INDISPUTABLE Rational Proof That God Exists (Or Existed)

[Enai de a lukal]

People who specialize in philosophical concepts like contradiction not only say there is no contradictions concerning God but that God is necessary to undue contradictions and unfulfilled dependencies that exist if he is absent.

Either a bald-face lie, or a laughable display of ignorance. Specialists in philosophy say no such thing; the idea that God is necessary has been consistently rejected for, oh, about 200 years now, and many philosophers have spent their time highlighting and discussing apparent contradictions in the theistic conception of God. This statement is "an epic fail"

 

[Thief]

I would say God is necessary to cover the scientific necessity of cause and effect.

Regardless of belief or lack thereof....
dismissing cause and effect dismisses all forms of experiment or logic.

Nothing can 'be'.... without a Cause.

Spirit first. God would be the First of all in mind and heart.


Substance is creation....and God is the Creator.
Can't really have one without the other.
That he stands back to watch His toys spin in circles doesn't mean He's not around.

That's my belief...and logic.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

I would say God is necessary to cover the scientific necessity of cause and effect.

That is not the sense in which God has been claimed to be necessary, for instance by some very confused theologians trying to dabble in logic.

Regardless of belief or lack thereof....
dismissing cause and effect dismisses all forms of experiment or logic.

Dismissing God as a pseudo-explanation by fiat for causality in toto is not to dismiss the particular causal relations necessary to scientific explanation. Furthermore, supposing that causality itself must admit of a causal explanation, the way individual events do, is incoherent no less than, e.g. "north of the north pole", "before the beginning of time", and so on, and reeks of a compositional fallacy to boot.

 

[cottage]

Robin2, re: 3118
I'm sorry but much of your argument is convoluted and wandering. I have answered what I consider to be all your key points. But if there is anything I've missed that you think I ought to have addressed then please post it again and I'll give you my answer by return.

That was my point. They extrapolated from what they knew as an almost universal about what they can observe to what they could not observe because no known reason prevented them from doing so. However that was even a less persuasive inference than mine. Animals do not exist universally. Cause and effect exists in every observation ever taken concerning anything. things do not get more universal. You labeling one speculation and the other an argument from observation is a semantic technicality that is not even true as a technicality.

This is was your analogy:

“Animals were at one time only observable or apprehended by people outside N America. Did that fact do anything to indicate animals did not exist in N America. My argument is basically the same. There are more reasons to believe life exists where ever it is possible than reasons to doubt it can or does. Don't get the reasoning.”

So you were questioning whether the people outside North America had cause to believe that animals could not exist elsewhere on the planet. I think we can agree they had not. There is no reason to believe that animals, living breathing creatures like us, could not exist elsewhere. Animals actually exist! The people outside North America had knowledge of animals and so it would not be unreasonable to believe there were animals elsewhere on this actually existing planet of ours. But then you said: “There are more reasons to believe life exists where ever it is possible than reasons to doubt it can or does.” I think we can agree again, if we’re talking about planet Earth, but we simply cannot know that to be the case with the universe as a whole. But of course you are not simply referring to “life”, possible experience, or what may exist elsewhere in the universe; for you are proposing to spirit us out planet Earth and the entire universe and present us with supernatural being that not only doesn’t actually exist in possible experience but is incontrovertibly tied to a contingent principle!
So do you see the difference: Animals and planet Earth happen to exists, unlike your analogy that wants to infer from what does exist a thing that doesn’t exist. Your argument demonstrates the fallacy of unfalsifiability, and also the fallacious assumption that if that if something has not already been proven false, then it must therefore be accepted as true. (Burden of Proof not acknowledged), which together with appeals to authority and appeals to popularity and belief form the greater part of your overall argument.


And now a word concerning principle of cause and effect and contingency, as there seems to be some confusion concerning this.

“Contingent” does not mean that a thing must be dependent upon something else.

A contingent proposition is neither true nor false. “The world is contingent upon God”), the Flying Spaghetti Monster or anything else) is a statement that is possibly true or possibly false. So contingent existence means that a thing may or may not be: that is to say without necessity. Whereas “A triangle has three sides” is a contingently true statement, necessarily so because the concept of a triangle is analysable by its having three angles.

