Is There One Sound/valid Syllogistic Argument For The Existence Of God?

He's a devotee of Objectivism and a contributing writing for the official Objectivist website. I had some correspondence with him when I was researching Objectivism for my article, which has been published in an apologetics pamphlet. We moved off the official site so that we could communicate directly via a privately owned blog configured much like this forum.

I had already done the background research, but before I wrote the article from my notational outline I wanted to speak directly with one of the organization's higher ups. It's not easy. It's like a cult, akin to Scientology. These guys are really paranoid about direct communications with skeptics. I was even advised to upgrade my firewall before going to the blog as my article was not going to be a positive review. It turned out fine though as I did learn that I had a few incidentals misconstrued from my conversation with him, so I was able to revise my notes on those and do more reading to confirm.

But it did get a little weird when he asked me about my person religious beliefs. I let him know I was a Christian and he started getting a bit condescending. I ignored that, pretended not to notice, because my goal was to get what I needed and move on. But that only made him more condescending as he clearly got the idea that I wasn't merely being diplomatically obtuse but was actually stupid. I just let him go on with his silliness about the nature of chemical composition, the paradoxical position-momentum dichotomy of the Heisenberg principle and the like. . . . When he got done with all that I asked him a few pointed questions in the light of certain facts about these things, and he terminated the conversation. LOL!

I notice that the worlds of atheists get smaller and smaller with each new absurdity they assert to deny the obvious.

Hi Justin
i find my world gets bigger the more people I connect with and learn how they look at the world.
it always opens up new doors and avenues for me.
And yes, it narrows down some issues and makes them workable.

The solutions get more inclusive and focused when we agree point by point with more people
to locate points of intersection and agreement.

The problems get narrowed down to things we can actually solve!

this is not a bad thing.

When we start seeing how we are made different to serve a good purpose,
it's actually a great thing, a tremendous gift.

Each person adds good things, and yes, by resolving things and narrowing it down
we eliminate a bunch of needless conflict and wasted energy.

It seems you and MD and I can agree on our part of the puzzle.
And if GT Percy and me can agree on another part, we can fit this together.

It's like a jigsaw puzzle, finding out where all the Blue Sky pieces go, the Green Grass pieces,
getting the corners and frame/edge together, and then grouping the other parts to fill in everywhere else.

Justin if you believe God's plans are so great there is already a design and perfect purpose for
every soul, then you would celebrate how this is coming together, including everyone. Wow!
 
He's a devotee of Objectivism and a contributing writing for the official Objectivist website. I had some correspondence with him when I was researching Objectivism for my article, which has been published in an apologetics pamphlet. We moved off the official site so that we could communicate directly via a privately owned blog configured much like this forum.

I had already done the background research, but before I wrote the article from my notational outline I wanted to speak directly with one of the organization's higher ups. It's not easy. It's like a cult, akin to Scientology. These guys are really paranoid about direct communications with skeptics. I was even advised to upgrade my firewall before going to the blog as my article was not going to be a positive review. It turned out fine though as I did learn that I had a few incidentals misconstrued from my conversation with him, so I was able to revise my notes on those and do more reading to confirm.

But it did get a little weird when he asked me about my person religious beliefs. I let him know I was a Christian and he started getting a bit condescending. I ignored that, pretended not to notice, because my goal was to get what I needed and move on. But that only made him more condescending as he clearly got the idea that I wasn't merely being diplomatically obtuse but was actually stupid. I just let him go on with his silliness about the nature of chemical composition, the paradoxical position-momentum dichotomy of the Heisenberg principle and the like. . . . When he got done with all that I asked him a few pointed questions in the light of certain facts about these things, and he terminated the conversation. LOL!

I notice that the worlds of atheists get smaller and smaller with each new absurdity they assert to deny the obvious.
Actually, religion is on the retreat.

Yes and no. i think we are moving away from the old school approach of laying down the law and having followers follow the leaders. SAme with how govt is evolving toward more self-governmnet and localized management by teaching communities to be more independent: starting with independent states, then breaking down into independent cities, and now independent districts or townships within counties.

With religion also we are getting away with the old school authority figure type relationship.

so that role of religion is moving into another stage, where people are independent mature adults.
We are no longer children or teens who need to be "spanked or grounded" by our parents.

People outgrow their parents, like the colonies outgrew their parent country.

It is time that we graduate and move out to be self-governing and not rely on some authority figure to tell us what to do or else.

The Reformation movement reformed the church and people no longer were bound to Catholic authority as the one way to Salvation but could invoke the laws directly.

The State is going through this now, with people denouncing false govt that the people do not need to blindly follow, especially if govt officials are violating and abusing the law. So you see people invoking the Constitutional laws
directly and reclaiming the authority of the people to direct the govt (not the govt directing the people) the same way the people ARE the church body (not the church as an elite group of elders herding the people around as followers) People = Church body People = Govt
When we embrace the law, we ARE that body of people being represented under contract or agreement between us.

