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?

[McCulloch]

Are you arguing that God is axiomatically true, thus ending the debate before it even starts?

Igtheism tries to end the debate before it starts; it does this by refusing to accept clear definitions of God as "the not-less-than-personal fount of all possibility and all reality and all existence and all being." Yes, this is a mouthful, but it's hardly unintelligible per the norms of the English language.

Is there any evidence that the fount of all possibility, reality, existence and all being is personal?

But yes, since there is no empirical evidence for or against theism (theism and non-theism are opposing metaphysical viewpoints) it follows that theism and non-theism are each axioms, starting points for any argument. And if we start with each axiom in turn, and examine the logical consequences of each, it follows that theism turns out to be the logically preferred philosophical position.

Some great logicians disagree with your examination of the logical consequences.

A single neuron can hardly be called intelligent. Yet a fully functioning brain is. The analogy still works for me.

"Wetness" of water is a subjective mental experience, like the color "red."

Actually not. Wetness is not subjective. Wetting is the ability of a liquid to maintain contact with a solid surface, resulting from intermolecular interactions when the two are brought together. The degree of wetting is determined by a force balance between adhesive and cohesive forces.

[dusk]

As far as I'm aware, above the molecular level (at least) consciousness or subjective experience is the only example of 'emergence' which isn't either a subjective perspective on phenomena (eg. 'wetness,' rainbows or the like) or the interaction of a thing's parts viewed on a larger scale (eg. macro-economics, stars, states of matter). I've never seen anything even remotely analogous to the development of characteristics as unique or different as those of subjective experience from parts which supposedly do not have them.

I am asking myself now can it be any different?
Doesn't consciousness simple emerge from self-reflection.
We have subjective phenomena. Why? Because we have subjects that feel are aweare, esperience things in certain subj. phenomena ways.

Input -> Cause
Now let us assume an object. The object reacts to certain inputs like a bacteria that swells when it comes in contact with water. Simple.

Multipel Inputs -> decision
If there are multiple inputs it will at some point be necessary to weight inputs against each other. There is a certain complex processing capability.

Form a model/approximation of an input
At the next step inputs become too complex to be individually accounted for. They are abstracted in multiple steps and a model is formed that only sort of resembles and approximates all the details of the real individual inputs (those one could reduce to the smallest bit or wave or atom). Yet the model is something fundamentally different it is an abstraction, necessary for further processing.

We work the same way with software in computers. Nobody can program in binary code. We abstract and abstract. Translate information into more and more condensed form until it can be worked with. If information is dense enough making a decision is simple, otherwise it is impossible.
Our eye and sight does the same thing. All impulses are already pre processed in the web behind our retina more than our computer chips process in our digital cameras. When the impuls stream reaches the brain the entire parts of the picture are taken apart. Lines and geometries are separately processed. It is a hugely interesting field and due to all this weird processing optical illusions are possible.

Models for inputs classes
Now we have multiple models that represent certain input classes like sight, smell, fatigue, ... . Also abstractions of goals. Survival, eating, ageing, reproduction becomes something different that only loosely or indirectly correlates with those more fundamental ones. All to simplify. To compress billions of singular inputs to fit through a few nerves.

Model of self
At some point the magical self-reflection comes in. We form a model of ourself as whole. A model that is in a way the compressed information of all the other models, past models and so on.
Now how can there NOT be any awareness of the other abstracted inputs from the perspective of this one model. This awareness doesn't have to feel a certain way but as being an integral part of the whole it must exist. There are different levels of awareness associated with all other inputs. So it is not just one simple thing but also an abstraction of different states.
Should the self now try to understand or interpret the concept of awareness itself (selfreflection) it must can only do what it always does regard the model of self as another input. Now awareness to the processing engine is a feeling like the feeling of fatigue (substitute feeling with model if you like).

I hope everyone is following. The question is can it be any other way? Is it possible to not be aware of ones awareness while still being aware of the model of self and all other inputs (or reasonable to stop there).
Isn't the consciousness simply necessary as soon as a model of an object starts to reflect on itself.

