Emily: Sorry, some things came up. . . .
Dear GT and MD:
1. RE: "Proving God existing in the first place"
Where I agree with MD is that God by definition of representing infinite knowledge
can NEVER be proven or disproven.
So this is impossible.
The point is to ACKNOWLEDGE this, but BOTH ways:
neither can something infinitely greater than man be proven
NOR
neither can something infinitely greater than man be disproven
to exist, it is BY DEFINITION beyond our scope.
As I have shown in my previous posts with regard to the incontrovertible axiom of the major premise of the Transcendental Argument (MPTAG), expressed either as a proof for God's existence or as a proof for the universality of the principle of identity: your contention "that God by definition of representing infinite knowledge can NEVER be proven or disproven" has been falsified since time immemorial", as peer-reviewed academia knows. Nothing from your post in the above is logically true. These notions of yours are taken from the pages of post-modern popular culture. They are in fact the gibberish of materialistic subjectivism and epistemological relativism. You're an absolutist and a proponent of classical liberalism, not an irrationalist and a statist, right? Now, hopefully, from here on out, you will still be the former like me from premise to conclusion.
Actually, the principle of identity readily allows us to comprehend the concept of infinity with no sweat at all, as any given
A of a single predicate may be two or more things unto infinity simultaneously without conflict. If this were not so, we could
not coherently apprehend qualities of infinitely unparalleled greatness.
It doesn't matter that our finite minds could never possibly comprehend the entirety of what an entity of infinitely unparalleled greatness would entail.
We can comprehend that the only restriction that would logically prevail upon such an entity would be for that entity to become something other than what it is, i.e., become something it's not:
A = A; A ≠B.
Also, we readily understand that any given
A (or whole) may be divided without end.
Comprehensively, the
laws of organic/classical thought constitute the universally organic
principle of identity: (1) the discrete
law of identity, (2) the law of contradiction and (3) the law of the excluded middle (or third). The reason we apprehend a universally comprehensive principle existing above these fundamental laws of human thought collectively, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, is because the first law of thought is foundational and the second and third laws of thought are in actuality elaborations on the first. Taken together, we know why we are able to coherently apprehend, linguistically express and mathematically demonstrate constructs such as
infinity,
eternity,
perfection,
absoluteness,
ultimacy. . . .
For our purposes we need only to emphatically established the essence of the law of identity:
A: A = A, which means that for any given entity (rational or material), that entity is what it is, as opposed to being something it's not.
Note that we may readily see from this that
two distinct entities/propositions that are diametrically opposed/mutually exclusive cannot both be true in the same way, at the same time, within the same frame of reference (the law of contraction), and it is not possible for there to be a middle (or third) option that would negate the first or second laws (the law of the excluded middle). So the second and the third laws are actually contained in the first!
Cutting to the chase:
Let I = Infinity.
A: A = A = I = (all the numbers—natural, rational, irrational, integers, complex, hypercomplex—that exist simultaneously), or = (all existents or potential existents that exist simultaneously).
Note:
infinity is a complex
A (or whole) of a single predicate that is what it is.
That's what infinity means conceptually, and its mathematical proof is most easily understood as a function of division in calculus, which renders inversely corresponding sets of inputs and outputs of values approaching infinity and zero, respectively (See
Post #2359).
Absolute logical consistency via unbiased objectivity reveals the complexities and potentialities of reality, not the ill-supported meanderings of materialistic subjectivism/relativism, which routinely presuppose that any given proposition isn't real, may not be real or can't be real, materially or immaterially, simply because at any given moment it's substance may only be known to coherently exist as a rational intuition. The question is not, do we or do we not have direct evidence of actual existents that correspond with the constructs in our minds, but whether or not the construct in our minds is logically coherent. If it's logically coherent, it's possible for it to exist outside of our minds.
Among the first axioms of classical, constructive and modal logic is that anything that's coherently conceivable/possible, necessarily exists in our minds, and in classical and modal logic, it necessarily exists beyond our minds for complex reasons that I won't get into here. (Note: the only exception to this rule, at least initially, is when the negative is assumed on the test basis of rational skepticism in order to uncover any potential contradictions in complex postulates or theorems.)
However, the actual objects or constituents of transcendent propositions (as distinguished from the issue of logical coherency) can only be assigned a valid, might or might not be true value in the absence of an inhabited proof of direct evidence in constructive logic and in science. (Note: in this case the term
proof goes to the controlling foundation for science, i.e., the logical categories of ontology, not to the conventions of science, which are contingent on the former. In other words, the logic of metaphysics tells science what it can legitimately do and what it can't do. The inferences of science are limited to the substances of sensory data.)
Notwithstanding, ultimately, everything we believe is rational, not material in nature. Only fanatically closed-minded, question-begging dogmatists limit the application of organic logic to empirical entities, disregard the implications of mathematically demonstrable constructs like
perfection,
eternity,
absoluteness,
ultimacy . . . as premised on the construct of infinity, and confine the principle of identity and the logical proofs thereof to the trappings of a one-dimensional reality.
This attitude not only stifles the natural flow of rational discourse, but circumvents the process of disclosing the legitimate avenues of scientific discourse. In other words, if we were to bind the logical concerns of human cognition to the conventions of science, as some have proposed unaware as to what that would actually mean in reality, we would not only destroy the foundation for science itself as we arbitrarily reduced the intuitive range of human apprehensive, we would reduce the range of scientific inquiry!
Besides, we know about things of a single predicate that can occupy up to an infinite number of locations simultaneously (subatomic particles, like electrons and photons) without contradiction, and we know about lots or things of a single predicate that exist as distinctly two or more things, albeit, simultaneously as one and the same thing without contradiction, in the material realm of being
: three-dimensional space, electromagnetic radiation, the Majorana fermion, magnetic poles. . . . In truth, virtually everything that exists of a single predicate is comprised of two or more things simultaneously, our bodies as a whole, for example, or any given part of our bodies, all the way down to the subatomic level
: the principle of division rendering ever-smaller wholes of a single predicate.
The conceptualizations of
perfection, infinity and
eternity (or concepts like
ultimacy and
absoluteness) are apprehensible and logically coherent, and they may be readily demonstrated as such in linguistic or mathematical terms. As these concepts are objectively and universally understood via the delineations of the rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness, as premised on the principle of identity
: they are axioms assigned a truth value in all forms of logic. In short,
because they are objectively and universally understood, their conceptualizations are justifiably held to exist.