Is there proof God exists?

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This there proof God exists?

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[+3] - Cyracuz - 03/10/2007Extropy is wrong. There is no proof whatsoever that there is any god.
[+3] - Lustig Andrei - 10/23/2011[quote=Lovee-4ever]If God didn't exist, then there would be no right or wrong.[/quote] That is one of the silliest, dumbest things I have ever read. Atheist philosophers discuss morality,...

The answer is yes. There are, in fact, proofs for the existence of a
"God," whatever it may be.

However, if you are asking for sound proofs of God, then that is a different matter. The arguement would need to start from true premises, end in the statement "God exists," and have a valid logical form. However, nothing is ever necessary for anything's existance. The mere existance of something does not entail the existance of god, therefore. Therefore, the only way to prove that a supreme being exists is a posteriori.

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Extropy is wrong. There is no proof whatsoever that there is any god.

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In a posteriori, we must rely on observed phenomena. In order for God to be necessary, there must be a phenomenon for which God is the necessary explaination. However, since the existance of anything does not require anything. Therefore a permanent supernatural event that cannot be explained away by natural causes only proves that there is something supernatural, and does not prove that whatever agent that caused it is necessarily omnipotent, because whatever caused a supernatural event does not need to be omnipotent (not that such an event will ever occur, since none has occured so far, so by induction we can predict that such an event will never occur). Therefore, God is not a necessary explaination for anything. Therefore, it is also impossible to prove "God exists" a posteriori.

For example, even if a ghostly white figure was to appear in front of you, and makes all of your hair disappear, or even said "I am God," and you know for certain that it is merely some mental phenomenon in the brain, that does not mean that whatever caused that is necessarily omnipotent. It may indeed have just been a white ghost who has the power to speak english, teleport around, and make people's hair disappear, but nothing else, and just wants people to think that it is god.

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The principle problem with this little bit of nonsense thread, is the lack of a definition of god.

Extropy, apart from some minor spelling errors, the main problem with your discursus (apart from making it up as you go along), is that you haven't defined any terms, beginning with "god."

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I can think of multiple definitions of God, but I shall not choose between them, but merely state that for all of the following definitions of God my previous arguement applies:

A Perfect or Ideal Being
A Necessary Being
First Cause (first causes are not necessary for anything)
Creator (creation is not necessary for anything)
Omniscient Being
Omnipotent Being

My same arguement applies to all of them because nothing is necessary for something to be. "There exists x" is an statement, and can be true or false as much as any other statement p. It is not necessary for statements to be caused to be true. 1+1=2.

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I've made the same objections set are making in earlier threads, and that pretty much yielded nothing.

When I say there is no proof god exists I am referring to the christian concept of god.

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Extropy wrote:

The answer is yes. There are, in fact, proofs for the existence of a
"God," whatever it may be.

However, if you are asking for sound proofs of God, then that is a different matter. The arguement would need to start from true premises, end in the statement "God exists," and have a valid logical form. However, nothing is ever necessary for anything's existance. The mere existance of something does not entail the existance of god, therefore. Therefore, the only way to prove that a supreme being exists is a posteriori.

In the first paragraph you state that there is proof, and in your second
paragraph you contradict yourself, except you're giving different shades
of proof, where there is none.

You personally believe that there is a God, there is absolutely no proof
whatsoever! Exactly this should have been your answer and nothing else!

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CalamityJane wrote:

Extropy wrote:
The answer is yes. There are, in fact, proofs for the existence of a
"God," whatever it may be.

However, if you are asking for sound proofs of God, then that is a different matter. The arguement would need to start from true premises, end in the statement "God exists," and have a valid logical form. However, nothing is ever necessary for anything's existance. The mere existance of something does not entail the existance of god, therefore. Therefore, the only way to prove that a supreme being exists is a posteriori.

In the first paragraph you state that there is proof, and in your second
paragraph you contradict yourself, except you're giving different shades
of proof, where there is none.

You personally believe that there is a God, there is absolutely no proof
whatsoever! Exactly this should have been your answer and nothing else!

Perhaps you do not know what the difference between a proof and a sound proof is.