Can there be a robot doing all the same thinking patterns I lined up of multiple stages of processing, modeling, compressing, weighing, deciding and self-reflection without being conscious of it.
If it can be unconsciously aware of inputs to process correctly it must be aware of awareness to process itself (approximately correct).

Subjectively consciousness is a weird thing but objectively it isn't all that odd.

[EduChris]

...Is there any evidence that the fount of all possibility, reality, existence and all being is personal?...

Empirical evidence? Sure, the same as the empirical evidence to suggest otherwise (but don't forget that my term is "not-less-than-personal" rather than simply "personal").

...Some great logicians disagree with your examination of the logical consequences...

Sure. Given the magic of emergence, people (experts included) are free to agree or disagree.

...Wetness is not subjective. Wetting is the ability of a liquid to maintain contact with a solid surface, resulting from intermolecular interactions when the two are brought together. The degree of wetting is determined by a force balance between adhesive and cohesive forces.

Sure, and the color "red" is a certain reading on a spectrum. But our subjective mental experience of "wetness" and "red" is not the same as the scientific explanation. Apart from genuine consciousness, everything is just a jumble and tumble of particles (or so we think, or so we imagine we think).

[McCulloch]

but don't forget that my term is "not-less-than-personal" rather than simply "personal"

I am a mathematician by training. In my world, not less than X means the same as X or greater. Other than adding words to your description, is there anything meaningful you wish to convey with the not-less-than expression?

[EduChris]

...I am a mathematician by training. In my world, not less than X means the same as X or greater. Other than adding words to your description, is there anything meaningful you wish to convey with the not-less-than expression?

If I say that Gdel was not less than a mathematician, and if you then proceed to refer to Gdel only as a mathematician, which of us would be more accurate?

[ThatGirlAgain]

but don't forget that my term is "not-less-than-personal" rather than simply "personal"

I am a mathematician by training. In my world, not less than X means the same as X or greater. Other than adding words to your description, is there anything meaningful you wish to convey with the not-less-than expression?

Unless of course the field of discourse was an unordered set such as the complex numbers or was of an intransitive nature. That is probably more often the case when dealing with humans. In such cases, "not less than" can take on quite rich meanings.

[Mithrae]

As far as I'm aware, above the molecular level (at least) consciousness or subjective experience is the only example of 'emergence' which isn't either a subjective perspective on phenomena (eg. 'wetness,' rainbows or the like) or the interaction of a thing's parts viewed on a larger scale (eg. macro-economics, stars, states of matter). I've never seen anything even remotely analogous to the development of characteristics as unique or different as those of subjective experience from parts which supposedly do not have them.

I am asking myself now can it be any different?
Doesn't consciousness simple emerge from self-reflection.
We have subjective phenomena. Why? Because we have subjects that feel are aweare, esperience things in certain subj. phenomena ways.

Input -> Cause
Now let us assume an object. The object reacts to certain inputs like a bacteria that swells when it comes in contact with water. Simple.

Multipel Inputs -> decision
If there are multiple inputs it will at some point be necessary to weight inputs against each other. There is a certain complex processing capability.

Form a model/approximation of an input
At the next step inputs become too complex to be individually accounted for. They are abstracted in multiple steps and a model is formed that only sort of resembles and approximates all the details of the real individual inputs (those one could reduce to the smallest bit or wave or atom).

Hi Dusk, thanks for the reply. It's not self-awareness or a type of consciousness which comes from it which puzzles me, it's subjective experience or awareness itself. I might have to stop using the term consciousness - it seems to create too much confusion.

It seems to me that there's a very significant leap between your first and second points above. There can be multiple inputs or any number of factors influencing a chemical reaction, but we don't introduce terms like 'decision,' 'weighing' or 'processing' to describe it. The reaction simply produces what it produces, exactly like your Input > Cause point. In the case of man-made things which do have complex processing capability (ie, computers) we still don't use terms like decision or weighing unless we're anthropomorphising them; all they're actually doing is following a pre-programmed script and responding in the pre-programmed manner to various inputs, except when they're being obstinate.

