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

[Mertex]

?

LOL. What I mean is that rational logic is always open ended leaving the door open for new information that can change our perceptions and/or understandings. To say that we understand as well as we can with the information we have is to be logical. To say this is the way it is period is not logic but dogma.

My practical self goes with the knowledge I have to function in my world and generally that knowledge is sufficient to accomplish whatever I need to accomplish at the time.

My scientific self knows that I know only a teensy bit of what there is know about anything which makes life always exciting because we never know what else is possible. And if I had been born 100 years from now, I'm quite sure my perception and understanding about many things would be different than they are now because humankind will likely have advanced many times over what it has done in the last 100 years.

Will our perceptions about God have changed too in the next 100 years? I have to suspect they will as they have certainly changed over all the past millennia of recorded history.

The problem I had with your first post was the statement that "The only logical absolute that we can be certain of is that we have so little knowledge compared to all the knowledge there is to be had, that our logic and understanding will always be limited by what we can know, reason, discern, envision now at this time." That's an understanding, not a logical absolute, derived from the logical absolutes of human thought. From where I'm standing that's part of Q.W.'s confusion.

Well I probably didn't state it clearly. But my intention was to state the logical absolute that we know a tiny fraction of all that there is to know. In my opinion, that is far more than just an understanding. That's a fact.

Is it demonstrable? Of course not because we cannot demonstrate what we do not yet know.

Of course. For all we know our solar system is just an atom in another unimaginably huge universe.

LOL. My son used to come up with such concepts that really make you think. He postulated a similar thought one time that who knows whether each atom contains a whole other universe and is, as you suggest, a component in a much larger one and so on. He suggested it gives you a whole new perspective when you throw another log on the fire.....all those universes. . . . .

In my Astronomy class in college, some one asked the question of the class - "Do you think the Universe goes on forever or do you think somewhere there is a big, big wall that stops it?" If you think about it, either answer seems absurd.....that's how little we can comprehend.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

But what logic are you talking about? The evidence tells me that our organic logic absolutely applies to our understanding of the universe. It can't be otherwise even if it's conceivable that the universe is doing things that are not consistent with our organic logic. We couldn't know that because we can't see things any other way even if it is true. This is why it's dumbfounding to me when you say there's no evidence for this. We have nothing but evidence for this and no one can see anything else but evidence for this. My problem earlier with the thing Foxfyre said was the way she said it because it implied that there was no absolute organic logic that is lined up with how things work in the world outside our minds. She doesn't really not see that once we got into what she reall means and sees. Logic and knowledge aren't the same things. Used right our organic logic does what it's supposed to do. That doesn't mean we always use it right or we don't make errors in our thinking. We do, usually because of pent of biases or because of bad info. But we also get to learn from these kinds of errors too, and it's good logic that shows us the errors later.

Logic used to be the only tool we had to understand the universe. It works, sort of, but the fact is that there are things in the universe that contradict our organic logic. According to our logic, there is no way something can be two things at once, yet we all understand that electromagnetic radiation is both a particle and a wave.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

But organic logic is not the formal structures of logical argument. See my last post. To me philosophy should just define things. I suppose to some extent if you can define something you can see get some idea about why it is or how it works at a rational level. I don't see anything wrong with that but we have to use science to test things. There's some overlap because science is based on the philosophy of science. My reading of Aristotle is different than yours. What I get from him about God is that God is perfect because he's not "divisible magnitude" while the "magnitude" (the physical substance of existence) is. But I guess he might have had some idea that the magnitude should be perfect too in some other way. I'll take your word for it because I apparently missed something there about what he expected. The only thing I can think about in that way is that we know that our perfect ideas about geometric forms cannot be perfectly replicated by us in the physical world. As for the establishment. They're always be with us but perfection has nothing to do with a non-geocentric solar system. It just is. The old idea was just based on his unaided senses and limited technology.

That's redundant. Edit: "unaided senses and limited scientific methods" is what I meant to say.

