A Philosophical Argument for the Existence of God

[TheChristianEgoist]

This argument is different from many others (including the Kalam argument on this forum) in that it does not require (or really tolerate) the minutia of various theories of the special Sciences (like physics). It thoroughly anticipates and dismisses most major objections in the structure of the argument, itself.
You can find a full post of my argument, along with many clarifying comments and objections answered here: http://thechristianegoist.wordpress.com ... ble-mover/

1) Things can only act according to their natures. This is the law of causality.

2) Regarding action, the nature of a thing is either purposeful or accidental – meaning that an action is either purposeful or un-purposeful, intentional or unintentional. This is the law of the excluded middle applied to the nature of action.

3) Accidental actions are necessarily the result of some sort of interaction – which means that every accidental action necessitates a prior action of some kind.

4) There cannot be an infinite regress of accidental actions. An infinite regress of a series cannot exist because a series must have a beginning in order to exist.

5) There must have been an action which triggered the beginning of accidental action (3 & 4), and this ‘trigger’ action could not, itself, have been accidental (3).

6) If the beginning to accidental action could not have been accidental, then it must have been purposeful (2).

7) A purposeful action is a volitional action and volition presupposes a mind and values.

8) An actor with mind, values, and volition is a person.

9) A personal actor began all accidental action in the universe.

[thepandemicson]

[Replying to post 180 by scourge99]

I assumed that this doesn't actually keep such an event from being a possibility.
I've always presumed that a possibility doesn't always mean that the concept must answer in the affirmative. It simply means that the option is open until proven otherwise.

Hence, the very moment that the number of dice in the bag is revealed, which would result in the aforementioned contradiction, would be the moment at which we can be certain of the possible outcomes, and now we're beginning to understand the limits.

I'd argue it like this: possibility is a fluid concept, and mathematically, it is a function. If you were to change the parameters, you change the results without it contradicting itself. By changing parameters, you can attain undefined results which you would then dismiss as an impossible and therefore incorrect answer.

For example: f(x)=x/y

This is a classic mathematical function. We can achieve any number of possible answers for whatever we choose to plug in for x, because we don't know what y is. Our results will be vague, however, since everything is divided by an unknown variable.

f(x)=18; therefore 18=x/y

Now we are looking for a result. This is still open to any number of possible answers for x, since y is still an unknown and undefined parameter.

y=3; therefore 18=x/3

Now we just defined a parameter. This completely changed x, resulting in only one possible answer for x.

x=54

This didn't result in a contradiction, because up until the point that we knew what y was, we had any number of answers for x, and upon each of those numbers we could have determined a different value for y.
All that we did was give a specific value for y to determine what x had to be. And from there we can determine what x is not.

The number of dice in the bag isn't a variable to determine the resulting answer until we know how many there are. Without this knowledge, we still have the possibility to roll any whole number we can think of, and only when we know how many dice there are can we determine the possibility of rolling that same number.

[instantc]

To use your example :
1b) if i shuffle a deck of cards, is it possible that the Ace of Spades is on top? Yes.

2b) if i shuffle a deck of cards without an ace of Spades, is it possible that the Ace of Spades is on top? No.

3b) if i shuffle a deck of cards that may or may not have an ace of Spades, is it possible that the ace of Spades is on top?

If the answer to 1B is affirmative, then the answer to 3B is' yes' as well. In both cases the top card either is or is not the ace of spades, the word possible indicates that we don't know whether that's the case.

I agree that the word "possible" indicates that we don't know whether or not its true the Ace of Spades is on top of the deck. But that isn't the complete definition. That is an implication of the definition.

The word "possible" to me in this context means that there is some possible world in which the Ace of Spades is on the top of the deck. If there is no ace of Spades in the deck then its not true in any possible world. Thus it's not possible. Its impossible.

But don't you see how this also applies to 1B? If the top card in fact isn't the ace of spades, although we are only staring at the back side of it, then there is no possible world where that top card is the ace of spades, nor is there a possible world where shuffling the deck in the way you did would result in the ace of spades being in the top.

[instantc]

People incorrectly use the word possible and then build arguments off of their incorrect word use. I see it with theists positing God more often than I can count. They say, that because God's existence is possible, yada yada yada. Well guess what, I can stop them right on premise one and say, "Is it?" "Show me how it's possible." They say that ignorance of something means it is possible. Which is stupid and not logical argument at all. You are insisting it is valid.

Well, it is logically possible that God exists, unless God's existence contradicts one or more laws of logic.

In the ordinary use of the word 'possible', I don't see why you should be happier with people saying 'God may or may not exist' than 'it is possible that God exists'.

[JohnA]

People incorrectly use the word possible and then build arguments off of their incorrect word use. I see it with theists positing God more often than I can count. They say, that because God's existence is possible, yada yada yada. Well guess what, I can stop them right on premise one and say, "Is it?" "Show me how it's possible." They say that ignorance of something means it is possible. Which is stupid and not logical argument at all. You are insisting it is valid.

