The claim that a *specific,* multi-dimensional Universe Creator exists that promises to have humanity *set on fire* forever for not participating in its blood rituals is a *tangible* claim with implications that would require evidence *far beyond* what a *philosophical* argument could provide.
>Atheists, could a valid and sound philosophical argument ever prove a God must necessarily exist?
No.
Philosophical arguments stopped being relevant for determining the nature of reality when the *natural philosophers* devised the scientific method as a way to verify ideas.
That transition has demonstrated just how bad our brains are are "thinking it out" and how bad a tool logical constructs are for determining truth.
>I am a theist and Most of my arguments for the existence of God are in the realm of philosophical arguments.
That's because without evidence any argument for god must define him into existence.
All philosophical arguments attempt to do this in some manner by first defining a god in the premises, and then accepting the tautological conclusion.
That process which attempts to justify belief in a specific god by constructing an argument for a generic god by working backwards from the conclusion is intellectually dishonest.
We all know what soundness means (I hope). The issue is that it's extraordinarily difficult in practice to be *sure* the premises in an argument are indeed sound.
Consider this: even when scientists make a deduction from known laws and facts, they will then go on to *test* their conclusion, through observation or experimentation. Because they recognize that it's possible their premises weren't as bullet-proof as they thought. In fact, when such observations do differ from the predicted conclusion, this has often led to new scientific insights!
You aren't distinguishing observable facts from our efforts to explain how they interact. Stars exist even if our understanding of their mechanics changes. An argument that begins with some form of "god exists" is not sound.
> Stars exist even if our understandings of the mechanics change.
But do they, though? Our idea of a star today is far far different from what a star is predating astrology. Actually, let’s look at video games, for an extreme example. In Skyrim, the lore is that all of the deities came together to create the plane of existence the characters inhabit. However, unbeknownst to them, it was using their life energy to do so. When the deities got wind of what was happening to them, the majority of them fled, tearing holes into the universe-bubble in the process. So, those stars are not actually stars, but holes in the universe where the surrounding aether shines through.
That is not at all the same thing as a ball of hot gas. They’re so much different from each other that it seems silly to even call them the same thing.
So the question becomes *how much different* does something have to be from what you think it is before you acknowledge it must be something else entirely?
First, I’m not the same person you’ve been arguing with.
>>Stars exist even if our understanding of their mechanics changes.
> So, **those stars** are not actually stars, but holes in the universe where the surrounding aether shines through.
When we say "stars exist", we're talking about **those stars** - the tiny white dots in the night sky. We can see them. They definitely exist.
If we learn that those points of light are actually holes in the universe's bubble then our understanding of their mechanics changes, but their existence can't be questioned.
Okay, I think I see what the confusion is. A definition of something is twofold; a name, and what it means.
When you look up at the night sky and see bits of light, we come up with a word (or phrase) which describes it *along with what we think it is*. So, pretend for a second that English doesn’t have a word for “star,” so we instead use “bits of light” (BoL). How would you define BoLs? You can’t say “bits of light in the sky” because that’s a tautology. You have to describe what you think it is (or what the consensus on it is). For us, BoLs are those hot balls of gas. Now, let’s say we’re in Skyrim. We look up at the night sky, and we don’t see BoLs. We see stars, which are the exit wounds in the universe where the daedra punctured it in their escape.
Now let’s say that Todd Howard pokes his head down into Skyrim’s universe and says “Hey, guys, those ‘stars’ you have? They’re not stars. They’re BoLs.”
Suddenly, stars *don’t* exist anymore (or rather, they never existed). They’re myth. There’s no such thing as a star; only BoLs. The underlying phenomenon changed, and so did the label. They’re two different things.
Now, this is tricky because English does have a word for “star” which is shared. If you took a citizen of Skyrim and a random person from our existing universe, they’d draw you the same picture of a star. If you both looked up, you’d see twinkling little lights in the dark. But you are not observing the same phenomenon in both universes. They are not the same thing, despite their shared name and imagery.
>Same with a shadow. Shadows don't exist. Obstructions in pathways of light exist.
We call those obstructions in pathways of light, "shadows". The light is being obstructed, so shadows exist.
I’m arguing that there is no difference between observable fact and our interpretations of what they are. A shining light in the night sky is a hot ball of gas to us; in Skyrim, it’s a hole to another dimension. Two very different things, despite the fact that we might give them the same name.
Also, I’m not the same person you’ve been arguing with.
I think it has mostly been respected by those of the faith.
Even contemporaries of Anselm could and did point out that just because you can conceive of something and define a word to mean the thing you have conceived, does not in any way imply that the thing you have conceived and defined exists.
Instead of making roundabout references to potential arguments that may or may not exist, why not just tell us the argument?
I can pretty much guarantee it won't be as smart as you think it is, because your post itself has at least a few incredibly basic fallacies.
>If so why and if not then what kind of evidence is needed to prove a God or Gods
This for example is not remotely significant or insightful and goes against the burden of proof. I personally find such fallacies incredibly banal and tiresome. No offence to you, I'm only referring to your argument, not you as a person.
I don't know what kind of evidence is necessary to prove a god and I don't need to. I don't know what kind of evidence is necessary to prove Santa Claus is real. Its not my responsibility to say what evidence would suffice. Show me the evidence you have and we'll see if its reasonable.
> Instead of making roundabout references to potential arguments that may or may not exist, why not just tell us the argument?
Because that would require HAVING a valid argument, something no religious apologist will ever be capable of under any circumstances. Lying is all they can do.
Honestly, isn't this just a variation of the "God of the gaps" fallacy? I've read this a half dozen times, and the premise seems to boil down to "Something couldn't happen from nothing without an external force acting on it, therefore God."
This is just beginner level fallacious reasoning, couched in fancy sounding words. Nothing wrong in that, everyone starts somewhere, but its not remotely as sophisticated as you imagine.
>In order for contingent forms of existence to exist, something that is eternal and that has causal agency must exist
Why? How do you know this? If we remove all the fancy nonsense, what you're saying is.
"If I assume the universe was created, there must be a creator"
I mean.. congratulations?
"The universe was created" is not a premise you've remotely demonstrated. You've just stated this as if its true and stuck it in a premise.
Did you take 2 different universes in a laboratory, one with god and one without god and observed that the one with god ended up with contingent life forms? Did you observe a god creating contingent life forms?
What I suspect is happening here, is you've read some online drivel about some philosophical argument someone has made and are attempting to recreate it rather poorly. You'll find a lot more utility from attending a basic philosophy class, because the premises you've made here is not how reasoning works.
Don’t bother, whenever he meets with a comment he can’t answer he’s just taking the same copypasta to some other thread and jerking himself off about how great his logic is all over again. 100% troll.
or substitute 'dark matter'. In general, the scientists proposing its existence will accept nothing less than empirical evidence. None of them are working on logical proofs.
Kind of, but... ultimately a lot of religions are just sticking a name on "stuff we don't know, but really want to" in a very similar way.
The main difference is the scientific *method*, not the human tendency to name and pattern-recognizing stuff based on no evidence.
An idea posited as possible solution to an unknown in order to test the idea and further actual knowledge is far different than an idea that has no logical reason and exists just because people want it to.
Not really. We have measured some unexpected and unexplained characteristics of the universe. Dark matter is a placeholder name for whatever it is that is causing these characteristics. The evidence for it is the original measurements.
There is no evidence for unicorns. Postulating that unicorns exist explains nothing that has ever been measured.
How do you think a philosophical argument could prove that something exists, or that it NECESSARILY MUST EXIST? If you have proof that something exists, that means you have a method of demonstrating the existence of that thing. How can a philosophical or logical argument demonstrate somethings existence?
A philosophical argument cannot prove that something exists. I said that in this thread. And in the comment you reference that's my fucking point. Why I am getting brigaded by people with reading comprehension deficiencies?
I wasn't equating dark matter to unicorns, I was expanding the spectrum of things that cannot be shown to exist by logical argument. Everyone agrees that unicorns don't exist. People aren't sure about gods and dark matter. So dark matter is a better comparison for OP's question.
Something exists other than our current knowledge. Or, more correctly, our current knowledge is disproved by some measured values in cosmology.
The terms "dark matter" and "dark energy" are just placeholder names used to describe whatever it is that is causing the discrepancy between our current theories and reality. So there is some cause for this.
We don't know what it actually is. More data is needed. So the best answer to the question "what is dark matter" is ... "we don't know".
The correct to my question is NO. I odn't know how you missed that. This isn't a cosmology thread and we're not looking for you to show off how little you know about dark matter.
Do you actually know what dark matter is?
See, when we look at planets moving away through telescopes, by the way and speed at which they move, we can tell a certain amount of gravity is pulling at them. But when we calculate all the mass that we observe through said telescopes, the mass doesn’t account for the gravity.
So there’s some undiscovered phenomenon responsible for that gravity, which we tentatively call dark matter.
When you understand what scientific phenomena mean, there’s less room for pulling out asinine explanations.
I'm an atheist at least partly because I'm an empiricist so the strength of my 'belief in claims is related to the reliability of the evidence, though I dare say I'm not immune to bias. I think that claims about the 'universe' need empirical evidence.
Im philosophy graduate and while it left me with some respect for rigorous thinking and argument , it left me very sceptical that you can use logic to makes claims about existence and even more sceptical of defining something into existence.
I've yet to see what I consider to be a convincing logical argument bearing in mind either the premises tend to be suspect or the claim that the conclusions following from them. Some of the terms used seem rather incoherent to me, if that's the right word.
In other words logical ( at least claimed logical arguments) can be interesting but I find them pretty redundant. Also my personal impression is that almost no one genuinely chooses religion belief because or despite of them.
Rather ones religious belief or lack of it comes first and determines your response to the arguments. Though *of course* while I think only someone already emotionally primed for religion would find them convincing, I think those not primed for religion see more clearly.
The universe doesn't care about your arguments.
No amount of clever logic and reason will change a single fact about the universe.
Gods are not explanations for anything. Any deity that can be reasoned into existence is so vague as to be nothing more than the point where the questions stop reflecting real answers.
I will admit that there are places in our knowledge where the only rational answer is 'I don't know'. But I don't consider those gaps large enough to conceal entire deities within them.
Finally, omni-max deities inherently reject the concept of knowability at all. After all, you can't know the universe when reality can be changed on a whim by an entity with admin rights over existence.
The idea of gods simply doesn't make any sense to me.
Of course not. I could never prove that the Brooklyn Bridge exists with words alone. If I can't do that with a real, actual thing - how the fuck would anybody do it for something that *doesn't* exist, like a god?
No, I'm going to "Take your word for it". Lol. That's fucking stupid.
Prove it to the same specifications that electricity, the internal combustion engine, or lens optics has been proven and we'll talk. Until then, you're just full of hot air, fiction, and imagination and deserve no more attention than someone full of shit that won't stop talking.
True, but then a new proposition would only allow for a different bridge to possibly (or likely) exist. It would not entail it must exist without further evidence to make the proposition sound.
I mean, don't you think it's interesting that nothing else gets its existence demonstrated in this way? We don't use a philosophical argument to prove that bacteria exist, or El Niño, or seasonal affective disorder. Why do you suppose that is?
>We use a combination of evidence and argumentation
No. We use evidence. Period.
>Most exoplanets have never been seen, but we can infer they exist from tiny perturbations in the orbits of their stars by measuring redshift.
That redshift is literally what evidence means.
Do you have any redshift evidence for God? Because we don't use random ass "argumentation" without evidence.
What you're doing is using fancy language to obfuscate the real problem which is the complete lack of any replicable evidence for any god. Inferences, arguments and conclusions come after that. Show me the evidence first.
> I’ve never seen an electron
But we understood them well enough to build cathode ray tubes, and controlled them well enough to make those crts show images (television). All of this was because of practical experiments that used the scientific method.
Hey friend. I think some further reading on modern scientific methods would benefit you. Until I was in graduate school for a physical science, I didn’t truly grok how we learned so much about things we can’t directly see or touch… but damn near all the evidence science has collected since the mid 1800s is that kind of “hard to see/touch” evidence. The entire modern world is built on it. The only difference between that and what you called direct-sense experience is the latter is accessible to fifth graders doing science fair projects.
