Proving a negative

[Mr.Badham]

If 2 or more unfalsifiable beliefs contradict one another, all could be wrong. All but 1 must be wrong.

If there were 5 unfalsifiable competing beliefs that did not allow for the existence of the others, we would know for a fact that 4 of them must be incorrect.

If someone, then came along, and stated that their belief allows for the existence of some or all of the other beliefs, we would then have to state that there are 6 competing unfalsifiable beliefs, because the first 5 do not allow for the 6th, and if any of the first 5 are correct, the 6th belief would consequently be incorrect. If the 6th unfalsifiable belief were correct, than anyone believing in the first 5 would then be incorrect. Although the 6th allows for the existence of the first 5, only those believing in the 6th unfalsifiable belief would be correct.

I'm not so arrogant as to believe that I am 100% correct. But this is as close as I can come to proving a negative. Does anyone agree that this might be a good starting point?

[McCulloch]

I disagree. Since the very concept of a god is poorly defined, it is difficult to demonstrate that it is inherently contradictory or that its existence is contradicted by something else we are aware of.

The concept is not poorly defined, it is only poorly understood. Which makes sense, considering God is a being unlike any other beings (which I think can be a given for our concept of God, no matter what else we think follows).

Did you mean poorly understood or impossible to understand (ineffable)?

There are theories much more detailed and nuanced than you let on. One can take either a kenotic approach (i.e. the Son gave up access to His attributes) or even say that this demonstrates that being a human is not so essentially limiting as we otherwise would believe.

Yes, perhaps. But ultimately it is called a divine mystery. It makes no sense, but theologians speak in circles about the topic with complex rationalizations.

Theologians, have spilled oceans of ink discussing theodicy, but have come no closer to answering the issues.

To your own satisfaction, granted.

I can only speak for myself. If you have a solution to the apparent contradictions of theodicy, based no reason and logic, do present them. I will try to follow the reasoning, but I am easily confused.

My point is that, in principle, we can gain knowledge without science. In fact, some objects of knowledge are unobtainable through science.

Well then. I agree with this point. Can we also gain knowledge without reason?

If omniscience would include the knowledge of everything that God is going to do, then it seems to follow that God is not really omnipotent, since He wouldn't be free to do otherwise than He what knows He will do. But omniscience and omnipotence are essential properties of God. Therefore, God is impossible. God cannot possibly exist.

Et voila, a rudimentary argument for God's non-existence.

Wonderful. You've convinced me. We're done here.

[AquinasD]

Did you mean poorly understood or impossible to understand (ineffable)?

I would not define ineffable that way. It is only poorly understood, like all human knowledge.

Yes, perhaps. But ultimately it is called a divine mystery. It makes no sense, but theologians speak in circles about the topic with complex rationalizations.

Perhaps some do, but I am not interested in this. The only aspect of the Mystery is that it can never be finished, i.e. completely described.

I can only speak for myself. If you have a solution to the apparent contradictions of theodicy, based no reason and logic, do present them. I will try to follow the reasoning, but I am easily confused.

I have done so before. I am pressed for time at the moment, so I cannot link to it, but it is here in the philosophy subforum. The "Many-Worlds Theodicy." Of course, you could also google it and find it, I suppose.

Well then. I agree with this point. Can we also gain knowledge without reason?

Depends on what you mean by "reason." If you mean "without attendant argumentation construable in a logical calculus," yes, which really only means that there is knowledge which cannot be communicated effectively through language. The color blue is a form of knowledge that cannot be revealed through knowledge; it must be directly perceived in order to be truly known (at least, if you are to know its qualitative affects).

Wonderful. You've convinced me. We're done here.

...that argument is easy to deconstruct.

It assumes that God is temporal. But since God is atemporal, none of His knowledge technically comes before His action, and thus cannot serve to restrict His freedom in any significant sense.

[McCulloch]

Did you mean poorly understood or impossible to understand (ineffable)?