However Gottfried Leibniz’s Argument from Contingency holds that there must be a reason to explain the existence of something. Briefly paraphrased: If “The universe exists” is true then something must account for the fact that it is true. And therefore, according to Leibniz, there must be a cause for the existence of the universe and the cause must be such that denial leads to self-contradiction. So a thing that exists but which may not exist is to be finally accountable to a thing that actually exists and for which the non-existence is impossible. The problem of course is that is cause is itself contingent, the very premissary tool that the argument needs to construct its conclusion! So the thing that has no possibility of not existing is to be accounted for by a thing that has the possibility of not existing. And that presents a mega problem in the case of “the thing for which non-existence is impossible”; a contradiction in plain terms.


You said: “Everything that exists must have a cause and that everything that exists must have an explanation of it's self in it's own nature, in something or in something else's nature. Neither one of those rules have any dependence on the natural.”

Oh, and incidentally, there are no “laws of philosophy”.

I entirely agree an explanation is needed if an intelligent, personal being freely chose to bring the world into existence for that is to assign a purpose to the act of creation. And there can only be two answers to that question. God created the world for himself, or for the benefit of others. But an omnipotent Supreme Being, who is sufficient in all things, cannot have needs, unfulfilled wishes or desires. He has everything and is everything by definition. And nor can it be said that he created the world for the benefits of others, since it is nonsensical to imply that creatures that didn’t formerly exist can benefit from anything. Neither God nor a self-exiting world need a reason for being, since there will be nothing external to them, but if the world is created then there must be a reason and a purpose for its being brought into being. So I think we are entitled to ask the reason for bringing the world into existence. And given that there areonly, at most, the two possibilities mentioned above, both of which contradict the concept of an all-sufficient Supreme Being, a personal explanation fails to deify the basic first cause concept.

And I’m not “basically saying if you cannot prove X then X is impossible”, which I believe is what you said. I’m saying X is impossible if it is contradictory.

 

[The Neo Nerd]

Any indisputable, rational proof yet?

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Only that there are no limits to the self-deception some are willing to engage in to hold on to cherished (if infantalizing) beliefs.

 

[1robin]

Either a bald-face lie, or a laughable display of ignorance. Specialists in philosophy say no such thing; the idea that God is necessary has been consistently rejected for, oh, about 200 years now, and many philosophers have spent their time highlighting and discussing apparent contradictions in the theistic conception of God. This statement is "an epic fail"

If you wish to discuss anything with me do not throw that term about without just cause. You must have access to my motivations to know what you claimed and you do not. That makes your sarcastic accusation a lie it's self because I can know, that you know, that you do not know my motivation. Do not do so again if you desire a debate.

As for your bizarre claim. For my statement to be true I need exactly 1 professional philosopher who sees no contradiction in God's nature and anything else. Craig, Aquinas, Zacharias among a great many have more credentials than necessary and claim exactly what I did. Not only was my statement not a lie (I had no intention to knowing say an incorrect statement), not only was it not incorrect, it is absolutely factual. I said nothing about all scholars or even most. I said people well trained to know find no contradiction concerning God and also find that only with God are many paradoxes, dead ends, and contradictions cleared up. That is absolutely true.

Even if we pretend the idea of a "necessary being" and God are contradictory, which is silly, that would only show an actual contradiction in semantic terminology not in any actually existing being. God cannot be bound by our pathetic attempts to describe him. He is not affected by your categories or what "rightly or wrongly" is ascribed to them. God is not affected or bound by your semantics any more than a whale is bound or effected by calling them mammals. Our terminology governs nothing. Not one label, one category, or one thought exercise changes anything that exists nature or essence the tiniest fraction. The effort usually comes from the attempt to hide an emotional position or preference in the vagaries and ambiguities that the finite limits of fallible man's language usage. You can not determine the reality of anything by slapping the label necessary on it, and you cannot make anything in any language anything but derivative and subordinate to God if he exists. You have it perfectly backwards.

 

[1robin]

Oh gimme a break!
Did you type it or not? Gee, for someone who gets all indignant about semantic arguments, you certainly like to play around with them yourself.