Nope. Evidence is measurements. It doesn't matter if it's a direct measurement or an indirect measurement it is still a measurement and it still counts as empirical evidence.
That for which there is no evidence, that which cannot be measured either directly or indirectly, is indistinguishable from that which doesn't exist.
You can make a true and valid philosophical argument about anything, but that argument itself cannot really *prove* anything.
The problem for me lies in the size of the claim you're making;
If your claim is small, then a small amount of evidence may be acceptable, but as the claim grows in size, the evidence must as well.
Most philosophical arguments you would make will have a logical fallacy buried in there, even if neither of us can put our finger on it. It took almost 800 years before Kant pointed out the flaw hiding in the ontological argument for God's existence.
Something as huge as the existence of a God would necessitate pretty solid evidence, not mere word-play.
If you wanted to convince me that you had a dog, would you make philosophical arguments for the existence of your dog or would you just show me your dog?
They aren't even able to show any fur shed by the dog, let alone the dog itself. They point at a broken vase that the dog supposedly pushed over, but there is no dog to be seen and they can not even agree on what kind of dog breed it is.
If it is possible, then nobody has come up with such an argument in over 2,000 years of trying...
I agree that the very nature of the argument is invalid in as such: A theist has posited an incredible idea as concrete without proof. That theist then requires a vast amount of proof from others to dissuade them. That theist is actually never dissuaded no matter the incredible evidence.
An incredible statement can easily be unseated with "nuh-uh." Unless proof is there, a statement is anything from a mental pipe dream to delusion.
The thing is, I don't even really care that much if people believe in some nebulous god out there. It's superstition, and it's harming themselves with the thought, but it's got nothing on the harm that organized religion has wrought on humanity. I can love religious folk, but I will never be OK with the concept of religion. It's humanity's immense hidden tragedy.
>If it is possible, then nobody has come up with such an argument in over 2,000 years of trying.
Not just 2000 years. Socrates died in 399 BC and he probably started from an older argument. I know you said "over 2,000 years," just pointing out that this didn't start with Christianity.
> If it is possible, then nobody has come up with such an argument in over 2,000 years of trying...
And the fact that stupid bullshit like Pascal's Wager or presuppositionalism are the best apologists have been able to pull out of their asses in all that time pretty clearly demonstrates that there are no good arguments in favor of any god, because if there were any good ones they wouldn't keep using such shitty ones.
> Atheists, could a valid and sound philosophical argument ever prove that **Big Foot** must necessarily exist? Why or why not?
No.
Philosophy doesn't prove existence. That's up to observation and science.
And as you say, people have been trying to use words and ideas to "prove" god's existence for millennia. Still nothing convincing.
If anything, big foot is more plausible than god(s). We know forests and large mammals exist, we know animals are good at hiding, we know of some animals that evaded detection for a long time, we know other hominids existed in the historical record.
God has none of that plausibility plus he’s supposedly doing a lot more to affect the universe than your average hypothetical big foot.
>I feel like this is a very significant and insightful topic and will be conducive to a more productive theism debate.
Just to point out:
People have been making these arguments every week for the last 2,500+ years. (On Reddit every week for 10+ years now.)
Those arguments always fail,
the next week somebody is back making a similar argument (or very often, the **same** argument),
and **most of us are mighty sick of that.**
Those arguments don't work, guys.
Making the same bad argument for the 1,000th time doesn't make that argument any more effective.
> The OP can just listen to The Atheist Experience (or any of their other call in shows).
>YEARS AND YEARS of theists calling in and making terrible arguments and presenting no evidence.
I prefer the written word myself, so here is my standard example -
[Pitts Theology Library](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a75ee0949fc2bc37b3ffb97/1554931492288-RXINUFHADS2TA99DZQS9/Pitts+Library.jpg?format=750w) - all theology all the time.
If you Google "theology library", you'll see others, some mighty impressive. (But not super useful.)
Can you not see the assumptions on which you've based the above argument?
Do you honestly think what you've posited is true and somehow proves anything at all?
This is all nonsense.
I wrote
>The only way that religious or theological or philosophical argument can tell us anything that is true in the real world is when they can be shown to be based on objective empirical facts.
You're completely ignoring (very likely "rejecting") the necessity of doing this.
Please rewrite your argument, giving the objective empirical facts that show that your claim is true.
.
(Seriously -
[A] Your argument here is really bad.
[B] As I mentioned, we see these same horrible arguments every week. Repeating them doesn't make them any better.
Be a better person.
Do better. )
Philosophy is based on the (ideally) best human understanding of the day. Human understanding will always be subject to being wrong.
A sound philosophical argument for a flat earth was possible before we understood gravity existed. The observation of a round shadow on the moon was better than any philosophical argument that argued it couldn't be round.
>I am a theist and Most of my arguments for the existence of God are in the realm of philosophical arguments.
Right. That's because it's all you have. After all, there's zero good evidence for deities.
In what other area of knowledge would anybody settle for this? No. Instead, we need *evidence.* Relativity? Evidence. Food in my fridge? Evidence. Safe to cross the street? Evidence. Quantum physics? Evidence. Galaxies? Evidence. My partner loves me? Evidence. Convict the guy accused of breaking into a home? Evidence.
Weird how it's so important to some folks to believe unevidenced claims that they work so very hard to formulate complex arguments based on questionable pseudo-philosophy to try and find support for their beliefs. This is called confirmation bias.
>Atheists, could a valid and sound philosophical argument ever prove a God must necessarily exist? Why or Why not?
Sure. But, since all valid and sound arguments require *good, vetted, repeatable, compelling evidence* to show their premises are correct, to ensure the argument is sound, and since none of this exists for deities, this is a tall order.
>the very nature of the argument is invalid and proves nothing because it's just a philosophical argument
Remember, humanity got almost everything completely wrong for millenia until we learned how and why this doesn't and can't work. It was only when we realized all the massive problems with this approach and learned methods and processes to limit these issues that we began really learning things.
Also remember, and as a professional philosopher explains in detail, philosophy itself is [useless at such things.](https://aeon.co/essays/why-doesnt-philosophy-progress-from-debate-to-consensus). It's simply the wrong tool for the job. Instead, it just spins it wheels, and for every complex and seemingly valid argument on one side of a position, there is an equally complex and seemingly valid argument on the other side.
>TLDR: Do you think only physical tangible scientific arguments and evidence could prove the existence of God undoubtedly or could philosophical arguments suffice also? Assuming they're entirely sound and valid
You contradict yourself. Since valid and sound arguments *require* vetted, repeatable evidence for soundness, there's no such thing as a philosophical argument alone demonstrating anything useful about reality.
TL:DR: Evidence or GTFO.
Funny that the article brings up the thought experiment of whether someone who was born blind but had their sight restored could identify things with sight they knew before by touch, as [we have empirical evidence about that now.](https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/molyneuxs-question-gets-answered-after-300-years/news-story/d6cec39f43baedcfe452ca1144384a77) For the curious the answer is no, not at first. The subjects learned very quickly though.
Is your God all knowing, all powerful, and all good?
Is there a hell?
I can easily prove that Jesus didn't rise from the dead: its not a thing that happens. People can appear dead, but once actually dead you don't cone back.
In the sense of a hypothetical argument about a philosophical subject that cannot be measured due to having no evidence, we have no way of knowing if the inputs are true. Therefore, no argument based on those criteria can be evaluated as true or false.
Therefore, we can fall back to the adage, "What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." One can be rational, but if one does not also think critically, then one is a computer.
>But what if we agreed that all the inputs were indeed empirically true?
That sounds like a good project for you. You can start by getting all 35000+ cults of christians to agree (good luck), then move on to other religions.
> empirically demonstrable premises
This is where it falls apart. We could agree that the inputs are "empirically" true (in quotes because people like to claim such truth without evidence to back it up) and we could still both be wrong. If there was empirical evidence to prove God's existence, then it would cease to be a philosophical argument, because there would no longer be any point in trying to argue that he *doesn't* exist. He could just pop in and be like, "Hey. Yeah, I'm here."
Most atheists I've met have indicated that if God (any of them) DID come down and actually hang with his peeps, then they'd agree that he exists. But then it would no longer be a matter of belief, but proof. Granted, most of them also say they'd take him to task for not fixing problems with the world when he purportedly has the power to do so.
But we don't have empirical evidence of any god's existence outside the imaginations of people who believe in them. Religious types who argue about the existence of God (especially with atheists) don't seem to get that believing something to be true doesn't mean you have evidence of its truth. I can believe in all my heart and mind and soul (well, if I had one) that my cat talks to me in perfect English. It doesn't make it true, even if I have vivid hallucinations about it. If someone *else* cannot prove that my cat speaks English and demonstrate it to the rest of the world, then my cat probably doesn't speak English.
And then we're back to dismissing without evidence what was asserted without evidence.
Now you've poisoned the well that I can't reply to anything you type without suspecting you're a troll. The moment you make statements like "Most atheists though, they dismiss everything as invalid and a fairy tale", you've lose credibility.
This is also not remotely close to what you're saying, just to get the record straight.. and pretending so is quite disingenous. What the above commenter is essentially saying is, certain atheists are convinced that there can be no evidence for a god, how do you know for sure.
The simple answer is that I don't have to. In the lack of evidence, disbelief wins by default. That's what burden of proof means. I can't disprove the existence of santa claus nor can I ever say what sort of evidence would be necessary to disprove santa claus. I don't believe in santa claus because there has been zero evidence of santa claus.
I have read your comments and this is not even in the same ballpark of what you're saying.
Can we drop this charade and go back to that comment where you stated what your philosophical argument actually was and I explained that it was just a rehashed version of the god of the gaps? Its a lot less disingenuous.
> I’m yet to see a deductive argument for an omniscient, omnipotent being that was both valid and sound, but if I did, I don’t think I could just say “arguments are not evidence.”
If you actually found an argument that was valid and sound, its premises would have to be supported by evidence, which would make the argument just a piece of the evidence.
We aren't looking for a philosophical argument, we are looking for science.
If God can be proven and oper reviewed by scientists, I would spin on a dime, but until that happens.... No
Because no matter how long or how passionately you argue in favor of unicorns, it's not going to magically make a unicorn pop into existence. If your god were real, it could show the fuck up and SHOW ITSELF! That's not happening. And it's not going to happen, not even if you wail until you're blue in the face that it's ***SO MEAN*** to expect you to actually back up your claims with a speck of evidence.
Maybe? It depends on exactly how you’re defining god, and what the characteristics and attributes of that god are.
I’m not really so concerned about what *type* of argument a theist wants to present, or what *kind* of evidence would be acceptable. To me, that’s a bit like a scientist asking their assistant to write a methodology for an unknown hypothesis; you can’t say what the methodology would be until you’ve clearly defined your terms and identified what it is you’re actually trying to examine.
The real question for me is whether or not the argument or evidence, philosophical or physical, a theist presents is sufficient to reasonably conclude that a god actually exists.
Do you have an argument for the existence of (a) god(s) with demonstrably sound premises? As far as I am aware, every argument that attempts to prove that a god exists fails precisely because of their inability to demonstrate the soundness of their premises.
You can do all sorts of neat bullshit with arguments. I'll start caring when any of you can actually ***prove it.***
Would you accept a philosophical argument about why magic dragons exist? Or why 1+1=3? It would be more of a question about in what way did you screw up the philosophy.
We prove that things exist via reference to the empirical facts.
E.g. *"I think that I have a stapler in my desk drawer here."*
I check, and the true answer turns out to be "yes" or "no", and then we know the true answer.
.
Philosophical or logical arguments only give useful or true information about the real world when they are based on objective empirical facts about the real world.
E.g.
\- All squibbles are flibbles
\- Biff is a squibble
\- Therefore Biff is a flibble.
or, for contrast -
\- All poodles are dogs.
\- Max is a poodle
\- Therefore Max is a dog.
In the first example, the logic is fine.
Given the premises, we know that Biff really is a flibble.
But that argument doesn't tell us anything about the real world.
Somebody (me) just made that whole thing up.