Strangely enough, Copernicus had the exact same tools as Aristotle, yet he managed to conclude that the solar system was heliocentric.

It isn't our senses that limit us, it is our belief that we can explain things based on what we think we see.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I suppose that's easier.

I suppose it is, for you, especially since you ignored my explanation of why the post I was responding to was bullshit.

 

[MaryL]

If god is real, I pray that we all get candy coated orgasms NOW! ...NOW!...I will wait a minute....NOW! Anyone? No? Me either. God is like that.God, you disappoint me.

 

[Justin Davis]

LOL. What I mean is that rational logic is always open ended leaving the door open for new information that can change our perceptions and/or understandings. To say that we understand as well as we can with the information we have is to be logical. To say this is the way it is period is not logic but dogma.

My practical self goes with the knowledge I have to function in my world and generally that knowledge is sufficient to accomplish whatever I need to accomplish at the time.

My scientific self knows that I know only a teensy bit of what there is know about anything which makes life always exciting because we never know what else is possible. And if I had been born 100 years from now, I'm quite sure my perception and understanding about many things would be different than they are now because humankind will likely have advanced many times over what it has done in the last 100 years.

Will our perceptions about God have changed too in the next 100 years? I have to suspect they will as they have certainly changed over all the past millennia of recorded history.

The problem I had with your first post was the statement that "The only logical absolute that we can be certain of is that we have so little knowledge compared to all the knowledge there is to be had, that our logic and understanding will always be limited by what we can know, reason, discern, envision now at this time." That's an understanding, not a logical absolute, derived from the logical absolutes of human thought. From where I'm standing that's part of Q.W.'s confusion.

Well I probably didn't state it clearly. But my intention was to state the logical absolute that we know a tiny fraction of all that there is to know. In my opinion, that is far more than just an understanding. That's a fact.

Is it demonstrable? Of course not because we cannot demonstrate what we do not yet know.

Of course. For all we know our solar system is just an atom in another unimaginably huge universe.

LOL. My son used to come up with such concepts that really make you think. He postulated a similar thought one time that who knows whether each atom contains a whole other universe and is, as you suggest, a component in a much larger one and so on. He suggested it gives you a whole new perspective when you throw another log on the fire.....all those universes. . . . .

In my Astronomy class in college, some one asked the question of the class - "Do you think the Universe goes on forever or do you think somewhere there is a big, big wall that stops it?" If you think about it, either answer seems absurd.....that's how little we can comprehend.

But what logic are you talking about? The evidence tells me that our organic logic absolutely applies to our understanding of the universe. It can't be otherwise even if it's conceivable that the universe is doing things that are not consistent with our organic logic. We couldn't know that because we can't see things any other way even if it is true. This is why it's dumbfounding to me when you say there's no evidence for this. We have nothing but evidence for this and no one can see anything else but evidence for this. My problem earlier with the thing Foxfyre said was the way she said it because it implied that there was no absolute organic logic that is lined up with how things work in the world outside our minds. She doesn't really not see that once we got into what she reall means and sees. Logic and knowledge aren't the same things. Used right our organic logic does what it's supposed to do. That doesn't mean we always use it right or we don't make errors in our thinking. We do, usually because of pent of biases or because of bad info. But we also get to learn from these kinds of errors too, and it's good logic that shows us the errors later.

Logic used to be the only tool we had to understand the universe. It works, sort of, but the fact is that there are things in the universe that contradict our organic logic. According to our logic, there is no way something can be two things at once, yet we all understand that electromagnetic radiation is both a particle and a wave.