I would not define ineffable that way. It is only poorly understood, like all human knowledge.

Some things are better understood than others. Some results can be tested and replicated, proven and supported by evidence. Stuff about God, in comparison, seems to be as baseless as speculation.

I can only speak for myself. If you have a solution to the apparent contradictions of theodicy, based no reason and logic, do present them. I will try to follow the reasoning, but I am easily confused.

I have done so before. I am pressed for time at the moment, so I cannot link to it, but it is here in the philosophy subforum. The "Many-Worlds Theodicy." Of course, you could also google it and find it, I suppose.

Thank you, I will.

Well then. I agree with this point. Can we also gain knowledge without reason?

Depends on what you mean by "reason." If you mean "without attendant argumentation construable in a logical calculus," yes, which really only means that there is knowledge which cannot be communicated effectively through language. The color blue is a form of knowledge that cannot be revealed through knowledge; it must be directly perceived in order to be truly known (at least, if you are to know its qualitative affects).

Let me rephrase: Can we also gain knowledge without either reason or direct experience?

...that argument is easy to deconstruct.

It assumes that God is temporal. But since God is atemporal, none of His knowledge technically comes before His action, and thus cannot serve to restrict His freedom in any significant sense.

Darn! I thought that was too easy.

What does before mean to an atemporal being?

[Mr.Badham]

AquinasD wrote:

It assumes that God is temporal. But since God is atemporal, none of His knowledge technically comes before His action, and thus cannot serve to restrict His freedom in any significant sense.



I seriously doubt you could reword what you just wrote, and make it sound any less ridiculous. When I read what you write, I literally shake my head.

"None of his knowledge technically comes before his action"? Technically? His knowledge? His action? Are you saying that God's actions are restricted in an insignificant sense? What? What are you going on about? Are you in the right thread here or what? You're using english words, but they're not in the right order. You're not saying anything.

The question is, how do you decide which unfalsifiable belief to believe, without a starting point. If you weren't raised Catholic, why would you become one? That's what this thread is about.

[AquinasD]

Some things are better understood than others. Some results can be tested and replicated, proven and supported by evidence. Stuff about God, in comparison, seems to be as baseless as speculation.

It is true that some things are better understood, in a sense.

But a thing's ability to be understood does not require its "testability." That is an odd requirement.

Your last comment is equally odd. How is necessary that speculation be "baseless?" Isn't speculation usually predicated on some more basic knowledge?

Let me rephrase: Can we also gain knowledge without either reason or direct experience?

No, this does not seem possible, for then nothing would be the principle of that known object's intellection.

Darn! I thought that was too easy.

I am pleased to know this.

What does before mean to an atemporal being?

As we must speak analogously, it is only meant in an ontological sense.

Consider, for example, the two truths "McCulloch is a person" and "McCulloch exists." In order for McCulloch to exist, it must be true that he is a person, since being a person is essential to what McCulloch is, such that if he were not a person he would not be himself at all; and he must be a person before he can exist, for otherwise he should not be that he can exist at all. Hence, McCulloch's "being a person" is ontologically prior to his "existing." But obviously, these two properties of McCulloch occur temporally at the same time.

And this is the sense in which we mean that "God's knowledge of His actions does not come before His actions." It is not a temporal priority, but merely an ontological one.

[AquinasD]

I seriously doubt you could reword what you just wrote, and make it sound any less ridiculous. When I read what you write, I literally shake my head.

I cannot judge why you state this, but one reason could be that you haven't given up the belief that we can speak logically and meaningfully about God. Is that a discussion you think needs to occur before any other? Would you be willing to have that discussion?

The question is, how do you decide which unfalsifiable belief to believe, without a starting point.

Can you please clarify what you mean by "unfalsifiable?" I feel like I am the only one pointing to the necessity of attendance to this concept, and the fact of this keeps getting brushed over leading to perpetual confusion.