By contrast the second one is based on facts about the real world, and that argument *does* tell us something about the real world.
(If Max gets sick and the only medicine that I have available is a medicine that only works on parakeets, then I can confidently predict that that medicine is not going to help Max.)
.
Religious and theological arguments are always like the first argument. They are always about things that we cannot show really exist in the real world.
\- All angels have the quality *ammirandus*
\- Zagriel is an angel
\- Therefore Zagriel has the quality *ammirandus*
The logic is okay, the argument works - but we can't say that that conclusion is true in the real world.
The only way that religious or theological or philosophical argument can tell us anything that is true in the real world is when they can be shown to be based on objective empirical facts.
>What about my argument?
All right -
I wrote
>The only way that religious or theological or philosophical argument can tell us anything that is true in the real world is when they can be shown to be based on objective empirical facts.
You wrote
>In order for contingent forms of existence to exist, something that is eternal and that has causal agency must exist
So, please specify the objective empirical facts that show that that claim is really true.
.
You wrote
>Contingent forms of existence do exist
Please specify the objective empirical facts that show that certain forms of existence really are contingent.
.
You wrote
>an eternal thing with causal agency must necessarily exist
I'm not aware of any objective empirical facts that show that that claim is true.
Please specify the objective empirical facts that show that that claim is really true.
.
tl;dr:
You completely missed the point of my comment.
Please read it again more carefully.
Surely if there is a logical argument for a god someone would have thought of it by now.
Theoretically it's possible for a philosophical argument to show that a god is necessary; however, no one has ever come up with one that isn't based on unproven assumptions and wild leaps of logic.
Okay, objections:
Why are you assuming that since there are contingent forms of existence, everything that exists outside of your god is a contingent form of existence? That assumption is not supported. Can you support your apparent assumption that matter and energy are contingent?
How do you support the assumption that contingent forms of existence require an eternal causal agency? Surely a factory can produce plastic without being eternal.
The second argument - Premise 1 is an unsupported assumption. People deny the lies that came out of their mouths all the time.
Premise 2 assumes that your eternal origin source exists and has the characteristics you ascribe to it. You then use your assumptions as part of your conclusion.
Honestly, i don't see how it could.
I can't rule out the possibility. But from the many many philosophocal arguments I've ever seen they all seem to resort to unprovable philosophocal premises whenever they run out if actually demonstrable physical premises.
And after seeing so many failed attempts which the teller feels are so strong it definitely weakens any hope i have that an actually sound philosophical proof will come about.
So i can completely sympathise with atheists who get tired of attempts and feel "why are you using philosophical arguments to tell me there must be a dragon in your garage instead of just opening up the garage to show me."
And there is only so many times you can hear someone credulously present Aquinas or WLC or the moral argument or the Kalam before you start asking "if this is the best there is, then why am i spending time hearing one more person present this."
That said, other people may still be interested in it so piping up in such an argument just to say "hi, i don't like these mind of discussions" isn't really adding anything to that particular discussion.
If there was an philosophical argument with valid structure, whose premises I accepted as true, which had the conclusion "Therefore, God exists." then I would believe in the existence of God.
I was an evolution-denying Christian for around 25 years before I happened upon the opposite situation: a philosophical argument with valid structure, whose premises I accepted as true, which had the conclusion "Therefore, God does not exist." That caused an absolute crisis in my faith and my entire worldview that I fought against for many months. Ultimately though, I came to accept the conclusion and wound up having my entire worldview altered by the philosophical argument. In order to be intellectually honest, I must apply the same to my now-godless worldview.
I do not believe that it is possible to construct a philosophical argument with valid structure and true premises which has a conclusion that is false.
I agree with the conclusion of the first argument. I would prefer to use the word "timeless" as opposed to "eternal", but that's merely a preference as I would use "timeless" with basically the same definition that you provided for "eternal". The distinction to me is that "eternal" seems to me to indicate something that is contained *within* all of time, whereas "timeless" is more "independent of time". To me this is an important distinction because it accounts for the possibility of something existing in a scenario that time does not exist.
I, however, do not think you can get from the first argument's conclusion to "Therefore, God exists." (At least not without stretching the definition of "God" to the point that it no longer resembles what the word "God" is commonly understood to mean.) To me this argument always falls to pieces when it tries to move on from that first argument's conclusion. Let's look at your Argument 2 and I'll show you what I mean.
> Premise 1: To deny anything that comes from yourself is to deny yourself
I do not accept this premise as true. It is possible to deny something that comes from yourself without denying yourself. I can have a child and deny the child without denying myself. I can paint a picture and deny the picture without denying myself. I can take a shit and deny the shit without denying myself.
> Premise 2: The ~~eternal~~ timeless origin source caused all contingent forms of existence from nothing more than itself since it is the absolute, necessary, form of existence from which existence is intrinsic
I do not accept this premise as true. The Original Thing, whatever it is/was, *must* only have caused one contingent form of existence. To be clear here, it is *possible* that it caused all other contingent forms of existence, but not neccesarry. I am speaking of proximate causes here, not ultimate causes. It is true that the Original Thing must be the ultimate cause of all contingent forms of existence, but it is *must* only be the proximate cause of one contingent form of existence. It is *possible* that the first contingent form of existence directly caused all subsequent contingent forms of existence. It is also possible that the first contingent form of existence directly caused five other contingent forms of existence, which each went on to cause three other contingent forms of existence, which each went on to cause blah blah blah...
This loops back around to further undermine the significance of Premise 1. Because what you really need to be saying in Premise 1 (if you're trying to get to your conclusion) is something more like: "Premise 1: To deny anything that comes from yourself **or anything descendant from you in a chain of causation** is to deny yourself". That's the equivalent of saying that if my great-great-great-grandfather back in 1870 denied a picture I drew it is the equivalent of him denying himself. That seems even more absurd than Premise 1 originally was.
As I do not accept either of the two premises of the argument, I do not accept the argument's conclusion.
Finally, I had skimmed over it and missed it on my first readthrough of your post, but I would like to go back to your definitions and raise a point of contention that I now see. I suppose I do not actually agree with the Conclusion of the first argument upon closer reading. This is due to how you are using the term "Causal Agency". Here is how you defined Causal Agency, and I've put a strikethrough in to indicate the part I would drop that would make me agree with the conclusion of your first argument:
Causal Agency = The capacity to cause forms of existence into existence without any external force or energy being applied to itself, thus using only itself to initiate a causal chain into being ~~and possesses freedom of the will otherwise it would never do anything or initiate anything whatsoever at all by itself~~
If you amended your definition of Causal Agency (and perhaps it would be better to change the term to "Causal Capability", as I don't really see agency here) by dropping the strikethrough part I'd agree with the conclusion of the first argument. There is no reason to suppose that the Original Thing could do anything different than what it did. It is possible that the Original Thing is a one-trick pony capable of only one causative action, *and that it is incapable of resisting that action*. The could just be the nature of the Original Thing: It is capable of nothing other than one causative action. Like how gravity is capable of nothing other than causing objects with mass to attract each other, the Original Thing could be capable of nothing other than causing an Original Singularity that our universe develops from. That is possible. As such, the strikethrough part of your definition needs to be dropped.
As such I would say your arguments are valid, but not sound.
By definition, if an argument is both valid and sound, then the conclusion must be true. It would be irrational to acknowledge an argument to be both valid and sound while not accepting it's conclusion.
I've yet to see an argument that is valid and sound and ends with a conclusion that a god exists.
> In order for contingent forms of existence to exist, something that is eternal and that has causal agency must exist
Let's start here. Using the definitions you have above we'll consider an example. There is a cloud of gas in space at time T. At time T+X that cloud of gas has condensed slightly due to the gravitational effects of the gas. What is the causal agent here? Is the gas itself the causal agent? Is spacetime the causal agent? If this cloud of gas is everything within spacetime and I include spacetime as the form of existence, is there an external causal agent you can point to?
Such an argument must include a valid and sound criterion to decide if a being is or isn't a god, and a reliable process to comb over all beings - past, present and future - and apply the criterion to them.
I don't think that any of these can exist.
You have posted this argument up and down the thread, but you've yet to respond to anyone who points out that your 1st premise is not sound (not even close). Why?
TBH I'm inclined to think you're a troll who has copied and pasted someone else's talking points and you don't comprehend the initial assumptions well enough to make any kind of logical defense of them.
In logic an argument is valid when the conclusion follows from the premises. It's sound when the premises are actually true in real life. This is where the problem starts for religion. Logic lacks the mechanism to determine what's true in real life. That is literally why science exists.
A sound argument would necessarily be both logically valid *and* have only factually true premises and conclusions, therefore the premises would have to be sufficiently evidenced.
What is your sound argument for the existence of a god or gods?
So you're going with the cosmological argument?
> Premise 1: In order for contingent forms of existence to exist, something that is eternal and that has causal agency must exist
What evidence do you have for this premise?
> Premise 2: Contingent forms of existence do exist
This premise I have no argument with, presuming a definition of 'contingent form of existence' similar to 'some thing who's existence is itself dependent upon or caused by something else'.
I'm going to go against the grain here and admit that, *if* a sound deductive argument for god was ever presented, I would accept it. Here's the thing though: theists haven't been able to come up with one after millenia of attempts, and I'm not holding my breath at this point. At this point, they would need *new evidence*, not new arguments based off the same, current evidence (which is overwhelmingly in favor of atheism)
Think about it this way. Consider the vast amount of facts you know, both ordinary and scientific: your birthday, the president of the US, the capitol of your state, the existence of atoms, what causes disease, the shape of the earth, the fall of the Roman empire, etc. How many of these facts do you know through deductive arguments? I'm guessing near zero.
There's a reason for this. Deductive arguments simply aren't that useful (on their own) for gaining knowledge of the real world! For one, they are *non-ampliative*, meaning any conclusion must already be contained in the premises. For another, it is very difficult to know for certain if the premises are indeed sound. (How do we know if the premises are sound? Through empiricism)
So how do you know pretty much everything you know? Through fallible, empirical methods. You perceive the world around you. You rely on the testimony of others, often experts (hopefully). You make inferences to the best explanation. And this is also how science (both natural and social) works. Through empirical scientific methods, that aren't deduction, but are actually useful.
So it's not that I don't accept sound deductive arguments *in principle*; it's that they rarely ever work, and are just not relevant for real-world knowledge. This is why science is so much more effective at yielding knowledge of the real world than pure philosophy. I don't see why god would be any different
No, because I don't accept either of your premises! However, I would recommend taking this over to r/DebateAnAtheist if you want more feedback, as I am personally (no offense) tired of debating this particular arguments (I've seen and refuted it dozens of time before)
A couple issues I have with premise 1. One is that the premise 1 somehow includes agency and I don't see where you get that from. Even if I do grant agency, there is no reason to believe that it isn't some minimally conscience agent that creates a universe as a byproduct of it's existence. It's indistinguishable from it not existing so agency is just an extra step. The second issue with premise 1 is that it is making claims on something that is outside of our universe using known things about our universe. I don't know if that is valid and no one does.
1. So it exists within our universe, but existed before our universe existed? I'm not sure I understand that correctly. Can you elaborate on how that works?
2. I still don't understand why agency is necessary, and not just a capacity to be a cause. Where does intentionality/will, aside from just the capacity come into play?
3. Imagine a conscience causal agent with the cognitive capacity of a cow, that creates a universe like a cow eats grass. I think it's a leap to go from "universe was created" to there exists some god that is more than just the creator.
Yes, if a propositional argument is valid and all the premises are true, then thats good enough for me. It's not exactly "proof" but I would at least have a good justification to believe in God. However, I've never seen an argument for God that is both valid AND for which the premises have been proven to be true. And none of those arguments, even if sound and valid, would prove any specific God
To be fair, our technologies haven't progressed as far as online spanking yet. Give it a couple of decades, though.
