Can the existence of God be demonstrated by logic?

[McCulloch]

I believe that the following facets of my faith can be demonstrated by logical deduction
1. There is a God

Can the existence of God be demonstrated by logical deduction?

[dusk]

You are still evading the question which is as how does it make any difference?
Even if you could prove a moral standard it stays inaccessible and unverifiable which means it is just the same as if there was no absolute moral standard.

The nature of the Cause thus far (infinite, perfectly in morality, eternal b/c of cosmology, intelligent b/c of obvious design or "fine tuning")

This is not sound. A cause can be anything. A random event can be a cause. Attaching all the stuff like morality to the same first cause gets ridiculously anthropologic.
There is no need for intelligence. Given infinite and omnipotence all that is required is "try everything" in which case you get somethings right eventually. Fine tuning works under the assumption that its evidence is not an illusion and b that this is the only universe or that a creator had any choice. Like an empty puddle there is only one way to fill it with water without extra work.
Eternity is not a given either. Our universe could be created by one cause or god. It could itself be cause by something else which than is eternal. There is no obvious reason why the furthest cause we can find like the big bang is the very first.
That morality is in any way a property of such a cause is pure anthropological theist assumption. What meaning has morality to a random cause. What meaning does it have to a random event? What meaning has morality to a non social being? A shark eats what it likes and can it has no stake in morals.
Just because there are colors should it also be of perfect color.
Why would something as human as morality, something that only has meaning in a social context, have any meaning for the M-Branes clashing together spitting out new universes endlessly.

The entire god concept is one unbiased assumption put on top of the next assuming the former is a solid founding. Forgetting how shaky the lower bricks are every next step of the way.

because man has within him a moral compass, there must be a moral standard

The moral compass also proofs nothing. Because we have agreements in international trade law doesn't mean there is one ultimate standard of trade laws that the first cause devised.
As I said the golden rule basically sums most moralities up. Its need is just as inherent in social communities as trade laws are in international trade. That we could conceive any decent trade laws doesn't mean they are necessarily perfect or there is a perfect one (especially not regardless of circumstances).
If you would develop robots that act morally they could claim the same stuff as you did, given the module for moral decisions is abstracted from the main control. That module may just be a machine learning reasoner that has some basic goals like enjoying nice company as opposed to being a loner.

Yet this are all arguments as to why the conclusions aren't solid.
The question remains how is a world with no absolute morals any different from one where every other group makes up their own so called absolute ones? If you don't know that you got the right one where is the difference in there being just no right one.

[jimvansage]

I obviously believe you can know the right one.

Premeditated murder is always wrong
(killing, war, and capital punishment are debatable)

You admit "it is likely that there is a first cause" based upon evidence
whether that cause is infinite or not, personal or not, is unclear unless there exists evidence to demonstrate it (some text claiming to be a communication from that Cause which can be objectively weighed in light of evidence - but that's outside the realm of this discussion unless you'll accept the argument "If a document exists that first and foremost claims to be special revelation of the Cause (whereby mankind could not only know of the existence of the Cause, but the nature of it), and if that document contains truths which cannot be adequately denied, then it is (at least likely) that that document accurately describes the Cause and that by some means knowledge of the Cause was given to man and preserved in writing whereby all mankind could come to a knowledge of those truths"

That's an argument I just kind of formed off the top of my head. You'll say it's circular reasoning, but I'm not depending on a document to prove the existence of God, I'm evaluating what mankind can know about the Cause of the Universe and seeing if a document harmonizes with those principles.

If morality is subjective, there's nothing objectively wrong with saying that Document X is the objective standard/absolute or living by those standards.
If morality is subjective, then there would be nothing wrong with claiming Document X is the word of God (when uncertain) if the result is "living a better life and loving our fellow man - do unto others and all that"

I happen to believe that morality is objective (no evidence to the contrary - one cannot prove that the first cause is not a personal being or that that Cause is not eternal, therefore if a personal being has always existed, then a moral standard has always existed) and that one should only accept or reject something based on adequate evidence.

I do not say that the Cause under consideration is a personal being because of evidence in nature/the universe, but because I find the same fingerprints in a particular document which is not being debated here - but without any further revelation than cosmology, natural order/design, or morality one cannot know one way or the other the nature of that Cause; personal or impersonal.

[dusk]

Paragraph by Paragraph.

Obviously I do not.

