No it doesn’t. It is a hypothetical question; that’s it.
No; just another hypothetical question.
Not quite; it would only be proof to those who are aware of his existence.
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If God existed would there be proof?
- Thread starter Trailblazer
- Start date
firedragon
Veteran Member
Exactly. that's exactly what you have been saying. Which means "If God exists, there won't be any proof" which what you are invariably arguing for. So you can never ask for proof. Ever again.
Fallen Prophet
Well-Known Member
What are you talking about?
I was not the one who asked the original question that implied that God existed.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
No, it does not imply that since "If God exists" is a hypothetical statement.
If we knew that God existed and was the Creator then everything in Creation would be the proof of His existence.
Fallen Prophet
Well-Known Member
All irrelevant.
If God existed - then everything He created could be proof of His existence.
I never once argued that the existence of the Universe proved that God existed.
Evolution theory (modernized mother earth cult) is basically the same, some people have obsession that things must have evolved without Bible God and then they try to fit everything to their world view and to that theory.
I think Bible explains it well, and that Hebrews 11:1 is excellent in this. Especially the example of Noah is good. Noah knew well that God is real, God had told him directly what will happen. So, the question was not in his case about believing God is real, he knew it. But, even though he knew it, he could have told God, "no, you are kidding, there can't be such flood coming". Instead of rejecting God, he believed what God told and was loyal to God and built the ark as told, even though it was probably ridiculous for observers.
But, there is also trust part in that. Noah trusted to God, which is why he was loyal to God. There were no signs of the flood, but he was sure that things will go as God told. I think the same is expected from all righteous people. They know and understand, and after that it is looked will they be loyal to God, or do they reject Him.
Fallen Prophet
Well-Known Member
Exactly.
For example, 'If you had the money - would you buy a new car?"
The hypothetical question is predicated on the idea that you had the money - not any actual claim that you had money.
If you said that you would buy a new car if you had the money - that is not any actual claim about whether or not you had any money - only a claim about what you would do with it if you had it.
Therefore - if God existed - would there be evidence?
If this God is the same one that created everything - then hypothetically - yes - literally everything would be evidence of His existence if He existed.
Correct.
My premise is that if God existed God would have to provide the proof because there is no way we could ever get to where God exists and get the proof ourselves.
If God existed would there be proof?
I am not asking if there could be proof or if there should be proof, I am asking if there would be proof.
Thanks, Trailblazer
- If God existed would God provide proof of His existence?
- Does the fact that there is no proof of God's existence mean that God does not exist?
- In other words, could God exist and not provide proof of His existence?
I don't know God's agenda. Perhaps not providing proof is part of it.
Perhaps God is not interested in being worshiped or acknowledged.
Maybe since acknowledgement is important to us humans we assume the same is true for God.
I never said that you did.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
*sign*
Your claim was "if god, then proof". Trying to turn my denial of that implication into "if god, then no proof", is a basic mistake in very, very simple logic. As I keep saying, your claim amounts to proof being necessary for god, my counter-claim is that proof is sufficient but not necessary for god. See: Necessity and sufficiency.
Our disagreement is this:
You: If god, then proof.
Me: If proof then god (which is not the same as: if god, then no proof.)
Your claim (if god then proof) has the truth table (see, for example: Truth table - Logical implication):
G ¦ P ¦ G ⇒ P
--------------
F ¦ F ¦ T (Possible)
F ¦ T ¦ T (Possible) *1
T ¦ F ¦ F (Impossible) *2
T ¦ T ¦ T (Possible)
*1 Obviously you can't have proof of god without god, not that I think you meant to imply that.
*2 This is what I think makes it absurd. It's perfectly possible for a god to exist without proof.
My counter-claim (if proof then god) has the truth table:
G ¦ P ¦ P ⇒ G
--------------
F ¦ F ¦ T (Possible)
F ¦ T ¦ F (Impossible)
T ¦ F ¦ T (Possible) *1
T ¦ T ¦ T (Possible)
*1 This is our disagreement.
This is basic, basic stuff that you'll find in any introduction to truth functional logic.
Sheldon
Veteran Member
Well first we'd have to have some clue which deity you're talking about? Apparently it's a secret? You know humans have created thousands of deities, right?
EtuMalku
Abn Iblis ابن إبليس
The problem I see here is that it's likely that Moses is a fictional character and thus the stories of Moses are fables written by Abrahamics intended to further their faith.
The problem is we been historically without a miracle performer for quite a while. The Quran shows for every people there is a Guide (13:7) who can perform such miracle (the context of the verse) but that also God stops sending with miracles only if former people deny them. This means for some reason, the past generations denial of miracles made it harder for God to present them now.
And we see Muslims have the wrong concept of Dajjal performing miracles of same level of Prophets and hence have negated miracles as proofs. Not only that, but they are heavily bias against Ahlulbayt (a) and their position, which makes the Mahdi highly likely rejected now.