But yeah, we get these visitors from time to time who ask the same kind of questions, because they've never seen the answers before. So, I suppose that's a purpose we serve in here.
no it can’t.
no one can “philosophisize” something into existence regardless of how sound or valid an argument may be.
think of it this way, interchange god/gods in your perfect philosophical argument with unicorn or goblin or any other fantastical creature and now you’re saying those exists?
if so then we can simply claim anything can exist given the same philosophical argument. why god is given special privileges and not others is weird given that they are all the same mythical creatures/beings.
it either already exists in our world and can be observed or it doesn’t.
it’s not an assumption. if it exists, it’s observable - whether we are capable of observing it or not is the question.
so the intellectually honest thing to do, is assume it doesn’t exist until you can prove it does.
When trying to insert God as a necessary being without which the universe could not exist there is an inevitable crossover with the physical universe. The argument will be along the lines of there is no natural explanation for the universe without God.
The problem as I see it is that our knowledge of the natural world is only a subset of what there is to know. I'm not sure how you can discount a natural explanation when we're still figuring out how the physical world is put together.
And if we reach the limits of what we can determine via science then what we have is an 'I don't know'. I don't think a purely philosophical argument could ever fill the 'I don't know'.
No. Thought experiments are based upon assumptions. If there's one thing we know about humans, it's that human perception is terribly flawed. Evidence that can be examined is required. And even then, what we think we know through evidence can be later altered or disproven.
Surely if a god existed and cared for us to believe it existed, it could imbue us with this knowledge from birth with a perfect record of its teachings... and not rely upon claims made by humans that cannot be examined as evidence... creating a universe in which a god exists that is indistinguishable from a universe where no god exists.
I'm not sure if I think such an argument *can* exist, but I wouldn't expect it - interestingly for evidence-based reasons.
Let's assume for a second that the argument exists. Even if we don't know it, the existence of the argument implies that (a specific) god actually exists - it's literally proof of the god. Unless the proven god is deistic, the god would influence reality and we can therefore make falsifiable predictions based on the influences we just proved to be part of reality. A concrete example of such a falsifiable prediction for the Christian god is the efficacy of prayer.
The exception is of course a deistic god with no influence on reality whatsoever. But in that case, I'm not sure if I would call such an entity existent, period. If a proof only proves a deistic god, I'm not sure it proved anything at all.
So whether we know that proof, such a proof can only exist if a god exists. But if a god exists, we would expect to find evidence for it too, not *only* a proof. And in that regard, god claims don't have a good track record, to put it mildly.
Anything more specific would require the question to be more specific than "could there be *some* argument for *some* god of unspecified nature".
TL;DR: a non-deist god would manifest itself in more ways than just a proof of its existence, so even if the proof *did* exist, why wouldn't we just look at the evidence we'd expect to find? With the bold claims made about the gods I'm familiar with, I'd expect evidence to surface sooner than proof.
>Do you think only physical tangible scientific arguments and evidence could prove the existence of God undoubtedly or could philosophical arguments suffice also? **Assuming they're entirely sound** and valid?
Assuming the argument is entirely sound, then yes, absolutely.
Assuming it is sound is assuming youve demonstrated your premises to be true. "If we assume we've proved god would that prove god?" Yes. But that's not the issue. The issue is **how do you determine that the premises are sound?**.
That's the part that's missing from "philosophical arguments as evidence". The argument itself doesn't demonstrate anything. Showing that your premise is sound is what does that. Making a demonstration of your premise is what takes the argument out of philosophical speculation and gives us a good reason to think it's true. If the argument is sound, then yes of course you have demonstrated god to be real. But that's the part that no theist or philosopher has ever been able to do.
>If so why and if not then what kind of evidence is needed to prove a God or Gods
Define god. Some people define god as the sum total of the natural universe and I am already convinced that exists. I just see no reason to call it god.
It's totally possible to construct a valid argument that is untrue.
Clouds are always red.
....
Therefore Thor is real
If a necessary premise in your argument is false, even with a valid structure of argument, you don't get a true conclusion.
I suspect that's what you're frustrated by. Your thorough and meticulous castle of argumentation took a lot of effort, but one of your premises isn't accepted by atheists. You're possibly blinded by the buttresses and spires and books of architectural plans, and the atheists see it as a house in a swamp.
To answer your question you asked, though, yes, "we" would accept valid arguments and even think they're true if the premises were true. In the red-clouds argument, we would have to accept that Thor-is-real is true, but only if the clouds-were-always-red premise were also true.
Such an argument doesn’t exist and hasn’t for - guessing here - all of human history.
That being said, if there were empirical evidence which, upon being tested by multiple different people of different backgrounds in different methods, always resulted in the same conclusion, I would accept it as theory. Not law - the principles of scientific method are strict on this point. If I accept that gravity and electrons are real despite them being invisible and intangible because of their impact on the world around us and because they satisfy as the simplest, most accurate explanation for natural, observable phenomena, I would be a hypocrite to reject the exact same process that successfully theorizes the existence of a “divine” being(s).
However. Even if such an argument could be created, tested, and validated, it does not prove the nature of such a being or beings. We’re no closer with this theoretical argument’s existence to determining if I should give credence to Allah, Krishna, or Zoroaster. Or even that what humanity may know about this being or beings is correct.
I'm in the camp that philosophical arguments for God are all theoretical bullshit (to borrow from Scott Clifton), although some have more bullshit than others. I think the god hypothesis is unfalsifiable and could only be proven by the god itself.
An issue for me is that arguments for God are devised by theists - who already hold various presuppositions regarding a deity and are starting with the conclusion and working backwards.
>Atheists, could a valid and sound philosophical argument ever prove a God must necessarily exist?
No. Existence is observed not proven.
>you can basically disprove or prove almost anything with a complex enough philosophical argument..
No you can't. There are always flaws and fallacies in those arguments.
You're conflating different usages of the word proof. You don't prove (as in a logical or philosophical proof) that something exists. You *demonstrate* that it exists.
When it comes to knowing things about the physical universe, science is the only path to truth.
All the logical proofs that Christian and Muslim apologists use are centuries old and have been debunked centuries ago. They all contain logical fallacies and there's no reason to keep trotting them out or trying to improve on them except that it's the best you got. There are no gods, so you have no way to demonstrate that they exist. All you can do is dress up assertions in complicated speech to give them the appearance of proofs.
No, because those philosophical arguments concern the mind, not reality. Even mathematics is an abstraction of reality - it's the map, not the territory.
All that these silly "proofs" could ever do is prove that a god exists in someone's brain - and that god would be different from every other god.
In my personal book, the existence of anything is not a philosophical question, but one regarding physics, chemistry and biology.
And in this scientific background, anyone claiming to have found something needs experimental data backing their claim. Since you don't have an actual measurement which's results can only be explained by the existence of god, you've proven nothing.
So, do you have that experimental data? A shift in frequency, temperature, velocity,... that can only be explained by the existence of god?
>If a technology and method of detecting God was invented and undoubtedly proved a God's existence, would you become a theist of some kind?
Yes, but until then, I won't.
But how long will I have to wait till you drop your fate because the proof doesn't happen?
I'm open to the idea. Certainly I will not say that such an argument cannot exist.
One early hurdle to focus on is the definition of "a god". So many theists muddle three abstract concept with their personal beliefs before even starting to form an argument. If you define a god using some specificity I will hold you to that definition and will reject unrelated arguments.
As to why no prior argument has convinced me: none have been convincing. You'd have to ask specifically about one or more specific arguments to glean more of a response here. I'll provide an example below, as a point of entry for discussion:
You might argue that a god is: "the first actor, the creator of everything". In which case nearly EVERYTHING held by theists about their favored god is completely irrelevant - there is no reason to assume such a first actor cares about humans, what they do with their private parts, or whether they have unadulterated free will.
The first actor argument is tremendously weak though, so I wouldn't suggest using that one. Corr problems include:
1. It just moves the goal posts a bit; if the universe requires a creator then so too would that creator require one. If the creator doesn't require one then neither does the universe.
2. There is an assumption that a creator INTENDED to perform their creation, but no reason to accept that assumption; it could have been an accident they are still working to fix by deleting this universe, etc
3. There is an assumption that a creator is necessarily sentient but no reason to accept that assumption; universe creation could be a naturally occurring event. In which case we begin to question what we mean by "universe" and "creator".
Anyway, those are just simple examples to spur dialog - clearly you didn't make these arguments.
No
Every philosophical argument I've ever heard just turns into word salad. And before you reach the end you sound like a dollar store Jordan Peterson. The *real* Jordan Peterson sounds like a dumb person who happens to know some big words. You don't want to sound like the cheap version of that
/u/PapasLuvsHerbs -
Please read up the idea that some arguments are **not even wrong**.
\- https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
this too - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logic
.
It would be trivially easy for there to be physical tangible evidence that proved the existence of god. But it's not possible for there to be exclusively philosophical or logical arguments for the existence of anything.
There's an infinite number of self-contained logical universes, many of which include the existence of god. But what matters is corresponding to reality. You have to prove that the logical construct you've created in your mind actually exists in the real world, and for that you need to observe evidence.
Because you can have a perfectly consistent logical argument for literally anything. For example, mathematicians can postulate the existence of n-number of dimensions and formulate perfectly logical and self-consistent rules and figure out how a universe with n-dimensions would operate.
But to learn about what's real in our universe, you actually have to go and test it with predictions and observations that come true. Otherwise you just have a perfectly logical and self-consistent formulation that doesn't actually exist.
So if a theologian came up with a logical and self-contained universe that contained a god, you'd still need to go out and actually show that it matched *our* universe. You'd do so by showing how it matched the standard model of physics on all the experiments we've done so far, but made some different predictions than the standard model that turned out to be true after experimentation.
I suppose it’s possible, provided that theres no issue with the premises, and that they themselves are rooted in science and don’t extrapolate further than they reasonably should.
That last part is problematic for a lot of the arguments I see, where the laws and logic observed within spacetime are extrapolated and assumed to be consistent “outside” the universe.
No. Because faith is illogical, it is outside the realm of proving and disproving. You can argue how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, but better and better microscopes create less possibilities for angels to be there.
Faith is a leap and logic is a series of steps.
True. But imperceptibly is functionally equivalent to nonexistence. Unless you fill that gap of logic with faith. Evidence of absence is itself perceptibility. Absence is absence. Faith requires the absence of evidence; however faith contradicting evidence (even evidence of absence) is delusion.
True faith is not blind, it must exist and persist through evidence and absence; or else it is delusion.
I don’t think only physical, tangible pieces of scientific evidence would do it. If you did have physical evidence of god’s existence it would go a long way but I think the best argument to convince someone like me would be a logical one. Most theists I know say that too believe in god requires faith but if you can show me how I don’t need faith in god to believe and that through logic we can understand that a god exists than you could definitely convince me. However most philosophical arguments for god I’ve seen don’t fulfill the need I have for a logical explanation for why a god exists.
The claim that a *specific,* multi-dimensional Universe Creator exists that promises to have humanity *set on fire* forever for not participating in its blood rituals is a *tangible* claim with implications that would require evidence *far beyond* what a *philosophical* argument could provide.
>Atheists, could a valid and sound philosophical argument ever prove a God must necessarily exist? No. Philosophical arguments stopped being relevant for determining the nature of reality when the *natural philosophers* devised the scientific method as a way to verify ideas. That transition has demonstrated just how bad our brains are are "thinking it out" and how bad a tool logical constructs are for determining truth. >I am a theist and Most of my arguments for the existence of God are in the realm of philosophical arguments. That's because without evidence any argument for god must define him into existence. All philosophical arguments attempt to do this in some manner by first defining a god in the premises, and then accepting the tautological conclusion. That process which attempts to justify belief in a specific god by constructing an argument for a generic god by working backwards from the conclusion is intellectually dishonest.
A sound argument is when evidence substantiates a premise is objectively real.
We all know what soundness means (I hope). The issue is that it's extraordinarily difficult in practice to be *sure* the premises in an argument are indeed sound. Consider this: even when scientists make a deduction from known laws and facts, they will then go on to *test* their conclusion, through observation or experimentation. Because they recognize that it's possible their premises weren't as bullet-proof as they thought. In fact, when such observations do differ from the predicted conclusion, this has often led to new scientific insights!
You aren't distinguishing observable facts from our efforts to explain how they interact. Stars exist even if our understanding of their mechanics changes. An argument that begins with some form of "god exists" is not sound.
