Disproving god with the laws of logic

[Morse]

So let me get this straight and narrow Thief.

You come into a debate forum.

Then you say you do not need to prove god, and that we can't disprove him?

In a debate forum?

In

A forum about

Debate?

 

[Vile Atheist]

Here's how this exchange normally goes:

"Cause and effect...cause and effect...everything has a cause and effect."
"Okay, so what caused your God?"
"God doesn't have a cause."
"You've just contradicted yourself."
"No, God transcends time."
"Can you actually demonstrate that to be true?"
"I don't need to. I have faith. Faith requires no proving."
"Ummm....so you're saying that everything was created by something that didn't have an origin....and you attribute all these properties to it, even though you cannot demonstrate them to be true...and you know this because.....well you actually don't know it....you just say it needs no proving....for whatever half-baked reason you can come up with."
"Cause and effect.....cause and effect....everything has a cause and effect."


And repeat ad nauseum.



Personally, I believe Richard Dawkins created the universe. Scratch that. I KNOW Richard Dawkins created the universe. How? I have faith. And faith requires no proving. So sorry, Thief. You're dead wrong. Richard Dawkins is the creator of all. Abandon your beliefs now and worship Richard Dawkins. You are not going to do that? Then you won't accept your own damn argument. Now how can you - in all seriousness - expect anyone else with half a brain cell to?

 

[Morse]

Here's how this exchange normally goes:

"Cause and effect...cause and effect...everything has a cause and effect."
"Okay, so what caused your God?"
"God doesn't have a cause."
"You've just contradicted yourself."
"No, God transcends time."
"Can you actually demonstrate that to be true?"
"I don't need to. I have faith. Faith requires no proving."
"Ummm....so you're saying that everything was created by something that didn't have an origin....and you attribute all these properties to it, even though you cannot demonstrate them to be true...and you know this because.....well you actually don't know it....you just say it needs no proving....for whatever half-baked reason you can come up with."
"Cause and effect.....cause and effect....everything has a cause and effect."


And repeat ad nauseum.



Personally, I believe Richard Dawkins created the universe. Scratch that. I KNOW Richard Dawkins created the universe. How? I have faith. And faith requires no proving. So sorry, Thief. You're dead wrong. Richard Dawkins is the creator of all. Abandon your beliefs now and worship Richard Dawkins. You are not going to do that? Then you won't accept your own damn argument. Now how can you - in all seriousness - expect anyone else with half a brain cell to?

You are wrong, the universe was a combined effort, the result of the hard sweat and labor of Madhuri, Kerr, and I. The trinity has arisen!

 

[Vile Atheist]

I am not worthy!

 

[Morse]

That is correct. Have faith in this fact Contentius. Have faith, and you shall be rewarded with the cadavers of many boneless chickens.

 

[darkendless]

I get to say it....repeatedly...without proof.

Yeh, because you and every other theist are convinced they do not require proof.

Then again, who takes theists who act the way you do to be serious and intellectual human beings?

 

[Vile Atheist]

I get to say Christopher Hitchens is a literal peacock.....repeatedly....without proof.

 

[Morse]

As a side note, I would like to tell Thief something:

BECAUSE you INSIST on CONSTANTLY using periods in a sentence, I will inform you that TWO, yes, TWO spaces come after a period.

Not....this....at..alll
More... Like... This... See, now you don't... Seem,,,, completely.... Autistic.

And one space after a comma, as well, one space after a word.
Don't forget your capitals.
And don't forget to use those prepositions.
Oh, keep in mind your subjunctive and imperative tenses, never forget those.

 

[ManTimeForgot]

Here's how this exchange normally goes:

"Cause and effect...cause and effect...everything has a cause and effect."
"Okay, so what caused your God?"
"God doesn't have a cause."
"You've just contradicted yourself."
"No, God transcends time."
"Can you actually demonstrate that to be true?"
"I don't need to. I have faith. Faith requires no proving."
"Ummm....so you're saying that everything was created by something that didn't have an origin....and you attribute all these properties to it, even though you cannot demonstrate them to be true...and you know this because.....well you actually don't know it....you just say it needs no proving....for whatever half-baked reason you can come up with."
"Cause and effect.....cause and effect....everything has a cause and effect."