So the laws remain what they are, the spirit of the laws don't change.

But our relationsihp to authority figures and Collective Institutions of Church and State are CHANGING.

this is a wonderful good thing, but the change is such impact and requires so much
responsibility on the part of the people, it can seem frightening.

liek running off and running your own household, your own city or state
and having 1000 times more responsibilities than you can handle on your own.

We need to work in teams to manage it.

So part of the evolutionary process is to prepare us, both internally with our own readiness for change
and social responsibility, and logistically to work with others to handle the physical changes in society,
as our very social institutions will be transformed from the inside out, from the grassroots up.

Starting with us and then affecting the collective level from there. It will be exponential.
it has been happening over a long time, so if you see how much work it has taken to build
it isn't an overnight change and isn't so scary but a long process over many centuries
that has been building to a climax, to critical mass we are reaching currently.

We cannot afford any more waste or wars.

We really have no choice but to start cleaning up after old messes and conflicts
and quit repeating more!

it will take everyone working together at maximum capacity, so it won't be so scary
when we realize we're all in it together. There is no time for "them vs. us" conflicts.
it's more like "what part is yours and what is mine, how can I help you do that better
so we can all be most effective" -- if you've ever seen people work together after a
natural disaster or crisis hits, there is no time to fight, everyone just helps each other
because otherwise they're all stuck. If anyone panics it will mess up everyone's ability to
focus and help. So they just focus on doing what needs to get done, no questions asked.

It will be like that, just focusing on what can we do most effectively and how do we
organize our best minds and ideas and resources in teams and networks?

how do we get away from fighting over what the rules or plans are,
and figure out what works and how to get it going to prove it so more people can follow good models as examples?

it will be more positive that negative.

you may see it as the old religion falling into disuse.
but others will see it as the teachings and message being fulfilled.

When the rocket launches, it may render unusable parts the launch pad and booster gear
that is designed to get it to a certain stage and that's it. that is not a bad thing to let go of that part of the rocket.
 
I'm talking about what the number two describes, clown shoes.

And again, knowledge needing a source is not maxi magic, knowledge COULD just be, go ahead and prove that it couldn't, absolutely.

Dork.

No. It's not described in nature either. It's cogency may be demonstrated in nature outside of our minds, albeit, only as ultimately apprehended in our minds.

And I've already shown you what real academicians already know: your argument is self-negating, futile. That will be abundantly clear again when I show it to Emily.
2 is the descriptOR, idiot

Also my argument is not negatable. Knowledge may have NO SOURCE, and I kno w the junk religious answer to that but you can save it. Not having to have a source =\= not existing. You can think on that, with your dogmatic pseudo philosophy.

You do realize, of course, that you just shifted from the metaphysical substance of the mathematical value of two to a tautological expression concerning the value 2, something about a descriptORidiot? You might as well just run it all together, given that gibberish is gibberish. A = A.

And that argument (snicker) of yours: knowledge presupposes a knower. Hence, for that argument (snicker) of yours, the rest is down hill from there.
 
... Are you an irrationalist (an epistemological relativist) or a devotee of that idiot savant Ayn Rand, G.T.? I thought you leftists hated Ayn Rand. LOL!
I was actually thinking of Ayn Rand as I read your post. I recall a particularly insightful critic who observed that she was really more of a master rationalizer than a rationalist. Some people are "smart" enough to convince themselves of just about anything.

Yeah, that makes sense. So the pseudo-philosophical . . . duh . . . on the outskirts of peer-reviewed academia is the real stuff, but the real stuff of peer-reviewed academia is the duh.

I noticed that you asked Justin about the laws of thought. They are the law of identity, the law of contradiction, and the law of the excluded middle. You just violated all three in that post.
 
... Are you an irrationalist (an epistemological relativist) or a devotee of that idiot savant Ayn Rand, G.T.? I thought you leftists hated Ayn Rand. LOL!
I was actually thinking of Ayn Rand as I read your post. I recall a particularly insightful critic who observed that she was really more of a master rationalizer than a rationalist. Some people are "smart" enough to convince themselves of just about anything.

Yeah, that makes sense. So the pseudo-philosophical . . . duh . . . on the outskirts of peer-reviewed academia is the real stuff, but the real stuff of peer-reviewed academia is the duh.

I noticed that you asked Justin about the laws of thought. They are the law of identity, the law of contradiction, and the law of the excluded middle. You just violated all three in that post.
Awesome! Which post?
 
I'm talking about what the number two describes, clown shoes.

And again, knowledge needing a source is not maxi magic, knowledge COULD just be, go ahead and prove that it couldn't, absolutely.

Dork.