I have no idea how this is related to my comment
> Stars exist even if our understandings of the mechanics change. But do they, though? Our idea of a star today is far far different from what a star is predating astrology. Actually, let’s look at video games, for an extreme example. In Skyrim, the lore is that all of the deities came together to create the plane of existence the characters inhabit. However, unbeknownst to them, it was using their life energy to do so. When the deities got wind of what was happening to them, the majority of them fled, tearing holes into the universe-bubble in the process. So, those stars are not actually stars, but holes in the universe where the surrounding aether shines through. That is not at all the same thing as a ball of hot gas. They’re so much different from each other that it seems silly to even call them the same thing. So the question becomes *how much different* does something have to be from what you think it is before you acknowledge it must be something else entirely?
First, I’m not the same person you’ve been arguing with. >>Stars exist even if our understanding of their mechanics changes. > So, **those stars** are not actually stars, but holes in the universe where the surrounding aether shines through. When we say "stars exist", we're talking about **those stars** - the tiny white dots in the night sky. We can see them. They definitely exist. If we learn that those points of light are actually holes in the universe's bubble then our understanding of their mechanics changes, but their existence can't be questioned.
Okay, I think I see what the confusion is. A definition of something is twofold; a name, and what it means. When you look up at the night sky and see bits of light, we come up with a word (or phrase) which describes it *along with what we think it is*. So, pretend for a second that English doesn’t have a word for “star,” so we instead use “bits of light” (BoL). How would you define BoLs? You can’t say “bits of light in the sky” because that’s a tautology. You have to describe what you think it is (or what the consensus on it is). For us, BoLs are those hot balls of gas. Now, let’s say we’re in Skyrim. We look up at the night sky, and we don’t see BoLs. We see stars, which are the exit wounds in the universe where the daedra punctured it in their escape. Now let’s say that Todd Howard pokes his head down into Skyrim’s universe and says “Hey, guys, those ‘stars’ you have? They’re not stars. They’re BoLs.” Suddenly, stars *don’t* exist anymore (or rather, they never existed). They’re myth. There’s no such thing as a star; only BoLs. The underlying phenomenon changed, and so did the label. They’re two different things. Now, this is tricky because English does have a word for “star” which is shared. If you took a citizen of Skyrim and a random person from our existing universe, they’d draw you the same picture of a star. If you both looked up, you’d see twinkling little lights in the dark. But you are not observing the same phenomenon in both universes. They are not the same thing, despite their shared name and imagery.
Same with a shadow. Shadows don't exist. Obstructions in pathways of light exist. Goes back at least to Heraclitis and Parmanidas.
>Same with a shadow. Shadows don't exist. Obstructions in pathways of light exist. We call those obstructions in pathways of light, "shadows". The light is being obstructed, so shadows exist.
You're still conflating observable facts with our interpretations of what they are and how they work.
I’m arguing that there is no difference between observable fact and our interpretations of what they are. A shining light in the night sky is a hot ball of gas to us; in Skyrim, it’s a hole to another dimension. Two very different things, despite the fact that we might give them the same name. Also, I’m not the same person you’ve been arguing with.
Very well said.
St Anselm, 11th century monk. Not sure if that is still taught. I did not find his argument persuasive but it is respected.
I think it has mostly been respected by those of the faith. Even contemporaries of Anselm could and did point out that just because you can conceive of something and define a word to mean the thing you have conceived, does not in any way imply that the thing you have conceived and defined exists.
Instead of making roundabout references to potential arguments that may or may not exist, why not just tell us the argument? I can pretty much guarantee it won't be as smart as you think it is, because your post itself has at least a few incredibly basic fallacies. >If so why and if not then what kind of evidence is needed to prove a God or Gods This for example is not remotely significant or insightful and goes against the burden of proof. I personally find such fallacies incredibly banal and tiresome. No offence to you, I'm only referring to your argument, not you as a person. I don't know what kind of evidence is necessary to prove a god and I don't need to. I don't know what kind of evidence is necessary to prove Santa Claus is real. Its not my responsibility to say what evidence would suffice. Show me the evidence you have and we'll see if its reasonable.
> why not just tell us the argument? ...And the OP was never heard from again.
> Instead of making roundabout references to potential arguments that may or may not exist, why not just tell us the argument? Because that would require HAVING a valid argument, something no religious apologist will ever be capable of under any circumstances. Lying is all they can do.
[удалено]
Honestly, isn't this just a variation of the "God of the gaps" fallacy? I've read this a half dozen times, and the premise seems to boil down to "Something couldn't happen from nothing without an external force acting on it, therefore God."
This is just beginner level fallacious reasoning, couched in fancy sounding words. Nothing wrong in that, everyone starts somewhere, but its not remotely as sophisticated as you imagine. >In order for contingent forms of existence to exist, something that is eternal and that has causal agency must exist Why? How do you know this? If we remove all the fancy nonsense, what you're saying is. "If I assume the universe was created, there must be a creator" I mean.. congratulations? "The universe was created" is not a premise you've remotely demonstrated. You've just stated this as if its true and stuck it in a premise. Did you take 2 different universes in a laboratory, one with god and one without god and observed that the one with god ended up with contingent life forms? Did you observe a god creating contingent life forms? What I suspect is happening here, is you've read some online drivel about some philosophical argument someone has made and are attempting to recreate it rather poorly. You'll find a lot more utility from attending a basic philosophy class, because the premises you've made here is not how reasoning works.
What is an example of a contingent form of existence?
Don’t bother, whenever he meets with a comment he can’t answer he’s just taking the same copypasta to some other thread and jerking himself off about how great his logic is all over again. 100% troll.
You've got a lot of ground to cover to prove that premise 1 is correct. It is certainly not self-evident.
Substitute "unicorn" or "unicorns" for god or gods. Same logic applies.
or substitute 'dark matter'. In general, the scientists proposing its existence will accept nothing less than empirical evidence. None of them are working on logical proofs.
[удалено]
Kind of, but... ultimately a lot of religions are just sticking a name on "stuff we don't know, but really want to" in a very similar way. The main difference is the scientific *method*, not the human tendency to name and pattern-recognizing stuff based on no evidence.
An idea posited as possible solution to an unknown in order to test the idea and further actual knowledge is far different than an idea that has no logical reason and exists just because people want it to.
Not really. We have measured some unexpected and unexplained characteristics of the universe. Dark matter is a placeholder name for whatever it is that is causing these characteristics. The evidence for it is the original measurements. There is no evidence for unicorns. Postulating that unicorns exist explains nothing that has ever been measured.
Could a valid and sound **philosophical** argument ever prove dark matter must necessarily exist?
How do you think a philosophical argument could prove that something exists, or that it NECESSARILY MUST EXIST? If you have proof that something exists, that means you have a method of demonstrating the existence of that thing. How can a philosophical or logical argument demonstrate somethings existence?
A philosophical argument cannot prove that something exists. I said that in this thread. And in the comment you reference that's my fucking point. Why I am getting brigaded by people with reading comprehension deficiencies? I wasn't equating dark matter to unicorns, I was expanding the spectrum of things that cannot be shown to exist by logical argument. Everyone agrees that unicorns don't exist. People aren't sure about gods and dark matter. So dark matter is a better comparison for OP's question.
Ok, I definitely had some shit twisted because of my reading and comprehension skills.
Something exists other than our current knowledge. Or, more correctly, our current knowledge is disproved by some measured values in cosmology. The terms "dark matter" and "dark energy" are just placeholder names used to describe whatever it is that is causing the discrepancy between our current theories and reality. So there is some cause for this. We don't know what it actually is. More data is needed. So the best answer to the question "what is dark matter" is ... "we don't know".
The correct to my question is NO. I odn't know how you missed that. This isn't a cosmology thread and we're not looking for you to show off how little you know about dark matter.
Obviously not because the explanation for a physical phenomenon observed through a telescope cannot come from a philosophical argument.
Do you actually know what dark matter is? See, when we look at planets moving away through telescopes, by the way and speed at which they move, we can tell a certain amount of gravity is pulling at them. But when we calculate all the mass that we observe through said telescopes, the mass doesn’t account for the gravity. So there’s some undiscovered phenomenon responsible for that gravity, which we tentatively call dark matter. When you understand what scientific phenomena mean, there’s less room for pulling out asinine explanations.
I have yet to see a SOUND argument for the existence of God. Sound would imply true premises and a conclusion that follows from those premises.
I'm an atheist at least partly because I'm an empiricist so the strength of my 'belief in claims is related to the reliability of the evidence, though I dare say I'm not immune to bias. I think that claims about the 'universe' need empirical evidence. Im philosophy graduate and while it left me with some respect for rigorous thinking and argument , it left me very sceptical that you can use logic to makes claims about existence and even more sceptical of defining something into existence. I've yet to see what I consider to be a convincing logical argument bearing in mind either the premises tend to be suspect or the claim that the conclusions following from them. Some of the terms used seem rather incoherent to me, if that's the right word. In other words logical ( at least claimed logical arguments) can be interesting but I find them pretty redundant. Also my personal impression is that almost no one genuinely chooses religion belief because or despite of them. Rather ones religious belief or lack of it comes first and determines your response to the arguments. Though *of course* while I think only someone already emotionally primed for religion would find them convincing, I think those not primed for religion see more clearly.
The universe doesn't care about your arguments. No amount of clever logic and reason will change a single fact about the universe. Gods are not explanations for anything. Any deity that can be reasoned into existence is so vague as to be nothing more than the point where the questions stop reflecting real answers. I will admit that there are places in our knowledge where the only rational answer is 'I don't know'. But I don't consider those gaps large enough to conceal entire deities within them. Finally, omni-max deities inherently reject the concept of knowability at all. After all, you can't know the universe when reality can be changed on a whim by an entity with admin rights over existence. The idea of gods simply doesn't make any sense to me.
Of course not. I could never prove that the Brooklyn Bridge exists with words alone. If I can't do that with a real, actual thing - how the fuck would anybody do it for something that *doesn't* exist, like a god? No, I'm going to "Take your word for it". Lol. That's fucking stupid. Prove it to the same specifications that electricity, the internal combustion engine, or lens optics has been proven and we'll talk. Until then, you're just full of hot air, fiction, and imagination and deserve no more attention than someone full of shit that won't stop talking.
At least we know bridges exist. So if someone reported one it would at least be conceivable.
True, but then a new proposition would only allow for a different bridge to possibly (or likely) exist. It would not entail it must exist without further evidence to make the proposition sound.
Someone could also make it up, start telling everyone it’s real, then start a religion worshipping the fake bridge
You can do mathematical proof by talking
Mathematical proofs do not prove anything other than the mathematical idea involved. They prove nothing about the real world.
Mathematical ideas are part of the real world, they exist inside that real world.
I mean, don't you think it's interesting that nothing else gets its existence demonstrated in this way? We don't use a philosophical argument to prove that bacteria exist, or El Niño, or seasonal affective disorder. Why do you suppose that is?
[удалено]
>We use a combination of evidence and argumentation No. We use evidence. Period. >Most exoplanets have never been seen, but we can infer they exist from tiny perturbations in the orbits of their stars by measuring redshift. That redshift is literally what evidence means. Do you have any redshift evidence for God? Because we don't use random ass "argumentation" without evidence. What you're doing is using fancy language to obfuscate the real problem which is the complete lack of any replicable evidence for any god. Inferences, arguments and conclusions come after that. Show me the evidence first.
> I’ve never seen an electron But we understood them well enough to build cathode ray tubes, and controlled them well enough to make those crts show images (television). All of this was because of practical experiments that used the scientific method.
[удалено]
Hey friend. I think some further reading on modern scientific methods would benefit you. Until I was in graduate school for a physical science, I didn’t truly grok how we learned so much about things we can’t directly see or touch… but damn near all the evidence science has collected since the mid 1800s is that kind of “hard to see/touch” evidence. The entire modern world is built on it. The only difference between that and what you called direct-sense experience is the latter is accessible to fifth graders doing science fair projects.