Living things have evolved tremendous complexity, and significantly developed infants of a species (a human foetus, for example) can grow without any need for that second step. Just minutes after birth (and for the most part before birth also) there are digestive, respiratory, circulatory and immune systems operating that the finest engineers would be hard-pressed to match - all without that second step. Food is ingested, broken down for water, sugars, proteins and so on, distributed throughout the body and stored; oxygen is inhaled, passed into the bloodstream, distributed and used with sugars for energy conversion; CO2 is distributed back and exhaled and so on... it's all a bit beyond me Even interactions with the outside world is often described better under your first point than your second - breathing usually occurs autonomously, reactions to extreme pain are immediate and nonconscious, the immune system responds whether we're aware of an infection or not (and sometimes when we'd rather it didn't, as in the case of non-viable blood infusions or organ transplants). Basically it's all like a much more complicated kind of computer.

All of this came about as a result of genetic mutations and recombinations selected by natural pressures for greatest survival advantage, repeated again and again over billions of years. In other words awareness, weighing inputs and decisions were not necessary components of these vastly complicated structures, processes and responses. But we know that at some point that second step of yours - the utterly unique phenomena (supposedly) of subjective experience, evaluation and chosen responses - for some reason and by some manner came to be; and subsequently, as you've mentioned, the even more miraculous 'emergence' of abstractions, things which aren't real!

We can surely understand human consciousness fairly well given primate, mammalian and vertebrate experiences. The unanswered problem is experience itself. Given how limited the senses we've evolved are - for example our sight covers a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum, interpreted as 'colours' which are not real things, at scales above the million-atom mark and getting ever shakier beyond a few dozen metres - it seems to me that the very fact of experience itself should be considered the most fundamental indicator of the nature of reality. Yet it's so easily waved away as a mere by-product of the things which we can see.


So can the 'existence' of some 'God' be demonstrated by logic? I would say it seems most logical to suppose that experience or subjectivity is as integral to the nature of reality as things which we know through experience like mass or energy - if not more so.

[dusk]

It seems to me that there's a very significant leap between your first and second points above. There can be multiple inputs or any number of factors influencing a chemical reaction, but we don't introduce terms like 'decision,' 'weighing' or 'processing' to describe it. The reaction simply produces what it produces, exactly like your Input > Cause point. In the case of man-made things which do have complex processing capability (ie, computers) we still don't use terms like decision or weighing unless we're anthropomorphising them; all they're actually doing is following a pre-programmed script and responding in the pre-programmed manner to various inputs, except when they're being obstinate.

I think you are getting a little ahead there yourself, putting to much meaning into the word decision.
While making this point I didn't yet reach any state where any subject decides as such it cannot be equated with a conscious decision. What I describe as a decision is what we model a certain process and goal in IT.
If you have multiple inputs and you need to reach one single output, how do you get there.
Everybody knows the Apple Siri voice recognition system but how does it work.
It takes your voice. Maps all the parts to recorded known words. Usually it ends up with multiple possible words. Each word can have multiple meanings. It wants to respond with one answer as if it understood what you want, like any human being would. It takes lots of data mining technics into consideration and depending on occurrences of words in similar context some programmed semantic information and a few smaller factors it calculates a bunch of possible meanings of the entire Question. To reach the best one it weighs them against each other by via Bayes Algorithm probably. In the end you have a, b, c, ... with one say 90% likelyhood the next 60% and usually the last ones very low. If the pre processing was good there should be significant differences in the likelyhood of each guess.
Based on this weights in the end it decides on one answer.