If you weren't raised Catholic, why would you become one? That's what this thread is about.

That is an interesting question, and one I could answer, but I thought this thread was principally about "proving a negative."

[Qet]

The Christian concept of God is that a human, Jesus, is god. This very concept is a contradiction. Humans have various attributes: limited knowledge; limited abilities; mortality; physical body. God, it is said, has other attributes: unlimited knowledge; unlimited abilities; immortality; incorporeality. As anyone can notice, these attributes contradict. One being cannot be both mortal and immortal, have limited as well as unlimited knowledge.

I assume that it is uncontroversial that 'humans are contingent entities'. I assume, also, that it is uncontroversial that there is some entity which is non-contingent. In any case, there are such things as ontologically 'primary' and 'secondary'.

Normally, it is assumed that 'human' is equivalent to 'secondary', and that 'God' is equivalent to 'primary'. I think that is what you are assuming. I certainly assume it.
Our problem in making sense of a 'primary-secondary' (example: 'Jesus is both man and God') is that we are simply secondary.

A simple analogy will help as a start: An object can be both 'door' and 'red', such that 'door' is the primary and 'red' is the secondary. Further, this 'door' can be infinite in three dimensions such that its 'front surface' is finite in size while its depth is infinite. Finally, the 'red' can be just the color of that 'front surface' without being equivalent to that 'front surface'. So, this object can be described both as 'red' and as 'door', such that it is 'red' only in one sense, while it is 'door' in every sense.

So, it is possible for a primary person to experience being a secondary person without being simply a secondary person.

In terms of a simple infinity, it is possible for that infinity to be 'added to' in the sense of a simple finitude being added to that infinity, which clearly does not make that infinity into a finitude, nor makes that finitude into the infinity. But, there is no such thing as a 'simple infinity', in the sense that a 'simple infinity' is merely an abstraction without concrete content. Any concrete infinity must have content aside from its being an 'infinity'. It's an infinity of something, no different than 'presence' must be the presence of something in order for 'presence' to have any reality.

Only when we conflate our abstractions of things with the actual things can we end up even with ideas like 'omnipotence, by definition, must include power even over logic', since ‘power’ is defined abstractly as ‘the ability to bring about a state of affairs’.

But, note that that simplest definition of power is not the concrete essence of power at all, but is merely a generalization of our knowledge of power. In other words, it’s a tautology. So, to say that ‘power’ is the most meaningful definition of ‘power’ doesn’t say anything that we don’t already know. Actually, it says much less. In fact, if this generalization of ‘power’ were the essence of concrete power, then we could expect that any kind of agent (i.e., power) would have every imaginable kind of agency over every imaginable thing. A soldier could use a hammer to pound 2-plus-2 into five. A tornado could blow my best argument apart and deposit it’s pathetic remains in the next county. You, merely by taking thought of yourself, could become an ethical superhero who’s loved by everyone except your currently most hated enemies.

Creatures give pride-of-place to abstractions---over personal empirical and metaphysical knowledge--through a motive of which they typically are least aware: Abstraction is the neurological function of allocating the least possible explicit knowledge of, and, hence, the least neurological energy to, the correspondence between the abstraction and that from which the abstraction is abstracted.

The deeper problem is in that we, as concretely contingent (i.e., secondary) entities may not ever be able to have personal empirical knowledge of a concrete primary entity as such. The best we may ever be able to attain is empirical knowledge of ‘red’, and of ‘internal’ personal knowledge of what happens when a primary entity is denied its primary-ness in face of our presumption of infallibility of our own sentience as such.

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[Curious]

The Christian concept of God is that a human, Jesus, is god. This very concept is a contradiction. Humans have various attributes: limited knowledge; limited abilities; mortality; physical body. God, it is said, has other attributes: unlimited knowledge; unlimited abilities; immortality; incorporeality. As anyone can notice, these attributes contradict. One being cannot be both mortal and immortal, have limited as well as unlimited knowledge.