I don't know this stuff as well as others on this forum but I understand the nature of the rules of organic logic very well. You can't understand anything in philosophy, theology or science without them. The rules of inference and the scientific method are based on them. I don't remember what post it was now but you were saying things that seemed to be sort of right but also sort of wrong at the same time and what I couldn't put my finger on was how to explain what's causing you to mix up the two. But I do know exactly why your idea about the majorana fermion is wrong. I just didn't get into the mix over that because you wrote your post to M.D.R.. He just proved that this kind of argumentation is the logical fallacy of false predication. Even I know that and why that's logically true. There's no contradiction between this well known fact of electromagnetic radiation and the laws of logic, any more than there's a contradiction between the majorana fermion and the laws of logic. The second and third law of organic logic are just detailed annunciations of the universal rule of identity which holds that the predicate of any whole cannot be divided. This is understood in the logic of sets. one whole set can theoretically be an infinite number of things simultaneously just like any whole can be theoretically divided an infinite number of times. There's nothing in human nature's basic rules of logic that says these kinds of things are contradictory or can't exist. I don't know where you're getting this from.

 

[Picaro]

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.

Logic can neither prove or refute anything; all logic is just circular reasoning, hence your claims of something 'failing' is in itself nonsense. Read Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy on the limits of both formal and informal logic.

For fun, here is an example of the neo-platonist influence on Christian scholarship.

Aquinas Five Ways to Prove that God exists -- The Arguments



'

St. Thomas Aquinas: The Existence of God can be proved in five ways.

Argument Analysis of the Five Ways © 2004 Theodore Gracyk

The First Way: Argument from Motion Our senses prove that some things are in motion. Things move when potential motion becomes actual motion. Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion. Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect (i.e., if both actual and potential, it is actual in one respect and potential in another). Therefore nothing can move itself. Therefore each thing in motion is moved by something else. The sequence of motion cannot extend ad infinitum. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God. The Second Way: Argument from Efficient Causes We perceive a series of efficient causes of things in the world. Nothing exists prior to itself. Therefore nothing is the efficient cause of itself. If a previous efficient cause does not exist, neither does the thing that results. Therefore if the first thing in a series does not exist, nothing in the series exists. The series of efficient causes cannot extend ad infinitum into the past, for then there would be no things existing now. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God. The Third Way: Argument from Possibility and Necessity (Reductio argument) We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, that come into being and go out of being i.e., contingent beings. Assume that every being is a contingent being. For each contingent being, there is a time it does not exist. Therefore it is impossible for these always to exist. Therefore there could have been a time when no things existed. Therefore at that time there would have been nothing to bring the currently existing contingent beings into existence. Therefore, nothing would be in existence now. We have reached an absurd result from assuming that every being is a contingent being. Therefore not every being is a contingent being. Therefore some being exists of its own necessity, and does not receive its existence from another being, but rather causes them. This all men speak of as God. The Fourth Way: Argument from Gradation of Being There is a gradation to be found in things: some are better or worse than others. Predications of degree require reference to the “uttermost” case (e.g., a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest). The maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God. The Fifth Way: Argument from Design We see that natural bodies work toward some goal, and do not do so by chance. Most natural things lack knowledge. But as an arrow reaches its target because it is directed by an archer, what lacks intelligence achieves goals by being directed by something intelligence. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God."

[TBODY]

Circular reasoning that only be answered by circular reasoning.

[/TBODY]

 

[Picaro]

In my Astronomy class in college, some one asked the question of the class - "Do you think the Universe goes on forever or do you think somewhere there is a big, big wall that stops it?" If you think about it, either answer seems absurd.....that's how little we can comprehend.

Indeed. Evolution is another example. Is the fantastically improbable numbers of literally millions upon millions of 'happy accidents' required to justify it really less intellectually absurd than the Adam and Eve allegory and creationism? The Big Bang and evolution compared with the Adam and Eve allegory and creationism are intellectually the same at root.

 

[indiajo]

[


In my Astronomy class in college, some one asked the question of the class - "Do you think the Universe goes on forever or do you think somewhere there is a big, big wall that stops it?" If you think about it, either answer seems absurd.....that's how little we can comprehend.

This is an astronomy class? In COLLEGE????
My grandmother once told me there are no stupid questions. She was wrong.
In an astronomy class you don't ask what somone thinks, you ask what is profound knowledge so far.
This profound knowledge includes the fact that we cannot rely on our imagination and intuition if we want to gain knowledge about the universe. It is all about mathematics and physics.
It does not matter at all if you are able to imagine space, or no space at all behind the today known borders of the universe. What matters is the match between observation and theory.

