From God's inexistence it follows God's existence

irichc

1) Every truth leads to another one. Otherwise, truth's limit would be a non-truth, in which truth is going to find its beginning and its end. In that case, false propositions would proceed to true ones, and true ones would generate false ones as well.

2) Thus, every truth, whatever it may be, guides us by means of an infinite enchainment to supreme and unattainable Truth, which is God.

3) By stating a single true proposition, being really true, we are denying the limit that will denaturalize it (vid. 1); we are declaring an infinite progression of truths and, consequently, recognizing God's existence (vid. 2).

4) So, even if that hypothetical true proposition was "God doesn't exist", as far as it is asserted as a truth, it follows that God (i.e. the Truth, vid. 2) exists.

5) However, if God exists, the previous proposition (vid. 4) is false; and, if God doesn't exist, it is false too, because in that case the Truth (i.e. God, vid. 2) wouldn't exist and, then, single truths wouldn't exist either (vid. 3). So, in any case, God exists.

Greetings.

Daniel.


Theological Miscellany (in Spanish):

http://www.miscelaneateologica.tk

gom

somebody re sat their SF logic exam on wednesday

blobert

Daniel,

Can you explain it a little more simply please, my head hurts

Logical proofs of Gods existence or otherwise never work.

God ain't logical.

clearz

blobert wrote:

Daniel,

Can you explain it a little more simply please, my head hurts

Logical proofs of Gods existence or otherwise never work.

God ain't logical.

Yea seriously explain it point by point with examples. Im a non believer in God but am open to some decent debate about this this kind of thing.

Hagar

I can hardly wait to see what you third post will be.
I hope my head is better by then.

Deep, very deep.

cleareyed

Does this mean I have to start going to confession again?
Or that I should be facing Mecca?
Or maybe that wasp I murdered today should still be alive?
Or that I should be meditating in the lotus position?
Or worshipping my ancestors?
Or carrying out human sacrifice?
Just what does it mean?
(Rhetorical question dudes. Answers to be sent to Fr. Michael Cleary c/o Ian Paisley, Fallujah Mosque, China.)

Capt'n Midnight

Babel Fish

The Babel fish is small, yellow, leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the NONexistence of God.

The argument goes like this:

`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.

`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing.

Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, "Well, That about Wraps It Up for God."

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

Fysh

irichc wrote:

1) Every truth leads to another one. Otherwise, truth's limit would be a non-truth, in which truth is going to find its beginning and its end. In that case, false propositions would proceed to true ones, and true ones would generate false ones as well.[/b]

This doesn't work as a logical argument, because there is no such thing as absolute truth since it is in fact a human construct or idea stemming from our observations of the universe, with no physical equivalent.

I could go into various other arguments that follow on from this (such as, how can we be guided by a concatenation of truths to God? Surely such a concatenation would have two directions, one leading to the supreme truth that you call god and the other leading further and further away from this supreme truth and therefore closer and closer to the realm of falsehood?) but since this argument is basically defining God as truth and claiming that the existence of any single truth therefore implies the existence of God, I can't be bothered. It's no more correct, worthy or convincing an argument than Descartes' notion that existence is a necessary aspect of a perfect god and God by definition is perfect and therefore exists.

That said, it did lead to mention of Douglas Adams and the babelfish, so I applaud anyway.

irichc

Proving 1).

Arithmetic is a kind of language formed by numbers and operations. Every number is also a truth, and we express them as a tautology: "1 = 1"; "2 = 2"; "3 = 3", etc.

We know that "1" links to "2", and the same for the remaining infinite figures, from the fact that they are all related to each other. For instance: "2" is "1 + 1"; "3" is "2 + 1" or "1 + 1 + 1", etc.

So, if we change the meaning of a single number (let's say, "1 = 2"), all of them and their infinite possible operations would be affected. Thus, by limiting the enchainment of truths with a non-truth, no arithmetical operation would be true. And that happens in our natural language too, since every word gets its meaning by opposing the other ones.


Proving 2).

I.

In an infinite succession of eternal truths (since the nature of the truth as not contradiction is immutable), the last truth, that at the same time is the first one, guarantees the coherence between all of them.

If there were infinite truths and, nevertheless, we were lack of last truth, we could not affirm that “the truth is the truth”, since every truth links to another one, none that is not over all of them is capable of embrace them at the same level.

Any truth that one affirms presupposes, then, this deep truth: “the truth is the truth”. And that, far from being a tautology, indicates us that the truth can exist by itself, that is to say, without real concern, or ideal.

NB: By "first and last truth" I mean a primordial truth that presupposes every single one, and that is itself presupposed by all of them. I'm not thinking in a circle, but in a common trunk with infinite ramifications.

II.

1. The set of true statements is finite or infinite.

1.1. If it is finite, it is limited by a truth or by a non-truth.

1.1.1. If it is limited by a truth, that truth is an unlimited one, that is, God.

1.1.2. If it is limited by a non-truth, we are speaking of pseudo-truths which cover an unavoidable contradiction. In that case, the proposition "An infinite set of true statements limited by a non-truth exists" is false too, being nonsensical to claim such a thing.

1.2. If it is infinite, it has or it has not a first Truth.

1.2.1. If it has a first Truth at the beginning of the whole succession, then this Truth is self-referent, it is its own cause and, therefore, it is God. Its truth value doesn't need neither logic demonstration nor empirical verification, as far as it is self-depending.

1.2.2. If it has not a first Truth, then the proposition "the truth is the truth" is false, which would abolish every single truth, sending us back to point 1.1.2.


The reasoning in 3), 4) and 5) follows from 1) and 2) as indicated in the first message. It doesn't need a further explanation.

Cheers.

Daniel.


Theological Miscellany (in Spanish):

http://www.miscelaneateologica.tk

SkepticOne

It seems to be a text in two parts posted on various message boards on the internet. When the first part generates a response the second part is then posted.

e.g.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/archive/index.php/t-84014
http://www.network54.com/Forum/thread?forumid=106498&messageid=1093009778
http://camweb.org/bbs/philosophy/index.cgi?read=15534
http://amazingforums.com/forum2/DTHUNDER/104.html
http://members3.boardhost.com/ircphilo/msg/577.html

There are probably more. Unless there is a willingness to engage in discussion on the part of the poster, I wouldn't bother responding. The same stuff has also been posted on several forums here.

clearz

Do a search for
"From God's inexistence it follows God's existence" in google (with inverted commas) and it returns 369 results

simu

SkepticOne wrote:

It seems to be a text in two parts posted on various message boards on the internet. When the first part generates a response the second part is then posted.

e.g.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/archive/index.php/t-84014
http://www.network54.com/Forum/thread?forumid=106498&messageid=1093009778
http://camweb.org/bbs/philosophy/index.cgi?read=15534
http://amazingforums.com/forum2/DTHUNDER/104.html
http://members3.boardhost.com/ircphilo/msg/577.html

There are probably more. Unless there is a willingness to engage in discussion on the part of the poster, I wouldn't bother responding. The same stuff has also been posted on several forums here.

I'll lock this thread then. If anybody does want to discuss proofs for the existence/non-existence of God, that's cool, start a new thread on it but the idea of a little bot-like creature going around posting the same stuff on many different message boards without any engagement with other people's replies is just creepy!