Maybe one should mix this second and third step a little.
But I mean to call a decision to compress multiple inputs into only one output by whatever means necessary (preferable reasonable and accurate ones).
If in any algorithm or computer program you want to reach one output from a single input without picking randomly there is only two things. Compressing the inputs into something that only looks like a new output but effectively incorporates most of the information, or calculating some new action/goal/decision via some kind of weighing possibilities against each other.

Maybe it I should not call it decision but rather compression of inputs. I did want to emphasize on the weighing though as that is almost always a part of it. Each input doesn't create an equal impact on the end result. Some have greater influence than others. This is why the output is rarely reversible and looks complex.

In other words awareness, weighing inputs and decisions were not necessary components of these vastly complicated structures, processes and responses.

That depends on how you define it. If you assume an unconscious simple algorithm as a subject it has to be aware of its inputs to process them. It does not have to have any concept of awareness or being aware of anything but it has to know the inputs, otherwise it is blind.

But we know that at some point that second step of yours - the utterly unique phenomena (supposedly) of subjective experience, evaluation and chosen responses - for some reason and by some manner came to be; and subsequently, as you've mentioned, the even more miraculous 'emergence' of abstractions, things which aren't real!

This second step wasn't supposed to posit anything like subjective experience.
I would assume subjectivity comes in as soon as you talk of some subject. Is an algorithm that takes a few inputs and throws pain impulses through nerves towards your brain already a subject? I wouldn't say so.
I tried to argue that subjective experience is this model and abstraction I have been talking about but the ability to experience subjective experience requires the consciousness first. Otherwise it is just a complex model that is not really experienced.

It seems to me though and that is what I wanted to get at that the parts are necessary. That subjective experience had to "feel" somehow ones it necessarily must exist. If I build a robot with an equally if not more advanced AI as ours, that acts, reacts exactly like us. Talks and philosophizes like us. Could we ever distinguish that from a conscious being like us which religious people think we can only be because of god? I doubt it. And if we try we would still have to assume that it feels somehow to the robot as he can express it just like us and wonder about it.

Food for thought. I wrote the last post without long deliberation so I suppose some nitpicking should be possible. Could be my reasoning has gaps but I don't think the definition of decision is a gap, as I didn't understand it as a conscious decision just a static process with dynamic inputs.

So can the 'existence' of some 'God' be demonstrated by logic? I would say it seems most logical to suppose that experience or subjectivity is as integral to the nature of reality as things which we know through experience like mass or energy - if not more so.

I just don't see how god helps as it seems to me just a god of the gaps argument that keeps people from trying to understand the entire thing with a more holistic approach, by dividing the realms into somehow weirdly connected dualistic ones.
I don't like dualism because I don't think it can ever be coherent. The possibility of the existence of god imo also depends on the reality one requires for this concept. Based on subjective experiences god can objectively never be more than the description of a force (the particle physics) of mental/spiritual stuff. As soon as it becomes a worldly entity it has to be subjected to worldly evidence in which it seems utterly unprovable or even disprovable (depending on the concept in question). You cannot ever prove a deistic non interventional god exists. You can only define it into existence but call something god.

[Artie]

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?

You can demonstrate the non-existence of God by logical deduction.
1. Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist. We know that because we know Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made him up.
2. God doesn't exist. We know that because we know the ancient Hebrew made Him up along with many other gods. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlnnWbkMlbg

[Mithrae]

It seems to me that there's a very significant leap between your first and second points above. There can be multiple inputs or any number of factors influencing a chemical reaction, but we don't introduce terms like 'decision,' 'weighing' or 'processing' to describe it. The reaction simply produces what it produces, exactly like your Input > Cause point. In the case of man-made things which do have complex processing capability (ie, computers) we still don't use terms like decision or weighing unless we're anthropomorphising them; all they're actually doing is following a pre-programmed script and responding in the pre-programmed manner to various inputs, except when they're being obstinate.

I think you are getting a little ahead there yourself, putting to much meaning into the word decision.
While making this point I didn't yet reach any state where any subject decides as such it cannot be equated with a conscious decision. What I describe as a decision is what we model a certain process and goal in IT.