So we have to heal some of the ignorance, if the Mahdi is going to come back on the good terms and not the warned disasters regarding him.
While the Guide (13:7) is not performing miracles in public, the same chapter emphasizes God guides who turns to God often and so if we pray believing the straight path is the leader of the time and miracles is part of it, then we will be inshallah shown.
Surah Fatiha if properly understood with respect to Ahlulbayt (a) and the Mahdi (a) and his leadership in this time, then inshallah, God will guide all believers who believe in it to the Mahdi and by the Mahdi in this time and future as I believe he always does, whether guide is in open or hidden, miracles are part of what God shows to a people who have certainty.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
For purposes of my OP it could be any deity.
firedragon
Veteran Member
You have misinterpreted everything. This has nothing to do with sufficient.
Tell me, in your truth table, where did you get the third value? I can be used to differ between some uses of disjunctive language from others. We can utilise it to rule out exclusive disjunction. And you cannot posit the If-then on your truth table If we take p or q to be false when we take p and q to be true, then we are using “or” in a manner that doesnt match with the truth table. What can we say of someone who is ignorant of the truth or falsity of p and of q ? What does the truth table tell us about p or q in that case? It seems that applying truth table is not so straight forward. You should note the if-then is based on truth and lack of knowledge. We might not know the truth, and we might not have the knowledge to know the truth. That does not mean the argument is false.
IF Abraham exists today, there has to be proof. We might not know this proof, but there has to be proof. The Kohinoor was stolen, the thief exists, and there has to be proof for the theirs existence. The issue is, we know there is evidence because it was stolen. So it is evidence that there was a thief. Anything that exists has proof of its existence, if it exists, we may not know the proof. If it doesnt exist, it will not have of of its existence. If you find proof for something that does not exist, it is not proof of its existence, because it doesnt exist. IF.
Cant be going through all of this. Your application of logic is false.
Cheers.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Well, for a now in this universe natural pandeism deity you could prove its non-existence because you can't see it.
So no, you can't prove the non-existence of a supernatural deity, but then you can't prove the existence of a supernatural deity.
Are you still expecting him to engage you? He won't. He can't. He cannot understand you or your arguments, and makes none of his own.
You're looking for dialectic, by which I mean the cooperative effort in which two people that share the same rigorous epistemological values and methods use them to resolve their differences by going back to the point of departure and identifying why each chose a different path. This is what you have been asking in vain for him to do. But he can't. This is a skill learned at university. It requires expertise in critical thinking. And it requires one to respect academic values.
The kind of interaction we see here between you two is like two people at the ping-pong table, and one will only serve, never return a ball. The other returns the serve, but the server doesn't even acknowledge the return much less cooperate with a return. He serves, you return, the ball goes right by him off the table with him not even seeing it as he serves you another ball. There's never a rally. There's not even a ping-pong game. And you keep asking him to return your return (address your post), but he never does. This is why I often say that there is no discussion there. Discussion is impossible if one party cannot or refuses to play ball.
I liked your post with the logical symbols, but of course, it just flew by this poster and off the table. Not even an acknowledgement that he saw it, much less understood it, or that it made your case about the existence of and the proof of gods. It's all you will ever get. The reason to write such posts is that other people who do share your values might read it, understand it, and benefit from it.
I understand that when I'm posting to such people. In fact, I don't even think of it as a reply but an comment intended for whomever can benefit from it, which I know isn't the person to whom the post is addressed. If there was nobody but me and such a person in the thread, there would be no value in posting at all except perhaps as another opportunity to practice formulating cogent arguments and perhaps practicing ones communication skills.
I came across an interesting term for a particular cognitive bias called false consensus. It's the mistaken assumption that we are all basically the same, varying perhaps quantitatively in how far we've come, but assuming that the other guy can understand you with enough patience, because his brain and his way of thinking are essentially the same as yours, when it's not. How does this manifest? Just like we are seeing here. One guy trying every possible approach to being understood because he thinks that the other guy just need to read the right words and his brain will finally see. But it never happens. He never sees.
You really can't have a constructive discussion (dialectic) with somebody who doesn't have critical thinking skills, by which I mean the ability to interpret evidence properly and to be able to make a sound argument and evaluate an argument by another for soundness. If they can't do that, you can't have a constructive discussion of anything academic or serious.
And this is a good example of what I mean by a lack of critical thinking skills. I don't think you know what evidence is, much less proof. Evidence is that which is evidence. Evidence for a proposition is any evidence that makes the proposition more likely. There are both naturalistic and supernaturalistic possibilities for the origin of our universe. The world itself is evidence that one of these is correct, but is no better evidence for one possibility than the other. The world is only evidence that a world like this one is both possible and actual.