Well, it is logically possible that God exists, unless God's existence contradicts one or more laws of logic.

In the ordinary use of the word 'possible', I don't see why you should be happier with people saying 'God may or may not exist' than 'it is possible that God exists'.

Why is it logically possible that god can exist?


Offering prefixed to words like 'possible' does not magically make a god's existence possible. All you have done is defined this god's existence as possible, logically possible.

The creator god contradicts logic anyway since under creation ex nilhilo you have to think that this is logical:
Something (a god or whateva) existed before existence.
Something (a god or whateva) exists in the supernatural and acts in the natural.
Something (a god or whateva) existed inside/outside nothing before it created everything some x years ago.

The above is not logical at all:
Something can not exist outside/inside nothing.
We do not know anything about the supernatural (we do not know what it is, what is is not since we have no examples of things that are not natural).

SO, for me:
I leave it open and say:
It may not be impossible for a god/gods to exist. But that does not mean it is possible, possible by any of obtuse obscure pre-fixes one apply)
So, how can you even say it is logical for the

[scourge99]

To use your example :
1b) if i shuffle a deck of cards, is it possible that the Ace of Spades is on top? Yes.

2b) if i shuffle a deck of cards without an ace of Spades, is it possible that the Ace of Spades is on top? No.

3b) if i shuffle a deck of cards that may or may not have an ace of Spades, is it possible that the ace of Spades is on top?

If the answer to 1B is affirmative, then the answer to 3B is' yes' as well. In both cases the top card either is or is not the ace of spades, the word possible indicates that we don't know whether that's the case.

I agree that the word "possible" indicates that we don't know whether or not its true the Ace of Spades is on top of the deck. But that isn't the complete definition. That is an implication of the definition.

The word "possible" to me in this context means that there is some possible world in which the Ace of Spades is on the top of the deck. If there is no ace of Spades in the deck then its not true in any possible world. Thus it's not possible. Its impossible.

But don't you see how this also applies to 1B? If the top card in fact isn't the ace of spades, although we are only staring at the back side of it, then there is no possible world where that top card is the ace of spades, nor is there a possible world where shuffling the deck in the way you did would result in the ace of spades being in the top.

Yes, there is a possible world where the ace is on top. That possible world is where i shuffled the cards and the Ace of Spades is on top.


Same goes for rolling die. There is a possible world where i roll a 6,5,4,3,2 or 1. Just because i roll a 6 doesn't mean the other 5 numbers weren't possibilities. If I roll a 6, it's doesn't mean its impossible that i could have rolled a 5. But it is impossible for me to have rolled a 7.

[scourge99]

[Replying to post 180 by scourge99]

I assumed that this doesn't actually keep such an event from being a possibility.
I've always presumed that a possibility doesn't always mean that the concept must answer in the affirmative. It simply means that the option is open until proven otherwise.

Hence, the very moment that the number of dice in the bag is revealed, which would result in the aforementioned contradiction, would be the moment at which we can be certain of the possible outcomes, and now we're beginning to understand the limits.

I'd argue it like this: possibility is a fluid concept, and mathematically, it is a function. If you were to change the parameters, you change the results without it contradicting itself. By changing parameters, you can attain undefined results which you would then dismiss as an impossible and therefore incorrect answer.

For example: f(x)=x/y

This is a classic mathematical function. We can achieve any number of possible answers for whatever we choose to plug in for x, because we don't know what y is. Our results will be vague, however, since everything is divided by an unknown variable.

f(x)=18; therefore 18=x/y

Now we are looking for a result. This is still open to any number of possible answers for x, since y is still an unknown and undefined parameter.

y=3; therefore 18=x/3

Now we just defined a parameter. This completely changed x, resulting in only one possible answer for x.

x=54

This didn't result in a contradiction, because up until the point that we knew what y was, we had any number of answers for x, and upon each of those numbers we could have determined a different value for y.
All that we did was give a specific value for y to determine what x had to be. And from there we can determine what x is not.

The number of dice in the bag isn't a variable to determine the resulting answer until we know how many there are. Without this knowledge, we still have the possibility to roll any whole number we can think of, and only when we know how many dice there are can we determine the possibility of rolling that same number.

You seem to be describing "contingent possibility": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingenc ... losophy%29

[instantc]

To use your example :
1b) if i shuffle a deck of cards, is it possible that the Ace of Spades is on top? Yes.

2b) if i shuffle a deck of cards without an ace of Spades, is it possible that the Ace of Spades is on top? No.

3b) if i shuffle a deck of cards that may or may not have an ace of Spades, is it possible that the ace of Spades is on top?

If the answer to 1B is affirmative, then the answer to 3B is' yes' as well. In both cases the top card either is or is not the ace of spades, the word possible indicates that we don't know whether that's the case.

I agree that the word "possible" indicates that we don't know whether or not its true the Ace of Spades is on top of the deck. But that isn't the complete definition. That is an implication of the definition.