Fair enough.

But we know that at some point that second step of yours - the utterly unique phenomena (supposedly) of subjective experience, evaluation and chosen responses - for some reason and by some manner came to be; and subsequently, as you've mentioned, the even more miraculous 'emergence' of abstractions, things which aren't real!

This second step wasn't supposed to posit anything like subjective experience.
I would assume subjectivity comes in as soon as you talk of some subject. Is an algorithm that takes a few inputs and throws pain impulses through nerves towards your brain already a subject? I wouldn't say so.
I tried to argue that subjective experience is this model and abstraction I have been talking about but the ability to experience subjective experience requires the consciousness first. Otherwise it is just a complex model that is not really experienced.

But in your earlier post you suggested that consciousness emerges from self-reflection. That doesn't make sense to me if you're saying experience comes from consciousness. Babies seem to experience pain, discomfort and hunger from their first hours after birth, but until that moment their world was the womb. They could not have any sense of 'self' until they've developed a sense of 'other.' I think you've got it backwards there: Seems to me it must be because of experience - the various sights and sounds, and growing recognition of sources of food and comfort - that the constants of eyes, body, hunger, fatigue and so on could start being distinguished by an infant from all the other things which are present, but not experienced. A sense of self develops from being the unitary subject of diverse experiences, not vice versa.

It seems to me though and that is what I wanted to get at that the parts are necessary. That subjective experience had to "feel" somehow ones it necessarily must exist. If I build a robot with an equally if not more advanced AI as ours, that acts, reacts exactly like us. Talks and philosophizes like us. Could we ever distinguish that from a conscious being like us which religious people think we can only be because of god? I doubt it. And if we try we would still have to assume that it feels somehow to the robot as he can express it just like us and wonder about it.

It's interesting to think about. If it was created specifically to mimic humans we might not be able to distinguish it by its behaviour, but I'd say that programs written to laugh when told a joke, cry out when struck or write soppy poetry when involved in a long term relationship aren't comparable to humour, pain or love. But that further highlights the uniqueness of subjective experience, because I really wouldn't know what (if anything) the robot feels any more than I can be sure what (if anything) other humans feel or what (if anything) fungi, bacteria or planets feel. We know of other things which are so far unobservable, such as dark matter, and odds are there's plenty more unobservable stuff which we haven't even imagined yet. But surely you must see why it's a little strange to suppose that observation (which itself is unobservable) can arise from present and observable (yet itself fundamentally unobserving) matter.

I can't really answer for religious people, but my own view ties into your final comments about 'god' and dualism. We can't directly observe the sensations, thoughts, memories and emotions of other humans, let alone cats, snakes, jellyfish or amoeba - and we can't observe those things in atoms, rocks or planets either. So why do we assume that humans, cats and maybe snakes have some form of subjective experience, but rocks, planets and probably jellyfish do not? Seems to me that subjective experience is a more discrete (less interchangeable or producable) phenomenon or property even than the various molecular, atomic and elementary particles are: The currently non-reducible things which in my own humble fashion I have so far learned of are space-time, mass-energy, the 3/4 fundamental forces... and subjective experience or thought-choice (EduChris has explained how 'thought' is meaningless without choice).

So one option available to us is to suppose that the 'universe' is basically different from us, and that the apparently unique phenomenon of experience nevertheless arose from it without any particular mystery. The second option is to suppose that reality is basically similar to us - some folk call that 'god,' which I suppose is as good a term as 'universe' - and that our thought-choice is not some illusion or weird anomaly, but genuinely reflects the nature of reality and causality.

I would suggest that the former view is the more dualistic one. Of course many theists try to have it both ways, supposing that the 'universe' is substantially distinct from a 'god' who created it out of nothing, and I agree that such a view seems lacking. Idealism seems the most logical perspective, so far as I have yet discovered, which implies panentheism or (perhaps) pantheism.