Is belief in God Logical?

[McCulloch]

God is quite logical to me
I understand logic just fine.
The antithessis of there being no God is totally illogical.
The belief [that God exists] would be [logical] too, but yes God is logical.

The question then is, "Does logic support the belief that God exists? Is it illogical that there is no God? "

In order to avoid confusion, for purposes of this debate, the word logic without any modifiers will mean formal deductive logic. If you wish to reference any other form of logic, please distinguish them appropriately, for example, fuzzy logic or modal logic.

Feel free to reference the works of eminent logicians such as, Charles Babbage, Garrett Birkhoff, George Boole, George Boolos, Nick Bostrom, L.E.J. Brouwer, Georg Cantor, Rudolf Carnap, Gregory Chaitin, Graham Chapman, Alonzo Church, John Cleese, René Descartes, Julius Dedekind, Augustus DeMorgan, Michael Dummett, Leonard Euler, Gottlab Frege, Terry Gilliam, Kurt Gödel, Fredrich Hayek, Arend Heyting, David Hilbert, David Hume, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, William Jevons, Immanuel Kant, Stuart Kauffman, Gottfried Leibniz, Ada Lovelace, Jan Łukasiewicz, G. E. Moore, Robert Nozick, William of Ockham, Michael Palin, Blaise Pascal, John Paulos, Giuseppe Peano, Charles Peirce, Karl Popper, Emil Leon Post, Hilary Putnam, Willard van Orman Quine, Frank Ramsey, Julia Hall Bowman Robinson, Bertrand Russell, Claude Shannon, Thoralf Skolem, Alfred Tarski, Alan Turing, Nicolai A. Vasiliev, John Venn, John von Neumann, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alfred North Whitehead, Eugene Wigner or Stephen Wolfram.

[Cathar1950]

I disagree. Existence is that state or fact of existing; being. A rock exists. It strives not neither does it spin.

Don't underestimate a rock and what it is composed of. Its structure is either in the process of coming into being or eroding. It's atomic structure is in movement. But it never IS. It is always in the process of change.

A rock is not an isolated thing away from universal forces but a part of their eternal interaction.

A rock is. I don't quite get what IS is.

I suppose that for the purposes of this discussion, we should dispense with the word is. It is just too easy to equivocate and to misunderstand. For example, Love is blind; God is Love; My father-in-law is blind; Therefore God exists and is my father-in-law. The verb to be can be used in many different senses.

• I think therefore I am. [existence]
• The meeting is in three minutes. [occurrence]
• The report is in my briefcase. [position]
• Leave him as he is. [state]
• Woe is me. [to belong]
• Martha is tall. [a copula to connect the subject with its predicate adjective, or predicate nominative, in order to describe, identify, or amplify the subject]
• Is that right? [a copula to introduce or form interrogative or imperative sentences]
• He is waiting [an auxiliary to form the progressive tense]
• He is to see me today.[to indicate future action]
• Ice is frozen water. [To equal in identity]
• One US dollar is €0.65 [equivalence]
• Gasoline is $125 / liter. [price]
• Ten is most likely; one is least [to indicate significance]
• A human is an ape. [to indicate membership in a class]
• He is really stupid. [to indicate a specified quality]
• Each datum is just ones and zeros. [to indicate composition]

I get the idea that you might mean that God is existence itself. If so, then why call it God?

That is the point I was trying to make above.
Why not call it existence?
What I keep reading from our believing posters is a language game where nothing is beng said that is meaningful outside of their group.
They claim to have an experience which I don't doubt. But what is the nature of that experience? They claim it is God or Spirit. Others have similar experiences where the content and context is different and a matter of expression.
How do they claim something outside of the use of logic is logical? It sounds like some form or double speak or as Cohn expalins; Logicide where the words all have special meanings some of which are upside down.
I would think Nick’s last post addressed to me was rather patronizing and was hardly anything I didn’t understand. I question the adequacy of his explanations and find them elusive, not profound.
On one hand he used scriptures to explain something that is by the meaning of the passage not understandable and is only explained as results. Using some semi-formal idea of “Spirit” when the “wind” metaphor is all that is really used as if it was some objective fact refuses to take into account the limits and uses of metaphorical language.
They also refuse to acknowledge that their experiences are colored by their beliefs and doctrines and can hardly be distinguished from superstition.

[Nick_A]

Everything you've described relating to a "thing in itself" are its qualities. But this doesn't define what IS is.

I must admit that I've never wondered until now how an atheist considers Kant's distinction between noumenon and phenomenon. Noumenon IS within conscious potential while phenomena exists as manifestations of noumena

Without a belief in a conscious source, what is noumenon and how does in manifest as phenomenon? It seems that the atheist must deny noumenon though I never have asked an atheist how they regard Kant's distinction.

