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

[Justin Davis]

The main premise is not demonstrably true, either.

Continued from Post #794: http://www.usmessageboard.com/threads/is-there-one-sound-valid-syllogistic-argument-for-the-existence-of-god.376399/page-27#post-9877513

The Transcendental Argument
1. Knowledge (logical, moral, geometric, mathematical and scientific) is not possible if God doesn't exist.
2. Knowledge is possible.
3. God exists. ​

On the terms of logical proofs: since any argument that attempts to falsify the claim made by the major premise of the transcendental argument (See Post #691.) will actually prove the claim to be logically valid, we may justifiably dismiss those who claim that there exists no objectively discernible, independent justification that the claim in the major premise is true; for the naysayers themselves prove it to be logically valid with their very own arguments. In other words, they demand independent verification, provide independent verification themselves and then assert that their logical proof for the validity of the major premise's claim doesn’t exist or isn't logically valid. Neither one of these claims is factually true.

(By the way, Kant was the first to formally assert it. It has never been falsified! It can't be falsified, a well-established analytical fact in academia. But more to the point, it's not impervious to falsification merely because it's expression is logically coherent or because the essence of its object is not immediately accessible, as so many of you mistakenly believe. If that were all there were to it, nobody would care. The reason it's important is because, eerily, any argument launched against it will actually prove the major premise is logically valid.)

Hence, the only potentially legitimate objection to the claim made in the major premise is the bald, logically unsupported assertion that it might not be true, ultimately, outside of our minds. Fine. But let us be clear: There is no independently verifiable ground whatsoever to believe this is true outside of our minds under the conventional standards of justifiable knowledge or the conventional standards of logic, which allow that the premises of presuppositional arguments are justifiable knowledge if proven to be logically valid due to the inescapable exigencies of human cognition. In other words, the claim in the major premise is not merely an axiom, but a demonstrably incontrovertible theorem, as, once again, any attempt to refute it is a "counterargument" that is in reality the major premise for a complex, formal argument consisting of multiple axioms/postulates that invariably lead to a "discovered" proof that the truth claim in the major premise is logically valid.

Notwithstanding, while the observation that the claim in the major premise of the transcendental argument is conceivably false outside of our minds is not justifiable knowledge, it remains a propositionally justifiable objection, and that's due to the nature of presuppositional arguments. But the transcendental argument makes no claims whatsoever with regard to the legitimacy of propositionally justifiable objections. In other words, while the discrete objection in this case is not justifiable knowledge, the understanding that propositionally justifiable objections are legitimate, insofar as they are not absurdities, is justifiable knowledge.

Let me further underscore the distinction:

A discrete, propositionally justifiable objection ≠ justifiable knowledge or truth.

The understanding that coherent, propositionally justifiable objections are legitimate = justifiable knowledge.​

A discrete, propositionally justifiable objection is something that is conceivably true, but not explicably or demonstrably true. On the other hand, justifiable knowledge or truths are things that are demonstrably and authoritatively true from experience, or true by their very nature intuitively. Ideally, an instance of justifiable knowledge is something that is demonstrably, authoritatively and intuitively true.

The only discernibly practical objection that the naysayer can assert against the transcendental argument is purely academic: the notion that it begs the question, albeit, strictly in terms of its structural expression, which makes no difference to the fact that the major premise logically holds true against all comers. Hence, this objection is even weaker than the propositionally justifiable objection, which is a dead end, analytically!

But lets take a look at this academic objection in its syllogistic form:

1. Knowledge is not possible if God exists.
2. Knowledge exists.
3. God doesn't exist.​

Now the most interesting thing about this objection is not the fact that its major premise, unlike that of the real McCoy, is inherently contradictory and that it actually serves as yet another major premise for yet another argument that actually proves that the conclusion of the real McCoy is logically valid, but the fact that it attacks, without success, the validity of the universal laws of logic by presupposing the universal laws of logic.

But before we move on to why that's so and why that's important, let's make sure that our atheist friends of god-like omniscience are on the same page with us benighted theists:

God = omniscience (or all knowledge).

Thus, the major premise of the academic objection = Knowledge is not possible if all knowledge exists.

Or:

= Knowledge is possible if all knowledge doesn't exist.​

That brick never gets off the ground, let alone gets a flight plan.

Continued tomorrow. . . .

In other words, the claim in the major premise is not merely an axiom, but a demonstrably incontrovertible theorem, as, once again, any attempt to refute it is a "counterargument" that is in reality the major premise for a complex, formal argument consisting of multiple axioms/postulates that invariably lead to a "discovered" proof that the truth claim in the major premise is logically valid.

This expression really sharpens my focus. Though it's now self-evident to me why this would necessarily happen to any argument, I tried to do this with a few different arguments from suggestions on the internet yesterday in syllogisms just for practice and just like you said I kept proving the premise true though you have to make sure your premises stay true so you don't get a false positive. I noticed on a personal websites where the owner claimed his argument countered it, but to see why he's wrong you just put it into a syllogism and it falls apart. He didn't do that, just stated the objection and did a therefore that sort of looked right unless you really thought about it. Some people are really gullible.