No. It's not described in nature either. It's cogency may be demonstrated in nature outside of our minds, albeit, only as ultimately apprehended in our minds.

And I've already shown you what real academicians already know: your argument is self-negating, futile. That will be abundantly clear again when I show it to Emily.
2 is the descriptOR, idiot

Also my argument is not negatable. Knowledge may have NO SOURCE, and I kno w the junk religious answer to that but you can save it. Not having to have a source =\= not existing. You can think on that, with your dogmatic pseudo philosophy.

do realize, of course, that you just shifted from the metaphysical substance of the mathematical value of two to a tautological expression concerning the value 2, something about a descriptORidiot? You might as well just run it all together, given that gibberish is gibberish. A = A.

And that argument (snicker) of yours: knowledge presupposes a knower. Hence, for that argument (snicker) of yours, the rest is down hill from there.
You have to be able to delineate between logic, and what logic describes.

Logic is simply a descriptor, it does not exist in the physical sense - what it describes exists. What it describes does not need logic there to describe it, in order for it to exist.

Same with knowledge. Knowledge does not exist physically - just what is known and knowable - such as logic.

In order to describe things accurately (logic) or know the (knowledge), does not require a supreme mind that began everything in order to ground those physical things being described.

What you call the law of identity for example. A=a doesn't mean a god had to make it so because other possibilities NOT proven to be ruled out exist.

That is what tag fails to show, and why it begs the question. Begs it hard as fuck, because it can not as a proof rule out OTHER POSSIBILITIES - which means itself as a proof FAILS.
 
Knowledge requires a knower.
Sentient brains exist.
Knowledge exists.

What knowledge describes does not require a knower.

"It just is" is not debunked.
"It always was" is not debunked. Our particular universe is not even necessarily all of existence, there could be infinite others and the whole string of 'existence" period may have NO beginning. Not debunked.
"I am the only person that exists," not debunked.
"We are inside a computer program made by some dork from Wisconsin, he made an exact replica of his real world except that time was completely fabricated, just for his program" is not debunked.


Etc etc etc.



Until you rule out EVERY OTHER POSSIBILITY in the ABSOLUTE SENSE, then saying "knowledge requires god" cannot be used as PROOF of anything.

Tag is bunk for those reasons. And its irrational form, begging the question.
 
Logic is simply a descriptor, it does not exist in the physical sense - what it describes exists.

Nothing that follows from the above in your post works because you start out with things that are not logically or definitively true.

Logic (in and of itself, not the word logic) is not a descriptor. Logic as such doesn't describe! Everybody knows that.

Logic is a tool used by humans to make the necessary distinctions/delineations between and about the various things that exist in order for humans to define or describe them.

Human apprehension or human consciousness using the tool of logic defines/describes, and the name or the identity assigned to the thing defined/described is the descriptor.
 
Knowledge requires a knower.
Sentient brains exist.
Knowledge exists.

This proves that the existence of knowledge presupposes the existence of consciousness or the existence of a knower. In other words, as you say, there has to be a knower for knowledge to exist. Since we know that humans exist, beings with a sentient brain, we know that knowledge exists. That doesn't debunk anything at all; it proves something that's true: knowledge exists! Period. End of thought.

The assertion of the MPTAG doesn't dispute anything in that syllogism, let alone the conclusion. The premises are true. The conclusion is true. There's no dispute or basis of contention between your syllogism and that of the TAG. Neither debunks the other.
 
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... Are you an irrationalist (an epistemological relativist) or a devotee of that idiot savant Ayn Rand, G.T.? I thought you leftists hated Ayn Rand. LOL!
I was actually thinking of Ayn Rand as I read your post. I recall a particularly insightful critic who observed that she was really more of a master rationalizer than a rationalist. Some people are "smart" enough to convince themselves of just about anything.

Yeah, that makes sense. So the pseudo-philosophical . . . duh . . . on the outskirts of peer-reviewed academia is the real stuff, but the real stuff of peer-reviewed academia is the duh.

I think you probably missed my point. Which, to be fair, wasn't very clear.

My son has tried to convince me that our beliefs, even beliefs that are highly articulated, are never fundamentally rational at their core - and I'm beginning to think he's right. He says that they are adopted to satisfy deeply embedded emotional needs and we use reason to justify them or, far more rarely (almost never for most of us), challenge them. The thing is, it's the emotional strength of our beliefs that drives us to justify them rationally. And the more powerful the belief, the greater work we're willing to do to justify it.
 
You are demonstrating that you don't comprehend what I said, which is what I figured. Whether you believe I have proven it or not, individuals have individual perspectives. They believe "proof" in different ways. They see and evaluate evidence in different ways. They develop perceptions of truth through what they believe, whether out of faith or logic, or even scientific observation.