I assume that it is uncontroversial that 'humans are contingent entities'. I assume, also, that it is uncontroversial that there is some entity which is non-contingent. In any case, there are such things as ontologically 'primary' and 'secondary'.

Normally, it is assumed that 'human' is equivalent to 'secondary', and that 'God' is equivalent to 'primary'. I think that is what you are assuming. I certainly assume it.
Our problem in making sense of a 'primary-secondary' (example: 'Jesus is both man and God') is that we are simply secondary.

A simple analogy will help as a start: An object can be both 'door' and 'red', such that 'door' is the primary and 'red' is the secondary. Further, this 'door' can be infinite in three dimensions such that its 'front surface' is finite in size while its depth is infinite. Finally, the 'red' can be just the color of that 'front surface' without being equivalent to that 'front surface'. So, this object can be described both as 'red' and as 'door', such that it is 'red' only in one sense, while it is 'door' in every sense.

So, it is possible for a primary person to experience being a secondary person without being simply a secondary person.

In terms of a simple infinity, it is possible for that infinity to be 'added to' in the sense of a simple finitude being added to that infinity, which clearly does not make that infinity into a finitude, nor makes that finitude into the infinity. But, there is no such thing as a 'simple infinity', in the sense that a 'simple infinity' is merely an abstraction without concrete content. Any concrete infinity must have content aside from its being an 'infinity'. It's an infinity of something, no different than 'presence' must be the presence of something in order for 'presence' to have any reality.

Only when we conflate our abstractions of things with the actual things can we end up even with ideas like 'omnipotence, by definition, must include power even over logic', since ‘power’ is defined abstractly as ‘the ability to bring about a state of affairs’.

But, note that that simplest definition of power is not the concrete essence of power at all, but is merely a generalization of our knowledge of power. In other words, it’s a tautology. So, to say that ‘power’ is the most meaningful definition of ‘power’ doesn’t say anything that we don’t already know. Actually, it says much less. In fact, if this generalization of ‘power’ were the essence of concrete power, then we could expect that any kind of agent (i.e., power) would have every imaginable kind of agency over every imaginable thing. A soldier could use a hammer to pound 2-plus-2 into five. A tornado could blow my best argument apart and deposit it’s pathetic remains in the next county. You, merely by taking thought of yourself, could become an ethical superhero who’s loved by everyone except your currently most hated enemies.

Creatures give pride-of-place to abstractions---over personal empirical and metaphysical knowledge--through a motive of which they typically are least aware: Abstraction is the neurological function of allocating the least possible explicit knowledge of, and, hence, the least neurological energy to, the correspondence between the abstraction and that from which the abstraction is abstracted.

The deeper problem is in that we, as concretely contingent (i.e., secondary) entities may not ever be able to have personal empirical knowledge of a concrete primary entity as such. The best we may ever be able to attain is empirical knowledge of ‘red’, and of ‘internal’ personal knowledge of what happens when a primary entity is denied its primary-ness in face of our presumption of infallibility of our own sentience as such.

.

Please elaborate.

[Qet]

Please elaborate.

Only when we conflate our abstractions with the actual things upon which our abstractions are based can we end up with abstractions which, while being incoherent, we feel logically compelled to so abstract.

It nearly all revolves around the fact that, in a world of deficiency regarding our basic needs of life, health, and harmony, we have a problematic motive involved in our abstraction processes.

First, the more important is a given kind of knowledge, the more we rightly abstract it while ignoring the bases for the abstraction. In other words, we seek both to maximize the effects which our favored ideas have for meeting our basic needs, and to minimize the effects which our most disfavored ideas have for preventing those needs being met. But, in a world of basic deficiency, we are especially impelled to abstract ideas from the more perceptual realm of knowledge, even to the point of hastily cutting corners in the act of abstraction.