 

[Justin Davis]

Title is pretty self-explanatory. Go.

The Cosmological argument fails.
The kalam fails.
The ontological argument fails.
The modal ontological argument only proves the possibility of god, by virtue of modal logic and axiom S5.
The teleological argument fails.
The transcendental argument fails.
...

ARE THERE ANY? For the past three thousand years, the smartest minds have been unable to provide a single syllogism that conclusively demonstrates god's existence.

Yet, all of these supremely arrogant theists run their mouth against atheism, as if they have an epistemological leg to stand on, when they don't.

Any day now! We are waiting for your argument, and until then, atheism is justified.

since I can't trust any of my fellow untrustworthy scumbag humans, in God I must trust. lol.

I wish I knew what this meant but I don't.

 

[Justin Davis]

Having a bit of reading comprehension problems today? I did not say that Aristotle said knowledge did not require evidence. That would be absurd. What I said he said is that knowledge does not have to be demonstrable in order to be knowledge. A very different thing.

And I accept the reasoned conclusion that everything must have a beginning because there is zero evidence, zilch, nada, nothing--no eye witnesses, no testimony, no theory put forth by anybody--that suggests otherwise.

I am notoriously thick. What is the difference between not being demonstrated and not having evidence?

There is an equal amount of evidence which suggests everything must have a beginning.

I can tell you truthfully that I have had a tiddly wink in my pocket, and you now have knowledge that I claim to have had a tiddly wink in my pocket.

I can take a tiddly wink out of my pocket and show it to you and put it back in my pocket and you now have knowledge that I have a tiddly wink in my pocket.

The same truth/knowledge applies in both cases. In one case the truth was demonstrated. In the other it was not, nor is there any way to demonstrate that I once had a tiddly wink in my pocket, but it is a fact and a truth just the same.

When you told me, I had no evidence other than your word. When you showed, me I had evidence of the object. I am still not getting the difference.

Well I think most people do get the difference. Both are knowledge. One is a different form of knowledge but both are based on evidence and both are knowledge. If you are one who has to see, feel, hear, taste, smell experience something for yourself before you will even consider it, you may not be able to see that. And your knowledge will be extremely limited.

What I am not getting is the distinction you are making between evidence and demonstration. Another way of looking at it, of course, that instead of me limiting my knowledge, you are confusing belief with knowledge. Which is ok when it has no consequences.

I have two major hobbies. The first is motorcycles and the second diving. I do some extreme diving involving closed circuit rebreathers with extended decompression. It's what I love. But if I confused what I believed to be true with what I knew to be true, I would have died years ago. There is a definite difference between the two. So when Aristotle says you can have knowledge without demonstration, I can only presume he had an indoor job with no sharp objects.

Once again, your understanding of what is meant by knowledge without demonstration is the very thing you just did commonsensically about what you wrongfully believe him to be saying. You keep dismissing things out of hand that you don't understand, just like your rejection of the unabridged meaning of objectivity that showed you out right that you were wrong. So what is happening here is that you're going around in your life believing things that might not kill you but keep you from understanding reality better. Aristotle is not saying that demonstration isn't required. Some kinds of things have to be demonstrated to be reliable knowledge. What's funny is that you're so gullible to believe that what he's saying is what you think he's saying. What you think he's saying is obviously stupid. So you think that Aristotle arguably the most important formal logician in history believes something that stupid? That should tell you there's something wrong with your understanding.

 

[Foxfyre]

Having a bit of reading comprehension problems today? I did not say that Aristotle said knowledge did not require evidence. That would be absurd. What I said he said is that knowledge does not have to be demonstrable in order to be knowledge. A very different thing.

And I accept the reasoned conclusion that everything must have a beginning because there is zero evidence, zilch, nada, nothing--no eye witnesses, no testimony, no theory put forth by anybody--that suggests otherwise.

I am notoriously thick. What is the difference between not being demonstrated and not having evidence?

There is an equal amount of evidence which suggests everything must have a beginning.

I can tell you truthfully that I have had a tiddly wink in my pocket, and you now have knowledge that I claim to have had a tiddly wink in my pocket.

I can take a tiddly wink out of my pocket and show it to you and put it back in my pocket and you now have knowledge that I have a tiddly wink in my pocket.

The same truth/knowledge applies in both cases. In one case the truth was demonstrated. In the other it was not, nor is there any way to demonstrate that I once had a tiddly wink in my pocket, but it is a fact and a truth just the same.

When you told me, I had no evidence other than your word. When you showed, me I had evidence of the object. I am still not getting the difference.

Well I think most people do get the difference. Both are knowledge. One is a different form of knowledge but both are based on evidence and both are knowledge. If you are one who has to see, feel, hear, taste, smell experience something for yourself before you will even consider it, you may not be able to see that. And your knowledge will be extremely limited.