Humans are not infallible, our intelligence is not omniscient and our minds are not perfect, so no one can ever know truth. We believe truths, sometimes based on perceptions of logic, faith, spirituality, science... all kinds of things or maybe even strong combinations of these things, which are all subjective and based on our perceptions and perspectives as individual entities.

The only thing that can know truth is God.

Then nothing can know truth because there is no god. That's sad huh?

I might agree with you if you said, "only a god can know everything". Is that what you meant?

P.S. I thought about you when I was talking to my dad this weekend about how there is no god. His reasoning is just as liquid as yours is. There is a god because there must be.

And neither of you give the arguments against god any honest consideration because if you did then you wouldn't be so sure there is a god.

Especially a guy like you who claims to not be a christian. Do you know what you are? A cherry picker. You are like a tea bagger or libertarian. Can't honestly defend the GOP but all you are is a spin off. A cherry picker. You believe in generic god and hell. And no one else on this planet believes what you do, but feel free to keep on thinking you are so smart.

More people are atheists than agree with your version of god. Think about that for a minute. Why do they all believe different things? Because it's all in their heads.

There are just as many gods as there are snow flakes and just like snow flakes not one god is exactly the same as another persons spin.

Dear Sealybobo:
Even if we cannot prove there is a SOURCE of all knowledge.
What about the SET of all knowledge, laws, facts, events, thoughts that have occurred in the world?

Doesn't that exist as a collective SET of all things?

You can't prove it. No one can. But the rules of organic thought do as Rawlings pointed out. God tells us he's here.

There have been numerous claims of the supernatural, none of which have ever been demonstrated to be true. Furthermore, these claims are often mutually contradictory, and people who believe in one form of supernatural or paranormal activity will usually not believe in others due to cognitive bias and wishful thinking.

Proposing a non-physical explanation for an observed or imagined/fabricated phenomena is not a testable hypothesis and is therefore unworthy of serious consideration. It precludes any deeper insight or understanding and offers no means of distinction from any other possible supernatural claim.

There are many as yet unexplained phenomena and anomalies in nature. The scientific approach to these is to say “I don’t know yet” and keep on looking, not to presume an answer which makes us comfortable.

This claim often represents a deep discomfort with uncertainty or ambiguity, demonstrating a lack of critical thinking or poor understanding of a topic. It usually coincides with credulity, which is the tendency to believe in propositions unsupported by evidence.

Argument from wishful thinking. The primary psychological role of traditional religion is deathist rationalisation, that is, rationalising the tragedy of death as a good thing to alleviate the anxiety of mortality.

There is a truth and reality independent of our desires. Faith simply reinforces your belief in what you would like to be true, rather than what really is.

In order to better under understand this reality and discover the truth we must look for evidence outside ourselves.

Faith isn’t a virtue; it is the glorification of voluntary ignorance.

Yeah. Let us known when you want to stop thinking about irrelevancies, which amount to saying God doesn't exist over and over to yourself, and get back to the objective truths about existence and origin.

a. If we are right about organized religions, and I firmly believe we are, then it doesn't really matter if there is a god or "creator". It's just something that created us. All the other fairytale shit is just bullshit imo. Sorry if the truth hurts.

b. And we are right about all the organized religions. The 3 Abraham religions are hogwash, Greek Gods, Pharaoh gods. OR, your one god is real and the rest are bullshit, right?

c. I think "they" use religions to manipulate, control & keep the masses down. It is a dumb concept so they use it to dumb down society.

“I’m sorry if my insensitivity towards your beliefs offends you. But guess what – your religious wars, jihads, crusades, inquisitions, censoring of free speech, brainwashing of children, forcing girls into underage marriages, female genital mutilation, stoning, pederasty, homophobia and rejection of science and reason offend me. So I guess we’re even.” – Anonymous
 
I have looked at my societies main organized religion and decided it is bullshit. Some people who do what I do turn to Hindu, Budda, Muslim, Jew (Sammy Davis Jr.) Mormon, Born agains. We want to be religious. We want there to be a god.

And if my societies organized religion is made up, what does it matter if I don't believe in god? They say I'll go to hell. They are fucked up and stupid and hypocrites. If there is a god he would reward my intelligence not your stupidity. Sorry, tough love.

Only a god can say he is 100% an atheist because he would have to be able to be in all places at one time. A god basically. So we admit not to be certain. But certain your gods don't exist? That we are. So we are atheists when it comes to your god, not a generic one.


I disagree with " So we admit not to be certain " as being an impediment for the individual to accomplish the goal of Spiritual existence post physiology - whether there is an Almighty or not is irrelevant in accomplishing the goal first that itself will either answer the question or by its sucess make the answer answerable. -

engineering life must be a multispiritual endeavor, the possibility certainly exist to join the effort, doubt is the seed for failure.

.