A familiar way of being greedy in abstraction is to become so focused on a particular hated potential that we jump to conclusions about a particular case involving that potential: we’re too motivated to find and discourage a particular evil, in that we begin to ‘see it everywhere’ while failing, for our greed, to recognize that what we see is an illusion. And, it is in this failure to realize our illusions as such that we begin to develop confirmation bias, which only serves to reinforce that greed. And, even in cases for which our sense of confirmation is correct, we often fail to see the good which is present with the evil, much less the kinds of, and extents and manners to which, the good really is present. Because, we are badly effected, and we take that effect as an inherent property or outcome of the case.


To define omnipotence as power to do both logically possible and logically impossible tasks is to define omnipotence as power which is essentially and effectively adversarial to all identities, including the essential as well as contingent identities of power and love.

But, if omnipotence is defined as essentially adversarial to all identities, then the definition of omnipotence does not involve the identity of power as such, but involves merely a particular abstraction of the identity of power: the abstraction that ‘power is that which is effectively adversarial to something else’.

The logically possible task of combining two twenty-pound bricks into a sum of forty pounds of brick involves power merely of, or consistent with, mathematical identities, in so far as mathematical identities are necessarily about concrete entities. In contrast to this logically possible task is the arbitrarily nominal, or pretend, ‘task’ of combining two twenty-pound bricks into a mathematical sum of absolutely anything, including any amount of weight or any other kind of identity. This ‘task’ of making 20+20=logical explosion is arbitrarily nominal in that it does not picture a genuine state of affairs to be accomplished, but merely a nominal ‘state of affairs’, or nonsense-by-another-name.

Arbitrarily nominal ‘tasks’ involve an arbitrarily nominal ‘power’, in which the supposed power is effectively adverse to essential mathematical, logical, and metaphysical identities. Such ‘tasks’ picture these identities as if these identities are concrete in themselves apart from concrete entities, and, thus, as effectively concretely distinct from, and synthetically combined with, concrete entities.


The problem with defining power as essentially an adversarial relationship which one thing has to another, rather than as a concrete entity unto itself, is that, if such a definition truly represented the concrete essence of power, then power would not be anything in itself: it would be identified purely in the fact that something is subject to change. In other words, an instance of power would be identified purely in the empirical realm, such that nothing may be held a priori exempt from being changed, including mathematical sums and other kinds of logical entailment.

So, to think that a statement like ‘Power is identified by its effects’ is the final word on power is to be misled by the psychological effect which such a statement has on a certain kind of intellectually greedy frame of mind. At least the Oriental Traditions include the practice of ‘Forgetting’, because, in a world of struggle, the Greek turn of mind is so easily too greedy-for-knowledge for its own good:

When greed for effective abstractions takes hold of a mind, then that mind, by effect of that greed, says "Goodbye to seeing the full set of things on which some of my (dis)favored abstractions are based".


So, while the Scholastic (or Thomist) position on omnipotence (that the only valid conception of omnipotence is one in which omnipotence involves the power to do only that which can logically be done by a coherent omnipotence) is coherent from one frame of abstract reference, there nevertheless is a certain logical coherence to the anti-Scholastic position (the conception that omnipotence includes even the power to compromise its status as inviolably peerless power).

The coherence of this anti-Scholastic position is based on the fact that ‘power’ typically is another word for ‘agency’: the ability to bring about a given state of affairs. In order for the conception of omnipotence to be consistent with the fact that ‘power’ is ‘agency’, the conception must include the power of self-compromise. This conception of omnipotence may therefore be referred to as 'pure agency.'

Now, the conception of omnipotence as pure agency conflates three different kinds of agency, only two of which logically can be actual agents. One of these actual agents is the primary one (omnipotence), and, by definition, is not subject to compromise. The other actual agent is subject to compromise.

All agents known to be subject to compromise are subject to it by the fact that they are synthetic, contingent, agents: dependent for their integrity as agents on certain complex relationship to other agents. For example, air is an agent on which the human agent depends for the integrity of human agency. If a human does not have certain relationship to air, then the integrity of that human agent is compromised.