What I am not getting is the distinction you are making between evidence and demonstration. Another way of looking at it, of course, that instead of me limiting my knowledge, you are confusing belief with knowledge. Which is ok when it has no consequences.

I have two major hobbies. The first is motorcycles and the second diving. I do some extreme diving involving closed circuit rebreathers with extended decompression. It's what I love. But if I confused what I believed to be true with what I knew to be true, I would have died years ago. There is a definite difference between the two. So when Aristotle says you can have knowledge without demonstration, I can only presume he had an indoor job with no sharp objects.

I can see that you are struggling with this, but I think it is only because you aren't thinking through the difference between knowledge that is or is not demonstrable. If you see your friend that you love grieving over the loss of a loved one, even if you had never experienced or witnessed grief before and did not know the proper word for grief or nobody had ever explained it to you, you would see and have a sense of what your friend was experiencing and that it was an unpleasant and hurtful experience. You would have gained knowledge about grief that you did not posses before.

You can relate or describe your friend's grief to another person once you have knowledge about grief, but you cannot demonstrate it. You have knowledge of many things that you saw or heard or experienced yesterday or last week or last month, and you can relate your best description of these to others, but you cannot demonstrate many of them to a single other soul. If you or nobody you are aware of took a picture, how do you demonstrate to me the glorious sunset you saw last night? You have the knowledge. But the knowledge is not demonstrable. Ergo Aristotle's teaching that knowledge does not have to be demonstrable.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I am notoriously thick. What is the difference between not being demonstrated and not having evidence?

There is an equal amount of evidence which suggests everything must have a beginning.

I can tell you truthfully that I have had a tiddly wink in my pocket, and you now have knowledge that I claim to have had a tiddly wink in my pocket.

I can take a tiddly wink out of my pocket and show it to you and put it back in my pocket and you now have knowledge that I have a tiddly wink in my pocket.

The same truth/knowledge applies in both cases. In one case the truth was demonstrated. In the other it was not, nor is there any way to demonstrate that I once had a tiddly wink in my pocket, but it is a fact and a truth just the same.

When you told me, I had no evidence other than your word. When you showed, me I had evidence of the object. I am still not getting the difference.

Well I think most people do get the difference. Both are knowledge. One is a different form of knowledge but both are based on evidence and both are knowledge. If you are one who has to see, feel, hear, taste, smell experience something for yourself before you will even consider it, you may not be able to see that. And your knowledge will be extremely limited.

What I am not getting is the distinction you are making between evidence and demonstration. Another way of looking at it, of course, that instead of me limiting my knowledge, you are confusing belief with knowledge. Which is ok when it has no consequences.

I have two major hobbies. The first is motorcycles and the second diving. I do some extreme diving involving closed circuit rebreathers with extended decompression. It's what I love. But if I confused what I believed to be true with what I knew to be true, I would have died years ago. There is a definite difference between the two. So when Aristotle says you can have knowledge without demonstration, I can only presume he had an indoor job with no sharp objects.

Once again, your understanding of what is meant by knowledge without demonstration is the very thing you just did commonsensically about what you wrongfully believe him to be saying. You keep dismissing things out of hand that you don't understand, just like your rejection of the unabridged meaning of objectivity that showed you out right that you were wrong. So what is happening here is that you're going around in your life believing things that might not kill you but keep you from understanding reality better. Aristotle is not saying that demonstration isn't required. Some kinds of things have to be demonstrated to be reliable knowledge. What's funny is that you're so gullible to believe that what he's saying is what you think he's saying. What you think he's saying is obviously stupid. So you think that Aristotle arguably the most important formal logician in history believes something that stupid? That should tell you there's something wrong with your understanding.

PF knows the difference. He does this kind of knowledge all the time. None of us can live without. Fox is helping put a name it. A rose is rose. She's good at explaining things that way. He'll get it.

 

[PratchettFan]

I am notoriously thick. What is the difference between not being demonstrated and not having evidence?

There is an equal amount of evidence which suggests everything must have a beginning.

I can tell you truthfully that I have had a tiddly wink in my pocket, and you now have knowledge that I claim to have had a tiddly wink in my pocket.

I can take a tiddly wink out of my pocket and show it to you and put it back in my pocket and you now have knowledge that I have a tiddly wink in my pocket.

The same truth/knowledge applies in both cases. In one case the truth was demonstrated. In the other it was not, nor is there any way to demonstrate that I once had a tiddly wink in my pocket, but it is a fact and a truth just the same.

When you told me, I had no evidence other than your word. When you showed, me I had evidence of the object. I am still not getting the difference.

Well I think most people do get the difference. Both are knowledge. One is a different form of knowledge but both are based on evidence and both are knowledge. If you are one who has to see, feel, hear, taste, smell experience something for yourself before you will even consider it, you may not be able to see that. And your knowledge will be extremely limited.

What I am not getting is the distinction you are making between evidence and demonstration. Another way of looking at it, of course, that instead of me limiting my knowledge, you are confusing belief with knowledge. Which is ok when it has no consequences.