 

[indiajo]

[

Indeed. Evolution is another example. Is the fantastically improbable numbers of literally millions upon millions of 'happy accidents' required to justify it really less intellectually absurd than the Adam and Eve allegory and creationism? The Big Bang and evolution compared with the Adam and Eve allegory and creationism are intellectually the same at root.

There were not millions of "happy accidents". Actually it was a number so huge, we don's have a name for it..
And they were not "happy". They had to occur, as well as the polymer from which the keys on your computer keybord are made have to occur if the parameters are just right.
The first experiment to proof the random synthese of organic molecules was done in the 1950's. the Miller-Urey experiment 1953 to be more precise. and in such an experiment it is absolutely normal that you get amino acids. The basic molecules of life. The 4 building blocks of DNA are not very complicated either. Indeed it is fare more difficult to synthesize aspirin.

And people like you obviously have absolutely no clue how much time 4 billion years are.

You simply don't get the difference between scientific theories, backed up by observation, experiment, mathematical calculation and physical proof, and the absurd fairytales of some iron age goatherders.

 

[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.

Logic can neither prove or refute anything; all logic is just circular reasoning, hence your claims of something 'failing' is in itself nonsense. Read Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy on the limits of both formal and informal logic.

For fun, here is an example of the neo-platonist influence on Christian scholarship.

Aquinas Five Ways to Prove that God exists -- The Arguments



'

St. Thomas Aquinas: The Existence of God can be proved in five ways.

Argument Analysis of the Five Ways © 2004 Theodore Gracyk

The First Way: Argument from Motion Our senses prove that some things are in motion. Things move when potential motion becomes actual motion. Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion. Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect (i.e., if both actual and potential, it is actual in one respect and potential in another). Therefore nothing can move itself. Therefore each thing in motion is moved by something else. The sequence of motion cannot extend ad infinitum. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God. The Second Way: Argument from Efficient Causes We perceive a series of efficient causes of things in the world. Nothing exists prior to itself. Therefore nothing is the efficient cause of itself. If a previous efficient cause does not exist, neither does the thing that results. Therefore if the first thing in a series does not exist, nothing in the series exists. The series of efficient causes cannot extend ad infinitum into the past, for then there would be no things existing now. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God. The Third Way: Argument from Possibility and Necessity (Reductio argument) We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, that come into being and go out of being i.e., contingent beings. Assume that every being is a contingent being. For each contingent being, there is a time it does not exist. Therefore it is impossible for these always to exist. Therefore there could have been a time when no things existed. Therefore at that time there would have been nothing to bring the currently existing contingent beings into existence. Therefore, nothing would be in existence now. We have reached an absurd result from assuming that every being is a contingent being. Therefore not every being is a contingent being. Therefore some being exists of its own necessity, and does not receive its existence from another being, but rather causes them. This all men speak of as God. The Fourth Way: Argument from Gradation of Being There is a gradation to be found in things: some are better or worse than others. Predications of degree require reference to the “uttermost” case (e.g., a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest). The maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God. The Fifth Way: Argument from Design We see that natural bodies work toward some goal, and do not do so by chance. Most natural things lack knowledge. But as an arrow reaches its target because it is directed by an archer, what lacks intelligence achieves goals by being directed by something intelligence. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God."

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Circular reasoning that only be answered by circular reasoning.

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

This is wrong. Russell didn't say that logic can't prove anything or that all logic is circular in the sense that you mean. You misunderstand him. His thesis is that commonsense knowledge about things is not real knowledge unless it's "logically coherent" and "materially coherent", but we do necessarily begin with the commonsense assumption that existence is real, not just an illusion. We have no choice because we are compelled by experience and logic to make decisions about them whether they exist or not. It's the same practical cogito of Descartes. If this commonsense assumption is wrong then everything's wrong. But what difference would that make to us. Each person knows he exists and it's inconceivable how we could be aware of our existence without their being other objects too. If all logic is circular because of that assumption so what? That's just the way it is. From there logic can be used to prove things and disproves things.