Bad reasoning again. Theists are just wrong, not mad. They are wrong because they rely on faith, which is not a path to truth.
You remind me of the people that say that Jesus was either mad, a liar, or who he said he was. I don't believe he was any of those.
Also, the poster that offered three possibilities for the afterlife, none of which included that there is no afterlife. It's one of the commonest fallacies we see from apologists. They simply drop logical possibilities from their candidate list of what might have happened or be the case by faith.
Nope. You reveal another cognitive bias, one closely allied with Dunning-Kruger, or the unknowingly unknowing. These include the people who really have no idea what critical thinking is or its power to generate truth. It's not that they can't master it or that they value others "ways of knowing" more. They don't know what this phrase means, or that what it refers to exists.
As a result, they are unaware that there is such a thing as intellectual expertise (they recognize that athletic expertise or musical expertise exist, but not intellectual expertise), or that there are people who can know true things and know that they are true (the knowingly knowing). Such a person is also suffering from false consensus, or the mistaken idea that other minds are essentially the same as his, and since he is just guessing, so is everybody else.
This is the kind of person who says, "Well that's just an opinion" when he hears somebody like Dr. Fauci speak. He doesn't recognize that all opinions are not equal, that some are wrong, and that there are people who can identify the difference. He bristles at being told he is wrong by somebody that he considers also unknowingly unknowing, since he considers all people to be that.
Dunning-Kruger is described as people having an inflated sense of their own cognitive prowess, but I think it is better described as people having a deflated sense of what others know.
For completeness, we also have the knowingly unknowing - people that understand that there are experts, and that they are not one in a particular area such as epidemiology. These are the people that take the advice of experts. They know they don't know, but they also know who does.
I don't recall him saying that. Fault lies with anybody who had the ability to prevent the crime but didn't. Watch what happens to Trump over this January 6th thing. The blame will be shared by everybody abut whom this is true and it can be demonstrated in court. Your comment implies that if the rioters were guilty, then their "God" is not. They both are if they both had the chance to make the outcome different but didn't.
What makes you think it isn't people that need you to believe what they tell you by faith because they just made it up and naturally have no evidence to present are the ones who condemn empiricism for obvious, self-serving reasons? It's human nature to do that. You're making the same logical error as the poster quoted above you - dropping logical possibilities for no reason.
If I did invented a god or religion, I would also condemn you for not believing me, calling you things like wicked and adulterous (or today, wife beater or pedophile or Communist), while praising those willing to believe without evidence that I don't have.
Only if it exists and wants to be known. If a god exists that can't or doesn't care to present itself, that's fine. That god owes me nothing.
kjw47
Well-Known Member
Oh you must missed the part that God requires FAITH. He makes sure one knows he is there if they listen to him. He also mentioned the wicked would require proof. Probably because they have no faith.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Look, formal logic is obviously a beyond you so, let's put it this way: I objected to your implication that if god exists then there will be proof, not because I believed that if god exists there will not be proof, I objected because there is an obvious counterexample in that god exists is true but there may be no proof.
However, here are some other points:
Of course it is, for reasons I explained. It is true to say that proof is sufficient for something to be true but not be necessary. Something can be true without there being any proof.
Not sure what you mean by third value. I linked to a reference for the third column. The third line: G is T and P is F, is impossible because it's a direct contradiction of the implication that if G, then P and I explained before that G ⇒ P means if G, then P (#309).
I already gave examples: something existing beyond the observable universe (or in another universe in some larger multiverse), can be true but it's impossible, even in principle, to get any evidence, let alone proof. It is especially true for an omnipotent god, that may be deliberately making sure that there is no proof (or evidence) of its existence. So it's perfectly possible for things to be true and there be no evidence. The only way your implication could work is if you posit that it only applies to an omniscient being, and even then you'd have the contradictory case in which it is possible to have proof of something that isn't actually true (*1 in the first table). Saying otherwise would be the fallacy of denying the antecedent.
However, here are some other points:
Of course it is, for reasons I explained. It is true to say that proof is sufficient for something to be true but not be necessary. Something can be true without there being any proof.
Not sure what you mean by third value. I linked to a reference for the third column. The third line: G is T and P is F, is impossible because it's a direct contradiction of the implication that if G, then P and I explained before that G ⇒ P means if G, then P (#309).
I already gave examples: something existing beyond the observable universe (or in another universe in some larger multiverse), can be true but it's impossible, even in principle, to get any evidence, let alone proof. It is especially true for an omnipotent god, that may be deliberately making sure that there is no proof (or evidence) of its existence. So it's perfectly possible for things to be true and there be no evidence. The only way your implication could work is if you posit that it only applies to an omniscient being, and even then you'd have the contradictory case in which it is possible to have proof of something that isn't actually true (*1 in the first table). Saying otherwise would be the fallacy of denying the antecedent.