I have two major hobbies. The first is motorcycles and the second diving. I do some extreme diving involving closed circuit rebreathers with extended decompression. It's what I love. But if I confused what I believed to be true with what I knew to be true, I would have died years ago. There is a definite difference between the two. So when Aristotle says you can have knowledge without demonstration, I can only presume he had an indoor job with no sharp objects.

I can see that you are struggling with this, but I think it is only because you aren't thinking through the difference between knowledge that is or is not demonstrable. If you see your friend that you love grieving over the loss of a loved one, even if you had never experienced or witnessed grief before and did not know the proper word for grief or nobody had ever explained it to you, you would see and have a sense of what your friend was experiencing and that it was an unpleasant and hurtful experience. You would have gained knowledge about grief that you did not posses before.

You can relate or describe your friend's grief to another person once you have knowledge about grief, but you cannot demonstrate it. You have knowledge of many things that you saw or heard or experienced yesterday or last week or last month, and you can relate your best description of these to others, but you cannot demonstrate many of them to a single other soul. If you or nobody you are aware of took a picture, how do you demonstrate to me the glorious sunset you saw last night? You have the knowledge. But the knowledge is not demonstrable. Ergo Aristotle's teaching that knowledge does not have to be demonstrable.

I see what you are saying. I require evidence to have knowledge, but simply because I can't express that knowledge to you does not mean I do not have that knowledge. Is that it?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I can tell you truthfully that I have had a tiddly wink in my pocket, and you now have knowledge that I claim to have had a tiddly wink in my pocket.

I can take a tiddly wink out of my pocket and show it to you and put it back in my pocket and you now have knowledge that I have a tiddly wink in my pocket.

The same truth/knowledge applies in both cases. In one case the truth was demonstrated. In the other it was not, nor is there any way to demonstrate that I once had a tiddly wink in my pocket, but it is a fact and a truth just the same.

When you told me, I had no evidence other than your word. When you showed, me I had evidence of the object. I am still not getting the difference.

Well I think most people do get the difference. Both are knowledge. One is a different form of knowledge but both are based on evidence and both are knowledge. If you are one who has to see, feel, hear, taste, smell experience something for yourself before you will even consider it, you may not be able to see that. And your knowledge will be extremely limited.

What I am not getting is the distinction you are making between evidence and demonstration. Another way of looking at it, of course, that instead of me limiting my knowledge, you are confusing belief with knowledge. Which is ok when it has no consequences.

I have two major hobbies. The first is motorcycles and the second diving. I do some extreme diving involving closed circuit rebreathers with extended decompression. It's what I love. But if I confused what I believed to be true with what I knew to be true, I would have died years ago. There is a definite difference between the two. So when Aristotle says you can have knowledge without demonstration, I can only presume he had an indoor job with no sharp objects.

I can see that you are struggling with this, but I think it is only because you aren't thinking through the difference between knowledge that is or is not demonstrable. If you see your friend that you love grieving over the loss of a loved one, even if you had never experienced or witnessed grief before and did not know the proper word for grief or nobody had ever explained it to you, you would see and have a sense of what your friend was experiencing and that it was an unpleasant and hurtful experience. You would have gained knowledge about grief that you did not posses before.

You can relate or describe your friend's grief to another person once you have knowledge about grief, but you cannot demonstrate it. You have knowledge of many things that you saw or heard or experienced yesterday or last week or last month, and you can relate your best description of these to others, but you cannot demonstrate many of them to a single other soul. If you or nobody you are aware of took a picture, how do you demonstrate to me the glorious sunset you saw last night? You have the knowledge. But the knowledge is not demonstrable. Ergo Aristotle's teaching that knowledge does not have to be demonstrable.

I see what you are saying. I require evidence to have knowledge, but simply because I can't express that knowledge to you does not mean I do not have that knowledge. Is that it?

If I may. Yes. Almost. You can express it. And the moment you express or explain it to others, then they have it, in the sense that they are aware of what you experienced or what you know. They know this now about you. They know what you experienced or what you believe to be true. But the thing you experienced or believe to be true is not always something that can be empirically demonstrated.

Now if the kind of knowledge that you have and are sharing with others is not merely a subjective opinion about something that could arguably have any number of interpretations, then you're getting into the kind of knowledge that I've been talking about on this thread, which is demonstrably, authoritatively or intuitively objective because it is something that is universally understood by all, and others can see that it's universally understood by all once they grasp it for what it is, not for what they always thought it to be due to a lack of simply thinking it out.

In other words, they will see that it is something that everybody knows to be true once they actually look at it and stop imagining it to be something it's not.

But for the moment imagine this for purposes of analogy. You do extreme driving. I don't know anything about that. Without knowing what you know, if I just got behind the wheel and tried to go as fast and be as aggressive as you without knowing these things, I'd kill myself, or at the very least crash in no time flat! Right? Might I be able to do what you do with time and experience as you teach me or tell me or express to me what you know, things like certain techniques or tactics that you can't immediately or empirically demonstrate? Maybe, it I have the inclination and essential motor skills.