And here is how the exchange goes with a Deist who has thought things out a little bit better.

Everything which is imperfect must have a cause because it is logically impossible for something to come from nothing (it violates the tautological laws of identity; something cannot be other than itself and cannot possess qualities other than which it possesses; as such no thing can pass on qualities it does not itself possess because it does not have the quality to begin with). So then how does reality get started? Well either the totality of reality is perfect (eternal) and thus is immune to the requirement for needing a cause or reality is imperfect (is limited), and therefore has a starting point.

But then if reality is responsible for all that is real, how then can reality be created? Well you need something which transcends logic: something which is eternal or can "come from nothing" (our ability to conceive of Perfection fails utterly and completely, so any objection to Perfection on the grounds that you cannot see how it would work falls upon deaf ears; it isn't actually possible to conceive of Perfection as an imperfect being). Ergo "God" (the word "God" is a I think what trips up most people; a point which was brought up in the thread I started on cosmology and perfect perfection some time ago) "is."


The "best" that can be said in response to this is "we have no idea one way or another." And that is also the "worst" that can be said. Of course in the grand scheme of things I think it hardly matters whether the totality of reality is transcendent perfection or we are some non-separated "part" of transcendent perfection as they essentially amount to the same thing.

MTF

 

[Vile Atheist]

Everything which is imperfect must have a cause because it is logically impossible for something to come from nothing (it violates the tautological laws of identity; something cannot be other than itself and cannot possess qualities other than which it possesses; as such no thing can pass on qualities it does not itself possess because it does not have the quality to begin with). So then how does reality get started? Well either the totality of reality is perfect (eternal) and thus is immune to the requirement for needing a cause or reality is imperfect (is limited), and therefore has a starting point.

First, I'd like to thank you for offering something more sophisticated.

You say reality gets started through a "perfect" being. You'll need to define "perfect" here.

But then if reality is responsible for all that is real, how then can reality be created? Well you need something which transcends logic: something which is eternal or can "come from nothing" (our ability to conceive of Perfection fails utterly and completely, so any objection to Perfection on the grounds that you cannot see how it would work falls upon deaf ears; it isn't actually possible to conceive of Perfection as an imperfect being). Ergo "God" (the word "God" is a I think what trips up most people; a point which was brought up in the thread I started on cosmology and perfect perfection some time ago) "is."

Why not just skip the whole "God" bit and say the universe came from nothing?

And I note the answer to my above request for you to define perfection. My new question is: If you cannot even conceive of perfection, how do you know "God" possesses these qualities and how do you know these qualities are necessary to manifest reality?

 

[blackout]

I will probably always focus on the abrahamic god. As long as someone is trying to force my kids to pray to that god in school then he is the priority.

It might be helpful then to specify in your thread title.

"Disproving abrahamic god with the laws of logic"

or

"Disproving christian god with the laws of logic".

 

[Morse]

It might be helpful then to specify in your thread title.

"Disproving abrahamic god with the laws of logic"

or

"Disproving christian god with the laws of logic".

Makes sense. But is tedious.

Sort of like doing homework.

 

[ManTimeForgot]

Perfection (perfect assumption of all qualities existing or not) is rather immune to actual definition since it exists entirely within the realm of the logically indeterminate, but to proffer something as food for thought I propose that Perfection is a "composite" of infinite infinities. That is to say that Perfection possesses eternal, transcendent, unlimited qualities, capabilities, potentiality, actuality, and capacity of every sort, kind, way, manner, or being. What does all this mean? On any given Sunday... Not much to beings with limited memory storage and information processing like myself.


