God exists from reason, and is the source of all evil.

[InfiniteNow]

Philosophy and logic alone are not proof.

 

Provide a testable definition of god which can be falsified.

Provide empirical evidence of existence which is consistent and repeatable, and not explainable by other means.

Once you have, the challenges to your god concept will cease.

 

Until then, all you have is faith, and that's simply not good enough, no matter how strongly you've been indoctrinated to believe otherwise.

[Turtle]

.. You can change the name of God to anything and the argument works, but it is still God. Thus the spaghetti monster or other perversion of God's form works, but it is not fair minded to try and insult the argument for no credible reason.

 

Glenn

 

That's enough! This is a science forum & we are sick to death here of this god crap and we're not going to take it anymore. You're in violation of our rules and that's credible enough reason to kick you out and I see no reason Dear Readers to drag this out. :phones:

[Zythryn]

Since this is being put forth as basically a philosophical argument, I am personally ok just leaving the hypothesis, test, theory aspect out of it.

At the basis, the philosophic essay put forth still doesn't even hold up.

It is not self consistant and again uses invalid circular reasoning.

Glenn, saying you or ok with that is fine. But it still makes it an invalid argument as far as reason goes. And since your position states 'god exists from reason' it all falls apart right there.

Again, you can call it an apple or a god, but if you say:

God exists.

God is perfect.

Anything that is perfect must exist.

Therefore God must exist is about as circular an argument as you can get.

 

Yes, an apple is different from god, but so is anyone's description of god.

A perfect god in my mind may be different than a perfect god in your mind or in someone else's mind.

My idea of a perfect god and yours, if they both define god as perfect, are incompatable.

Therefore, even though through your reasoning god must exist because god is perfect. My god precludes yours from existance because my god is also perfect, therefore another entity can't exist that my god isn't superior to. Poof, yours disappears.

Ooops, Bob across the street also has another perfect god, I guess mine just disappeared too;)

 

See how much fun you can have with circular reasoning?

 

***************************************

Turtle, I don't want to step on any toes. But isn't the theology forum basically for philisophical arguments that don't rely on the scientific method?

I certainly grant that the underlined text may cross the line, but I find the philisophical argument interesting.

***************************************

[Turtle]

***************************************

Turtle, I don't want to step on any toes. But isn't the theology forum basically for philisophical arguments that don't rely on the scientific method?

I certainly grant that the underlined text may cross the line, but I find the philisophical argument interesting.

***************************************

 

Glenn has shown his hand; it's all over but the cryin'. :D Perhaps start a new thread in Philosophy? :phones:

[Glenn Lyvers]

Turtle, this is the Theology part of the forums. It is the place to discuss the investigation of God and theories. Of course I respect your right to say metaphysics is not a science, but you would hopefully agree that many others believe it is. Please check out the definition of theology. It is not my intention to break any rules, only to participate in this forum, where it seems appropriate to investigate God from a theological perspective.

 

Zytheryn, I have not made an argument which is persuasive enough for your acceptance. I want to be careful not to interject too must opinion because it is not appropriate to a fair discussion. I respectfully disagree on the circular thinking argument but I do see your equivocation argument clearly. This is a possible objection which I accept does possess ambiguousness. It does not follow that because something is ambiguous that it is necessarily in error, but it is weakened there. This is a common fact, which you rightly point out. There are philosophers on both sides of this argument that interpret it and use it as proof.

 

Of course this is frustrating for people who want to see a clear cut answer to this debate. You might think there is a clear answer from your perspective, others might also feel this way but have a completely different conclusion. Metaphysics is full of debates which are in full swing, and not yet resolved. Let us hope that future work in metaphysics will yield more absolutes and that these debates will come to a resolution. I am less invested in my current interpretation of this metaphysical conundrum that I am in seeking the truth from science. I hope that science will continue to reveal more and more to mankind and that all truths will eventually be uncovered. Until then, it is important that we seek without bias, and demonstrate the value of logic and the uncommon respect that can be shown between people of differing viewpoints in metaphysical matters.

[Buffy]

A reminder to all:

 

As defined here, the purpose of the Theology forum is to discuss the sociological and philosophical impacts of religious beliefs, primarily from a scientific viewpoint.

 

It is expressly not for discussing the superiority of one belief--or any lack thereof--over others.

 

It does not matter if you have another definition for Theology. That is how we define it here, and there are many places on the Internet where you can discuss it from other viewpoints where your opinions will be better received.

 

If you are here to support the primacy of one belief system as being the right one, you will run into the hostility displayed above.

 

Similarly, such lack of decorum is also outside the scope of our rules and my also incur deleterious side-effects.

 

If you must hate your fellow man, please try to find a way to do it without being conceited or offensive.