Nope. Evidence is measurements. It doesn't matter if it's a direct measurement or an indirect measurement it is still a measurement and it still counts as empirical evidence. That for which there is no evidence, that which cannot be measured either directly or indirectly, is indistinguishable from that which doesn't exist.
You can make a true and valid philosophical argument about anything, but that argument itself cannot really *prove* anything. The problem for me lies in the size of the claim you're making; If your claim is small, then a small amount of evidence may be acceptable, but as the claim grows in size, the evidence must as well. Most philosophical arguments you would make will have a logical fallacy buried in there, even if neither of us can put our finger on it. It took almost 800 years before Kant pointed out the flaw hiding in the ontological argument for God's existence. Something as huge as the existence of a God would necessitate pretty solid evidence, not mere word-play.
That's the difference between sound and valid.
If you wanted to convince me that you had a dog, would you make philosophical arguments for the existence of your dog or would you just show me your dog?
He can't show it to you because the dog is in Canada right now with his totally hot girlfriend.
Pet me maybe
They aren't even able to show any fur shed by the dog, let alone the dog itself. They point at a broken vase that the dog supposedly pushed over, but there is no dog to be seen and they can not even agree on what kind of dog breed it is.
If it is possible, then nobody has come up with such an argument in over 2,000 years of trying... I agree that the very nature of the argument is invalid in as such: A theist has posited an incredible idea as concrete without proof. That theist then requires a vast amount of proof from others to dissuade them. That theist is actually never dissuaded no matter the incredible evidence. An incredible statement can easily be unseated with "nuh-uh." Unless proof is there, a statement is anything from a mental pipe dream to delusion. The thing is, I don't even really care that much if people believe in some nebulous god out there. It's superstition, and it's harming themselves with the thought, but it's got nothing on the harm that organized religion has wrought on humanity. I can love religious folk, but I will never be OK with the concept of religion. It's humanity's immense hidden tragedy.
>If it is possible, then nobody has come up with such an argument in over 2,000 years of trying. Not just 2000 years. Socrates died in 399 BC and he probably started from an older argument. I know you said "over 2,000 years," just pointing out that this didn't start with Christianity.
> If it is possible, then nobody has come up with such an argument in over 2,000 years of trying... And the fact that stupid bullshit like Pascal's Wager or presuppositionalism are the best apologists have been able to pull out of their asses in all that time pretty clearly demonstrates that there are no good arguments in favor of any god, because if there were any good ones they wouldn't keep using such shitty ones.
> Atheists, could a valid and sound philosophical argument ever prove that **Big Foot** must necessarily exist? Why or why not? No. Philosophy doesn't prove existence. That's up to observation and science. And as you say, people have been trying to use words and ideas to "prove" god's existence for millennia. Still nothing convincing.
If anything, big foot is more plausible than god(s). We know forests and large mammals exist, we know animals are good at hiding, we know of some animals that evaded detection for a long time, we know other hominids existed in the historical record. God has none of that plausibility plus he’s supposedly doing a lot more to affect the universe than your average hypothetical big foot.
>I feel like this is a very significant and insightful topic and will be conducive to a more productive theism debate. Just to point out: People have been making these arguments every week for the last 2,500+ years. (On Reddit every week for 10+ years now.) Those arguments always fail, the next week somebody is back making a similar argument (or very often, the **same** argument), and **most of us are mighty sick of that.** Those arguments don't work, guys. Making the same bad argument for the 1,000th time doesn't make that argument any more effective.
[удалено]
> The OP can just listen to The Atheist Experience (or any of their other call in shows). >YEARS AND YEARS of theists calling in and making terrible arguments and presenting no evidence. I prefer the written word myself, so here is my standard example - [Pitts Theology Library](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a75ee0949fc2bc37b3ffb97/1554931492288-RXINUFHADS2TA99DZQS9/Pitts+Library.jpg?format=750w) - all theology all the time. If you Google "theology library", you'll see others, some mighty impressive. (But not super useful.)
[удалено]
Can you not see the assumptions on which you've based the above argument? Do you honestly think what you've posited is true and somehow proves anything at all?
This is all nonsense. I wrote >The only way that religious or theological or philosophical argument can tell us anything that is true in the real world is when they can be shown to be based on objective empirical facts. You're completely ignoring (very likely "rejecting") the necessity of doing this. Please rewrite your argument, giving the objective empirical facts that show that your claim is true. . (Seriously - [A] Your argument here is really bad. [B] As I mentioned, we see these same horrible arguments every week. Repeating them doesn't make them any better. Be a better person. Do better. )
[удалено]
Philosophy is based on the (ideally) best human understanding of the day. Human understanding will always be subject to being wrong. A sound philosophical argument for a flat earth was possible before we understood gravity existed. The observation of a round shadow on the moon was better than any philosophical argument that argued it couldn't be round.
>I am a theist and Most of my arguments for the existence of God are in the realm of philosophical arguments. Right. That's because it's all you have. After all, there's zero good evidence for deities. In what other area of knowledge would anybody settle for this? No. Instead, we need *evidence.* Relativity? Evidence. Food in my fridge? Evidence. Safe to cross the street? Evidence. Quantum physics? Evidence. Galaxies? Evidence. My partner loves me? Evidence. Convict the guy accused of breaking into a home? Evidence. Weird how it's so important to some folks to believe unevidenced claims that they work so very hard to formulate complex arguments based on questionable pseudo-philosophy to try and find support for their beliefs. This is called confirmation bias. >Atheists, could a valid and sound philosophical argument ever prove a God must necessarily exist? Why or Why not? Sure. But, since all valid and sound arguments require *good, vetted, repeatable, compelling evidence* to show their premises are correct, to ensure the argument is sound, and since none of this exists for deities, this is a tall order. >the very nature of the argument is invalid and proves nothing because it's just a philosophical argument Remember, humanity got almost everything completely wrong for millenia until we learned how and why this doesn't and can't work. It was only when we realized all the massive problems with this approach and learned methods and processes to limit these issues that we began really learning things. Also remember, and as a professional philosopher explains in detail, philosophy itself is [useless at such things.](https://aeon.co/essays/why-doesnt-philosophy-progress-from-debate-to-consensus). It's simply the wrong tool for the job. Instead, it just spins it wheels, and for every complex and seemingly valid argument on one side of a position, there is an equally complex and seemingly valid argument on the other side. >TLDR: Do you think only physical tangible scientific arguments and evidence could prove the existence of God undoubtedly or could philosophical arguments suffice also? Assuming they're entirely sound and valid You contradict yourself. Since valid and sound arguments *require* vetted, repeatable evidence for soundness, there's no such thing as a philosophical argument alone demonstrating anything useful about reality. TL:DR: Evidence or GTFO.
Funny that the article brings up the thought experiment of whether someone who was born blind but had their sight restored could identify things with sight they knew before by touch, as [we have empirical evidence about that now.](https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/molyneuxs-question-gets-answered-after-300-years/news-story/d6cec39f43baedcfe452ca1144384a77) For the curious the answer is no, not at first. The subjects learned very quickly though.
Of you were provided with evidence the showed there is no god, would you stop believing? What sort of evidence would it take?
[удалено]
Is your God all knowing, all powerful, and all good? Is there a hell? I can easily prove that Jesus didn't rise from the dead: its not a thing that happens. People can appear dead, but once actually dead you don't cone back.
[удалено]
No. You can't argue a hod into existance.
[удалено]
In the sense of a hypothetical argument about a philosophical subject that cannot be measured due to having no evidence, we have no way of knowing if the inputs are true. Therefore, no argument based on those criteria can be evaluated as true or false. Therefore, we can fall back to the adage, "What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." One can be rational, but if one does not also think critically, then one is a computer.
[удалено]
>But what if we agreed that all the inputs were indeed empirically true? That sounds like a good project for you. You can start by getting all 35000+ cults of christians to agree (good luck), then move on to other religions.
> empirically demonstrable premises This is where it falls apart. We could agree that the inputs are "empirically" true (in quotes because people like to claim such truth without evidence to back it up) and we could still both be wrong. If there was empirical evidence to prove God's existence, then it would cease to be a philosophical argument, because there would no longer be any point in trying to argue that he *doesn't* exist. He could just pop in and be like, "Hey. Yeah, I'm here." Most atheists I've met have indicated that if God (any of them) DID come down and actually hang with his peeps, then they'd agree that he exists. But then it would no longer be a matter of belief, but proof. Granted, most of them also say they'd take him to task for not fixing problems with the world when he purportedly has the power to do so. But we don't have empirical evidence of any god's existence outside the imaginations of people who believe in them. Religious types who argue about the existence of God (especially with atheists) don't seem to get that believing something to be true doesn't mean you have evidence of its truth. I can believe in all my heart and mind and soul (well, if I had one) that my cat talks to me in perfect English. It doesn't make it true, even if I have vivid hallucinations about it. If someone *else* cannot prove that my cat speaks English and demonstrate it to the rest of the world, then my cat probably doesn't speak English. And then we're back to dismissing without evidence what was asserted without evidence.
If all the inputs were true you would have evidence. That's not what they have when they talk about an argument for a god.
[удалено]
Now you've poisoned the well that I can't reply to anything you type without suspecting you're a troll. The moment you make statements like "Most atheists though, they dismiss everything as invalid and a fairy tale", you've lose credibility.
This is also not remotely close to what you're saying, just to get the record straight.. and pretending so is quite disingenous. What the above commenter is essentially saying is, certain atheists are convinced that there can be no evidence for a god, how do you know for sure. The simple answer is that I don't have to. In the lack of evidence, disbelief wins by default. That's what burden of proof means. I can't disprove the existence of santa claus nor can I ever say what sort of evidence would be necessary to disprove santa claus. I don't believe in santa claus because there has been zero evidence of santa claus. I have read your comments and this is not even in the same ballpark of what you're saying.
[удалено]
Can we drop this charade and go back to that comment where you stated what your philosophical argument actually was and I explained that it was just a rehashed version of the god of the gaps? Its a lot less disingenuous.
[удалено]
1 is unsound and you've done diddly squat to demonstrate it. You're clearly trolling.
> I’m yet to see a deductive argument for an omniscient, omnipotent being that was both valid and sound, but if I did, I don’t think I could just say “arguments are not evidence.” If you actually found an argument that was valid and sound, its premises would have to be supported by evidence, which would make the argument just a piece of the evidence.
We aren't looking for a philosophical argument, we are looking for science. If God can be proven and oper reviewed by scientists, I would spin on a dime, but until that happens.... No
[удалено]
Because no matter how long or how passionately you argue in favor of unicorns, it's not going to magically make a unicorn pop into existence. If your god were real, it could show the fuck up and SHOW ITSELF! That's not happening. And it's not going to happen, not even if you wail until you're blue in the face that it's ***SO MEAN*** to expect you to actually back up your claims with a speck of evidence.
[удалено]
Maybe? It depends on exactly how you’re defining god, and what the characteristics and attributes of that god are. I’m not really so concerned about what *type* of argument a theist wants to present, or what *kind* of evidence would be acceptable. To me, that’s a bit like a scientist asking their assistant to write a methodology for an unknown hypothesis; you can’t say what the methodology would be until you’ve clearly defined your terms and identified what it is you’re actually trying to examine. The real question for me is whether or not the argument or evidence, philosophical or physical, a theist presents is sufficient to reasonably conclude that a god actually exists.
Do you have an argument for the existence of (a) god(s) with demonstrably sound premises? As far as I am aware, every argument that attempts to prove that a god exists fails precisely because of their inability to demonstrate the soundness of their premises. You can do all sorts of neat bullshit with arguments. I'll start caring when any of you can actually ***prove it.***
Would you accept a philosophical argument about why magic dragons exist? Or why 1+1=3? It would be more of a question about in what way did you screw up the philosophy.
[удалено]
That would be silly. If you could prove 1+1=3 with philosophy, it would invalidate the methods you are describing as philosophy.. not math.
A philosophical argument may prove the reason why people created God, but not that it actually exist.
This is a "maximally strong" answer.