I copied that statement from a quote by someone else. I did not want to break up his statement even though it included something true but not applicable to the context. Is that just too much to grasp? I have no desire to discuss the semantics of this issue at all. You brought up a semantic objection, out of courtesy I was attempting to explain or clarify what caused it's inclusion. What is so extraordinarily confusing to you about this? I do not get it. The only thing that explains what your doing here is that you mad because the one objection you thought you had had nothing to do with my claims in their proper context. I do not know that is true but it best explains what you saying. If correct I will be happy to debate the truth of that statement in the context you placed it in when this discussion is concluded. I just want to do one thing at a time, I do not want to follow you down every off ramp you take whenever you wish to detour. This is not complicated.

By the way, I already knew you cribbed that statement, line for line, from William Lane Craig. I watch debates too.

No, that is where I heard it from. He is quoting the source I used. As usual lets pretend you are right anyway. If I said hey you got E=MC^2 from Einstein would that make it any less true.

It is not true. Others have claimed divine authority, so his claim was not unprecedented.

God lord I got us back on the road and you turned around and went back to the exit anyway. That is not true in two separate ways. No one ever made the same claims he did about his authority (that is actually an inescapable fact). So his claim was unprecedented, meaning no one had ever made identical claims before. It is also untrue because no one had ever made as comprehensive, absolute, and as sweeping claims to divine authority before. It was also dishonest because it had no relevance in the context those claims OBVIOUSLY were given in. I will debate this issue all you want but lets first conclude that actual reason that claim was made to begin with. It was made to illustrate that not only is he considered a historical figure but a historical figure that the evidence makes almost certain was claiming what the Bible suggests he was.

And I’m not sure how we know what Jesus supposedly said anyway, given that he never actually wrote anything down.

I can tell you how that can be resolved but I was giving a conclusion concerning a virtual consensus of a large group. I cannot tell you why it is they have confidence they know what types of claims he made. I have no access to it. I can tell you scientists have a consensus E=MC^2 is a true statement but it would be impossible for me to tell you why each one thinks it is. Is there any hope you will eventually actually deal with the claims themselves.

The statement is absolutely NOT irrelevant to the conclusion. It’s one of your premises for goodness sake!

I think you made some kind of type O here. The statement was relevant but it's claim of unprecedented was an incidental (though true) part of that statement.

So what? I’m the Queen of the Universe. There, I just did.

This is utter none-sense. You have not even come close to claiming the level of authority or comprehensive claims to divinity that Christ did. As usual let's pretend your right and did so. You would still have done nothing because unprecedented only applies to anti-dated things. A thing can be unprecedented and be copied later a billon times. Come on, do I really have to waste the little time I have on stuff this silly.

I have no idea why you think one of your premises is irrelevant to your claims or your conclusion.

The statement contained two claims and a quality associated with one. The claim he was historical is my primary claim and is a premise. The claim he claimed divine authority is a very secondary claim that only reinforces the type of historical figure he was. The word unprecedented is true and meaningful but is not necessary for my claims which seem to have not been addressed at all.

How is the claim you say Jesus made inconvenient to Jesus? It seems to be quite the opposite.

I never said they were though no claim could have ever been more inconvenient. It led to his death. When he was twice asked are you the king of the Jews/son of God (both divine and messianic requirements)? His affirmation meant certain death, his denial very easily could have prevented death. Once he did not answer but nodded ascension (prophetic) and once he said I believe "it is as you say". I made a statement about claims in general. It applied to Christ but was not stated about him.

How do we verify Jesus’ supposed claim that he had divine authority of any kind?

Good lord. You had taken this same off ramp several posts ago and I had explained this in detail. We were had come back to the highway and you had taken another off ramp. I have been trying to get back to the main road and you went back to the first off ramp and jumped the curb again. You are something else. I have already explained that this has no relevance in my context but existed in the statement for another purpose. My claim is still as true even if Jesus was lying. However I would be more than happy to justify that claim in this other context once we conclude this one if that is even possible. This is worse than herding cats on crack. You can drive them but the one place they will never go is where they are supposed to.

My brother-in-law has been claiming for years that he’s half-Italian (he isn’t even a tiny bit Italian). He maintains that to this day, even to people like his family members (who obviously know he isn’t), that he is in fact, half Italian. So maybe he’s sincere, but is he telling the truth?