Murder is always wrong? What if you would be a Jaguar. A loner who kills prey. Murders any other Jaguar or big creature that invades the territory (except maybe for females). Is murder wrong? Does the concept of murder make any sense at all?
If murder is a concept that emerges out of social community structures, as the betrayal of trust, what sense does the concept make before there is a community of some sort.
What cares some arbitrary first cause about emergent concepts that come so much later? It may be pre determined to turn out as it is but it still dependent on the structure it emerges from and thus is not independently absolute.

I admit there might be something that one could call a first cause. If a document exists that is obviously fabricated by humans and holds no massively greater wisdom than all the other similar documents, I don't see how that convinces anyone. Especially when factoring in the bias concerning the document that you grew up with. I wouldn't trust myself unless I accepted one of the 99 out of 100 that I did not grow up with.
Given there was such a convincing document I still wouldn't say it reveals the first cause. Much like the big bang it just reveals something about as far back as we can go. There still might be a cause before it. The big bang telling me that it is uncaused is not all that convincing. Self testimony just is never really convincing.
If I accept a god that is uncaused yet starts to will something into existing I might as well accept an big bang that simply happend without cause.

Anyway I don't see such a document in existence

in writing whereby all mankind could come to a knowledge of those truths

I don't know any document accessible by all mankind. The people in the past never had access to many. Today you usually only get access to some in your community. Others are banned. Than you ought to be able to read and understand it too.
A first powerful cause that wants to reveal itself to a bunch of narcissistic animals on planet earth should have started with a revelatory long dream, that any human can access in their dreams all over the world, the time. A dream formed such that the receiver can understand what it is about and contains.

If morality is subjective, there's nothing objectively wrong with saying that Document X is the objective standard/absolute or living by those standards.
If morality is subjective, then there would be nothing wrong with claiming Document X is the word of God (when uncertain) if the result is "living a better life and loving our fellow man - do unto others and all that"

It might be inconsistent though. You don't want anybody else to force their delusions down your throat. Say a north african who circumcise women, what right do you have to impose your standards as absolute. If they do it and you think it is wrong, what is it you are doing?
But Yes you are right it cannot be objectively wrong. We do it all the time. What ever values the stronger group has gets imposed? In our western world being free doing all kinds of stuff values high. In other parts or among ultra conservatives their own document derived values rate highest and they try to impose them.
Neither one is objectively wrong. Subjectively I claim the privilege to choose the society I like most and defend it against the others. It so happens that is a secular cosmopolitan one. I don't need a book for it and I know it is in no small part because of my upbringing.
Had I grown up in some viking village I might think raiding enemy villages is totally fine. Everybody that isn't us is the enemy

Totally agree one should not accept or reject something based on adequate evidence, but adequate evidence there must be.
Personal being doesn't suffice for morality. It would need to be a social being imo.

There are other documents that have fingerprints of other causes. Why doesn't that bother you.
If I know through a lot more evidence that dark matter most likely exists. Why would I accept the claims of one theoretical physicist about its nature if I had a number of such claims and all equally without evidence or equally insufficient evidence?
Seems rather weird to pick up any which one. I'd want one that is so much better than the others that if all say 50 claims are evaluated by a 1000 physicists more than 90% side with one with significant certainty. And no other comes close in certainty in the minds of that majority.

[McCulloch]

Speaking of prior to the Big Bang is as meaningful as speaking of colder than absolute zero or south of the South Pole.

If you can show that events cannot occur except in the space-time which we experience, certainly. But I reckon you'd have a hard time showing that to be the case, and I gather that many physicists and philosophers would disagree with you since a many worlds theory of reality would imply events beyond our space-time. Indeed it's necessary that at least one event occurred without the presence of our space-time, else there could have been no big bang. But since you appear to have set aside that definition, the point is moot.

How do you define event apart from space time?

[jimvansage]

The same way I'd define dark matter
while I have no frame of reference to clearly define an "event" outside space-time
when the only thing in existence was either the Cause or nothing (depending on your view)
the first "event" began
perhaps not outside space-time
but concurrent with the beginning of space-time

But we can't prove that an "event" in a non-space-time sense did Not happen before the first space-time event from our limited perspective

[EduChris]

...A definition of what we mean when we use the term God that is not ambiguous, tautological or contradictory...clearly, before we can meaningfully begin to discuss the existence of God, we must agree on what we mean when we use the word...

According to all major contemporary world theisms, "God" is "the ultimate brute reality which undergirds and accounts for all that is--and in particular, our universe and our selves." I have never been able to understand why this definition seems ambiguous or tautological or contradictory to some folks. The real issue, though, is not "existence" (can we prove the existence of existence in some non-tautological way?) but rather whether this "God" knows about us and cares about us (individually and collectively). But here again, I can't understand how anyone can say that "care and concern and knowledge" are so incomprehensible as to preclude any further discussion.