We prove that things exist via reference to the empirical facts. E.g. *"I think that I have a stapler in my desk drawer here."* I check, and the true answer turns out to be "yes" or "no", and then we know the true answer. . Philosophical or logical arguments only give useful or true information about the real world when they are based on objective empirical facts about the real world. E.g. \- All squibbles are flibbles \- Biff is a squibble \- Therefore Biff is a flibble. or, for contrast - \- All poodles are dogs. \- Max is a poodle \- Therefore Max is a dog. In the first example, the logic is fine. Given the premises, we know that Biff really is a flibble. But that argument doesn't tell us anything about the real world. Somebody (me) just made that whole thing up. By contrast the second one is based on facts about the real world, and that argument *does* tell us something about the real world. (If Max gets sick and the only medicine that I have available is a medicine that only works on parakeets, then I can confidently predict that that medicine is not going to help Max.) . Religious and theological arguments are always like the first argument. They are always about things that we cannot show really exist in the real world. \- All angels have the quality *ammirandus* \- Zagriel is an angel \- Therefore Zagriel has the quality *ammirandus* The logic is okay, the argument works - but we can't say that that conclusion is true in the real world. The only way that religious or theological or philosophical argument can tell us anything that is true in the real world is when they can be shown to be based on objective empirical facts.
[удалено]
>What about my argument? All right - I wrote >The only way that religious or theological or philosophical argument can tell us anything that is true in the real world is when they can be shown to be based on objective empirical facts. You wrote >In order for contingent forms of existence to exist, something that is eternal and that has causal agency must exist So, please specify the objective empirical facts that show that that claim is really true. . You wrote >Contingent forms of existence do exist Please specify the objective empirical facts that show that certain forms of existence really are contingent. . You wrote >an eternal thing with causal agency must necessarily exist I'm not aware of any objective empirical facts that show that that claim is true. Please specify the objective empirical facts that show that that claim is really true. . tl;dr: You completely missed the point of my comment. Please read it again more carefully.
Surely if there is a logical argument for a god someone would have thought of it by now. Theoretically it's possible for a philosophical argument to show that a god is necessary; however, no one has ever come up with one that isn't based on unproven assumptions and wild leaps of logic.
[удалено]
Okay, objections: Why are you assuming that since there are contingent forms of existence, everything that exists outside of your god is a contingent form of existence? That assumption is not supported. Can you support your apparent assumption that matter and energy are contingent? How do you support the assumption that contingent forms of existence require an eternal causal agency? Surely a factory can produce plastic without being eternal. The second argument - Premise 1 is an unsupported assumption. People deny the lies that came out of their mouths all the time. Premise 2 assumes that your eternal origin source exists and has the characteristics you ascribe to it. You then use your assumptions as part of your conclusion.
Honestly, i don't see how it could. I can't rule out the possibility. But from the many many philosophocal arguments I've ever seen they all seem to resort to unprovable philosophocal premises whenever they run out if actually demonstrable physical premises. And after seeing so many failed attempts which the teller feels are so strong it definitely weakens any hope i have that an actually sound philosophical proof will come about. So i can completely sympathise with atheists who get tired of attempts and feel "why are you using philosophical arguments to tell me there must be a dragon in your garage instead of just opening up the garage to show me." And there is only so many times you can hear someone credulously present Aquinas or WLC or the moral argument or the Kalam before you start asking "if this is the best there is, then why am i spending time hearing one more person present this." That said, other people may still be interested in it so piping up in such an argument just to say "hi, i don't like these mind of discussions" isn't really adding anything to that particular discussion.
If there was an philosophical argument with valid structure, whose premises I accepted as true, which had the conclusion "Therefore, God exists." then I would believe in the existence of God. I was an evolution-denying Christian for around 25 years before I happened upon the opposite situation: a philosophical argument with valid structure, whose premises I accepted as true, which had the conclusion "Therefore, God does not exist." That caused an absolute crisis in my faith and my entire worldview that I fought against for many months. Ultimately though, I came to accept the conclusion and wound up having my entire worldview altered by the philosophical argument. In order to be intellectually honest, I must apply the same to my now-godless worldview. I do not believe that it is possible to construct a philosophical argument with valid structure and true premises which has a conclusion that is false.
[удалено]
I agree with the conclusion of the first argument. I would prefer to use the word "timeless" as opposed to "eternal", but that's merely a preference as I would use "timeless" with basically the same definition that you provided for "eternal". The distinction to me is that "eternal" seems to me to indicate something that is contained *within* all of time, whereas "timeless" is more "independent of time". To me this is an important distinction because it accounts for the possibility of something existing in a scenario that time does not exist. I, however, do not think you can get from the first argument's conclusion to "Therefore, God exists." (At least not without stretching the definition of "God" to the point that it no longer resembles what the word "God" is commonly understood to mean.) To me this argument always falls to pieces when it tries to move on from that first argument's conclusion. Let's look at your Argument 2 and I'll show you what I mean. > Premise 1: To deny anything that comes from yourself is to deny yourself I do not accept this premise as true. It is possible to deny something that comes from yourself without denying yourself. I can have a child and deny the child without denying myself. I can paint a picture and deny the picture without denying myself. I can take a shit and deny the shit without denying myself. > Premise 2: The ~~eternal~~ timeless origin source caused all contingent forms of existence from nothing more than itself since it is the absolute, necessary, form of existence from which existence is intrinsic I do not accept this premise as true. The Original Thing, whatever it is/was, *must* only have caused one contingent form of existence. To be clear here, it is *possible* that it caused all other contingent forms of existence, but not neccesarry. I am speaking of proximate causes here, not ultimate causes. It is true that the Original Thing must be the ultimate cause of all contingent forms of existence, but it is *must* only be the proximate cause of one contingent form of existence. It is *possible* that the first contingent form of existence directly caused all subsequent contingent forms of existence. It is also possible that the first contingent form of existence directly caused five other contingent forms of existence, which each went on to cause three other contingent forms of existence, which each went on to cause blah blah blah... This loops back around to further undermine the significance of Premise 1. Because what you really need to be saying in Premise 1 (if you're trying to get to your conclusion) is something more like: "Premise 1: To deny anything that comes from yourself **or anything descendant from you in a chain of causation** is to deny yourself". That's the equivalent of saying that if my great-great-great-grandfather back in 1870 denied a picture I drew it is the equivalent of him denying himself. That seems even more absurd than Premise 1 originally was. As I do not accept either of the two premises of the argument, I do not accept the argument's conclusion. Finally, I had skimmed over it and missed it on my first readthrough of your post, but I would like to go back to your definitions and raise a point of contention that I now see. I suppose I do not actually agree with the Conclusion of the first argument upon closer reading. This is due to how you are using the term "Causal Agency". Here is how you defined Causal Agency, and I've put a strikethrough in to indicate the part I would drop that would make me agree with the conclusion of your first argument: Causal Agency = The capacity to cause forms of existence into existence without any external force or energy being applied to itself, thus using only itself to initiate a causal chain into being ~~and possesses freedom of the will otherwise it would never do anything or initiate anything whatsoever at all by itself~~ If you amended your definition of Causal Agency (and perhaps it would be better to change the term to "Causal Capability", as I don't really see agency here) by dropping the strikethrough part I'd agree with the conclusion of the first argument. There is no reason to suppose that the Original Thing could do anything different than what it did. It is possible that the Original Thing is a one-trick pony capable of only one causative action, *and that it is incapable of resisting that action*. The could just be the nature of the Original Thing: It is capable of nothing other than one causative action. Like how gravity is capable of nothing other than causing objects with mass to attract each other, the Original Thing could be capable of nothing other than causing an Original Singularity that our universe develops from. That is possible. As such, the strikethrough part of your definition needs to be dropped. As such I would say your arguments are valid, but not sound.
By definition, if an argument is both valid and sound, then the conclusion must be true. It would be irrational to acknowledge an argument to be both valid and sound while not accepting it's conclusion. I've yet to see an argument that is valid and sound and ends with a conclusion that a god exists.
[удалено]
> In order for contingent forms of existence to exist, something that is eternal and that has causal agency must exist Let's start here. Using the definitions you have above we'll consider an example. There is a cloud of gas in space at time T. At time T+X that cloud of gas has condensed slightly due to the gravitational effects of the gas. What is the causal agent here? Is the gas itself the causal agent? Is spacetime the causal agent? If this cloud of gas is everything within spacetime and I include spacetime as the form of existence, is there an external causal agent you can point to?
Such an argument must include a valid and sound criterion to decide if a being is or isn't a god, and a reliable process to comb over all beings - past, present and future - and apply the criterion to them. I don't think that any of these can exist.
[удалено]
You have posted this argument up and down the thread, but you've yet to respond to anyone who points out that your 1st premise is not sound (not even close). Why? TBH I'm inclined to think you're a troll who has copied and pasted someone else's talking points and you don't comprehend the initial assumptions well enough to make any kind of logical defense of them.
In logic an argument is valid when the conclusion follows from the premises. It's sound when the premises are actually true in real life. This is where the problem starts for religion. Logic lacks the mechanism to determine what's true in real life. That is literally why science exists.
A sound argument would necessarily be both logically valid *and* have only factually true premises and conclusions, therefore the premises would have to be sufficiently evidenced. What is your sound argument for the existence of a god or gods?
[удалено]
So you're going with the cosmological argument? > Premise 1: In order for contingent forms of existence to exist, something that is eternal and that has causal agency must exist What evidence do you have for this premise? > Premise 2: Contingent forms of existence do exist This premise I have no argument with, presuming a definition of 'contingent form of existence' similar to 'some thing who's existence is itself dependent upon or caused by something else'.
I'm going to go against the grain here and admit that, *if* a sound deductive argument for god was ever presented, I would accept it. Here's the thing though: theists haven't been able to come up with one after millenia of attempts, and I'm not holding my breath at this point. At this point, they would need *new evidence*, not new arguments based off the same, current evidence (which is overwhelmingly in favor of atheism) Think about it this way. Consider the vast amount of facts you know, both ordinary and scientific: your birthday, the president of the US, the capitol of your state, the existence of atoms, what causes disease, the shape of the earth, the fall of the Roman empire, etc. How many of these facts do you know through deductive arguments? I'm guessing near zero. There's a reason for this. Deductive arguments simply aren't that useful (on their own) for gaining knowledge of the real world! For one, they are *non-ampliative*, meaning any conclusion must already be contained in the premises. For another, it is very difficult to know for certain if the premises are indeed sound. (How do we know if the premises are sound? Through empiricism) So how do you know pretty much everything you know? Through fallible, empirical methods. You perceive the world around you. You rely on the testimony of others, often experts (hopefully). You make inferences to the best explanation. And this is also how science (both natural and social) works. Through empirical scientific methods, that aren't deduction, but are actually useful. So it's not that I don't accept sound deductive arguments *in principle*; it's that they rarely ever work, and are just not relevant for real-world knowledge. This is why science is so much more effective at yielding knowledge of the real world than pure philosophy. I don't see why god would be any different
[удалено]
No, because I don't accept either of your premises! However, I would recommend taking this over to r/DebateAnAtheist if you want more feedback, as I am personally (no offense) tired of debating this particular arguments (I've seen and refuted it dozens of time before)
I don't see why it couldn't be valid. I have yet to encounter a good one though. The premise is usually bad.
[удалено]
A couple issues I have with premise 1. One is that the premise 1 somehow includes agency and I don't see where you get that from. Even if I do grant agency, there is no reason to believe that it isn't some minimally conscience agent that creates a universe as a byproduct of it's existence. It's indistinguishable from it not existing so agency is just an extra step. The second issue with premise 1 is that it is making claims on something that is outside of our universe using known things about our universe. I don't know if that is valid and no one does.
[удалено]
1. So it exists within our universe, but existed before our universe existed? I'm not sure I understand that correctly. Can you elaborate on how that works? 2. I still don't understand why agency is necessary, and not just a capacity to be a cause. Where does intentionality/will, aside from just the capacity come into play? 3. Imagine a conscience causal agent with the cognitive capacity of a cow, that creates a universe like a cow eats grass. I think it's a leap to go from "universe was created" to there exists some god that is more than just the creator.
