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

[G.T.]

Well, no.

No, not at all.

I'm not bloviating because I have both a logical and a rational proof which is irrefutable.

When I say another is bloviating, its because they are asserting something that has infinite other explanations making their bloviation fall short as a proof.

If I'm bloviating, let me know the other possibilities: how can an all knower not know whether or not they're all knowing......when not knowing THAT necessarily MEANS they're not all knowing.

Come on contrarian. If I'm bloviating, fill me in on another possibility there.

Funny thing about logic, no argument you can make is irrefutable.

Funny thing about my premise, it is absolute truth and cannot be refuted.

 

[PratchettFan]

MDR, I just figured out what the problem is. None of these people trying to beat you up have a clue what a syllogism or what a syllogistic argument is.

A syllogism is a logical argument made up of two statements with a conclusion. The conclusion is true if the two statements are true. That is what is being forgotten here, the two statements must be true. This is a syllogistic argument:

All human beings can flap their arms and fly.
My dog is a human being.
Therefore my dog can flaps its arms and fly.

This is pretty much the argument being presented. What is added is that I don't need to prove my two statements are true. I claim they are axiomatic and anyone who actually wants me to support them is mentally deficient. Garbage in.... garbage out.

Not at all. As we KNOW that it is probable beyond a reasonable doubt that human beings cannot flap their arms and fly based on our empirical and scientific knowledge, your syllogism starts out with a premise that you KNOW is false.

A better analogy of a syllogism we can conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, is true would be as an example:

All mammals are warm blooded.
My dog is a mammal.
Therefore my dog is warm blooded.

No problem with the logic or facts there IF you accept the premise that mammals are warm blooded..

. . .but. . .the concept falls apart if it goes:

All mammals are warm blooded.
My dog is warm blooded.
Therefore my dog is a mammal.

There is plenty of room to challenge that particular syllogistic argument even though we know the conclusion is accurate. Change dog to parrot and you have an accurate statement but a false conclusion.

Let's move on to another one that seems logical but which we can logically conclude is false:

All humans with vocal chords can speak.
My parrot has vocal chords and can speak.
Therefore my parrot is human.

And moving on to one that is both logical and untestable which is the theme of this thread:

Everything must come/evolve/develop from something.
The universe exists.
Therefore something produced the universe (and the theologian calls that something God.)

That the argument can be falsified is irrelevant. Your claim was that we didn't understand what a syllogism is, and that is not true. The point is that for the conclusion to be true the two preceding statements must be true. You cannot simply declare them true by default, they must be shown to be true. In this case, that step is being skipped entirely.

 

[Hollie]

MDR, I just figured out what the problem is. None of these people trying to beat you up have a clue what a syllogism or what a syllogistic argument is.

A syllogism is a logical argument made up of two statements with a conclusion. The conclusion is true if the two statements are true. That is what is being forgotten here, the two statements must be true. This is a syllogistic argument:

All human beings can flap their arms and fly.
My dog is a human being.
Therefore my dog can flaps its arms and fly.

This is pretty much the argument being presented. What is added is that I don't need to prove my two statements are true. I claim they are axiomatic and anyone who actually wants me to support them is mentally deficient. Garbage in.... garbage out.

Not at all. As we KNOW that it is probable beyond a reasonable doubt that human beings cannot flap their arms and fly based on our empirical and scientific knowledge, your syllogism starts out with a premise that you KNOW is false.

A better analogy of a syllogism we can conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, is true would be as an example:

All mammals are warm blooded.
My dog is a mammal.
Therefore my dog is warm blooded.

No problem with the logic or facts there IF you accept the premise that mammals are warm blooded..

. . .but. . .the concept falls apart if it goes:

All mammals are warm blooded.
My dog is warm blooded.
Therefore my dog is a mammal.

There is plenty of room to challenge that particular syllogistic argument even though we know the conclusion is accurate. Change dog to parrot and you have an accurate statement but a false conclusion.

Let's move on to another one that seems logical but which we can logically conclude is false:

All humans with vocal chords can speak.
My parrot has vocal chords and can speak.
Therefore my parrot is human.

And moving on to one that is both logical and untestable which is the theme of this thread:

Everything must come/evolve/develop from something.
The universe exists.
Therefore something produced the universe (and the theologian calls that something God.)

