Logical explanation: why a god must exist

Fine then, the bang causes the gun shot wound, not the death. You still get the point I hope.

To help keep me clean and sober.......

so your entire argument hinges on your hope that causation is false which, to me, seems to be the most illogical of all the arguments presented in this thread and the most difficult to possibly defend(your position would also place the burden of proof completely on you since all the evidence suggest that cutting someone's head completely off necessarily causes their death aka cause and effect seem to be on pretty solid ground). Heck, you may as well not even visit this site or take the time to press the "reply" button since we can't be sure that pressing said button will lead to the end you are desiring.

The entire foundation of knowledge itself is based around the idea that we can isolate the cause of things and then learn how to manipulate that. It would be like saying, ''adding 1 to a number may or may not cause that number to increase since nothing is actually caused''. If we couldn't prove that adding 1 to a number would necessarily increase the number, then we could not have advanced even beyond the first steps of knowledge. Today, we have devices like transistors that we have been able to study with such precision that we know exactly how they will act(at least within given tolerances) despite how complex the physics behind them are...this has lead to many of our modern technologies.

If one wished one could run experiments where one isolated the noise of a gunshot to see what exactly it was causing.... if we used some sort of sound emitting device, or even a silencer, to counteract the noise and we still get a certain result, then we can easily determine that the sound a gun makes isn't causing the result we are seeing. To even suggest that we can't determine such things like you have with your example of saying we might think that the sound a gun makes when its fired is what is causing the death, to me, is disingenuous or simply just wrong.

Furthermore, I defy you to live your life non-hypocritically by the belief that nothing is caused. As such, I think you should stop wasting money on food since it would seem to me to be a waste since it isn't causing you to be nourished nor is in necessary to your survival.

I will play Devil´s advocate on this one since to some extent I think Night Ripper has a point...
In the example you gave, first of all is the bullet and not the gun who might be the "cause" of death...then one might argue for the atoms in the bullet, and the forces involved in the atoms, further eventually one gets to the uncertainty principle and one might as well make a case for correlation instead of cause since you cannot pinpoint the mechanic efficient cause of death with accurate certainty...

would you not agree that the cause of death will be, at least in a conceivable scenario, from blood loss?

I'm pretty sure I've read that a bullet hits with no more force than say dropping a baseball from several feet.

Now having said that....we can then determine what caused the blood loss...well it would be the breaking of arteries or whatever...well what caused that? Well it would be from this little object we call a bullet breaking through the arteries...it is in that sense that we say the gun shot caused the guy to die.

http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Metaphysics_Causality.html

I know exactly what you meant with the gun being the cause, and essentially as pragmatically, I am a "Causalist" (Hard Deterministic which is the the daring type...) given I don´t know and never did, what is to be the role, or even mean, of Freedom in any place, allow me, of the FULLNESS of BEING as a Whole...nevertheless, in this regard CAUSE or CORRELATION, as meaningful to meaningless terms, fuse together in an a priori formulation of Reality by which Time/Space is transcended in the extreme UNITY of that which is there...
CAUSE and CORRELATION are phenomenological assertions about what is going on that loose any sense in the face of the ONTOLOGICAL status of that which is done in itself...BEING !

Would one say that the cause of death was the bullet, the world, or that someone was eternally in Truth dead at the observers functional given locally referred time ?...(which is a correlative assertion)

Not to sound like Bertrand Russell here, but science does not need causation. It instead uses functions. I cannot remember the last time I applied the Law of Causality to Physics.

Last time I checked with thoughts and conclusions causality was not present. Instead we derive a conclusion from a premise. It seems rather queer to say that, "this conclusion was caused by the thoughts."

"Derived" or "deduced" seems better. Think about it.

I do not think we would say, "this conclusion was caused by the thoughts." The statement does not account for other cognitive processes which occur during thought. So there is more than one cause (I would imagine) than the thoughts themselves (assuming that thoughts cause conclusions). Conclusions derived from thoughts seems a little better.

If a law is self-evident, would it then be a priori? Is that what we are aiming for?

It is not the gunshot wound, but the bullet piercing a vital part of the human body; or perhaps it could be that the cause is loss of blood from the gunshot wound not being addressed in a timely manner.

In any event, the gunshot wound is not a necessary condition for death. It is sufficient.

There we go again...degrees of freedom popping up as means of explanation for potential alternatives...
I rather say that for that particular death, gunshot wounds and blood loss were not only a sufficient but also a necessary cause of death...it is a fact, at least in this Universe that if someone died from a gunshot wound and blood loss then someone died...of course as Death itself is a generalisation and can come in many forms, even in abstract terms, if one loosens its natural meaning a little bit, to say that it is sufficient instead of necessary turns out to be useful given the word serves all practical functions in which the event of death emerges correlated with other events...what this method in logic forgets is that we never are in the presence of death as a generalisation but always as a particular specific case as it happens...Death itself as a generalisation is a conceptual abstraction and not refers to any mechanical concrete causal situation that did happen...what did happen was such and such specific form of death...this to my view is extremely important to reconcile hard deterministic logical conceptual models in the relation of events...of course it is also true that at this light the use of the word correlation fits the bill just as good or perhaps even better to describe what in fact did happen, or tightly, what always it was there as Truth...

You say science does not use causations but functions. Could you elaborate or provide an example?