...Doesn't Paul argue for the existence of God based on the evidence of Creation?

Atheism was not part of the plausibility structures of the ancient cultures in which Paul found himself. Paul was therefore not referencing modern-style atheism (which didn't exist in his day) but rather was arguing against the notion that God doesn't care about us. For Paul, the order and beauty of the universe provided evidence that God does indeed care about us.

[Frosty]

[/quote]The properties of choice and by implication thought seem the simplest just is scenario to my mind - certainly simpler than various elementary particles, several fundamental forces, and a space-time continuum for them to be in. Coincidentally, whereas we have no way of showing that any particles are truly elementary or any forces truly fundamental, we have near-constant and unmediated access to choice and thought.

Hello,
What are the "properties" of thought? In what way would these properties exist? (physical, metaphysical, etc?)

Also how does an unmediated access to choice and thought by humans constitute any importance in a 'just is' scenario?

I think your thoughts on this are philisophically valid by way of Occams Razor, but I have trouble understanding the path of reasoning that results in consciousness being significant enought to be a part of the first cause of the Universe.

[jimvansage]

I think what we're really getting caught up in is empiricism versus rationality.

Empiricism (only knowing what our senses perceive) should only ever be an admission that there are limits to the things we can know.
It does not necessarily follow that
1. Anything we can't know by sense perception does not exist
2. only what we can examine by sense perception can be known

There may very well, be limits to rationality/logic/reason, but to trust only in empiricism is like finding a pile of dog feces in your yard and dogmatically affirming "If I didn't see a dog, I can't be sure that a dog has ever been on my yard"

It would also be like saying "Just because Barack Obama is the 44th president, and George W. Bush was the 43rd doesn't mean that there was ever a first president"

The unseen or unsensed as it were can be known from adequate evidence and proper reason.

[McCulloch]

I think what we're really getting caught up in is empiricism versus rationality.

Empiricism (only knowing what our senses perceive) should only ever be an admission that there are limits to the things we can know.
It does not necessarily follow that
1. Anything we can't know by sense perception does not exist
2. only what we can examine by sense perception can be known

There may very well, be limits to rationality/logic/reason, but to trust only in empiricism is like finding a pile of dog feces in your yard and dogmatically affirming "If I didn't see a dog, I can't be sure that a dog has ever been on my yard"

It would also be like saying "Just because Barack Obama is the 44th president, and George W. Bush was the 43rd doesn't mean that there was ever a first president"

The unseen or unsensed as it were can be known from adequate evidence and proper reason.

Jimvansage, you do misrepresent empiricism slightly. It is not that those things we cannot sense do not exist, but that it is not sound reasoning to declare certainty about the existence of things not seen or sensed, or properly inferred from that which is seen or otherwise sensed.

The ontological argument, the teleological argument, the anthropic argument, the cosmological arguments, the argument from the Resurrection of Jesus and other Christological arguments all fall short of being properly convincing objective reasoning based on adequate evidence to conclude that the God described in the Bible really exists.

[jimvansage]

Empiricism (only knowing what our senses perceive) should only ever be an admission that there are limits to the things we can know.
It does not necessarily follow that
1. Anything we can't know by sense perception does not exist
2. only what we can examine by sense perception can be known

There may very well, be limits to rationality/logic/reason, but to trust only in empiricism is like finding a pile of dog feces in your yard and dogmatically affirming "If I didn't see a dog, I can't be sure that a dog has ever been on my yard"

It would also be like saying "Just because Barack Obama is the 44th president, and George W. Bush was the 43rd doesn't mean that there was ever a first president"

The unseen or unsensed as it were can be known from adequate evidence and proper reason.

[/quote]
Jimvansage, you do misrepresent empiricism slightly.

~I did not misrepresent empiricism, that is how I have heard empiricism being misrepresnted and abused - "No one can see God, so we have to assume that there is no God"
There are arguments and there are alleged evidences that need to be, as you say, properly interpreted.

The ontological argument, the teleological argument, the anthropic argument, the cosmological arguments, the argument from the Resurrection of Jesus and other Christological arguments all fall short of being properly convincing objective reasoning based on adequate evidence to conclude that the God described in the Bible really exists.[/quote]

~what method of "properly convincing objective reasoning based on adequate evidence" did you use to conclude that ALL of these arguments or not valid, not sound, or neither valid not sound