Science is an exercise in falsifiability. Unlike religious dogma, which presumes the truth, the scientific method is a self correcting process, an ever sharpening blade. The models used by science to explain observations and make predictions are simply the ‘most correct’ at the time. The greatest skepticism should always be reserved for inflexible positions whose proponents insist that they and their assertions are above question and examination.
 
Science has demonstrably produced the most accurate and reliable models of the universe that mankind has ever known and it is upon these models that all modern technology, medicine and industry are based. Science keeps changing because the tools used to perform science keep improving. When the universe of available evidence changes, scientific theories must be re-evaluated. There are no absolute truths in science; all laws, theories and conclusions can become obsolete if they are found in contradiction with new evidence. However, a scientific theory is the highest honour any scientific principle can obtain, for they comprise all the evidence, laws and models relevant to an observed phenomena.

“Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.” – Chapman Cohen

Why there is no god
 
[Rawlings, you can put any kind of descriptor in front of logic... classical, formal, neo-classical, whatever... it is still a word which describes a concept of human belief and perception. Now there IS "unassailable logic" but this doesn't mean it is truth. We are incapable of knowing truth, we can only believe truth.

This is not a matter of me wanting to continue being a cave-dweller. I understand your argument regarding human cognition and identity, and logic for that matter, and I have not disagreed with you on any of that. I have been treated as if what I had to offer posed some sort of threat to your ideas. I don't know why, other than hubris.

I have only pointed out that any discussion of "logic" or things like "evidence" and "proofs" are all highly subjective terms used by humans to define various human perceptions of the aspects in reality. Because YOU can see your argument as valid and apparent, doesn't mean that every perspective also sees the same thing. And even if they did, it doesn't mean it's the truth. Logic does not equal truth. We don't know truth, we believe truth.

Boss, I'm impervious to the false and immaterial innuendoes of hubris or insecurity. You are making claims about reality that are purely subjective as if they were absolutes from on high, while you provide absolutely no objectively discernible argumentation or evidence in support of the bald declarations. None. Your contention about logic, evidence and proofs is false and contradictory.

Now there IS "unassailable logic" but this doesn't mean it is truth. We are incapable of knowing truth, we can only believe truth.

You cannot be objective or rational if you keeping inaccurately thinking and stating things. I've told you this before. It is self-evident that logic is not truth. Logic is a tool that divulges truth. Your statement is meaningless. Then you declare that we are incapable of knowing truth. How do you know that is true? Because you believe that is true? It’s not possible to believer a falsehood?

We, all of us, can see what is objectively true logically, and there is no justifiable or coherent reason to believe that what the objectively applied principle of identity divulges is not true. Is it possible that we can come to false conclusions even though we faithfully and objectively applied the principle? Sure.
But the reason we know that’s possible is the very same reason we know the fault would not be due to the logical principle, but due to apply it to a set of falsely apprehended data or do to a set of incomplete data.

But then that mostly happens when we are applying the principle to empirical data, not the rational data of axioms, postulates or theorems.

There's not a shred of evidence to support the notion that the knowledge thusly extrapolated is not true. How could there be? And the notion that the knowledge thusly extrapolated might not be true outside of our minds is useless, subjective mush. For whether that is the case or not, we wouldn't know the difference or be able to do anything about it. That's just the way it is for us, and commonsense and experience dictate that the rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness are at the very least reliably synchronized with the properties and the processes of the cosmological order.

There is no evidence or reason to believe that human consciousness has primacy over existence. On the contrary, all the evidence and the rational apprehensions of human cognition dictate that existence has primacy over human consciousness!

In other words, regardless of what the ultimate reality might be, that has absolutely no bearing on what the objectively applied principle of identity divulges every time we apply it. Wisdom dictates we go with what works rationally and empirically.

Bottom line: All you're really saying in the end is that what appears to be, might not be true. Okay. That’s nothing new, and it is in fact a useful thing to know, as we know that our data could be off. Also, this understanding allows us to imagine alternatives that we might not otherwise consider, but we must eventually be able to reconcile any extrapolations thusly derived to the real world in order for them to be of any practical use, and logic tells us that what might be via intuition and experimentation is dangerous to assume without always bearing in mind the exact nature of our premise. Otherwise, we're just blindly going with the flow of subjective mush, and it is people like me who are most capable of imaginatively regarding the variously apparent potentialities, not irrationalists or subjectivists, for they are in fact the most dogmatically closed-mind fanatics around.

Absolute logical consistency and objectivity reveal the complexities and potentialities of reality, not the ill-supported meanderings of subjectivist/relativist mush that presupposes that any given proposition isn't real, may not be real or can't real simply because its purely rational and not material. Ultimately, everything we believe is rational, not material in nature. Only closed-minded dogmatists ask the question of whether or not the nature of a thing is material or immaterial, or disregard the constructs of infinity, perfection, eternity, absoluteness, ultimacy . . . and accordingly confine the principle of identity and the logic thereof to the trappings of a one-dimensional reality. Hello! Folks were actually on this thread suggesting that I'm the closed-minded dogmatist because my way of thinking about things, actually recommended by the laws of thought, didn't make sense to them. Yeah. It didn't make sense to them because they are stuck in their one-dimensional world of subjective mush, which is not what logic is telling us about reality at all!