Are you not seeing that you utterly devalue your argument when you arbitrarily excuse your gods as necessarily "coming from something" with the "uncaused cause" exception? There is really no logical way of reaching the conclusion that “an eternal and uncaused supernatural entity was responsible for the creation of all.” That conclusion itself is a direct contradiction to the position that everything has a cause.

If there was one such uncaused thing, why not many?

If there can be an unlimited thing after all, why does that unlimited thing have to be god, rather than simply the universe itself?

Now would be a good time to point out another total failure in this set of arguments. Let’s pretend just for the sake of argument that the asserter of an uncaused supernatural entity had not directly contradicted himself. Let’s pretend that we somehow did reach the conclusion that at the end of this eternal chain of causation, there was an “unlimited cause” that started the whole thing.

What does this argument tell us about the nature and character of that “unlimited cause?”

Not a thing. It could be Allah, Yahweh, Krishna, Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, or some as yet undiscovered and unnamed giant cosmic syndicate of gods; Gods Intl., Inc. for example. Even were this argument correct (which it is not) it offers no evidence for the existence of your gods. Your gods are but one particular version of “gods” unique to one particular religious group. And there is no basis for connecting your sectarian deity with any of the arguments we have been offered to this point.

 

[PratchettFan]

How is it evidence?

How is it not evidence?

That is not an answer. The claim is made that it is evidence and it needs to be supported.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I'm afraid of people who are stupid enough to assign explanations to the yet to be explained and they rationalize it in such a way that they consider it proof whereas proof is the farthest thing from being available in terms of the origins of 'everything,' and fuck, we don't even know if there WAS an origin. But, you know, we're here....so, like.....god, bro.


No.

The apprehension of the existence of the universe necessarily entails the presupposition of an origin, but you already knew that. You just forgot again. Put down the spaghetti monsters of atheism obstructing your vision and step away from the slime.

And I see that you're still shoveling that purely subjective, fatuously pompous shit as argumentation: the typical atheist's default position of intellectual superiority, the mindless arrogance that he absolutely knows and/or understands something, which, by the way, the axioms of logical intuition utterly refute, better than the vast majority of the human race.

No one who rightly understands the matter is asserting that logical proofs, like the transcendental argument, are absolute proofs in terms of ultimacy, but you obtuse, mentally deficient materialists. Straw man.

Bottom line: the atheist necessarily concedes that all of the universally apparent imperatives of human apprehension touching on the problems of existence and origin (Everybody knows! post #99, http://www.usmessageboard.com/posts/9835074/) are objectively pertinent, beginning with premise number #3 of the syllogism in post #691, once again, every time he opens his yap to deny there be any substance behind the construct of a sentient Creator of the universe; that is, he admits his awareness of the fact that a supremely sentient origin of the universe cannot be rationally ruled out without proof, that the universe incontrovertibly is the pertinent empirical evidence for God's existence.

You're the bucktooth, nose-picking hayseed stupidly misapprehending the nature of what logical proofs are, not me. With regard to the problems of existence and origin, the pertinent, universally apparent imperatives of human apprehension coupled with the implications of the classical arguments for God's existence are the objectively rational evidence predicated on the objectively apparent empirical evidence. Whether one is convinced by this evidence or not, it's more than reasonable to assert that theism overwhelming has the stronger case.

 

[G.T.]

Yes, no.

But.nice try again!

Necessarily" entails the presupposition of an origin" is not passable because the contrary is not impossible: there could be NO origin.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Proof and evidence may be synonyms for you guy.....I'm cool with that.

I disagree.

To me...proof is irrefutable, whereas evidence can go either way.

But have at it killer.

Did you miss the link I posted that showed they were synonyms?

Another person that thinks there personal definitions trump the actual dictionary.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

That the argument can be falsified is irrelevant. Your claim was that we didn't understand what a syllogism is, and that is not true. The point is that for the conclusion to be true the two preceding statements must be true. You cannot simply declare them true by default, they must be shown to be true. In this case, that step is being skipped entirely.

You have a good point, if you ignore the fact that you can have a false premise and still reach a true conclusion.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

That is not an answer. The claim is made that it is evidence and it needs to be supported.