Let's say I do have the basic stuff to do it. I still can't do it successfully until I learn some things that can't be immediately demonstrated. They have to be learned from experienced over time. The more I learn from experience the sharper my skills get. Eventually, I'll have a store of knowledge that is in fact empirically demonstrable as someone watches me do it successfully. In other words, it's empirically demonstrable that I know how to do extreme driving with your training. But while the observer can plainly see or know that I know what I'm doing, that doesn't mean that the observer has my knowledge or experience to do it, and the knowledge about how to do it is not something I can immediately demonstrate to the observer. But I can express it or tell it to him, which gives him an understanding that is knowledge. If he wants to give it a go, I can express more and more as he experiences more and more. More and more knowledge. But it's not the kind of knowledge that's immediately demonstrable, because its the experience of this knowledge that's immediate.

 

[Justin Davis]

In other words, they will see that it is something that everybody knows to be true once they actually look at it and stop imagining it to be something it's not.

And this is what is so annoying about people like Hollie and Jake. They think they know what this is all about. First they think that people like you, QW, Fox and me are claiming that we can prove God's existence in the absolute, ultimate sense, and that's totally false. And the only reason they don't know that is because they're not even reading or thinking about anything we're saying. Then when Jake finally gets the fact that we're not claiming that, he tells us that what we're actually talking about is not important. But once again he doesn't know what that is either!

 

[G.T.]

lol oyyy!

 

[Foxfyre]

I can tell you truthfully that I have had a tiddly wink in my pocket, and you now have knowledge that I claim to have had a tiddly wink in my pocket.

I can take a tiddly wink out of my pocket and show it to you and put it back in my pocket and you now have knowledge that I have a tiddly wink in my pocket.

The same truth/knowledge applies in both cases. In one case the truth was demonstrated. In the other it was not, nor is there any way to demonstrate that I once had a tiddly wink in my pocket, but it is a fact and a truth just the same.

When you told me, I had no evidence other than your word. When you showed, me I had evidence of the object. I am still not getting the difference.

Well I think most people do get the difference. Both are knowledge. One is a different form of knowledge but both are based on evidence and both are knowledge. If you are one who has to see, feel, hear, taste, smell experience something for yourself before you will even consider it, you may not be able to see that. And your knowledge will be extremely limited.

What I am not getting is the distinction you are making between evidence and demonstration. Another way of looking at it, of course, that instead of me limiting my knowledge, you are confusing belief with knowledge. Which is ok when it has no consequences.

I have two major hobbies. The first is motorcycles and the second diving. I do some extreme diving involving closed circuit rebreathers with extended decompression. It's what I love. But if I confused what I believed to be true with what I knew to be true, I would have died years ago. There is a definite difference between the two. So when Aristotle says you can have knowledge without demonstration, I can only presume he had an indoor job with no sharp objects.

I can see that you are struggling with this, but I think it is only because you aren't thinking through the difference between knowledge that is or is not demonstrable. If you see your friend that you love grieving over the loss of a loved one, even if you had never experienced or witnessed grief before and did not know the proper word for grief or nobody had ever explained it to you, you would see and have a sense of what your friend was experiencing and that it was an unpleasant and hurtful experience. You would have gained knowledge about grief that you did not posses before.

You can relate or describe your friend's grief to another person once you have knowledge about grief, but you cannot demonstrate it. You have knowledge of many things that you saw or heard or experienced yesterday or last week or last month, and you can relate your best description of these to others, but you cannot demonstrate many of them to a single other soul. If you or nobody you are aware of took a picture, how do you demonstrate to me the glorious sunset you saw last night? You have the knowledge. But the knowledge is not demonstrable. Ergo Aristotle's teaching that knowledge does not have to be demonstrable.

I see what you are saying. I require evidence to have knowledge, but simply because I can't express that knowledge to you does not mean I do not have that knowledge. Is that it?

That's pretty much it. IMO all knowledge is based on what we see, hear, touch, smell, taste, read, observe, experience, reason,understand and I try hard not to put artificial limits on any of that. If you label all that 'evidence', I have no problem with that. Is all that knowledge demonstrable to others? No it won't be.

 

[G.T.]

ngt: "whats that going on between our legs? we've got like...............a sewage system mixed with an entertainment complex. BAD DESIGN! BAD DESIGN!"

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

In other words, they will see that it is something that everybody knows to be true once they actually look at it and stop imagining it to be something it's not.

And this is what is so annoying about people like Hollie and Jake. They think they know what this is all about. First they think that people like you, QW, Fox and me are claiming that we can prove God's existence in the absolute, ultimate sense, and that's totally false. And the only reason they don't know that is because they're not even reading or thinking about anything we're saying. Then when Jake finally gets the fact that we're not claiming that, he tells us that what we're actually talking about is not important. But once again he doesn't know what that is either!