Logic is telling us that reality is infinitely more complex than that!

You are demonstrating that you don't comprehend what I said, which is what I figured. Whether you believe I have proven it or not, individuals have individual perspectives. They believe "proof" in different ways. They see and evaluate evidence in different ways. They develop perceptions of truth through what they believe, whether out of faith or logic, or even scientific observation.

Humans are not infallible, our intelligence is not omniscient and our minds are not perfect, so no one can ever know truth. We believe truths, sometimes based on perceptions of logic, faith, spirituality, science... all kinds of things or maybe even strong combinations of these things, which are all subjective and based on our perceptions and perspectives as individual entities.

The only thing that can know truth is God.

Then nothing can know truth because there is no god. That's sad huh?

I might agree with you if you said, "only a god can know everything". Is that what you meant?

P.S. I thought about you when I was talking to my dad this weekend about how there is no god. His reasoning is just as liquid as yours is. There is a god because there must be.

And neither of you give the arguments against god any honest consideration because if you did then you wouldn't be so sure there is a god.

Especially a guy like you who claims to not be a christian. Do you know what you are? A cherry picker. You are like a tea bagger or libertarian. Can't honestly defend the GOP but all you are is a spin off. A cherry picker. You believe in generic god and hell. And no one else on this planet believes what you do, but feel free to keep on thinking you are so smart.

More people are atheists than agree with your version of god. Think about that for a minute. Why do they all believe different things? Because it's all in their heads.

There are just as many gods as there are snow flakes and just like snow flakes not one god is exactly the same as another persons spin.

Silly boob, your Dad sounds like a much smarter man than you, your Mom must have been a real air head. Tell me, when does your "phase" move back into "agnostic" mode where you maintain we don't know for sure? Is this a monthly cycle thing or does it come and go?

My version of God is very fluid. 95% of the species believes in my God, they've merely customized their version to taste. Only 5% of the species believes in Nothing.

Even I scratch my head and wonder how. I just look at all the evidence differently than you.

I see that we had Pharaoh gods, greek gods, abraham gods etc and say our ancestors made it up a long time ago when they weren't that bright and very superstitious. You, and my mom, say you believe there is SOMETHING because we have always believed in something greater than us. Again, I say that's no evidence and like you guys, I don't have a clue either. I'd like to believe I just can't. Too smart to believe irrational unprovable unfalsafiable claims. And your deep thinking into why their is or must be a god while interesting, does not prove a god exists. And so since all the Jesus and Devil and Noah shit is made up, I'm leaning STONGLY towards the atheist side of the argument.

But since I would have to be a God to be a full blown atheist, I guess the best I can tell you is that I'm agnostic atheist. I've told you a million times.

Also is true then that you would have had to have seen god to know for sure. So you are an agnostic theist. You can't honestly say you are a THEIST because you've never seen god nor can you introduce me so you can say whatever you want boy.
 
I'll wait for TAGGers to absolutely disprove other possible explanations for existence.
 
[Rawlings, you can put any kind of descriptor in front of logic... classical, formal, neo-classical, whatever... it is still a word which describes a concept of human belief and perception. Now there IS "unassailable logic" but this doesn't mean it is truth. We are incapable of knowing truth, we can only believe truth.

This is not a matter of me wanting to continue being a cave-dweller. I understand your argument regarding human cognition and identity, and logic for that matter, and I have not disagreed with you on any of that. I have been treated as if what I had to offer posed some sort of threat to your ideas. I don't know why, other than hubris.

I have only pointed out that any discussion of "logic" or things like "evidence" and "proofs" are all highly subjective terms used by humans to define various human perceptions of the aspects in reality. Because YOU can see your argument as valid and apparent, doesn't mean that every perspective also sees the same thing. And even if they did, it doesn't mean it's the truth. Logic does not equal truth. We don't know truth, we believe truth.

Boss, I'm impervious to the false and immaterial innuendoes of hubris or insecurity. You are making claims about reality that are purely subjective as if they were absolutes from on high, while you provide absolutely no objectively discernible argumentation or evidence in support of the bald declarations. None. Your contention about logic, evidence and proofs is false and contradictory.

Now there IS "unassailable logic" but this doesn't mean it is truth. We are incapable of knowing truth, we can only believe truth.