Is your brothers historical existence related to that claim?

It’s not a bizarre concept, I simply wanted you to explain what you meant by the phrase.

I meant in this context (as explained several times in detail) that Christ existed historically and he believed he had divine authority (whether he actually did or not). In other contexts I can show he did have it. In this one it is irrelevant.

They’re not all facts. Sorry. How can you say “they’re all facts” (as in, the numbered list you gave are all factual statements) and then turn around and tell me that I’m shipwrecked on an unrelated auxiliary point which was one of the statements on that numbered list!?

This is true. It was my mistake and a casualty of frustration over not being able to get you to understand the simplest thing and being in a hurry. They may be facts but are not known facts. They are the best and quorum conclusions based on the evidence given by most of those most in a position to know. That was my original claim but apparently I got frustrated and in a hurry left out some clarity the 50th time I had to say the same thing. I made a type O. You are shipwrecked in triviality, non-context issues, and do not seem to have any interest in the rescue efforts I supply. You have beached yourself firmly in irrelevance and refuse to budge. I keep dragging you out to sea and you turn around and head for the nearest beach.

What do you think the word “unprecedented” means?

Do you have a wheel with random thoughts on it you spin for every comment. Precedent technically means no identical and previous example.

Precedent:
1. never done or known before.
You violated that simple definition twice in your example above.


I will give you another and very easy way to prove me wrong even about this non-context issue your obsessed with to the exclusion of the actual one.


Find me any historical figure both believed by the majority who should best know to have existed and to have claimed.

1. To be a ransom for all men's sin.
2. To be co-occupant of God's throne.
3. To be the equivalent in essence with God.
4. To have mastery (and demonstrate it) over the natural.
5. To have existed eternally.
6. To be the only divine son of God.
7. To be that which everything was created through and for.
8. To have authority of everything.
9. To be perfectly sinless.
10. To have the only name by which men may be saved.

That is only maybe ten percent of what Christ claimed but far more than any other has. Good luck. If you ever intend to take my comments in the context they were given and they obviously belong in you be sure to let me know so I can drag you to sea again.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

For my statement to be true I need exactly 1 professional philosopher who sees no contradiction in God's nature and anything else.

If that's all you meant, than your statement was extremely misleading.

Craig, Aquinas, Zacharias among a great many have more credentials than necessary and claim exactly what I did.

A fringe academic whose views are almost universally rejected by his peers, a theologian who, many hundreds of years ago, intentionally set out to show that Aristotle can be cited in support of Scripture rather than being a threat to it, and a prophet that lived over a thousand years ago. A real current list there for one thing- and for another, I recall you saying something about professional philosophers, not prophets and theologians? Oops!

Not only was my statement not a lie (I had no intention to knowing say an incorrect statement), not only was it not incorrect, it is absolutely factual.

Ignorance, then, I see.

I said nothing about all scholars or even most. I said people well trained to know find no contradiction concerning God and also find that only with God are many paradoxes, dead ends, and contradictions cleared up. That is absolutely true.

Saying "professional philosophers think that such and such" is not a statement about what most professional philosophers think?

And if you think it is true, back it up. Giving the names of three theologians, from hundreds of years apart, one of whom worked in an exclusively Christian environment (such that most of his ultimate conclusions were foregone), and another who's views are roundly rejected, certainly will not suffice to show what "professional philosophers" think.

Even if we pretend the idea of a "necessary being" and God are contradictory, which is silly

That is silly; but then again, you just made it up. Nobody suggested "the idea of a 'necessary being' and God are contradictory'- I've disputed your claim that there is ANY consensus among professional philosophers that the concept God is free of contradiction and/or that God is a necessary being.

God cannot be bound by our pathetic attempts to describe him. He is not affected by your categories or what "rightly or wrongly" is ascribed to them. God is not affected or bound by your semantics any more than a whale is bound or effected by calling them mammals. Our terminology governs nothing. Not one label, one category, or one thought exercise changes anything that exists nature or essence the tiniest fraction. The effort usually comes from the attempt to hide an emotional position or preference in the vagaries and ambiguities that the finite limits of fallible man's language usage. You can not determine the reality of anything by slapping the label necessary on it, and you cannot make anything in any language anything but derivative and subordinate to God if he exists. You have it perfectly backwards.