 

[indiajo]

[

Strangely enough, Copernicus had the exact same tools as Aristotle, yet he managed to conclude that the solar system was heliocentric.

Not exactly. Aristotle was a philosopher. Copernicus a mathematician. Coprnicus tried to calculate the movement of planets and simply found out that this works with the heliocentric model, but not otherwise.

It isn't our senses that limit us, it is our belief that we can explain things based on what we think we see.

Of course our senses limit us. We cannot detect x-rays. We cannot see quarks.
Which makes the second part of the sentence true.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

[

Strangely enough, Copernicus had the exact same tools as Aristotle, yet he managed to conclude that the solar system was heliocentric.

Not exactly. Aristotle was a philosopher. Copernicus a mathematician. Coprnicus tried to calculate the movement of planets and simply found out that this works with the heliocentric model, but not otherwise.

It isn't our senses that limit us, it is our belief that we can explain things based on what we think we see.

Of course our senses limit us. We cannot detect x-rays. We cannot see quarks.
Which makes the second part of the sentence true.

Correct on both counts. The fact of the matter is that Aristotle's organic logic was rock solid insofar as its unaided analysis of the raw sensory data went. This was not a breakdown in logic. This was merely mathematically unamplified logic, essentially, insufficient data. All the while the organic principle of identity was doing precisely what it's supposed to do, including eventually alerting us to the actual nuts and bolts of the problem. Ultimately, the real problem was simply a lack of knowledge, not a problem of logic at all.

But QW knows these things . . . except when his ill-considered expressions confuse the matter, as in his FYI that there are things that exist that our brains can't detect, which, ultimately, is the same thing as saying that our senses limit us. Yet we know these things exist! How? Because as he tells us we can imagine the existence of things (via the organic principle of identity) and build technology that magnifies our senses that we might perceive/measure the effects of their presence, which was initially conceived to be in our minds because of other effects that we were able to perceive/measure due to other forms of technology. But then who in their right minds believes that we can reliably explain things based on what our senses convey alone in the first place?

No one who understands the principle of identity believes that for moment.

 

[BreezeWood]

But then who in their right minds believes that we can reliably explain things based on what our senses convey alone in the first place?

No one who understands the principle of identity believes that for moment.

No one who understands the principle of identity believes that for moment.


and that is the reason for Christianities reliance on a bible for Spiritual Admission rather than the means granted at their inception to accomplish imortality ?

oh, and knowing the means is immaterial to the answers they acquire "after" they get there, of course.

.

 

[sealybobo]

If god is real, I pray that we all get candy coated orgasms NOW! ...NOW!...I will wait a minute....NOW! Anyone? No? Me either. God is like that.God, you disappoint me.

I compare him to a deadbeat dad who never visits, doesn't pay child support but if you make it to the NBA he'll show up and want to be your dad but if you don't amount to anything he never looks for you. But isn't that his fault? He should have visited more.

 

[Justin Davis]

Q.W.'s post doesn't make sense to me. It seemed you agreed with it.

I took his post to mean that the Bible doesn't support that everything is already determined and planned out and we are just characters in a script that is already sealed and unchangeable. If that is what he was saying, then I do agree with him. But my point wasn't focused on whether everything is already programmed and decided, but looks ahead to all the surprises that await us out there and ahead of us. Not only do I think we're all going to have a good laugh when we get to heaven and find out how much we got wrong theologically, but the scientists a hundred years from now are likely to look at this period in our history as a scientific dark age.

This entails the intimate things of God that are not objectively or universally apparent. These are the additional things that God has revealed via inspiration. These things can of course be objectively weighed, but they're not intrinsically apparent to all.

The God of the Bible is omniscient without exception. The Bible unmistakably asserts a doctrine of predestination, yet it simultaneously holds that creatures have free will. What do we do with this?