 

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go, :phones:

Buffy

[Glenn Lyvers]

Forgive this off topic post, but I want to invite anyone to private message me if I do or say anything which is unwelcome. I'm a new member, and I don't expect that to serve as an excuse if I am in error, but I would appreciate feedback from the regulars here if I am. I have to respect the members who have obviously contributed so much to this forum, and from that respect, I hope to foster goodwill. I want to participate in the most appropriate way.

 

Thanks

[modest]

I'm with Zythryn on this. Ontological arguments for the existence of God (or, I suppose for the the non-existence of God as well) are prone to fallacy. Most often they are circular and rely on "word magic" or some kind of bare assertion fallacy.

Conceptual Fallacies:...

word magic: using words that imply the existence of entities where existence is unverifiable.

Diana Mertz Hsieh: Definitions of Fallacies

Formal fallacies:...

Bare assertion fallacy: premise in an argument is assumed to be true purely because it says that it is true.

List of fallacies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anselm's argument which Glenn echos is basically:

1. God is the greatest (nothing greater can be conceived)
   
2. God exists in people's imagination.
   
3. It is a greater thing to exist in reality than to merely exist in the imagination
   
4. God, therefore, exists in reality
   

First, this is not a proof, it is an argument. Second, to rewrite this argument so that it takes more than 60 seconds to read is not useful to the argument, the reader, or the theist advocating the argument.

 

The argument is clearly fallacious. It starts off giving some property to God simply asserting its validity. Any and all further conclusions based on that property and that assertion merely agree with the assertion rather than proving its validity.

 

I might as well say

1. The dark Lord Sauron was the most evil thing ever
   
2. Sauron exists in middle earth in the Lord of the Rings
   
3. It is more evil to exist in reality than to exist in fictional middle earth
   
4. Sauron exists in reality
   

Saying #1 is true doesn't make it true, and concluding #4 simply because it is consistent with #1 does not provide validity—it only provides consistency. What if I said "the most perfect God is one which exists only in the realm of human imagination". Does Anselm prove me wrong? Of course not.

 

~modest

[Glenn Lyvers]

I edited this, and removed the text because this article was written like Descartes Meditations, which asked the reader to concede, for the sake of argument, that God exists first, and then invited the reader to explore what that would mean. I also included a bit of biased text at the bottom of the piece, which was there since it had been sent for publication elsewhere. It was, therefore, not a God-neutral article, and as such, gathered a negative penalty from a moderator. I wont be posting future threads like this one and I hope nobody was bothered by the essay.

 

I see how to edit a post, but I can't seem to simply delete a post. I'm probably missing something simple because it would seem to be a standard feature of any BBS that a person can delete their own post.

[Glenn Lyvers]

please do not comment on this post just yet. I posted this to the philosophy forum, because it is not a science/theology paper, but a philosophy (metaphysics of epistemology) paper - obviously this will be flagged in this forum. It was moved here by a moderator and I have asked that it be moved back or deleted.

 

Sorry... I'm learning.

[Zythryn]

Zytheryn, I have not made an argument which is persuasive enough for your acceptance. I want to be careful not to interject too must opinion because it is not appropriate to a fair discussion. I respectfully disagree on the circular thinking argument but I do see your equivocation argument clearly. This is a possible objection which I accept does possess ambiguousness. It does not follow that because something is ambiguous that it is necessarily in error, but it is weakened there. This is a common fact, which you rightly point out. There are philosophers on both sides of this argument that interpret it and use it as proof.

 

Two points. I would use a word other than 'persausive'. Your argument contains logical fallacies. Since the point you are attempting to support is the 'god exists from reason', it is imperitive that your reasoning not be fallacious since the premise rests on sound reasoning.

As a purely philisophical argument, yours fails as soon as you use fallacious arguments to support it.

Second, while you may accept the position may possess 'ambiguousness' that also is not acurate. It contains outright faulty logic. And again, since the premise is that 'god exists from reason' you can't use faulty reasoning to show that the premise is true.

 

My personal opinion of the existance of god does not come into play at all here, I am sticking strictly to the structure of your argument from a pure 'rules of logic' position.

[GAHD]

I moved this thread (which I viewed as theology) From philosophy earlyer this morning, but apparently my "moved thread" post did not properly append.

 

I apologize for any misunderstandings that may have caused.

[Glenn Lyvers]

GAHD - No problem. It did cause a few people to hold it to a higher standard maybe, but that's fine. Even though people gave me bad ratings, I still think this is a pretty good group.

 

There are no real surprises with my thread. Some supporters emailed me, some objectors brought up the same objections I expected. All in all, it was a fun post and I was very happy that most objectors demonstrated their intelligence by being polite, other demonstrated something else.

 

I'll stick around a bit.

 

Peace.