I do not suppose any "individual" "thing" possesses anything of the sort. Perfection lacks anything resembling "singular existence." So I suppose this is why others are bothered when the argument uses the word "God." I personally do not care about what about the nomenclature so long as the meaning is the same (Perfection, Eternally Transcendent, Supreme/Ultimate Reality, God, First Cause, Prime Mover, etc). Perfection is everything and nothing. Completely true and not true. So it is a very good question: "Why do we need anything of the sort?"

I've made this argument before and most did not pay attention to it the last time, but for what its worth I will rehash it here. If we presume that reality (Note: I am not talking about the Universe here. Whether the universe, our immediate cosmos, has a beginning or not is hardly relevant here) has a beginning then we need something which can violate causality (and I don't just mean temporal causality; I mean relational causality where one thing affects another) and therefore logic itself. So what sort of "thing" is capable of violating logic entirely? Well in order to do so you need something which "defeats" logic at every level and in every way, because if even one "aspect" acquires definition, then it is no longer immune to logic and thus cannot be something capable of violating causality. So we end up with something which is completely foreign to human understanding.

The other "option" as I see it is that reality is itself Perfect and thus eternal and does not need causation. It "simply" has always been. But then I contend that the difference between this cosmology and the above is essentially one of semantics or at best purposeless as applying this knowledge is impossible as we would have to be able to "exceed" reality to apply any of it.


There is a "third" possibility but I count it as only technically possible. If the totality of reality were limited but eternal, then you could void the causation requirement without invoking Perfection... But this has serious problems in my mind because by invoking eternity you have created an infinity but allowing it to "propagate" through an imperfect (limited) cosmos. The problem I have is the result of "containing" infinities. As near as I can tell (we have no actual experience with infinities so this is technically conjecture) in order to contain an infinity you need something infinite. Or put more simply a perfect object requires a perfect mechanism (notice that absolute ideologies all fail at some point). An eternal cosmos without a perfect mechanism for interaction/transfer between objects within the cosmos would eventually result in a kind of stasis. Some variation on the theme of the "Steady State Universe" could maintain an eternal cosmos while being "limited' (injecting information, energy, waveforms, etc whatever the cosmos needs to eliminate stasis), but exactly what sort of "thing" is required to create infinite "energy" (infinite because it is being done eternally) from nothing (something other than reality is responsible).

So I accept the technical feasibility that one can conceive of a cosmology without Perfection, but the cosmological model in question I propose is flawed. Leaving us with two virtually indistinguishable cosmological models in which one is "God" and the other requires "God." And in the final analysis I think it unworthy to attempt to distinguish between requiring and being when it comes to a non-local "thing" as "God."

MTF

 

[Morse]

Perfection (perfect assumption of all qualities existing or not) is rather immune to actual definition since it exists entirely within the realm of the logically indeterminate, but to proffer something as food for thought I propose that Perfection is a "composite" of infinite infinities. That is to say that Perfection possesses eternal, transcendent, unlimited qualities, capabilities, potentiality, actuality, and capacity of every sort, kind, way, manner, or being. What does all this mean? On any given Sunday... Not much to beings with limited memory storage and information processing like myself.


I do not suppose any "individual" "thing" possesses anything of the sort. Perfection lacks anything resembling "singular existence." So I suppose this is why others are bothered when the argument uses the word "God." I personally do not care about what about the nomenclature so long as the meaning is the same (Perfection, Eternally Transcendent, Supreme/Ultimate Reality, God, First Cause, Prime Mover, etc). Perfection is everything and nothing. Completely true and not true. So it is a very good question: "Why do we need anything of the sort?"