Slow down, junior; nothing in this rant has the remotest relevance to anything I've said here.

 

[cottage]

I find it impossible to believe you did not understand my analogy. If expert testimony is good enough when life and death are on the line then it by necessity is more than good enough for an formal or informal discussion. Arguments from authority are only fallacious when used to claim certain knowledge. When you get sick do you read a box of luck charms or go to a well educated doctor? When you build a house do you hire a meteorologist or an architect? When a college needs a chair in physics do they ask a freshman or a Phd? If expert testimony is good enough for virtually everything else on earth it is certainly valid in a debate and is in fact a huge part of every professional debate I have ever seen.

You fail to see or acknowledge the crucial, fundamental difference. Expert witnesses do not now, nor have they ever, appeared in a modern court of law to argue for the existence of supernatural beings; they argue to and from facts, and both sides can challenge the other’s witnesses, using their own experts. That is the way the adversarial system is conducted in modern Western courts. And in philosophy, as I’ve already explained to you, the experts are only as good as their arguments. You are entitled to your a heteronymous view, but if you are referring to another’s argument then it is incumbent upon you to articulate it so that I can have the opportunity to respond and challenge it. That is the way argument works. And the outcome of professional debates (including Youtube) does not depend upon the expertise of the debaters but upon the soundness of the arguments, that is to say whether points of fact or logic are refuted or demonstrated.

Who is acting offended? I mentioned a bad argument that also had and insult. I did not say I was offended. I just hate wasting time with that kind of stuff and was disappointed because you have been civil in general. I don't care what you attack, I am used to it in this modern militant atheist age we live in, as long as what you claim is valid. I do not have any use for incidental insults or insults based on false reasoning, and most of all based on what can't be known. I was simply saying lets drop that nonsense and get back to the issue. Expert testimony is just about the most valid methodology possible in a debate. It is only invalid if used as proof. The entire world abides by that principle. Why are you not doing so if God is involved?

There is a world of difference between a spirited debate, where one aggressively but politely attacks an opponent’s arguments, and ad hominem responses that make the individual the target of the attacks But from what you’ve written above it appears that you believe taking a person’s arguments to task is insulting to the person? It isn’t, but questioning my motives or casting doubt upon my sincerity as you’ve done is definitely in the ad hominem area and adds nothing to the debate.
And I’m sorry but I just don’t understand the hang up with expert testimony and your belief that there are individuals whose opinions are not to be questioned. Science is concerned with facts and philosophy with arguments. But God cannot be established factually through general experience and so that only leaves argumentation and metaphysical explanations. And no argument is insulated or protected from counter argument no matter how highly esteemed the author or originator. But what makes things worse is when you merely name-drop or just allude to arguments without expressing them and opening them up for discussion and debate.

I think the actual claim was that the universe would end.

1. If you mean cease to exist then I have far better reasons to claim it probably will never cease to exist than the none you have to claim it will.

As I keep saying, I gave two hypotheses.
“… All operations will cease but then begin anew, repeatedly and without intermission, and by such means form and matter is thus successively restored and may continue to exist indefinitely.”

2. If you mean that what we know as the universe will change or end then we agree.

Well we cannot know such a thing, which is why I gave two hypotheses, both of which are logically possible. Here is my second hypothesis (the Antithesis):

“The world began to exist and there was nothing before the world began to exist. The world has not always existed; there was nothing before the world and with no necessary existence it will one day cease to be. Hence there is no infinite regression or infinite progression of causes. The world is finite, and uncaused since there is no contradiction in denying any necessity in cause and effect, which being a contingent principle belongs to the world; and nor is there any necessity or empirical evidence for acts of creation, no evidence whatsoever, it being nothing more than an arbitrary act of the mind. The world neither created itself nor was it produced from nothing, but appeared where no thing existed previously; and causality being a worldly phenomenon began and will end with the world.”