There are two views that I'm aware of: the "Foreknowledge" and the Calvinist view.

The Foreknowledge view holds that God simply foreknew that a portion of the angels would reject Him, that humanity would fall. Knowing this He predestined that He would provide a means of redemption . . . for mankind. But the terms predestined and foreknowledge go to our perspective of time, not His. There is no past or future for God. Everything is now for Him. From our perspective of time, everything that has ever happened, is happening or will happen, is happening right now for Him. The contention is that His knowledge of what we will do, from our perspective, is what we are doing right now, from His perspective. He is viewing those things we will do, according to our sense of time, in the same sense that I'm viewing this screen right now, knowing precisely what I intend to say. I'm free to write what I will, but He's here, with me, right now . . . right now . . . one hour from now, right now, if you follow, viewing my thoughts and intentions. He is here with me at this very moment ten years ago, for example, from my perspective.

The Calvinist view holds that God predestined, without regard to His foreknowledge, who he would create to choose Him.

I opt for the Foreknowledge view as it seems to reconcile the whole of scripture, but I don't pretend to know if it works based on my limited understanding.

I know this won't be satisfactory for many. It remains mysterious to me. The Foreknowledge view is the closest I can get to making sense out of it all. But I do believe from other evidence that there is "a unifying principle" that is rationally coherent in the light of all the pertinent facts that are simply beyond my ken from this side of heaven.

Again setting aside the heavy theology that is mostly an alien language to probably most on this thread, I go back to the KISS principle.

For every passage asserting the omniscience of God, you can find another stating that God relented, God had compassion, God changed his mind. For example, the scripture would suggest Abraham was able to bargain with YHWH to have the life of Lot and his family spared when God destroyed Sodom. And later God wanted the people to depend on Him for what they needed, but they clamored for a king until God finally gave in and gave them one.

Exodus 32:9-14:
(Following the people making the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain). . . .
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.​

I personally cannot square a concept of free will against a concept of a life and universe in which it is already scoped and planned and determined from beginning to end. I can't see how that would make us more than puppets forced to go through it all without purpose since the outcome is already determined. If everything is already decided, there is no real purpose in repenting, in changing, in doing things better or being more wise, or in prayer that we are commanded to do without ceasing. Despite the joy and blessings given us, there is also great suffering and cruelty of the most horrible kind. I can't square the loving God I know up close and personal with one who would have planned all that out.

I have to believe that free will includes the ability to change things and make a difference; otherwise I can reason no purpose for going through all this at all.

So for want of a better explanation, I see God's omniscience as being able to see what will happen if we continue on the course we are on, but who loves us enough to allow us to love so we do have the ability to change our circumstances and our destiny.

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and Q.W. is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

 

[NYcarbineer]

The OP asks for a sound argument, in the form of a syllogism, for the existence of God.

Clearly none has been provided.

 

[sealybobo]

I took his post to mean that the Bible doesn't support that everything is already determined and planned out and we are just characters in a script that is already sealed and unchangeable. If that is what he was saying, then I do agree with him. But my point wasn't focused on whether everything is already programmed and decided, but looks ahead to all the surprises that await us out there and ahead of us. Not only do I think we're all going to have a good laugh when we get to heaven and find out how much we got wrong theologically, but the scientists a hundred years from now are likely to look at this period in our history as a scientific dark age.

This entails the intimate things of God that are not objectively or universally apparent. These are the additional things that God has revealed via inspiration. These things can of course be objectively weighed, but they're not intrinsically apparent to all.

The God of the Bible is omniscient without exception. The Bible unmistakably asserts a doctrine of predestination, yet it simultaneously holds that creatures have free will. What do we do with this?

There are two views that I'm aware of: the "Foreknowledge" and the Calvinist view.