There is inductive and deductive reasoning.
Inductive is drawing general conclusions from specific observations.
This is pretty close to the scientific method.

Deductive reasoning is lining up premises in an argument to arrive at a valid conclusion.
Even using deductive reasoning requires the use on inductive reasoning.

For example, you can deduce using valid premises that all people die. This is still based on inductive reasoning since you have to observe specific examples to draw that general conclusion. It's a valid conclusion and it used inductive reasoning as well as deductive reasoning.

My point there is that using inductive reasoning, you specifically observe the effect of a certain cause.
Even if you use deductive reasoning, you still have inductive reasoning underneath.

As for the gunshot thing, good clarification.
Point being, the cause of death would be more or less a chain reaction of cause and effect.
Gun is shot
Bullet strikes body
Bullet does damage to vital functions
vital function(s) cease
death
Science tells us the "Cause of Death" would be bleeding out or a punctured lung, etc. There you have it, death was caused by an effect.
What would the scientific function of that death look like?

So what I hear from this is
Death is always caused.
That cause varies on an individual basis, but always has the effect of death.

Since you seem to be making the case that death is too abstract a term to pin down for our purposes, let's clarify. Now for our purposes in this example(as this is not a discussion of death, but of the existence of a God), let's define death as a permanent cessation of all vital functions. That's Merriam-Webster's definition and it can be our working definition for this discussion.

Amperage, you have no idea how glad I am to hear that someone else sees the Law of Causation as both valid and obvious. It is inherent in everything we do.

For instance:
I say the Law of Causation requires a creator.(cause)
Other people disagree as they do not believe there is a creator.(effect)
Since my argument that the Law of Causation would require such a supernatural force is simple and logical, there is only one recourse and that is to deny the Law of Causality. The irony is that this doubt itself is CAUSED by something.

Again one can just as well argue there is a correlation between such and such event since efficient cause its actually very hard if not impossible to track...

...what specific event in the "wound meta event" was fatal ? This is far trickier then it seams at first glance...you are up for infinity´s...

But one can equally accept causation as a practical mean of expression...
The problem I see with a "Creator" and a separate "Creation" aside the definition of Creator being either more abstract, or more biblical, which does n´t much matter for the case, is that for instance, if you take a finger of your body and "build" something with it, is still is your "finger" in there...I just don´t see the need or logical justification for separating one from another...and that´s what matters.
To my view, if one is up to bring about a conceptual formulation of a Divinity, the main factor is the extension, or size of what it can define as a Set...the bigger the better...Fullness of Existence should be the aim !
All words fall down as meaningful representations or symbols of something from something else in this holistic approach, since all is included...
"GOD" does n´t cause "GOD" IS !!! (Everything)

" there is a correlation between such and such event"
Yes. That's what I'm TELLING you. that 'correlation' is a CAUSAL correlation. Meaning that one event causes another.

" efficient cause its actually very hard if not impossible to track..."
Was my sun and plant explanation difficult to impossible to track?
And what specific event was fatal is irrelevant, the point is that it's a chain of cause and reaction(effect).

I understand your argument.
You are saying that if there is only God, then the only thing he had at his disposal to construct the universe is himself.
However, you are replacing the concept of 'creation' with that of 'construction' or 'building'.
Creation is something from nothing.
Building is something from something.
Now before you jump on me, saying I have violated the Law of Causality, no.
When I say it is something from nothing, I mean an intelligent being CAUSED material to be from immaterial, the universe from nothing in the universe.

If we accept that God is infinite - as I have argued time and again - then he is boundless. There is no limit to his power, his intellect, he lacks nothing. If, he is unlimited in his power and infinite(both are things we cannot understand with our finite minds), then it is logical to conclude he has the POWER to create(from immaterial, that is "no thing", material, which is the universe.)

I am not only criticizing the definition there, or even this particular word, I go a step further, and state that "DEATH" as a conceptual generalisation as any other generalisation does n´t refer to anything which did happen separatelly from its specificity, as the TRUTH in the event which was in fact manifested was n´t just besides sufficient, but also Necessary...

You know what the true problem is between yours and my conception to this problem ?
What in the hell would NOTHINGNESS be ???
There is, for Christ sake, only EVERYTHING...
There´s, as the very word (meaningless) points out, NOTHING to NOTHINGNESS worth mention...
The very same argument that helps justifying GOD it was not Caused and its ETERNAL !!!...
THERE´S NO BEFORE OR AFTER "GOD" !!!...You must go holistic mod in here !!! ( and Universe or Multiverse is not out of it)

My conception of Trinity :

The Father=The Whole=Multiverse/Universe
The Son=Any particular Entity/Species/Group=Mankind is one of them...
The Holly Spirit=The Dynamic=The Phenomenology=The Functional Correlation or Cause between "things" as one prefers...


As for the Material and Immaterial...Have you ever thought about what Virtual Reality´s brought up on this concern ?
WE DON´T KNOW what in the hell is the DIFFERENCE if there is any !
(There is no "Matter")

We covered that earlier. There was never nothingness.

To create is "To cause to exist; bring into being."

There was God.
Now there's God + the Universe he created(caused to exist).

again, this is an example of a cause/effect relationship. I don't want to get off topic by beginning a debate about the definition and characteristics of death.