Proof that the Christian god cannot exist

Ahh... there we are. Thank you Godless, your link was very nice. It put what I tried to say at the start clearly. The problem that Cris makes in his original argument is a modal error. That is, his argument is invalid, as his conclusion doesn't follow necessarily from his premises.

As for the temporality/non-temporality of God. That God interacts with the temporal does not necessitate Him as a temporal being. As I have stated, the eternal nature of God means that His actions, knowledge, thoughts, and whatever else, are simultaneous, thus God's actions at any point in the temporal sphere, occur at once, in the eternal sphere.

Thanks for the lesson in Calvinism, but I was quite aware of that. If you want to be specific about the particular Christian "God" that we're talking about, then please do, it would make things much easier. As it is, I don't believe in the Calvinistic God. I also do not believe in the Temporal God. This is because I believe both in the omniscience of God and free will. Hence, belief in either of those Gods would represent a logical inconsistency on my part, however less for God's omniscience and more for God's immutability.

In my religious studies, I have seen God named omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, immutable, infinite, omnijust, omnibenevolent, truth, existence itself, pure being, pure spirit, pure act, eternal. While most of these attributes (and others that have slipped my mind just now, as I'm struggling to keep my eyes open), can be accounted for by various other means, mostly having to do with God as an infinite being, three of these attributes caused me the most difficulty. They are: pure act, omnipotence and immutable.

While most would probably look at those three and wonder how they can cause any kind of logic problems, I don't, or didn't. The difficulty came from breaking the terms down and understanding the root dualities of two of them, with respect to the third. That is, broken down, the two represent actuality and potentiality. Omnipotence means that God is capable of anything. To have a power means you are capable of something specific. To have all powers means you are capable of every possible action. However, to be capable of something means that you can do it potentially. In other words, there is the possibility of your doing it.

This causes a problem if God is said to be Pure Act. Of course, being Pure Act would make complete sense if God is Pure Being. However, temporal entities, as beings, are neither pure act, nor pure potential. They move from potentiality to actuality, potency to activity. To be possible, is to be potential. To be real, is to be actual. Change occurs in the movement from potentiality to actuality.

So if God is omnipotent, that is, contains all possibility, is fully potent, not lacking in any form of potential, but also Pure Act, that is, purely actual, fully real, perfect reality, but at the same time immutable, unchanging, then how is it that He interacts with people, how is it that He exists sequentially (moving from one moment to the next)?

The only way to reconcile all of these different, seemingly contradictory aspects of God, was to realize the full meaning of that final quality belonging to Him: eternality. The temporal is a sequenced existence, which is why anything existing in the temporal experiences time, past-present-future, sequenced events. The eternal is holistic existence, anything existing in the eternal experiences perfecton, totality, fullness, pure simultaneity, present, the "Eternal Now."

This then allows for omnipotence, immutability, Pure Act, as well as interaction, since interacting with temporal entities would still be experienced by an eternal being eternally, simultaneously, at once. All relationships known, experienced, made, acted upon, reacted upon, at the same time, at once, always, forever, unchanging, now.

There is precedent for asserting such an existence. That precedent is the duality of sequence and holism, potential infinity and actual infinity, partial and complete, evolution and perfection. The very thinking device utilized by every human being operates upon this basic duality. One hemisphere operates on logic, sequence and is responsible for science, reading of symbols, mathematics, any sequenced function. The other hemisphere operates on intuition, holism and is responsible for religion, art, the big picture, and holistic function.

Though you may not find this precedent convincing, I believe it is simply a basic underlying reality of existence. Thus, if there is a temporal, and there clearly is, there is also an eternal.

At any rate, the knowledge that even a temporal person has of the future is a result of the choices made in the future. That someone knows what those choices will be, doesn't mean those choices are predetermined. Consider it like this: if I didn't choose to do what God knows, then God wouldn't know it.

 

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No, not at all. It wouldn't be just for God to not perform the experiment, and tell the souls that they would be going to hell, without letting them sit the test. It's like this, just say a teacher knew you were going to fail your test based on what she knew you knew, then she got give you a D without letting you sit the test. That would be unjust, same thing goes for God.

For more on this, read: http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/destined.html

Nah.