Exactly! Everybody knows that God's existence can't be proven to another in the absolute, ultimate sense. These people have been thinking all this time that we've been arguing something we're not . . . after how many friggin' posts now? Eight-hundred and some posts!

And what is one of the things I've been telling them all along that everybody knows: God's existence can't be proven to another in the absolute, ultimate sense!

And it is because everybody knows this, including them as they simultaneously think that we're arguing the opposite, that their minds are closed. Hence, they will not shut up, read, think about or understand what we are arguing.

And now that that Jake finally understands, after Eight-hundred and some posts, that we haven't been arguing that all along, what is his response?

Answer: whatever we are talking about isn't important or doesn't matter, but he doesn't have the first clue about what that is. IDIOT!

He opens his mind long enough to get just one item of what we're talking about, after Eight-hundred and some posts, which is more of the things that everybody knows, only to shut the door of his mind again!

 

[PratchettFan]

When you told me, I had no evidence other than your word. When you showed, me I had evidence of the object. I am still not getting the difference.

Well I think most people do get the difference. Both are knowledge. One is a different form of knowledge but both are based on evidence and both are knowledge. If you are one who has to see, feel, hear, taste, smell experience something for yourself before you will even consider it, you may not be able to see that. And your knowledge will be extremely limited.

What I am not getting is the distinction you are making between evidence and demonstration. Another way of looking at it, of course, that instead of me limiting my knowledge, you are confusing belief with knowledge. Which is ok when it has no consequences.

I have two major hobbies. The first is motorcycles and the second diving. I do some extreme diving involving closed circuit rebreathers with extended decompression. It's what I love. But if I confused what I believed to be true with what I knew to be true, I would have died years ago. There is a definite difference between the two. So when Aristotle says you can have knowledge without demonstration, I can only presume he had an indoor job with no sharp objects.

I can see that you are struggling with this, but I think it is only because you aren't thinking through the difference between knowledge that is or is not demonstrable. If you see your friend that you love grieving over the loss of a loved one, even if you had never experienced or witnessed grief before and did not know the proper word for grief or nobody had ever explained it to you, you would see and have a sense of what your friend was experiencing and that it was an unpleasant and hurtful experience. You would have gained knowledge about grief that you did not posses before.

You can relate or describe your friend's grief to another person once you have knowledge about grief, but you cannot demonstrate it. You have knowledge of many things that you saw or heard or experienced yesterday or last week or last month, and you can relate your best description of these to others, but you cannot demonstrate many of them to a single other soul. If you or nobody you are aware of took a picture, how do you demonstrate to me the glorious sunset you saw last night? You have the knowledge. But the knowledge is not demonstrable. Ergo Aristotle's teaching that knowledge does not have to be demonstrable.

I see what you are saying. I require evidence to have knowledge, but simply because I can't express that knowledge to you does not mean I do not have that knowledge. Is that it?

That's pretty much it. IMO all knowledge is based on what we see, hear, touch, smell, taste, read, observe, experience, reason,understand and I try hard not to put artificial limits on any of that. If you label all that 'evidence', I have no problem with that. Is all that knowledge demonstrable to others? No it won't be.

I get you now. And this is fine so long as the outcome really doesn't matter.

 

[G.T.]

Food for thought: when you say things like "god is necessary for knowledge to exist," it appears as though you believe you've proven in the ultimate absolute sense that god even exists.

So forgive those who think you've been deluded into thinking that you're able to prove god in the ultimate absolute sense.

 

[Foxfyre]

Well I think most people do get the difference. Both are knowledge. One is a different form of knowledge but both are based on evidence and both are knowledge. If you are one who has to see, feel, hear, taste, smell experience something for yourself before you will even consider it, you may not be able to see that. And your knowledge will be extremely limited.

What I am not getting is the distinction you are making between evidence and demonstration. Another way of looking at it, of course, that instead of me limiting my knowledge, you are confusing belief with knowledge. Which is ok when it has no consequences.

I have two major hobbies. The first is motorcycles and the second diving. I do some extreme diving involving closed circuit rebreathers with extended decompression. It's what I love. But if I confused what I believed to be true with what I knew to be true, I would have died years ago. There is a definite difference between the two. So when Aristotle says you can have knowledge without demonstration, I can only presume he had an indoor job with no sharp objects.

I can see that you are struggling with this, but I think it is only because you aren't thinking through the difference between knowledge that is or is not demonstrable. If you see your friend that you love grieving over the loss of a loved one, even if you had never experienced or witnessed grief before and did not know the proper word for grief or nobody had ever explained it to you, you would see and have a sense of what your friend was experiencing and that it was an unpleasant and hurtful experience. You would have gained knowledge about grief that you did not posses before.

You can relate or describe your friend's grief to another person once you have knowledge about grief, but you cannot demonstrate it. You have knowledge of many things that you saw or heard or experienced yesterday or last week or last month, and you can relate your best description of these to others, but you cannot demonstrate many of them to a single other soul. If you or nobody you are aware of took a picture, how do you demonstrate to me the glorious sunset you saw last night? You have the knowledge. But the knowledge is not demonstrable. Ergo Aristotle's teaching that knowledge does not have to be demonstrable.