If you had been to the center of the earth and saw a Wal-Mart there then your claims about a Wal-Mart being there are both perfectly valid and made about a known thing even if I do not know it. If I had a family member that died ten came back to life 24 hours later and said they saw X and Y and that Z and Q are how that realm may very well operate. I can say I do not believe you, I can say I deny what you claim, what I can't say is that they are claiming something invalid. When 2/3 of earths population testifies to a realm of reality that is beyond the natural it is anything but a debate about a fantasy, and should be taken as more evidence than what can be seen by a handful through a telescope a billion light years away.

We seem to be going over the same ground again and again because you are not seeing the difference between what we can reasonably infer from possible experience and what is purely speculative. The examples you’ve given above jump from the former to the latter, conflating spiritual beliefs with facts or evidence. But if a person came back to life after being deceased for 24 hours then your argument would be made. But that simply doesn’t happen! So the analogy doesn’t work.

It can be divorced from objects all together. Causality exists even in non-material interactions. I never said it was not contingent.

Causality certainly cannot be divorced from objects altogether anymore than it can be divorced from acts of cognition. The point being that in all cases it has no necessary existence and thus it is limited by its finitude, that is to say its beingness is not without limits, and therefore if the supernatural is dependent upon causality then there is no distinction to be made between the natural and the supernatural. And this demonstrates that a supernatural existence cannot be deduced from the natural world on the basis of cause and effect since the former can only be stated upon the conditions that bind and bound the latter. Therefore we can only discuss what exists or what might exist in terms of the natural world.

I said there exists no theoretical way to make it contingent on only the natural. The effect of a thing seen in a medium does not limit the things existence to a dependence on the medium.

There is no logical impossibility in contingent things existing beyond what we know of the universe, including cause and effect or even the ridiculous multiverses. But it remains the case that causality is contingent, which means if God is the cause of the world then God is dependent upon a contingent principle from which it follows that he himself is in want of a cause and in which case God is not God. And so we have a contradiction at every possible turn.

Supernatural things are more factually relevant than most scientific things. They are just less empirical and less quantifiable. They are experienced by more people than any black hole, holographic boundary, or string that ever existed.

Well, that’s an exercise in self contradiction! You said supernatural things are more factually relevant than scientific things but less empirical. Empiricism is facts! And regardless of your Arguments from Other believers you cannot argue from general experience. If the supernatural existed beyond faith and mere belief then the matter would be settled and we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. Not since time immemorial, in any millennia, has God come remotely near to proving his existence, not even for the bulk of believers.

 

[Thief]

That is not the sense in which God has been claimed to be necessary, for instance by some very confused theologians trying to dabble in logic.


Dismissing God as a pseudo-explanation by fiat for causality in toto is not to dismiss the particular causal relations necessary to scientific explanation. Furthermore, supposing that causality itself must admit of a causal explanation, the way individual events do, is incoherent no less than, e.g. "north of the north pole", "before the beginning of time", and so on, and reeks of a compositional fallacy to boot.

So...going back to the beginning.....the singularity.....

Which came first?.... Spirit or substance?

Apply cause and effect if you can.
If you cannot....where then is your 'logic'?

 

[Enai de a lukal]

So...going back to the beginning.....the singularity.....

What beginning? What singularity?

Which came first?.... Spirit or substance?

Since there is no such thing as "spirit", that would leave only "substance". But this is a silly question, based on a false premise, to begin with. Not sure why I'm bothering answering you while you're doing your broken record impression yet again.

Apply cause and effect if you can.

K- to particular events in the universe, which is the domain in which causality is applicable, so far as we can tell. Extending it beyond that is not justified.

If you cannot....where then is your 'logic'?

Right where it should be since we are not trying to jam a round peg into a square hole by trying to extrapolate causality beyond all intelligible bounds.

 

[1robin]

Robin2, re: 3118
I'm sorry but much of your argument is convoluted and wandering. I have answered what I consider to be all your key points. But if there is anything I've missed that you think I ought to have addressed then please post it again and I'll give you my answer by return.

You may stop at anytime or we can switch to a historical topic. I believe we have achieved mutually assured burn out of these issues.




This is was your analogy:

“Animals were at one time only observable or apprehended by people outside N America. Did that fact do anything to indicate animals did not exist in N America. My argument is basically the same. There are more reasons to believe life exists where ever it is possible than reasons to doubt it can or does. Don't get the reasoning.”