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As beyond said, you have to understand the concept of enternal.

 

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No problem.

However there's a fundamental flaw of this article which I chose to overlook. For obvious reason it assumes that a god exists. Now lets take a stab at with the reasoning of an atheistic stance. Shall we?

click

the imposibility of god.

Christian god logical?

Excuse for not putting all the above findings in my own words, but basically my ideas are arrived from these. My time is limited.

Off to work.

Godless

 

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LOL. Here we go again, how many times will we explain this to you, i see no point in argueing, if your gonig to keep bringing up the same point, over and over, not matter what.

Here it goes again, Gods created souls, he knows them as well as a parent knows their children, he knows what descisions we'll make based on our hearts, and with that knowledge, he can have precise results. Another point being, you don't know what other possibilitys of knowing what will happen can be. Your basing this as if he was in our universe, which he is not, this is a typical thing for an atheist to do.

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Oh and also. Ive been looknig into this more, and i've found that, somebody who lived 1000 years before Christ, wrote about that Jesus is coming in the future, thsi is all in the old testament, which was written BEFORE Christ. When the old testament was completed 400 years B.C. this man had quoted exactly what Jesus said before it even happened. Now, just because he knew this, this ordinary human did not have any effect on what happened in the future, but he knew what was going to happen. Its not impossible to know the future, and still have no free will. Sorry for my lack of explaining, take a read of this: http://www.carm.org/dialogues/proof.htm
It's a discussion somebodys having with an atheist in a chatroom. He talks a little about it better then i do.

 

Godless, I really hope those links aren't the sum of the arguments that have caused you to hold your present position on the matter?

First, none of them address the argument I've presented, and I presume that is because mine isn't one most Christians use. That's fine. While many would say God is "outside of time," most don't actually know what they mean by that.

At any rate, your first link makes the same modal error. Despite what you think, assuming the existence of God has nothing to do with the method of modal logic used in the article you posted that I addressed last night. If it does, please enlighten me.

The second article is probably the strongest one. However, there are several ideas which he does not address, and several others that he does, but clearly does not fully understand. However, I won't discuss them here, I don't have time. If I were to offer a rebuttle to his arguments, I'd send him an email like he's asked. At any rate, I like his arguments the best, because they're the most challenging of the three links.

The third link is just terrible. It's so full of holes and logical errors I wouldn't even know where to begin. I realize you'll say "point them out please," but I don't feel like writing an essay on the matter. Furthermore, I simply don't have time, like you.

Anyway, to offer a simple and brief summary, none of these articles offer rebut to the argument I've put forth, namely that of Eternality - holism. As such, I disregard them as proofs against the Christian God, despite that many of the arguments they present I do agree with, given their understanding of the Christian God.

Again, another way of considering this, though not so much from a temporal perspective: "You've already made the choice. Now you must understand why." - The Oracle

 

I do love the way idiotic fundies construct posts.

First there is the "LOL" as if to say "well duh, it is so stupid of you not to understand this simple fact", then they go on to say "well obviously God created souls and knows what we will do based on the organ that pumps blood around our body!".

 

i just now started reading this thread...
cris you started the thread, so this question is directed toward you and you alone:
by the title, i assume you see a difference in the G-d of christians, and the G-d of abraham?

just wondering.

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Your basing this as if he was in our universe, which he is not, this is a typical thing for an atheist to do.

And, would it be typical of a theist to know so well that which resides outside of our universe?

 

Their unreconigsable falasy is making assumptions of something they know nothing about. Like assuming such an existence of another dimension where supposedly this god resides, (outside of time, outside of our universe, out of sight yet determines men's outcome.)

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There's no following any logic here. Oh! yes modal logic. What if it exist, what if it's true, best not take any chances.

Fear I tell ya! fear is what keeps fundies and theist in line, fear of death, fear of hell, fear of the unknown, fear of living by one's own volition.

Godless

 

Na! it was a quick qoogle search. However I've been an atheist longer than some people here have been alive.

I was once a believer, I was once a Christian, Catholic, Babtist. But I saw no evidence of such a being called god, I felt nothing, other than fooling myself to believe such tripe, I got laid more often. Perhaps I should go back

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And just keep my real opinions to myself. But too bad I'm determined to be honest.