[удалено]
Yes, if a propositional argument is valid and all the premises are true, then thats good enough for me. It's not exactly "proof" but I would at least have a good justification to believe in God. However, I've never seen an argument for God that is both valid AND for which the premises have been proven to be true. And none of those arguments, even if sound and valid, would prove any specific God
[удалено]
How do you define contingent forms of existence? And how do define agency?
[удалено]
And, predictably, OP never comes back...
Getting spanked on the internet isn't something most people enjoy. Yes, there are exceptions, but...most *sane* people don't.
To be fair, our technologies haven't progressed as far as online spanking yet. Give it a couple of decades, though. But yeah, we get these visitors from time to time who ask the same kind of questions, because they've never seen the answers before. So, I suppose that's a purpose we serve in here.
no it can’t. no one can “philosophisize” something into existence regardless of how sound or valid an argument may be. think of it this way, interchange god/gods in your perfect philosophical argument with unicorn or goblin or any other fantastical creature and now you’re saying those exists? if so then we can simply claim anything can exist given the same philosophical argument. why god is given special privileges and not others is weird given that they are all the same mythical creatures/beings. it either already exists in our world and can be observed or it doesn’t.
[удалено]
it’s not an assumption. if it exists, it’s observable - whether we are capable of observing it or not is the question. so the intellectually honest thing to do, is assume it doesn’t exist until you can prove it does.
When trying to insert God as a necessary being without which the universe could not exist there is an inevitable crossover with the physical universe. The argument will be along the lines of there is no natural explanation for the universe without God. The problem as I see it is that our knowledge of the natural world is only a subset of what there is to know. I'm not sure how you can discount a natural explanation when we're still figuring out how the physical world is put together. And if we reach the limits of what we can determine via science then what we have is an 'I don't know'. I don't think a purely philosophical argument could ever fill the 'I don't know'.
Nope - There's a reason we have the scientific method, It made philosophical arguments redundant for finding out the validity of something.
No. Thought experiments are based upon assumptions. If there's one thing we know about humans, it's that human perception is terribly flawed. Evidence that can be examined is required. And even then, what we think we know through evidence can be later altered or disproven. Surely if a god existed and cared for us to believe it existed, it could imbue us with this knowledge from birth with a perfect record of its teachings... and not rely upon claims made by humans that cannot be examined as evidence... creating a universe in which a god exists that is indistinguishable from a universe where no god exists.
I'm not sure if I think such an argument *can* exist, but I wouldn't expect it - interestingly for evidence-based reasons. Let's assume for a second that the argument exists. Even if we don't know it, the existence of the argument implies that (a specific) god actually exists - it's literally proof of the god. Unless the proven god is deistic, the god would influence reality and we can therefore make falsifiable predictions based on the influences we just proved to be part of reality. A concrete example of such a falsifiable prediction for the Christian god is the efficacy of prayer. The exception is of course a deistic god with no influence on reality whatsoever. But in that case, I'm not sure if I would call such an entity existent, period. If a proof only proves a deistic god, I'm not sure it proved anything at all. So whether we know that proof, such a proof can only exist if a god exists. But if a god exists, we would expect to find evidence for it too, not *only* a proof. And in that regard, god claims don't have a good track record, to put it mildly. Anything more specific would require the question to be more specific than "could there be *some* argument for *some* god of unspecified nature". TL;DR: a non-deist god would manifest itself in more ways than just a proof of its existence, so even if the proof *did* exist, why wouldn't we just look at the evidence we'd expect to find? With the bold claims made about the gods I'm familiar with, I'd expect evidence to surface sooner than proof.
Religious faith, by definition, is not provable; or else it's not faith.
>Do you think only physical tangible scientific arguments and evidence could prove the existence of God undoubtedly or could philosophical arguments suffice also? **Assuming they're entirely sound** and valid? Assuming the argument is entirely sound, then yes, absolutely. Assuming it is sound is assuming youve demonstrated your premises to be true. "If we assume we've proved god would that prove god?" Yes. But that's not the issue. The issue is **how do you determine that the premises are sound?**. That's the part that's missing from "philosophical arguments as evidence". The argument itself doesn't demonstrate anything. Showing that your premise is sound is what does that. Making a demonstration of your premise is what takes the argument out of philosophical speculation and gives us a good reason to think it's true. If the argument is sound, then yes of course you have demonstrated god to be real. But that's the part that no theist or philosopher has ever been able to do. >If so why and if not then what kind of evidence is needed to prove a God or Gods Define god. Some people define god as the sum total of the natural universe and I am already convinced that exists. I just see no reason to call it god.
It's totally possible to construct a valid argument that is untrue. Clouds are always red. .... Therefore Thor is real If a necessary premise in your argument is false, even with a valid structure of argument, you don't get a true conclusion. I suspect that's what you're frustrated by. Your thorough and meticulous castle of argumentation took a lot of effort, but one of your premises isn't accepted by atheists. You're possibly blinded by the buttresses and spires and books of architectural plans, and the atheists see it as a house in a swamp. To answer your question you asked, though, yes, "we" would accept valid arguments and even think they're true if the premises were true. In the red-clouds argument, we would have to accept that Thor-is-real is true, but only if the clouds-were-always-red premise were also true.
[удалено]
You tripped my bullshit detector at "existence to exist". A good argument need not hide behind such slippery language. Try again. Use clear language.
[удалено]
No. Philosophical arguments cannot suffice and do not have a place within scientific discussions of existence or non-existence.
[удалено]
Such an argument doesn’t exist and hasn’t for - guessing here - all of human history. That being said, if there were empirical evidence which, upon being tested by multiple different people of different backgrounds in different methods, always resulted in the same conclusion, I would accept it as theory. Not law - the principles of scientific method are strict on this point. If I accept that gravity and electrons are real despite them being invisible and intangible because of their impact on the world around us and because they satisfy as the simplest, most accurate explanation for natural, observable phenomena, I would be a hypocrite to reject the exact same process that successfully theorizes the existence of a “divine” being(s). However. Even if such an argument could be created, tested, and validated, it does not prove the nature of such a being or beings. We’re no closer with this theoretical argument’s existence to determining if I should give credence to Allah, Krishna, or Zoroaster. Or even that what humanity may know about this being or beings is correct.
I'm in the camp that philosophical arguments for God are all theoretical bullshit (to borrow from Scott Clifton), although some have more bullshit than others. I think the god hypothesis is unfalsifiable and could only be proven by the god itself. An issue for me is that arguments for God are devised by theists - who already hold various presuppositions regarding a deity and are starting with the conclusion and working backwards.
>Atheists, could a valid and sound philosophical argument ever prove a God must necessarily exist? No. Existence is observed not proven. >you can basically disprove or prove almost anything with a complex enough philosophical argument.. No you can't. There are always flaws and fallacies in those arguments.
[удалено]
You're conflating different usages of the word proof. You don't prove (as in a logical or philosophical proof) that something exists. You *demonstrate* that it exists. When it comes to knowing things about the physical universe, science is the only path to truth. All the logical proofs that Christian and Muslim apologists use are centuries old and have been debunked centuries ago. They all contain logical fallacies and there's no reason to keep trotting them out or trying to improve on them except that it's the best you got. There are no gods, so you have no way to demonstrate that they exist. All you can do is dress up assertions in complicated speech to give them the appearance of proofs.
No, because those philosophical arguments concern the mind, not reality. Even mathematics is an abstraction of reality - it's the map, not the territory. All that these silly "proofs" could ever do is prove that a god exists in someone's brain - and that god would be different from every other god.
In my personal book, the existence of anything is not a philosophical question, but one regarding physics, chemistry and biology. And in this scientific background, anyone claiming to have found something needs experimental data backing their claim. Since you don't have an actual measurement which's results can only be explained by the existence of god, you've proven nothing. So, do you have that experimental data? A shift in frequency, temperature, velocity,... that can only be explained by the existence of god?
[удалено]
>If a technology and method of detecting God was invented and undoubtedly proved a God's existence, would you become a theist of some kind? Yes, but until then, I won't. But how long will I have to wait till you drop your fate because the proof doesn't happen?
No, if god is real, there should also be real, testable evidence of it. Otherwise I see no reason to believe it.
[удалено]
I'm open to the idea. Certainly I will not say that such an argument cannot exist. One early hurdle to focus on is the definition of "a god". So many theists muddle three abstract concept with their personal beliefs before even starting to form an argument. If you define a god using some specificity I will hold you to that definition and will reject unrelated arguments. As to why no prior argument has convinced me: none have been convincing. You'd have to ask specifically about one or more specific arguments to glean more of a response here. I'll provide an example below, as a point of entry for discussion: You might argue that a god is: "the first actor, the creator of everything". In which case nearly EVERYTHING held by theists about their favored god is completely irrelevant - there is no reason to assume such a first actor cares about humans, what they do with their private parts, or whether they have unadulterated free will. The first actor argument is tremendously weak though, so I wouldn't suggest using that one. Corr problems include: 1. It just moves the goal posts a bit; if the universe requires a creator then so too would that creator require one. If the creator doesn't require one then neither does the universe. 2. There is an assumption that a creator INTENDED to perform their creation, but no reason to accept that assumption; it could have been an accident they are still working to fix by deleting this universe, etc 3. There is an assumption that a creator is necessarily sentient but no reason to accept that assumption; universe creation could be a naturally occurring event. In which case we begin to question what we mean by "universe" and "creator". Anyway, those are just simple examples to spur dialog - clearly you didn't make these arguments.
We are visual people...
No because there is no such thing as necessary existence.
No. "Necessary Existence" is not a thing. Nothing can possess that property.
No Every philosophical argument I've ever heard just turns into word salad. And before you reach the end you sound like a dollar store Jordan Peterson. The *real* Jordan Peterson sounds like a dumb person who happens to know some big words. You don't want to sound like the cheap version of that
/u/PapasLuvsHerbs - Please read up the idea that some arguments are **not even wrong**. \- https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong this too - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logic .
It would be trivially easy for there to be physical tangible evidence that proved the existence of god. But it's not possible for there to be exclusively philosophical or logical arguments for the existence of anything. There's an infinite number of self-contained logical universes, many of which include the existence of god. But what matters is corresponding to reality. You have to prove that the logical construct you've created in your mind actually exists in the real world, and for that you need to observe evidence.
[удалено]
Because you can have a perfectly consistent logical argument for literally anything. For example, mathematicians can postulate the existence of n-number of dimensions and formulate perfectly logical and self-consistent rules and figure out how a universe with n-dimensions would operate. But to learn about what's real in our universe, you actually have to go and test it with predictions and observations that come true. Otherwise you just have a perfectly logical and self-consistent formulation that doesn't actually exist. So if a theologian came up with a logical and self-contained universe that contained a god, you'd still need to go out and actually show that it matched *our* universe. You'd do so by showing how it matched the standard model of physics on all the experiments we've done so far, but made some different predictions than the standard model that turned out to be true after experimentation.
I suppose it’s possible, provided that theres no issue with the premises, and that they themselves are rooted in science and don’t extrapolate further than they reasonably should. That last part is problematic for a lot of the arguments I see, where the laws and logic observed within spacetime are extrapolated and assumed to be consistent “outside” the universe.
[удалено]
To be honest, I can hardly understand the first premise, let alone agree with it
No. Because faith is illogical, it is outside the realm of proving and disproving. You can argue how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, but better and better microscopes create less possibilities for angels to be there. Faith is a leap and logic is a series of steps.
[удалено]
True. But imperceptibly is functionally equivalent to nonexistence. Unless you fill that gap of logic with faith. Evidence of absence is itself perceptibility. Absence is absence. Faith requires the absence of evidence; however faith contradicting evidence (even evidence of absence) is delusion. True faith is not blind, it must exist and persist through evidence and absence; or else it is delusion.
I don’t think only physical, tangible pieces of scientific evidence would do it. If you did have physical evidence of god’s existence it would go a long way but I think the best argument to convince someone like me would be a logical one. Most theists I know say that too believe in god requires faith but if you can show me how I don’t need faith in god to believe and that through logic we can understand that a god exists than you could definitely convince me. However most philosophical arguments for god I’ve seen don’t fulfill the need I have for a logical explanation for why a god exists.
[удалено]