Against Agnosticism - or - God is Provable

Yes. But, theist and atheist are not in the same boat as agnostic. Theist and atheist are both belief-based. Agnostic is logic based.

Edit: I like your heading. Based after mine?

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Norsefire:

We are not speaking of "a creator". We are speaking of God. God could be a creator, but possibly could not be. Even so, that would be presumably accidental to his nature, rather than intrinsic.

 

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God is merely a face, a concept created by the countless world civilizations to give voice to their belief. God is more fiction than fact. It is not based on science. The core belief is based on logic, yes, but God is little more than a product of the imagination.


If we are to be serious about discussion, we must first shed any bias or fiction. Therefore, I say "a Creator" without specifying anything. I do not specify his nature or features or intentions or abilities. I merely specify one of his actions, the creation of the universe.


And with this, we proceed with discussion. And with this, we make the concept not only plausable, but on equal grounds with nature.

 

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Norsefire:

I am not speaking about Zeus and Jehovah - Quezacoatl and Indra. Those are cultural divinities. We can neither speak of proof nor disproof from reason for those. If they exist, we'll learn of them from empirical means.

God with a capital G is a philosophical idea deducible from pure reason.

This is again: Not an intrinsic part of the nature of God, which we are discussing. Of course, you could argue otherwise, in which case we're okay. But we're not discussing "a creator" or "the creator". God might be the creator, God could be the creator potentially, but creation is not "omnipotence" or "omniscience".

As such, attacking the idea of creator only attacks one interpretation of God's place in existence. It is not an attack against either the idea of God, nor of God as a coherent idea, except in as much as the notion of creator is bundled up with God, which is not as solid as historic prejudices would make us believe.

 

We go by what we can see. And nobody ever said String Theory was consensus. As a matter of fact, the detractors of the theory call it "science philosophy".

You've got to get past the fact that science goes by evidence, whereas philosophy, or at least what you're talking about, does not.

Who is "we"? Who decides that existence is attributable to God? And since when are the laws of it God's attributes? And where are the perfections?

Again, you're not proving or disproving anything. You're taking an assumption and running with it. That's all you are doing.

 

I've never seen a convincing theological proof for the existence of god

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In a way - the foundation of modern mathematics is often said to be set theory, which is a branch of mathematical logic. But now some mathematicians think category theory is a better foundation.

By mathematics I mean the subject studied by modern mathematicians, which covers any system based on axioms. This would include Euclidean geometry. Gödel proved his result for arithmetic and many other branches of mathematics, but not all of them.

No axiom is unchallengeable. E.g. Non-Euclidean geometry

At worst you might get a system where all results are both true and false, but you can't prove there's anything wrong with that system without making another assumption

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Mathematicians see A=A as an assumption regarding the equality symbol '='.

In the end we can rely on apparently useful assumptions like "consistency is good" or "reality is consistent" and "good logic should not contradict reality" but these are still assumptions. None of them can be proven.

 

JDawg:

Detractors calling it "science philosophy" discredit both science and philosophy, while rightfully discreditting String Theory.

But no, philosophy has evidence, it is merely evidence of a rational, not empirical, nature. Of course, this permits philosophy to actually prove things and find truth, unlike science which cannot do any such thing - as evidenced again, by the nature of scientific inquiry, as discussed by Popper and others.

Who is "we"? Rational humanity. Or at least, those amongst who are are rational and pursue the topic, too.

I never claimed existence was necessarily an attribute of God. Anselm does, but I am not at this moment claiming anything. In fact, I do not intend to prove or disprove God here.

As to the attributes, I spoke of them in the OP. They clearly go back to the nature of existence. It is ridiculous to speak of omnipotence without reference to existence, for instance.

You are again mistaking philosophy for science. Science is the one that takes assumption and conjecture and hypothesis and runs away with it, without hope of proof. Rational philosophy does quite the opposite.

 

If you define agnostic as anyone who thinks the probability of god existing is not 0% or 100% I think a lot of atheists and theists would fall under that definition. Theists may think it's over 99% and atheists may think it's below 1% but very few people are actually 'sure' (except kids who believe whatever their parents tell them.)

Yes, I thought it was a good idea but too restricted

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No, they call it science philosophy because it is based on assumptions rather than evidence...just like philosophy.

Dude, you really need to get off Popper's junk. Seriously. But let's have an experiment here...if philosophy can prove or disprove God...what is the answer? Is he real or isn't he?

Because you can't.

Nice cop out.

Well, whatever planet you're from, I'm sure that's how they do things. Here on Earth, however, you've got it backwards.

 

Zephyr:

Try the Ontological Argument, specifically with the Godel and Platinga's additions/amendations of it.

Yes, Kurt Godel wrote a proof of God.

But of course, neither can be, as GITS has prohibited a consistent, complete mathematics that ascribes to a logicist paradigm, so long as that mathematics includes arithmetic.

Sorry: I was being too imprecise here. You are correct, arithmetic and the other branches of mathematics won't be consistent and complete, but some branches (the geometries) will be.

Affirm the opposite and see what occurs, specifically, pay attention to what it means to affirm the opposite.

The laws of thought are more than mere assumptions. One cannot debunk them without using them and one can show their primacy by means of the absurdity of their opposite wedded to their internal consistency and self-evidence.

 

JDawg:

No, again, that would be science.

The matter is under investigation. Since 500 BC. I'll get back to you when the controversy is done for.

No, because that isn't the point of this thread. What I am attempting to do is show how absurd agnosticism is. Theism and atheism are the only two rational positions to hold on the matter. One of them is indeed right. We just don't know which one yet.

Let's go back to speaking to Caloric. Oh wait, we can't...as this supposed scientific idea was later found not to be so by science. Or actually, by an engineer.

 

Well this raises a question...if the problem still hasn't been solved by reason, then how do you know it can be solved by reason?

 

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Zephyr:

Two things:

1. Funny comic.

2. Dinosaur Comics (www.qwantz.com) is better.

Though you'll actualy find that, contrary to the comic, the Ontological Argument does not "magick things into existence" as had been claimed. Specifically, the ontological argument only works for something which would be perfect. Thus the critique (of which this is a species of) which would have us imagine a greater circumstance (dollars on a bureau, a perfect island) is flawed in as much as those are not perfect in any sense.

 

JDawg:

The question: Does God exist? is either true or false. Accordingly, reason will solve it....eventually.

Pick up a philosophy journal dedicated to these topics. You'll find plenty of men and women busy at work with it. Or pick up books from most of the great thinkers of the Western and also the Eastern world.

 

OK, but you have to base it on something. That something is scientific evidence, correct?

 

But aren't you 'not believing in a god'? Does that mean that you believe that there is no god?

 

JDawg:

No, it is far outside of the purview of science. Science does not deal with necessity - only reason does.

 

OK, so now I have it straight. One day, one of your peers is going to have this revolutionary idea that either proves or disproves God. And it's not going to be based on evidence, just reason...that won't be improved upon by new evidence...

OK, man. Whatever helps you hate yourself a little less.

 

I hold an entirely neutral opinion on the concept of God. My stance is "unknown". I neither believe in God nor do I not believe in God. I accept that I do not know.







And James, you CAN'T use logic. Logic is like mathematics, but you still need to plug in the numbers before you can solve it, and we don't have the numbers. We don't have any understanding on existence enough to deliberate whether or not there is a creator.