The word "possible" to me in this context means that there is some possible world in which the Ace of Spades is on the top of the deck. If there is no ace of Spades in the deck then its not true in any possible world. Thus it's not possible. Its impossible.

But don't you see how this also applies to 1B? If the top card in fact isn't the ace of spades, although we are only staring at the back side of it, then there is no possible world where that top card is the ace of spades, nor is there a possible world where shuffling the deck in the way you did would result in the ace of spades being in the top.

Yes, there is a possible world where the ace is on top. That possible world is where i shuffled the cards and the Ace of Spades is on top.

This is the same for 3B, there is a possible world where one of the 51 cards you picked was the ace of spades, and thus there is a possible world where the top card of that short deck is an ace of spades.

You may say that there is no possible world where the top card of that particular deck is the ace of spades, since its not in that deck. But, I may say that there is no possible world where the top card of the deck in 1B, having been shuffled exactly the way you did, is the ace of spades. In both cases the possibility arises from one or more past events occurring differently, and the word possible entails that we don't currently the outcome of those past events.

[Filthy Tugboat]

People incorrectly use the word possible and then build arguments off of their incorrect word use. I see it with theists positing God more often than I can count. They say, that because God's existence is possible, yada yada yada. Well guess what, I can stop them right on premise one and say, "Is it?" "Show me how it's possible." They say that ignorance of something means it is possible. Which is stupid and not logical argument at all. You are insisting it is valid.

Well, it is logically possible that God exists, unless God's existence contradicts one or more laws of logic.

Does God's existence contradict one or more laws of logic? You'd have to give an example of a God here, there are countless different versions and more being created every second of every day. Every time a believer learns something knew and evolves their opinion of God they are thinking of a different God than the one they were before.

To me, it's an unanswerable question because a lot of people that believe in God also believe that God is beyond comprehension, explanation and understanding. I doubt it's demonstrable that God's existence is possible and no one has succeeded in demonstrating the possibility to me.

In the ordinary use of the word 'possible', I don't see why you should be happier with people saying 'God may or may not exist' than 'it is possible that God exists'.

God's existence may be possible, we just can't know for sure, would be the correct way of saying it. Admitting that it's unknown is the only honest option.

[olavisjo]

.

I have a bag containing an unknown number of 6 sided dice. Is it possible that you can roll an 18 with the dice in the bag? You claim "yes" because, for example, there could be 3 dice in the bag and could therefore roll 3 sixes.


I open the bag and reveal that there is only one die in the bag.

Is it possible to roll an 18 with one die in the bag? No.

Before you claimed it was possible and now its been shown as impossible. That is a contradiction. It can't have been possible before and impossible now. If its impossible now then it must have been impossible before. If its impossible then it can't be possible. But before we claimed it was possible. How do we resolve this paradox?

It is not a paradox at all, it is more like a fallacy of Equivocation.

I open the bag and reveal that there is only one die in the bag.
Is it possible to roll an 18 with one die in the bag? No.

I open the bag and reveal that there are three dice in the bag.
Is it possible to roll an 18 with three dice in the bag? No.
Is it certain that I can roll an 18 with three dice in the bag? Yes.

But before we claimed it was possible. And yet either way it is no longer possible. Because when you know how many dice are in the bag, it will be either impossible or certain that we will be able to roll an 18.

Can you see how you are equivocating the word possible with "it might be" and "it is certain"?

[instantc]

People incorrectly use the word possible and then build arguments off of their incorrect word use. I see it with theists positing God more often than I can count. They say, that because God's existence is possible, yada yada yada. Well guess what, I can stop them right on premise one and say, "Is it?" "Show me how it's possible." They say that ignorance of something means it is possible. Which is stupid and not logical argument at all. You are insisting it is valid.

Well, it is logically possible that God exists, unless God's existence contradicts one or more laws of logic.

Does God's existence contradict one or more laws of logic? You'd have to give an example of a God here, there are countless different versions and more being created every second of every day. Every time a believer learns something knew and evolves their opinion of God they are thinking of a different God than the one they were before.

To me, it's an unanswerable question because a lot of people that believe in God also believe that God is beyond comprehension, explanation and understanding. I doubt it's demonstrable that God's existence is possible and no one has succeeded in demonstrating the possibility to me.

Since we are here and now talking about logical possibilities, something is possible if it doesn't contradict the laws of logic. Since the laws of logic are not exhaustively listed anywhere, it is impossible to convey a survey that would conclusively show that a claim doesn't contradict any laws of logic. Thus, the reasonable presumption should be that if something doesn't seem to break the laws of logic, then it should be deemed logically possible. Otherwise it is pointless to talk about logical possibilities. Is it logically possible to build a tower that is five thousand feet tall? Certainly it is, but can you show me that every implication of that claim complies with every single law of logic? Obviously you cannot.

Additionally, we could discus about whether or not God is causally possible or physically possible. Here I think some demonstration is needed on part of the claimant.