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For this honesty I've lost good opportunities, good jobs, and I sure as hell can't be a politician!

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Godless

 

Yes, but your forgetting the point of this thread. Cris is saying he claims that he has proof that a Christian God cannot exist, while also suggesting himself that God lives outside time, which indicates even he thinks Gods outside another universe, now as you claim, there may not be another universe, which completly wrecks this argument. Theres no point really arguing from ehre though, theres no proof in the first post.

 

The "concept" of God is usually defined by a lack of a definition. God is usually said to be unlimited in power, knowledge, and goodness and unknowable to us mere mortals; but these are all traits that are defined by a lack of something.

"God" is not a concept at all because it subsumes no particulars. Unlike a real concept, there is nothing in reality to which one can refer to and say, "That is God." To be unlimited in power, omnipotence, is a contradiction. To be unlimited in goodness, omnibenevolence, is taken without any standard of good. Regarding God, it is said that God is good. What is good? God's will. What characterizes God's will? Goodness. That circle is without substance and meaningless. Some people claim that all these objections are silly because God is simply unknowable. How do they know that God is unknowable?

The notion of God is nothing but a big mixture of contradictions and nothingness. There is no meaning behind the word and no concept to even define.

We view with mirth the ancient Greeks and Egyptians and other peoples with their pantheons of various Gods controlling various aspects of the world. We laugh at contemporaries who claim to have been visited by aliens or seen Bigfoot. Some even laugh and deride those scientists who make claims with only a little evidence in support of their views. But what is truly ridiculous is the people who then turn around and say, "the belief in God is perfectly fine" either because someone they know believes it or because a large portion of the population believes it. Truth is not a social phenomenon. Reality is absolute and can only be understood through reason.

What is disappointing is not so much all of the faithful, but all those who sanction faith in others. To accept without comment this ridiculous self-contradicting life destroying nonsense in one's peers and give it a sort of spiritual relativism sanction, to claim that each can believe whatever he wants, that one spiritual belief is just as valid as another -- that is what perpetuates the evil of faith-based religions and notions.

The belief in God and the acting on that belief is evil. It divorces one's knowledge and actions from reality, with consequences ranging from the trivial (wasting one morning a week) to the disastrous (crusades, having unwanted children, Israelis and Arabs slaughtering each other over a patch of desert, wasting one's entire life working for a purpose not one's own, etc.)

Importance of philosophy

Godless

 

How do we know? Because we don't!

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Gods good, which makes hes will good. Asking what makes God good and answering "Gods will" doesnt say anything really. What makes a good person a good person? Their good will, and what makes their will good? God. So now that truns into Gods will is good, because God is good. He just is.

That doesnt rule out Gods possibility, we jsut simply laugh because of the unknown.

Doesnt do any harm. Religion actually makes people good, not bad, the bad comes from those who arent willing to have faith.

Its not evil, i don't see how it is. If anything it actually gives us knowledge and guidelines.

 

Thanks Jay_7 for making a complete ass of yourself.

Crusades, dark ages, flat earht, heliocentric theory vs geocentric.

Dark bible

Yea! these people sound like real nice people

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Godless

 

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/notkill.html

Look. Ive stated by opinions & views. So has everyone else, and the first post of this thread has been proved wrong and theres no longer need for debate. Thanks for the good debate

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its up to you to find your faith. Im not going to take part in this anymore.

Cya

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I understand where you think there is a paradox. The operative word is think. Now if you know your sister well enough to know that she will refuse a proposla from Jerk A, does that mean you have taken her free will? No. The same goes with God. He knows you so well he knows which freewill choice you would make before you make it. Nothing is predetermined. he didn't say yes or no for you. He just knows that you will make that choice.

 

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M*W: You are the only thing that has been proven wrong. You don't "debate," you post worthless website links. You came to a scientific website to prove a point which you were unable to do. Run along home now, son. You couldn't play with the big boys after all.

 

lol I suggest stop talking if you dont even contribute to the argument in a logical way.

 

lol she has 2660 posts...she has had alot more to say (whether i agree with it or not) than you have here, mister 62 posts. show some respect for others if you want it yourself.

 

She disrespected me way before i disrespected her.