Sigh.

Life exists, and that has been proven by science, that makes it evidence. The only real question now is what conclusion we draw from the evidence, not whether or not it actually is evidence. The fact that anyone has to point this out just indicates how pathetic the education system in this country has become.

 

[G.T.]

Proof and evidence may be synonyms for you guy.....I'm cool with that.

I disagree.

To me...proof is irrefutable, whereas evidence can go either way.

But have at it killer.

Did you miss the link I posted that showed they were synonyms?

Another person that thinks there personal definitions trump the actual dictionary.

I said I'm cool with it dude.

Good for you if you and your dictionary say they're the same.

They're not, in my eyes. Evidence builds a proof. Proof can't build evidence. Well, that's just my opinion - gluck, we cannot have a conversation I guess.

I'm gonna cry

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Yes, no.

But.nice try again!

Necessarily" entails the presupposition of an origin" is not passable because the contrary is not impossible: there could be NO origin.

What are you talking about? At the very least, the cosmological singularity is the origin, while the quantum vacuum is the origin of the singularity.

Spaghetti monsters!

Are you scientifically illiterate as well as conceptually illiterate? A material origin is one of the options, whether it be eternally existent or not. Origin doesn't mean whatever confused notion you have in your mind. The old steady state model of the Classical ear, for example, sans our current knowledge, which held that the universe was virtually eternal would arguably make the universe its own origin for the atheist. How far back one goes, existence entails origin.

Dude!


Are harping on the unjustifiable concept of something from nothing again? In that case nothingness, though it be unintelligible, would conceptually be the origin!

Move on! I am not making Foxfyre's cosmological argument.

 

[G.T.]

The cosmological singularity isn't proven to have an origin, dude.

 

[BreezeWood]

MD: And the atheist necessarily concedes that the universe incontrovertibly is the pertinent empirical evidence for God's existence every time he opens his yap to deny there be any substance behind the construct of a sentient Creator of the universe in his pinhead. DUH! Only idiots and liars go on spouting this rank stupidity after necessarily conceding the obvious.

...

... to deny there be any substance behind the construct of a sentient Creator of the universe

there is not a necesary reason to believe the "sentient Creator" of Life is the same as the creation of the Universe.

.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

That the argument can be falsified is irrelevant. Your claim was that we didn't understand what a syllogism is, and that is not true. The point is that for the conclusion to be true the two preceding statements must be true. You cannot simply declare them true by default, they must be shown to be true. In this case, that step is being skipped entirely.

You have a good point, if you ignore the fact that you can have a false premise and still reach a true conclusion.

Caveat. He has a valid point in general. His charge, however, that some "step is being skipped", i.e., that the major premise in the teleological argument is merely being declared to be true is patently false. The universally apparent imperatives of human intuition prove his claim to be patently false. His purely academic objection does not hold. And I will drive home that point momentarily with regard to what he's ultimately implying in this case utterly unawares.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

The cosmological singularity isn't proven to have an origin, dude.

The concept of proof/evidence, in and of itself, another thing you don't understand, or, for that matter, whatever the ultimate origin of ANYTHING is, is not relevant, dummy. Existence entails origin. Period. End of thought. I will not entertain another obtuse post from you on this.

 

[Hollie]

That the argument can be falsified is irrelevant. Your claim was that we didn't understand what a syllogism is, and that is not true. The point is that for the conclusion to be true the two preceding statements must be true. You cannot simply declare them true by default, they must be shown to be true. In this case, that step is being skipped entirely.

You have a good point, if you ignore the fact that you can have a false premise and still reach a true conclusion.

Caveat. He has a valid point in general. His charge, however, that some "step is being skipped", i.e., that the major premise in the teleological argument is merely being declared to be true is patently false. The universally apparent imperatives of human intuition prove his claim to be patently false. His purely academic objection does not hold. And I will drive home that point momentarily with regard to what he's ultimately implying in this case utterly unawares.

Can you spell "pompous blowhard who tries to make a point but trips over his own inability to string words into meaningful sentences"?

 

[Hollie]

The cosmological singularity isn't proven to have an origin, dude.