So you were questioning whether the people outside North America had cause to believe that animals could not exist elsewhere on the planet. I think we can agree they had not. There is no reason to believe that animals, living breathing creatures like us, could not exist elsewhere. Animals actually exist! The people outside North America had knowledge of animals and so it would not be unreasonable to believe there were animals elsewhere on this actually existing planet of ours. But then you said: “There are more reasons to believe life exists where ever it is possible than reasons to doubt it can or does.” I think we can agree again, if we’re talking about planet Earth, but we simply cannot know that to be the case with the universe as a whole. But of course you are not simply referring to “life”, possible experience, or what may exist elsewhere in the universe; for you are proposing to spirit us out planet Earth and the entire universe and present us with supernatural being that not only doesn’t actually exist in possible experience but is incontrovertibly tied to a contingent principle!

Stick with this analogy a little further. People outside N America are just like people in the natural. They take information about they can access and try and determine if it might also be true about what they cannot access. If they find more reasons to believe animals might exist in other places just as we find more (actually all of the evidence is in one direction) reasons to believe cause and effect exists beyond the natural then we can make a reasoned faith claim that it probably does. I see no flaw in the logic or the analogy with the exception that we can access the supernatural but not lands we have never been to.

So do you see the difference: Animals and planet Earth happen to exists, unlike your analogy that wants to infer from what does exist a thing that doesn’t exist. Your argument demonstrates the fallacy of unfalsifiability, and also the fallacious assumption that if that if something has not already been proven false, then it must therefore be accepted as true. (Burden of Proof not acknowledged), which together with appeals to authority and appeals to popularity and belief form the greater part of your overall argument.

The existence of animals (cause and effect) were never questioned. The analogy showed that a reasoned deduction for what is known (the natural to what is not known (the supernatural) is at times a valid exercise. WE know cause and effect exists, they knew animals exist. They did not know animals existed on continents unknown to the. We do not know cause and effect apply to the supernatural. They deduced that if land existed at other places it was logical to believe animals exist there. It is logical believe that cause and effect exists in other realms of reality if they exist. There is no fallacy of falsifiability. Falsifiability is a criteria for science or empirical claims not philosophical or faith claims. A things existence is not affected by it's falsifiability. Falsifiability indicates the level of certainty in a claim. It is not a test for truth. I did not ask you to accept my claim as true. I asked you to consider it a valid deduction and a likely truth.

“Contingent” does not mean that a thing must be dependent upon something else.

That is exactly what it means.
Contingent being
Web definitions
A. Something that does not exist in and of itself but depends for its existence upon some other being.

A contingent proposition is neither true nor false. “The world is contingent upon God”), the Flying Spaghetti Monster or anything else) is a statement that is possibly true or possibly false. So contingent existence means that a thing may or may not be: that is to say without necessity. Whereas “A triangle has three sides” is a contingently true statement, necessarily so because the concept of a triangle is analyzable by its having three angles.

We have been speaking about what is true of a concept. I can not prove that the Christian God does exist but if he does and his revelation is true then everything else is contingent upon him. The universe's existence is contingent upon something that the natural does not contain. I submit that God is the best candidate, whether I can prove he exists or not.

However Gottfried Leibniz’s Argument from Contingency holds that there must be a reason to explain the existence of something. Briefly paraphrased: If “The universe exists” is true then something must account for the fact that it is true. And therefore, according to Leibniz, there must be a cause for the existence of the universe and the cause must be such that denial leads to self-contradiction. So a thing that exists but which may not exist is to be finally accountable to a thing that actually exists and for which the non-existence is impossible. The problem of course is that is cause is itself contingent, the very premissary tool that the argument needs to construct its conclusion! So the thing that has no possibility of not existing is to be accounted for by a thing that has the possibility of not existing. And that presents a mega problem in the case of “the thing for which non-existence is impossible”; a contradiction in plain terms.

Cause may be contingent but it's dependence for existence is not found in anything natural. It also makes no difference anyway. The cause of a car includes an engineer, even if an engineer is also contingent.

You said: “Everything that exists must have a cause and that everything that exists must have an explanation of it's self in it's own nature, in something or in something else's nature. Neither one of those rules have any dependence on the natural.”