I see what you are saying. I require evidence to have knowledge, but simply because I can't express that knowledge to you does not mean I do not have that knowledge. Is that it?

That's pretty much it. IMO all knowledge is based on what we see, hear, touch, smell, taste, read, observe, experience, reason,understand and I try hard not to put artificial limits on any of that. If you label all that 'evidence', I have no problem with that. Is all that knowledge demonstrable to others? No it won't be.

I get you now. And this is fine so long as the outcome really doesn't matter.

I'm not sure what you mean by outcome. I don't see knowledge as necessarily requiring any outcome as much knowledge involves a journey of discovery that we are still on with no outcome yet in sight.

 

[Justin Davis]

In other words, they will see that it is something that everybody knows to be true once they actually look at it and stop imagining it to be something it's not.

And this is what is so annoying about people like Hollie and Jake. They think they know what this is all about. First they think that people like you, QW, Fox and me are claiming that we can prove God's existence in the absolute, ultimate sense, and that's totally false. And the only reason they don't know that is because they're not even reading or thinking about anything we're saying. Then when Jake finally gets the fact that we're not claiming that, he tells us that what we're actually talking about is not important. But once again he doesn't know what that is either!

Exactly! Everybody knows that God's existence can't be proven to another in the absolute, ultimate sense. These people have been thinking all this time that we've been arguing something we're not . . . after how many friggin' posts now? Eight-hundred and some posts!

And what is one of the things I've been telling them all along that everybody knows: God's existence can't be proven to another in the absolute, ultimate sense!

And it is because everybody knows this, including them as they simultaneously think that we're arguing the opposite, that their minds are closed. Hence, they will not shut up, read, think about or understand what we are arguing.

And now that that Jake finally understands, after Eight-hundred and some posts, that we haven't been arguing that all along, what is his response?

Answer: whatever we are talking about isn't important or doesn't matter, but he doesn't have the first clue about what that is. IDIOT!

He opens his mind long enough to get just one item of what we're talking about, after Eight-hundred and some posts, which is more of the things that everybody knows, only to shut the door of his mind again!

But the reason he closed his mind again is because he thinks that just because the arguments can't prove "to another in the absolute, ultimate sense" that God exists that what they do prove or show doesn't matter. What I've learned from you is that once people look at the other things "everybody knows" and them look at the arguments in the light of those things they can see that the premises for the arguments are objectively and independently verified, which means that the conclusions of these arguments are logically valid. They don't fail like the OP thinks.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

In other words, they will see that it is something that everybody knows to be true once they actually look at it and stop imagining it to be something it's not.

And this is what is so annoying about people like Hollie and Jake. They think they know what this is all about. First they think that people like you, QW, Fox and me are claiming that we can prove God's existence in the absolute, ultimate sense, and that's totally false. And the only reason they don't know that is because they're not even reading or thinking about anything we're saying. Then when Jake finally gets the fact that we're not claiming that, he tells us that what we're actually talking about is not important. But once again he doesn't know what that is either!

Exactly! Everybody knows that God's existence can't be proven to another in the absolute, ultimate sense. These people have been thinking all this time that we've been arguing something we're not . . . after how many friggin' posts now? Eight-hundred and some posts!

And what is one of the things I've been telling them all along that everybody knows: God's existence can't be proven to another in the absolute, ultimate sense!

And it is because everybody knows this, including them as they simultaneously think that we're arguing the opposite, that their minds are closed. Hence, they will not shut up, read, think about or understand what we are arguing.

And now that that Jake finally understands, after Eight-hundred and some posts, that we haven't been arguing that all along, what is his response?

Answer: whatever we are talking about isn't important or doesn't matter, but he doesn't have the first clue about what that is. IDIOT!

He opens his mind long enough to get just one item of what we're talking about, after Eight-hundred and some posts, which is more of the things that everybody knows, only to shut the door of his mind again!

But the reason he closed his mind again is because he thinks that just because the arguments can't prove "to another in the absolute, ultimate sense" that God exists that what they do prove or show doesn't matter. What I've learned from you is that once people look at the other things "everybody knows" and them look at the arguments in the light of those things they can see that the premises for the arguments are objectively and independently verified, which means that the conclusions of these arguments are logically valid. They don't fail like the OP thinks.

Right! But it's not just that, which is what I think even some of the theists think. If the premises are in fact objectively and independently verifiable in some way, and you see why that's true because you have been paying attention to what some have thought to be "overly technical" or limiting factors, that means the conclusions are universally true . . . in our minds! And that being true means that all the atheist is really saying in the end is that it is conceivable that the conclusions aren't true outside of our minds. Okay. But what is their argument that would constitute justifiable knowledge. I can assure that their is no major premise, let alone a subsequent argument they can raise that, unlike the premises of the classical arguments, constitutes justifiable knowledge.