You cannot be objective or rational if you keeping inaccurately thinking and stating things. I've told you this before. It is self-evident that logic is not truth. Logic is a tool that divulges truth. Your statement is meaningless. Then you declare that we are incapable of knowing truth. How do you know that is true? Because you believe that is true? It’s not possible to believer a falsehood?

We, all of us, can see what is objectively true logically, and there is no justifiable or coherent reason to believe that what the objectively applied principle of identity divulges is not true. Is it possible that we can come to false conclusions even though we faithfully and objectively applied the principle? Sure.
But the reason we know that’s possible is the very same reason we know the fault would not be due to the logical principle, but due to apply it to a set of falsely apprehended data or do to a set of incomplete data.

But then that mostly happens when we are applying the principle to empirical data, not the rational data of axioms, postulates or theorems.

There's not a shred of evidence to support the notion that the knowledge thusly extrapolated is not true. How could there be? And the notion that the knowledge thusly extrapolated might not be true outside of our minds is useless, subjective mush. For whether that is the case or not, we wouldn't know the difference or be able to do anything about it. That's just the way it is for us, and commonsense and experience dictate that the rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness are at the very least reliably synchronized with the properties and the processes of the cosmological order.

There is no evidence or reason to believe that human consciousness has primacy over existence. On the contrary, all the evidence and the rational apprehensions of human cognition dictate that existence has primacy over human consciousness!

In other words, regardless of what the ultimate reality might be, that has absolutely no bearing on what the objectively applied principle of identity divulges every time we apply it. Wisdom dictates we go with what works rationally and empirically.

Bottom line: All you're really saying in the end is that what appears to be, might not be true. Okay. That’s nothing new, and it is in fact a useful thing to know, as we know that our data could be off. Also, this understanding allows us to imagine alternatives that we might not otherwise consider, but we must eventually be able to reconcile any extrapolations thusly derived to the real world in order for them to be of any practical use, and logic tells us that what might be via intuition and experimentation is dangerous to assume without always bearing in mind the exact nature of our premise. Otherwise, we're just blindly going with the flow of subjective mush, and it is people like me who are most capable of imaginatively regarding the variously apparent potentialities, not irrationalists or subjectivists, for they are in fact the most dogmatically closed-mind fanatics around.

Absolute logical consistency and objectivity reveal the complexities and potentialities of reality, not the ill-supported meanderings of subjectivist/relativist mush that presupposes that any given proposition isn't real, may not be real or can't real simply because its purely rational and not material. Ultimately, everything we believe is rational, not material in nature. Only closed-minded dogmatists ask the question of whether or not the nature of a thing is material or immaterial, or disregard the constructs of infinity, perfection, eternity, absoluteness, ultimacy . . . and accordingly confine the principle of identity and the logic thereof to the trappings of a one-dimensional reality. Hello! Folks were actually on this thread suggesting that I'm the closed-minded dogmatist because my way of thinking about things, actually recommended by the laws of thought, didn't make sense to them. Yeah. It didn't make sense to them because they are stuck in their one-dimensional world of subjective mush, which is not what logic is telling us about reality at all!

Logic is telling us that reality is infinitely more complex than that!

You are demonstrating that you don't comprehend what I said, which is what I figured. Whether you believe I have proven it or not, individuals have individual perspectives. They believe "proof" in different ways. They see and evaluate evidence in different ways. They develop perceptions of truth through what they believe, whether out of faith or logic, or even scientific observation.

Humans are not infallible, our intelligence is not omniscient and our minds are not perfect, so no one can ever know truth. We believe truths, sometimes based on perceptions of logic, faith, spirituality, science... all kinds of things or maybe even strong combinations of these things, which are all subjective and based on our perceptions and perspectives as individual entities.

The only thing that can know truth is God.

Then nothing can know truth because there is no god. That's sad huh?

I might agree with you if you said, "only a god can know everything". Is that what you meant?

P.S. I thought about you when I was talking to my dad this weekend about how there is no god. His reasoning is just as liquid as yours is. There is a god because there must be.

And neither of you give the arguments against god any honest consideration because if you did then you wouldn't be so sure there is a god.

Especially a guy like you who claims to not be a christian. Do you know what you are? A cherry picker. You are like a tea bagger or libertarian. Can't honestly defend the GOP but all you are is a spin off. A cherry picker. You believe in generic god and hell. And no one else on this planet believes what you do, but feel free to keep on thinking you are so smart.

More people are atheists than agree with your version of god. Think about that for a minute. Why do they all believe different things? Because it's all in their heads.

There are just as many gods as there are snow flakes and just like snow flakes not one god is exactly the same as another persons spin.

Silly boob, your Dad sounds like a much smarter man than you, your Mom must have been a real air head. Tell me, when does your "phase" move back into "agnostic" mode where you maintain we don't know for sure? Is this a monthly cycle thing or does it come and go?

My version of God is very fluid. 95% of the species believes in my God, they've merely customized their version to taste. Only 5% of the species believes in Nothing.