A sound proof is a proof wherien the premises are true, and the logical form is valid. For example, 1+1=2, therefore, the Earth is flat. That is a proof which starts from true premises, but the logical form is invalid. Therefore, it is not sound.

In my first post on this topic I proved that it is in fact impossible to prove that God exists a priori, so that the only way to prove God is a posteriori. In my second post on thist topic I proved that it is in fact also impossible to prove that God exists a posteriori. Therefore, in my first two posts in this topic I have proved that it is impossible to prove that God exists, whether it be dependent or independent on sense experience.

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In addition to Setanta's "principle point" both "proof" and "existence" also require non-tautological analysis. It follows that the question is vacuous, because believers will either answer (a) you don't need "proof" only "faith" or (b) in their eyes "evidence" is all around them.

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There are, in fact Hundreds of proofs of God's existance.

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These of course all crumble when faced with Woody Allen's

Quote:

Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on the weekend.

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Quote:

(a) you don't need "proof" only "faith" or (b) in their eyes "evidence" is all around them.

I think that I can think of answers to both.

(a) Faith per se is not sufficient to make something true. Something may not be true even if one has faith that it is true. This is because faiths have the possibility of being false.

(b1) Intuition per se is not sufficient to make something true. Something may not be true even if one's intuition says that it is true. This is because intuition has the possibility of being false.

(b2) God is not the necessary cause of whatever caused that evidence. Whatever caused it does not necessarily need to be omnipotent. Also, there is the possibility that it in fact has been caused by natural phenomena.

(b3) God is not the necessary cause of any complexity or meaning. Whatever caused it does not necessarily need to be omnipotent. Also, there is the possibility that the universe has no objective meaning. If there is an objective meaning, it does not need to have been caused by anything supernatural. Also, complexity does not necessarily have a supernatural cause.

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Extropy,

"Truth" is "what works". It is a temporary node of social consensus which may or may not have physical manifestations. Any concept of "Absolute Truth" begs the questions of all "absolutes" including "deities".

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Actually, something if true if what it says is so. If it is raining, then it is true that it is raining.

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Extropy,

There is a difference between static "mathematical logic" with binary "truth values" and dynamic "reality" where "truth values" are negotiated and may be muti-valued. Wittgenstein, for example highlights the difference by rejecting his earlier philosophy concerning logic in favour of the exploration of linguistic contexts. His aphorism "meaning is use" can be well applied to any concept including "truth" or "God".

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Quote:

If it is raining, then it is true that it is raining.

One time something very strange happened at our house. My brother was standing in the driveway, and I was in the garden, on the other side of the house. The doors were open through the house, and we were talking to eachother.
He said it was raining.
I said that it wasn't, because it truly wasn't.
But he insisted that it was raining.
So I went through the house, and came out where he stood, and sure enough; it was raining. A faint drizzle.
Puzzled I went back to where I'd been, and it wasn't raining.

Turned out it was a local shower on a day with no wind. The edge of the shower was somewhere on the roof of our house. I remember standing in the dry garden watching the rain come down in the driveway, through the window...

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Cyracuz.

Exactly !....you've just demonstrated one of the problems with the "correspondence theory of truth".

In general isolated atomic statements like "it is raining" tend to be trivial relative to communication dynamics. Significantly this idea has been extended in linguistics by different concepts of "grammar". Chomsky used "the sentence" as his primary unit but others like Halliday applied the term to whole discourses.

I tend to use this contrast (between atomic and wide range)when thinking of philosophical issues. The celebrated "how do I know that John has a pain" beloved of philosophy seminars becomes trivial when compared with "real life scenarios" where what matters is "how to deal with John". Similarly atomic sentences about "the existence of God" are embedded in a wider social context of "the existence of everything including self". Thomas Kuhn pointed out that "scientific paradigms" were complex networks of meaning and directed activities. The same could be said for "religious paradigms".

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Fresco

What do you mean by "atomic statements"?

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....a term in logic meaning simple statements like "Snow is white", "Peter has a pain" etc. which cannot be broken down further.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/AtomicStatement.html
http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/logemp.htm

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Is there proof God exists?

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