because you can only prove the non-existence of something by showing it to be impossible? I've yet to meet a person who claimed that the idea of a god in general was actively logically impossible.
I mean, there are also no 100% successful arguments against the existence of unicorns, dragons, chupacabras, sasquatch, or fascinating religion threads.
Couldn't one try to argue that the physical universe as we know it contains no plausible means of self-causation, and then define God as a being capable of such? I mean, it certain makes sense to argue against the needless existence of God in a "turtles all the way down" sort of way, but that only works if each level of your turtle tower is similarly incapable of self-causation.
(Note: I'm not trying to make such an argument here - largely because it's not an argument I'm interested in having - I'm just wondering what you would think of such a tack.)
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There are proofs against gods with certain specific capabilities. Like, against omnipotence and such.
But in general, they're poor proofs. I think the more complex gods can be argued against better. An omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, perfect god is hard to reconcile with an imperfect, suffering world.
But again, most weaker gods are not logically disprovable. There's nothing inconsistent with Zeus, for example. Well, other than him not being on Mt. Olympus.
Fictional...
Or all gone now that Thor killed them?
Am I blowing your mind?
Qingu: Technically, Izanami-no-Mikoto threatened Genocide against the Human Race (or at least the Japanese, given the myth), and the fact that people die could, in the myth, could be considered attempted genocide against mankind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar
while I love this discussion, with you more than most, this probably isn't the best thread for this, so I respectfully disagree.
I mean
no offense.
One could. Anything goes. But then you have to deal with the question why something as complex as an omnipotent being is capable of self-causation and much simpler concepts of life are not.
Its like expecting nuclear reactors to grow on trees but not expecting fruit to grow on trees.
Thats hard to swallow, especially if you look at concepts like evolution.
Isn't Alvin Plantinga's modal ontological argument famous for being undefeated?
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
In that case, all you can do is lean on the claim that conceivability does not imply possibility, no matter what.
It's acknowledged as being circular.
Pretty much.
Is there something that agnostics do that is different from what atheists do?
There is one main line of objection here: if your only criteria of godhood is 'that which was the first cause,' then you're going to wind up calling the Big Bang god. In fact, when they are not presented carefully, theistic first cause arguments may well be valid--it's just that they don't establish the conclusion the theists are looking for. The point here is just that whatever the first cause happens to be, the theist has not presented any actual arguments that it must also be an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being that sent his only son to Jerusalem. Which exposes the intellectual vapidity of the whole affair, because of course that is what they want to establish, but because they can't establish it, they instead give an argument that, if it establishes anything, only establishes that something must have come first.
A closely related way of phrasing the same point is as such: "if god himself doesn't need an independent first cause, then why does the universe?" The only way a god-based explanation explains the origins of everything is by definitional fiat: we have defined him as a first cause. But such definitional fiat is not an explanation at all, it's just a rearrangement of words.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
As best I know, neither of us do much of anything in any kind of patterned way that relates to the label. Other than argue on the internet about it.
I'm going to assume you're joking and not, in actuality, a complete fucking idiot.
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Equivocate?
I see. That makes sense.
I always considered the ontological argument to be strange because it doesn't actually provide you with a reason to believe. There's no actual persuasion happening. Very boring, dry, and academic argument.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
This debate ought to be this forum's mascot. It comes up regularly without fail. This is probably the tenth distinct thread on this exact debate that I have posted in.
Anyway, it all comes down to how you define words like "truth," "knowledge," "belief," and "faith." Generally when you get into philosophical precision about those words, you find that there is in fact a nonsensical redundancy in how people differentiate agnosticism and differing types of atheism.
As for proving God... just make God's existence axiomatic to your system. Boom. God exists. That's basically what faith is anyway.
Note: I consider myself an agnostic
Now, questioning whether a deity(/ies), if it/they did indeed exist, deserve to be worshiped that I find fun in thinking about and arguing.
So far, the best answer I can think of is "no" and "what in the hell does it mean to 'worship' something?"
should I take that concept to it's own thread?
If Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost actually existed I would drop all my shit to worship them straightaway. I may not really appreciate their take on things, but I also don't really want to burn in hell for eternity.
But that's the thing: You're basically worshiping a tyrant for the sole purpose of not incurring their wrath (which, incidentally, has been interpreted through various means over the years and various sects not even agreeing that the fire and brimstone hell is an accurate portrayal).
and of course, that doesn't even begin to touch on my feelings that an all-powerful, all knowing, all loving God is wholly incompatible with the state of life on earth and basic morality as informed by human empathy. As far as I'm concerned, you could have two out of the three, but not all three.
And then there's the issue of a creator demanding obedience from a species which he himself is supposed to have imbued with it's own will and capacity for reason
well, if he's not actually answering prayers or even making a small effort towards world peace then I sure wouldn't worship the sumbitch. If anything we should make a concentrated effort to find a way to kill god before we get sent to hell because it would make an awesome action movie.