The Foreknowledge view holds that God simply foreknew that a portion of the angels would reject Him, that humanity would fall. Knowing this He predestined that He would provide a means of redemption . . . for mankind. But the terms predestined and foreknowledge go to our perspective of time, not His. There is no past or future for God. Everything is now for Him. From our perspective of time, everything that has ever happened, is happening or will happen, is happening right now for Him. The contention is that His knowledge of what we will do, from our perspective, is what we are doing right now, from His perspective. He is viewing those things we will do, according to our sense of time, in the same sense that I'm viewing this screen right now, knowing precisely what I intend to say. I'm free to write what I will, but He's here, with me, right now . . . right now . . . one hour from now, right now, if you follow, viewing my thoughts and intentions. He is here with me at this very moment ten years ago, for example, from my perspective.

The Calvinist view holds that God predestined, without regard to His foreknowledge, who he would create to choose Him.

I opt for the Foreknowledge view as it seems to reconcile the whole of scripture, but I don't pretend to know if it works based on my limited understanding.

I know this won't be satisfactory for many. It remains mysterious to me. The Foreknowledge view is the closest I can get to making sense out of it all. But I do believe from other evidence that there is "a unifying principle" that is rationally coherent in the light of all the pertinent facts that are simply beyond my ken from this side of heaven.

Again setting aside the heavy theology that is mostly an alien language to probably most on this thread, I go back to the KISS principle.

For every passage asserting the omniscience of God, you can find another stating that God relented, God had compassion, God changed his mind. For example, the scripture would suggest Abraham was able to bargain with YHWH to have the life of Lot and his family spared when God destroyed Sodom. And later God wanted the people to depend on Him for what they needed, but they clamored for a king until God finally gave in and gave them one.

Exodus 32:9-14:
(Following the people making the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain). . . .
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.​

I personally cannot square a concept of free will against a concept of a life and universe in which it is already scoped and planned and determined from beginning to end. I can't see how that would make us more than puppets forced to go through it all without purpose since the outcome is already determined. If everything is already decided, there is no real purpose in repenting, in changing, in doing things better or being more wise, or in prayer that we are commanded to do without ceasing. Despite the joy and blessings given us, there is also great suffering and cruelty of the most horrible kind. I can't square the loving God I know up close and personal with one who would have planned all that out.

I have to believe that free will includes the ability to change things and make a difference; otherwise I can reason no purpose for going through all this at all.

So for want of a better explanation, I see God's omniscience as being able to see what will happen if we continue on the course we are on, but who loves us enough to allow us to love so we do have the ability to change our circumstances and our destiny.

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and QW is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

Ok so maybe there is an all powerful all knowing god out there that created all this. What evidence do you have?

And I need to know right away if you believe the stories in the bible. I don't mind debating with people who argue for a generic god because they can't believe all this happened by accident.

What I can't argue with are people who believe in talking snakes, 350 year old men, virgin births and god coming to earth on a suicide mission.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I took his post to mean that the Bible doesn't support that everything is already determined and planned out and we are just characters in a script that is already sealed and unchangeable. If that is what he was saying, then I do agree with him. But my point wasn't focused on whether everything is already programmed and decided, but looks ahead to all the surprises that await us out there and ahead of us. Not only do I think we're all going to have a good laugh when we get to heaven and find out how much we got wrong theologically, but the scientists a hundred years from now are likely to look at this period in our history as a scientific dark age.

This entails the intimate things of God that are not objectively or universally apparent. These are the additional things that God has revealed via inspiration. These things can of course be objectively weighed, but they're not intrinsically apparent to all.

The God of the Bible is omniscient without exception. The Bible unmistakably asserts a doctrine of predestination, yet it simultaneously holds that creatures have free will. What do we do with this?

There are two views that I'm aware of: the "Foreknowledge" and the Calvinist view.