For me it is no problem since I see noumenon or the thing in itself in the context of Plato's world of forms as conscious potentials.

It may be worth a thread at some point. Do noumena exist and relate to phenomena? Can noumena exist for atheism?

[Rathpig]

Everything you've described relating to a "thing in itself" are its qualities. But this doesn't define what IS is.

.... Can noumena exist for atheism?

Nick,

You write as if the entire philosophical work of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries never happened. To answer Kant, and ultimately your own questions, all one has to do is look to the logical positivists and the philosophy of analytics which evolved from this school of thought.

Using metaphysics within the context of logic is meaningless. Metaphysics is the art of saying nothing in as many words as possible. This was Kant's failure. The "Ding an sich" as Kant ultimately misused noumenon is meaningless. It isn't that this doesn't "exist for atheism". Kant was simply wrong in his methodology of categorization.

Now ultimately Popper is correct that metaphysics may be a lack of understand which can be overcome as knowledge advances. So one should dismiss metaphysics out of hand for simply having this structure, but you are delving back into a metaphysical philosophy which was long ago shown to be incorrect in structure. Though this is not specifically germane to the current conversation.


What is your bottom-line, Nick?

Is this a convoluted ruse to support god-of-the-gaps by using long outdated philosophical concepts to wedge open an intellectual intuition schism to insert deity?

It's been done before and it fails every test. It isn't that somehow metaphysical knowledge exists outside of the analytical. Metaphysical knowledge is just word play on language. You are not dealing with concepts of the knowable. You are dealing with the manipulation of language to create paradox.

Read Russell. Read Ayer. It wouldn't hurt to read Nietzsche even. His burning desire to impale Kantian concepts is good light reading.

[The_Spirit_of_Truth]

The question then is, "Does logic support the belief that God exists? Is it illogical that there is no God? "

Of course, it is logical to believe in God because there must be someone who controls what is happening in the universe and all the evolutions including their very beginning.

[bernee51]

The question then is, "Does logic support the belief that God exists? Is it illogical that there is no God? "

Of course, it is logical to believe in God because there must be someone who controls what is happening in the universe and all the evolutions including their very beginning.

Why MUST there be someone (thing?) controlling what is happening in the universe?

[Goat]

The question then is, "Does logic support the belief that God exists? Is it illogical that there is no God? "

Of course, it is logical to believe in God because there must be someone who controls what is happening in the universe and all the evolutions including their very beginning.

Isn't that reasoning circular?

"it's logical because I believe it?" How is that logical.

[The_Spirit_of_Truth]

The question then is, "Does logic support the belief that God exists? Is it illogical that there is no God? "

Of course, it is logical to believe in God because there must be someone who controls what is happening in the universe and all the evolutions including their very beginning.

Why MUST there be someone (thing?) controlling what is happening in the universe?

For example, somebody created us, people (we are not a natural evolution development from the ape to the human). We know that somebody controls us, people. And the entire enternity must also be controlled by someone because otherwise it would dissolve and perish.

[Goat]

The question then is, "Does logic support the belief that God exists? Is it illogical that there is no God? "

Of course, it is logical to believe in God because there must be someone who controls what is happening in the universe and all the evolutions including their very beginning.

Why MUST there be someone (thing?) controlling what is happening in the universe?

For example, somebody created us, people (we are not a natural evolution development from the ape to the human). We know that somebody controls us, people. And the entire enternity must also be controlled by someone because otherwise it would dissolve and perish.

Other that quotes from religious scripture, which I don't accept, what evidence do you have that we were 'created'. Considering the huge amount of fossil and genetic evidence pointing to the very close relationship between man and the other great apes, why are you rejecting the fact we are a species of ape?

[McCulloch]

For example, somebody created us, people

You assume. How do you know?

We are not a natural evolution development from the ape to the human.

In a technical sense you are correct. Humans are not an evolutionary development from the apes. Humans are one species of the great apes, just as lions are one species of the felines. We are apes. Relatively hairless apes with bigger brains than the other apes, but we really are apes.

And the entire enternity must also be controlled by someone because otherwise it would dissolve and perish.

Oh really? How do you know that?

[daedalus 2.0]

The question then is, "Does logic support the belief that God exists? Is it illogical that there is no God? "

Of course, it is logical to believe in God because there must be someone who controls what is happening in the universe and all the evolutions including their very beginning.

Why MUST there be someone (thing?) controlling what is happening in the universe?

For example, somebody created us, people (we are not a natural evolution development from the ape to the human). We know that somebody controls us, people. And the entire enternity must also be controlled by someone because otherwise it would dissolve and perish.

I don't know this. Enlighten me - using logic.

Rathpig, great post. I get tired of theists bringing up Kant as if he is the new messiah.