I've made this argument before and most did not pay attention to it the last time, but for what its worth I will rehash it here. If we presume that reality (Note: I am not talking about the Universe here. Whether the universe, our immediate cosmos, has a beginning or not is hardly relevant here) has a beginning then we need something which can violate causality (and I don't just mean temporal causality; I mean relational causality where one thing affects another) and therefore logic itself. So what sort of "thing" is capable of violating logic entirely? Well in order to do so you need something which "defeats" logic at every level and in every way, because if even one "aspect" acquires definition, then it is no longer immune to logic and thus cannot be something capable of violating causality. So we end up with something which is completely foreign to human understanding.

The other "option" as I see it is that reality is itself Perfect and thus eternal and does not need causation. It "simply" has always been. But then I contend that the difference between this cosmology and the above is essentially one of semantics or at best purposeless as applying this knowledge is impossible as we would have to be able to "exceed" reality to apply any of it.


There is a "third" possibility but I count it as only technically possible. If the totality of reality were limited but eternal, then you could void the causation requirement without invoking Perfection... But this has serious problems in my mind because by invoking eternity you have created an infinity but allowing it to "propagate" through an imperfect (limited) cosmos. The problem I have is the result of "containing" infinities. As near as I can tell (we have no actual experience with infinities so this is technically conjecture) in order to contain an infinity you need something infinite. Or put more simply a perfect object requires a perfect mechanism (notice that absolute ideologies all fail at some point). An eternal cosmos without a perfect mechanism for interaction/transfer between objects within the cosmos would eventually result in a kind of stasis. Some variation on the theme of the "Steady State Universe" could maintain an eternal cosmos while being "limited' (injecting information, energy, waveforms, etc whatever the cosmos needs to eliminate stasis), but exactly what sort of "thing" is required to create infinite "energy" (infinite because it is being done eternally) from nothing (something other than reality is responsible).

So I accept the technical feasibility that one can conceive of a cosmology without Perfection, but the cosmological model in question I propose is flawed. Leaving us with two virtually indistinguishable cosmological models in which one is "God" and the other requires "God." And in the final analysis I think it unworthy to attempt to distinguish between requiring and being when it comes to a non-local "thing" as "God."

MTF

I may be in the wrong museum by asking this, but I ask this question anyway:

How many points are there from you to me?

Oh, and do you believe in evolution? The topic of you being the only theist without an amber preserved mind came up, and we were wondering. I assumed you believe in creation?

 

[Vile Atheist]

I've made this argument before and most did not pay attention to it the last time, but for what its worth I will rehash it here. If we presume that reality (Note: I am not talking about the Universe here. Whether the universe, our immediate cosmos, has a beginning or not is hardly relevant here) has a beginning then we need something which can violate causality (and I don't just mean temporal causality; I mean relational causality where one thing affects another) and therefore logic itself. So what sort of "thing" is capable of violating logic entirely? Well in order to do so you need something which "defeats" logic at every level and in every way, because if even one "aspect" acquires definition, then it is no longer immune to logic and thus cannot be something capable of violating causality. So we end up with something which is completely foreign to human understanding.

You refer to God as a "First Mover". Presumably, this means that God completed the first action (presumably the singularity). Every action in the universe influences another action. We interpolate this back to the singularity. But that singularity had to originate from some point. If we are to follow the track of Nothing -> Something, God cannot exist for God is "something". Essentially all you're doing is replacing "Nothing" with something that cannot be understood and it's properties not conceived by us. Basically, it's replacing one unknown with another unknown and doesn't solve the mystery.

I think the deistic case is better made than the theistic case, but I don't see the merit in it. If something, as you say, transcends logic...what purpose does God have when we can merely say the universe came from nothing? The universe itself is a logical contradiction.

But...you also point out how God itself could be the universe (basically what I just said). In that case, the nomenclature is pointless. If anything, detrimental for it carries a LOT of baggage with it. More than any other word in our language. There would be no point in worshipping or paying special deferrence to the universe as some might do. There would be no point to labelling the universe as "God". The universe is the universe. If the universe is itself the initial logical contradiction, then why don't we just say the universe is itself the initial logical contradiction? Why do we need to say "God is the initial contradiction"?