The Foreknowledge view holds that God simply foreknew that a portion of the angels would reject Him, that humanity would fall. Knowing this He predestined that He would provide a means of redemption . . . for mankind. But the terms predestined and foreknowledge go to our perspective of time, not His. There is no past or future for God. Everything is now for Him. From our perspective of time, everything that has ever happened, is happening or will happen, is happening right now for Him. The contention is that His knowledge of what we will do, from our perspective, is what we are doing right now, from His perspective. He is viewing those things we will do, according to our sense of time, in the same sense that I'm viewing this screen right now, knowing precisely what I intend to say. I'm free to write what I will, but He's here, with me, right now . . . right now . . . one hour from now, right now, if you follow, viewing my thoughts and intentions. He is here with me at this very moment ten years ago, for example, from my perspective.

The Calvinist view holds that God predestined, without regard to His foreknowledge, who he would create to choose Him.

I opt for the Foreknowledge view as it seems to reconcile the whole of scripture, but I don't pretend to know if it works based on my limited understanding.

I know this won't be satisfactory for many. It remains mysterious to me. The Foreknowledge view is the closest I can get to making sense out of it all. But I do believe from other evidence that there is "a unifying principle" that is rationally coherent in the light of all the pertinent facts that are simply beyond my ken from this side of heaven.

Again setting aside the heavy theology that is mostly an alien language to probably most on this thread, I go back to the KISS principle.

For every passage asserting the omniscience of God, you can find another stating that God relented, God had compassion, God changed his mind. For example, the scripture would suggest Abraham was able to bargain with YHWH to have the life of Lot and his family spared when God destroyed Sodom. And later God wanted the people to depend on Him for what they needed, but they clamored for a king until God finally gave in and gave them one.

Exodus 32:9-14:
(Following the people making the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain). . . .
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.​

I personally cannot square a concept of free will against a concept of a life and universe in which it is already scoped and planned and determined from beginning to end. I can't see how that would make us more than puppets forced to go through it all without purpose since the outcome is already determined. If everything is already decided, there is no real purpose in repenting, in changing, in doing things better or being more wise, or in prayer that we are commanded to do without ceasing. Despite the joy and blessings given us, there is also great suffering and cruelty of the most horrible kind. I can't square the loving God I know up close and personal with one who would have planned all that out.

I have to believe that free will includes the ability to change things and make a difference; otherwise I can reason no purpose for going through all this at all.

So for want of a better explanation, I see God's omniscience as being able to see what will happen if we continue on the course we are on, but who loves us enough to allow us to love so we do have the ability to change our circumstances and our destiny.

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and QW is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

The key to what you're saying is understanding God's sense of time in the eternal now and as you appear to believe, I think, by definitively grasping the implications of God's infinite power to conceive of and create an infinite number of possible existents or states of existence that we ourselves might very well be in right now that make the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will a snap.

Unlike QW, it appears to me that you understand the implications of infinite simultaneousness. And what we're getting from QW is that he flatly refuses to believe that the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will is possible as he fails to grasp that the laws of thought actually assert the existence of things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously and anticipate the existence of other things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously.

As for Fox, she thinks a careful examination of this means being "overly technical," that objectively thoughtful and precise definitions of the apparent attributes of what a transcendent origin would be like limits God. But that's false. On the contrary, objectively speaking, if God exists, the fundamental things that everybody can know about God because they are objectively apparent from careful thought would necessarily be coming directly from God as impressed on our minds. And the fact of the matter is that the precise definitions/apprehensions of these things divulge that it is QW and Fox who, unawares, are putting artificial limits on God and artificial limits on what we may objectively know about Him from nature.

But I can tell from her responses, bless her heart, that (1) we don't need to carefully define certain things with regard to the cosmological argument, especially, by the way, and (2) that absolute omniscience necessarily = Calvinism, which it doesn't, or necessarily = the movie's in the can, which it doesn't, and she could know this is she were to open her mind up a bit. Certain things do need to be known before getting into the arguments for God's existence.

In other words, she could have a V-8 moment of "Oh, my God, it is I who am putting chains on God, not Michael." *Sigh*

 

[Justin Davis]

The OP asks for a sound argument, in the form of a syllogism, for the existence of God.

Clearly none has been provided.

Clearly you haven't been paying attention.