Oh, and incidentally, there are no “laws of philosophy”.

Laws are things which have no known exception. Since I do not want to have another semantic technicality discussion replace my use of "law" with it's definition wherever used.

I entirely agree an explanation is needed if an intelligent, personal being freely chose to bring the world into existence for that is to assign a purpose to the act of creation. And there can only be two answers to that question. God created the world for himself, or for the benefit of others. But an omnipotent Supreme Being, who is sufficient in all things, cannot have needs, unfulfilled wishes or desires. He has everything and is everything by definition. And nor can it be said that he created the world for the benefits of others, since it is nonsensical to imply that creatures that didn’t formerly exist can benefit from anything. Neither God nor a self-exiting world need a reason for being, since there will be nothing external to them, but if the world is created then there must be a reason and a purpose for its being brought into being. So I think we are entitled to ask the reason for bringing the world into existence. And given that there are only, at most, the two possibilities mentioned above, both of which contradict the concept of an all-sufficient Supreme Being, a personal explanation fails to deify the basic first cause concept.

I have dealt with this twice so far. You are saying God created something for himself indicates a need. That is not true. I can create a castle in my back yard but I do not need a castle. God did not need to create, he chose to create. He could also have created a race of beings and created something for them without their having a need to exist or have anything else created for them. For some reason you are equating something having something or doing something with something having a need for it or to create it.

And I’m not “basically saying if you cannot prove X then X is impossible”, which I believe is what you said. I’m saying X is impossible if it is contradictory.

I do not see that anything I have claimed is contradictory any more than I see that a choice to create implies a need to create.

 

[1robin]

Only that there are no limits to the self-deception some are willing to engage in to hold on to cherished (if infantalizing) beliefs.

What does infantilizing mean?

 

[Thief]

What beginning? What singularity?


Since there is no such thing as "spirit", that would leave only "substance". But this is a silly question, based on a false premise, to begin with. Not sure why I'm bothering answering you while you're doing your broken record impression yet again.


K- to particular events in the universe, which is the domain in which causality is applicable, so far as we can tell. Extending it beyond that is not justified.


Right where it should be since we are not trying to jam a round peg into a square hole by trying to extrapolate causality beyond all intelligible bounds.

Denial of spirit is not a winning discussion in a religious forum.

So...that 'thing' you are.....about to make a response .....
is nothing but a chemical reaction?

I don't 'think' so.

 

[1robin]

What beginning? What singularity?

The same singularity virtually every cosmologist suggests existed in the first microsecond of the universes creation (or expansion). What do you mean what singularity?

Since there is no such thing as "spirit", that would leave only "substance". But this is a silly question, based on a false premise, to begin with. Not sure why I'm bothering answering you while you're doing your broken record impression yet again.

You can't possibly know a single thing claimed here was true even if it was.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

What does infantilizing mean?

in·fan·til·ize transitive verb \ˈin-fən-ˌtī-ˌlīz, -fən-tə-ˌlīz, in-ˈfan-tə-\
in·fan·til·izedin·fan·til·iz·ing

Definition of INFANTILIZE

1: to make or keep infantile
2: to treat as if infantile

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Denial of spirit is not a winning discussion in a religious forum.

If the existence of something which appears to have NO correlate in reality is taken as a given on religious forums, all the worse for religious forums then. But this is not an argument anyways; at best this is a fallacious appeal to consensus. In other words, you're going to need to do better than this.

So...that 'thing' you are.....about to make a response .....
is nothing but a chemical reaction?

I don't 'think' so.

I don't care what you "think"- do you have any reasons or evidence for supposing it is not?

 

[1robin]

in·fan·til·ize transitive verb \ˈin-fən-ˌtī-ˌlīz, -fən-tə-ˌlīz, in-ˈfan-tə-\
in·fan·til·izedin·fan·til·iz·ing

Definition of INFANTILIZE

1: to make or keep infantile
2: to treat as if infantile

Why was that word attached to faith?

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Why was that word attached to faith?

The articles of the Christian faith (divine commands, a moral world order, an all-powerful all-good big brother watching over you, an afterlife, etc.) are nothing if not infantalizing.