 

[Vile Atheist]

I may be in the wrong museum by asking this, but I ask this question anyway:

How many points are there from you to me?

Oh, and do you believe in evolution? The topic of you being the only theist without an amber preserved mind came up, and we were wondering. I assumed you believe in creation?

I believe he mentioned he is a deist. Meaning his notion of God is the origin of everything and doesn't really meddle in our lives. I think he accepts scientific explanations after that. But that's just my guestimate. I'll let him speak for himself.

 

[blackout]

Makes sense. But is tedious.

Sort of like doing homework.

I hardly see how an accurate thread title is tedious.
There are so many gods and god concepts out there.
(just check out the RF forum directory for starters)
What's is tedious however, is having to read 3 pages in
to find out that the thread is addressing only one particular god concept.

It wastes my time.

Specifying the god/god concept you are addressing
(especially) on a forum such as this one...
where people hold so many differing god concepts,
is both courteous and respectful.

It is also NECESSARY information to the conversation at hand.

 

[Morse]

I was putting words in his mouth, notice how this thread isn't mine. I shouldn't have said anything.

 

[Vile Atheist]

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/word-god-is-product-of-human-weakness.html

Wonder if Thief found this during his Google searches of Einstein.

 

[ManTimeForgot]

You refer to God as a "First Mover". Presumably, this means that God completed the first action (presumably the singularity). Every action in the universe influences another action. We interpolate this back to the singularity. But that singularity had to originate from some point. If we are to follow the track of Nothing -> Something, God cannot exist for God is "something". Essentially all you're doing is replacing "Nothing" with something that cannot be understood and it's properties not conceived by us. Basically, it's replacing one unknown with another unknown and doesn't solve the mystery.

I think the deistic case is better made than the theistic case, but I don't see the merit in it. If something, as you say, transcends logic...what purpose does God have when we can merely say the universe came from nothing? The universe itself is a logical contradiction.

But...you also point out how God itself could be the universe (basically what I just said). In that case, the nomenclature is pointless. If anything, detrimental for it carries a LOT of baggage with it. More than any other word in our language. There would be no point in worshipping or paying special deferrence to the universe as some might do. There would be no point to labelling the universe as "God". The universe is the universe. If the universe is itself the initial logical contradiction, then why don't we just say the universe is itself the initial logical contradiction? Why do we need to say "God is the initial contradiction"?

I refer to "God" as Perfect Perfection (PP for short) or Supreme Reality (I don't like First Cause as notions of causality don't really relate to this "being"). The problem with interpolation back to a singularity is that that singularity includes time. Our universe is not necessarily synonymous with the totality of reality. We might only be able to go back (however many billion years), but that doesn't mean that the whole cosmos might not be trillions or even eternal.

"God" actually isn't something. That's part of that whole completely logically indeterminate. "God" lacks existence as we understand the term to mean, including "being something." I am "extending" the mystery to outside the bounds of reality. Anything outside of reality is not my concern, whereas a great "void" which is "immune" explanation would be a concern.


But as far as your last point is concerned I agree entirely. Reality is Reality. I find the notion "God" useful when examining the consequences of infinity as it relates to cosmology, but you are correct in noting that "God" generally has a bunch of (in my opinion useless) religious baggage attached which can confuse the issue. And I do not advocate "worship" of Supreme Reality or the "Totality of Reality" or whatever you want to call "All that is" or "Origination of Reality." The notion is completely foreign to me.


I think the cosmos is far more mysterious and wondrous than most people give it credit for. I am a defender of religion in act, but not in ideology; I like to think of it as training wheels for people on their way to accepting ideas which have heavier implications than they are prepared to accept at the time. Whereas the journey inward and outward; the search for answers whether it is tinged with notions of religious experience or a half-obsessed desire to manipulate the cosmos (become a wizard) it hardly matters to me why we search for truth, answers, facts, new experiences, wisdom, etc; so long as we don't stop searching.

MTF