The concept of proof/evidence, in and of itself, another thing you don't understand, or, for that matter, whatever the ultimate origin of ANYTHING is, is not relevant, dummy. Existence entails origin. Period. End of thought. I will not entertain another obtuse post from you on this.

"Existence entails origins."

Let me help you here, fundie whack job. You should have written, "existence requires origin." So then, define for us the hierarchy of gods who designed your designer gods, who in turn were designed by super-designer gods, who in turn.....

 

[Foxfyre]

MDR, I just figured out what the problem is. None of these people trying to beat you up have a clue what a syllogism or what a syllogistic argument is.

A syllogism is a logical argument made up of two statements with a conclusion. The conclusion is true if the two statements are true. That is what is being forgotten here, the two statements must be true. This is a syllogistic argument:

All human beings can flap their arms and fly.
My dog is a human being.
Therefore my dog can flaps its arms and fly.

This is pretty much the argument being presented. What is added is that I don't need to prove my two statements are true. I claim they are axiomatic and anyone who actually wants me to support them is mentally deficient. Garbage in.... garbage out.

Not at all. As we KNOW that it is probable beyond a reasonable doubt that human beings cannot flap their arms and fly based on our empirical and scientific knowledge, your syllogism starts out with a premise that you KNOW is false.

A better analogy of a syllogism we can conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, is true would be as an example:

All mammals are warm blooded.
My dog is a mammal.
Therefore my dog is warm blooded.

No problem with the logic or facts there IF you accept the premise that mammals are warm blooded..

. . .but. . .the concept falls apart if it goes:

All mammals are warm blooded.
My dog is warm blooded.
Therefore my dog is a mammal.

There is plenty of room to challenge that particular syllogistic argument even though we know the conclusion is accurate. Change dog to parrot and you have an accurate statement but a false conclusion.

Let's move on to another one that seems logical but which we can logically conclude is false:

All humans with vocal chords can speak.
My parrot has vocal chords and can speak.
Therefore my parrot is human.

And moving on to one that is both logical and untestable which is the theme of this thread:

Everything must come/evolve/develop from something.
The universe exists.
Therefore something produced the universe (and the theologian calls that something God.)

That the argument can be falsified is irrelevant. Your claim was that we didn't understand what a syllogism is, and that is not true. The point is that for the conclusion to be true the two preceding statements must be true. You cannot simply declare them true by default, they must be shown to be true. In this case, that step is being skipped entirely.

We can dispute and argue the truth or plausibility for any of the three statement in the syllogism. But there is no requirement that any of the statements be true in order for there to be a syllogistic argument. But a valid syllogistic argument? Now we are into a territory where the truth or plausibility of all the statements can and should be called into question.

But if there is no way to verify or falsify any of the statements via logic, reason, known quantities, or empirical experience, the syllogism remains just the same.

Now if we go with the opening statement that:

Knowledge cannot exist separate from or apart from a creator or God.

. . . . that is easily subject to question 'how do you know that? Or what is your argument for that?

Likewise he who is foolish enough to say the opening statement is false is easily subject question 'how do you know that?' or what is your argument for that?

But if the opening statement cannot be challenged via reasoned argument or verifiable evidence, then the following does logically follow:

Knowledge exists.

Therefore there is a God.

 

[PratchettFan]

That the argument can be falsified is irrelevant. Your claim was that we didn't understand what a syllogism is, and that is not true. The point is that for the conclusion to be true the two preceding statements must be true. You cannot simply declare them true by default, they must be shown to be true. In this case, that step is being skipped entirely.

You have a good point, if you ignore the fact that you can have a false premise and still reach a true conclusion.

I agree you can do that, but the conclusion will be true of itself, not established by a syllogism. If the premise is false, then the conclusion must be proven in another manner. In this case, we are faced with a premise which we are to take as self-evident and without question. The conclusion is to be taken as true based upon an unsupported premise. If the premise is not demonstrated, then any conclusion derived from it must be proven independent of the premise.

 

[PratchettFan]

That is not an answer. The claim is made that it is evidence and it needs to be supported.

Sigh.

Life exists, and that has been proven by science, that makes it evidence. The only real question now is what conclusion we draw from the evidence, not whether or not it actually is evidence. The fact that anyone has to point this out just indicates how pathetic the education system in this country has become.

How is that evidence of God? Connect the two things.