The third kind of agency in the 'pure agency' conception of omnipotence is a generalized abstraction known as cause-and-effect, or 'something brings about a given state of affairs'. This abstraction may be referred to as 'simple agency’.

It may be that the only sense in which simple agency is a valid concept is in the sense that it is an abstraction of cause-and-effect. In other words, simple agency is abstracted from the fact that actual agents have actual kinds of agency.

The concept of simple agency is abstracted from actual kinds of agency similar to how generalizations of math are abstracted. Whether adding two pair of shoes, or one pair of shoes and one of socks, the simple quantitative sense is always the same: four items. Likewise, whether observing a hammer as it strikes a nail, or a nail as it goes into wood, the most singular sense is always the same: something brings something about.

But, the concept of simple agency cannot identify any actual agents, nor of the relationships between actual agents. As two examples, simple agency cannot determine whether a bird can pick a worm out of a math problem, or whether a hurricane can throw 2+2 up into 5. In fact, if simple agency were the total essence of actual powers, then any kind of agent would have pure agency. A hammer could pound two-plus-two into five. If that sum was not enough, then some random numbers could be juggled to make a bigger hammer. Or, just the power to imagine a different sum could make that sum a reality.

[spoirier]

Theorem. Nobody on Earth was ever guided by God in the last decade.

Proof: If God had the opportunity to guide someone, He should have used this opportunity for emailing me the address of my future wife (and/or emailing mine to her).
But this didn't happen. Therefore no such a person existed. â—»

I guess what Christians would automatically reply to this proof: they would argue that no, this request is not right, I did not really need this, God had reasons to not do this, greater plans than this, better purposes to fulfill.

To this my reply is that, well, they can imagine so, but this requires assumptions about my life that are light years away from what it clearly is to me - and I'm not making this up.
I cannot in a few words show enough of my life and experience to prove to their satisfaction the moral necessity of this expectation, but to me it is overwhelming.

Just a few details to figure out what I mean, though the complete proofs would be much too long and hard and out of subject to convincingly explain here (and, of course, too far away from the Christian ideology to seem plausible to Christians at first sight... which is one more evidence to me that Christianity is evil as it hijacks the goodwill of people away from the necessary understandings for truly efficient good actions) :
I have read and heard many hundreds of Christian testimonies praising God for different things. And I noticed that all these reasons were either imaginary (with no evidence of the reality of the claimed blessings, for example as in paragraph 39 of Faustina's diary) or much more short-sighted than the deceived expectations that forced me to conclude that God does not help.
Because I discovered very important things to do with my life for the good of humanity, but destiny (which nearly anyone could have helped but none did) made these stall until now.

Another option for God would have been by the same method to give me contact with future partners to implement my software project that would bring new uses of Internet that would be very helpful to millions of people (and somewhat helpful to many more), including tools to more easily find the truth, secure online transactions of any kind, contribute to justice, freedom and prosperity, and a new online dating system that would bring love to millions of people.
But this did not happen either. Neither by direct contact with partners, nor indirectly by anybody with the basic sense of mission to care about finding some. Neither the direct divine inspiration to anybody else, of a similarly useful plan for the world.

Neither any similar type of divine guidance: despite the numerous cases I heard of Christians (and other spiritual people) testifying that God gave them their love, none of them ever got it in a way similar to the one described above, while, I think, this should logically have been one of the easiest and most efficient available methods for an omniscient God to do as soon as He can guide anyone. Why ?

Without these bad lucks, I may have stayed a devout Christian until now, and also done great works to bring new ideas for the teachings of mathematics and physics, that could have become popular to a lot of students. But being abandoned this way wasted my energy, forced me to curse God and then deconvert and expose many arguments against Christianity. Can that be God's will above giving me the chance to do the other very useful things for mankind, seriously ??