But folks can't see any of this until they (1) understand things like what objective evidence is, what proofs are and what real knowledge is (both subjective and objective, demonstrable and non-empirically demonstrable in the immediate sense) and (2) what the fundamental absolutes that everybody knows once they look at them with regard to the problems of existence and origin are!

 

[Foxfyre]

In other words, they will see that it is something that everybody knows to be true once they actually look at it and stop imagining it to be something it's not.

And this is what is so annoying about people like Hollie and Jake. They think they know what this is all about. First they think that people like you, QW, Fox and me are claiming that we can prove God's existence in the absolute, ultimate sense, and that's totally false. And the only reason they don't know that is because they're not even reading or thinking about anything we're saying. Then when Jake finally gets the fact that we're not claiming that, he tells us that what we're actually talking about is not important. But once again he doesn't know what that is either!

Exactly! Everybody knows that God's existence can't be proven to another in the absolute, ultimate sense. These people have been thinking all this time that we've been arguing something we're not . . . after how many friggin' posts now? Eight-hundred and some posts!

And what is one of the things I've been telling them all along that everybody knows: God's existence can't be proven to another in the absolute, ultimate sense!

And it is because everybody knows this, including them as they simultaneously think that we're arguing the opposite, that their minds are closed. Hence, they will not shut up, read, think about or understand what we are arguing.

And now that that Jake finally understands, after Eight-hundred and some posts, that we haven't been arguing that all along, what is his response?

Answer: whatever we are talking about isn't important or doesn't matter, but he doesn't have the first clue about what that is. IDIOT!

He opens his mind long enough to get just one item of what we're talking about, after Eight-hundred and some posts, which is more of the things that everybody knows, only to shut the door of his mind again!

One bit of knowledge I have acquired purely via observation and reason doing this message board stuff for a number of years now, is that some people play obtuse, stupid, belligerent, hateful, insulting for sport. I can't say for certain, but I suspect some people--maybe Hollie and Jake?--entertain themselves by trying to goad or manipulate us in that way. It can be by being deliberately personally insulting while using diversionary tactics or it can be by being deliberately obtuse or non sequitur. They don't care that they don't have our respect because we certainly don't have theirs. But we give them exactly what they want when we take the bait. I don't always succeed, but I do make an effort not to take that bait.

Even more interesting is how often the Atheists and anti-religionists are drawn to religious threads like flies. They almost never are interested in discussing concepts but are there to declare how stupid anybody is to believe in God or really in anything larger than ourselves. I don't understand those who are so driven to destroy the faith of those to whom their faith is important and beneficial, but I do wonder what is at work that makes the subject so fascinating to so many non-believers.

One might even think it is another bit of evidence for the existence of God.

To put that into a syllogistic argument:

One cannot be passionate about something that does not exist.
Atheists/anti-religionists are passionate about discrediting God.
Therefore God exists.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Once again you dance and prance and saying different things than you diid before, when I have been consistent and clear from the beginning.

Justin, a hint for you: we recognize long paragraphs for justification for what they are ~ you fool no one.

False. You're understanding of what I said before is wrong. You're understanding of what the others have been telling you is wrong. And so if what you're now implying is that you agree with what I just said, which is the same thing I've been saying all along, you are now contradicting yourself. You're also implying that I lied. You are a very disturbed and confused person. You’re not to be taken seriously. I see that you don't care about the truth or about real human interaction.

And G.T. is same kind of mind. Closed! G.T. is still thinking he refuted the teleological argument, not even realizing that he actually proved its major premise to be logically valid. For crying out loud! It is a well-established fact in academia that the claim in the major premise is not merely an axiom, but a demonstrably incontrovertible theorem . . . as any attempt to refute it is a "counterargument" that is in reality the major premise for a complex, formal argument consisting of multiple axioms/postulates that invariably lead to a "discovered" proof that the truth claim in the major premise is logically valid.

It can't be falsified! Ever! And it is objectively and independently verified by that fact! And this cannot be repeated too much: it's not impervious to falsification just because it's expression is logically coherent or just because the essence of its object is not immediately accessible, as so many of you mistakenly believe. If that were all there were to it, nobody would care. The reason it's important is because, eerily, any argument launched against it will actually prove the major premise is logically valid.

And I can show the same thing about the major premises for everyone of the arguments to anyone as long as they open up their minds and look at the things that everybody knows regarding the problems of existence and orgin, which are objectively verifiable as they are incontrovertibly self-evident!

 

[JakeStarkey]

That you admit that concrete proof for the existence of or not of deity is all that matters to me, guys. You can dance on the head of a pin all you want: go for it.

Now having made sure we are all on the same sheet of music, I am a believer in my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He calls me by my first name and I call Him Lord. Although Satan knows your name, some of you are letting it call you by your addictions, where as Jesus, who always knows your addictions (consider our radical atheists), calls you by your name.

Thanks for the opportunity to share, folks