I am also smart enough to understand that I can not say 100% sure there is a god/creator. Are you smart enough to admit that for you to be a real theist you would have to have talked to god? Otherwise the best you can be is an agnostic theist at best.

AND, stupid, if you have talked to god, you would have to introduce us to him for us to ever call ourselves theists. Why do you get proof and we don't?

But you know you can't honestly say he has talked to you. You've talked to him sure but him talk back? Doubt it.

But if it is true, tell him to talk to me ONCE and I'm in! I'm open to the possibility your invisible man is real. Are you open to the possibility he's all in your head? I doubt it.
 
"It just is" is not debunked.
"It always was" is not debunked. Our particular universe is not even necessarily all of existence, there could be infinite others and the whole string of 'existence" period may have NO beginning. Not debunked.
"I am the only person that exists," not debunked.
"We are inside a computer program made by some dork from Wisconsin, he made an exact replica of his real world except that time was completely fabricated, just for his program" is not debunked.


Etc etc etc.



Until you rule out EVERY OTHER POSSIBILITY in the ABSOLUTE SENSE, then saying "knowledge requires god" cannot be used as PROOF of anything.

Tag is bunk for those reasons. And its irrational form, begging the question.
 
... Are you an irrationalist (an epistemological relativist) or a devotee of that idiot savant Ayn Rand, G.T.? I thought you leftists hated Ayn Rand. LOL!
I was actually thinking of Ayn Rand as I read your post. I recall a particularly insightful critic who observed that she was really more of a master rationalizer than a rationalist. Some people are "smart" enough to convince themselves of just about anything.

Yeah, that makes sense. So the pseudo-philosophical . . . duh . . . on the outskirts of peer-reviewed academia is the real stuff, but the real stuff of peer-reviewed academia is the duh.

I think you probably missed my point. Which, to be fair, wasn't very clear.

My son has tried to convince me that our beliefs, even beliefs that are highly articulated, are never fundamentally rational at their core - and I'm beginning to think he's right. He says that they are adopted to satisfy deeply embedded emotional needs and we use reason to justify them or, far more rarely (almost never for most of us), challenge them. The thing is, it's the emotional strength of our beliefs that drives us to justify them rationally. And the more powerful the belief, the greater work we're willing to do to justify it.

That's a dynamic of human psychology, a dynamic that we're all aware of. At least I am, you are and your son is. I have no dispute with that. But in my opinion, it's a fault that humans are prone to fall into, but don't have to fall into.

It does not follow that objectively applied logic in and of itself is synonymous with subjective emotionalism/rationalization. By definition, by the juxtuification of these two things, we see that these two things are not synonymous.

If that cognitive distinction, the one I just made, is a deeply embedded conviction, though it may not be true outside our minds, so what? That conviction, in and of itself, is not based on emotion, but on logical pragmatism, and the fact this cognitive distinction is derived via objectively applied logic is proven to be derived just so, as it also concedes that this cognitive distinction might not be true outside our minds. But then it also seems to be an absurdity to say that it's not true beyond our minds. Hence, I conclude that it must be true. That distinction is not based on emotionalism. It's not a rationalization of the emotional kind.

That's just the way it is. Pragmatism is the right word here.

The Five Things, for example, are just the way it is when we look at the problems of existence and origin, and the fact of the matter is that everybody of a sound and developmentally mature mind can see that these things are objectively true. Whether they are ultimately true outside of our minds is not the issue! Thinking that they might not be true outside of our minds does not change the fact that they are true in our minds, does not change the fact that we can't make these things go away or tell us something else. We can't believe them into telling us something else! And the notion that they aren't true outside of our minds seems to be an absurdity. Hence, we have no good reason to assume they are not true outside of our minds. Pragmatism. That's just the way it is!

There should be no dispute at all among us over these five things. None! Except some keep interjecting something that is not there! They're interjecting a notion that is based on a subjective rationalization (an emotional reaction) that I'm saying The Five Things are an argument that proves God existence.

Huh?

I never said any such thing. Mirage. Illusion. Phantom. Ghost.

But some have also suggested that the frank, objective recognition of the incontrovertibly true Five Things could not possibly lead to a proof for God's existence. Oh? Are you sure? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. But to preemptively deny the possibility that it doesn't lead to some kind of proof is to interject a deeply embedded bias prematurely, emotionally. That's a rationalization that is not objective.

The biggest problem on this thread is the false notion that follows in my next post which I'm going isolate.
 
I'll wait for TAGGers to absolutely disprove other possible explanations for existence.
I'm waiting for the TAGGers to make an honest admission that that TAGGing makes every possible explanation for existence (and for competing claim to gods) just as likely as theirs.

Did I say I'm waiting for an honest admission? Nah. I wouldn't expect honesty.
 

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