Discovered a New Ontological Argument

[Wesrock]

If you’re not ready for people to quote from a seven point syllogism you’ve publicly posted online and given instructions on how to find then it’s probably best you don’t ask people whether they think it follows.

 

[MichaelLlenos]

MichaelLlenos:

The particular argument is brilliant because…

You can say that all you want. But it’s a simple rule of logic. If you derive P and ~P, you disprove the argument. In deriving a contradiction, you show that the logic fails. And with it, you can derive anything via the principle of explosion.

Have it your way. But with my limited sense of logic I know there are two different kinds of statements: syllogisms and enthymemes, or perfect logical statements and imperfect ones. If an enthymeme is an imperfect logical statement, it must not be a logical absolute, but must be judged by via probability & not absolute equations. How do you know what part of the middle ground my premises and conclusions fall mostly under: the perfect or imperfect deduction? I know a lot of people here will say the imperfect one. Well, there you go. My premises & conclusions do not fall under the strict rules of logic and their lettered equations. But that doesn’t make them greatly errored either.

 

[MichaelLlenos]

@MichaelLlenos
No one ever got rich off of theological proofs. You might be able to get a paper out of it, but as noted the theory is still a work-in-progress and CAF is as good a place as any to put it through its paces to make it stronger.

Thanks for the note. I was never hoping to get rich off a new ontological argument. Just maybe get the credit for it.

Wesrock said: If you’re not ready for people to quote from a seven point syllogism you’ve publicly posted online and given instructions on how to find then it’s probably best you don’t ask people whether they think it follows…

Well, Mountie was being nice and gave me some encouragement. People have been posting but not the entire thing at once, which was nice of them. Just think about the next original ontological argument and it’s originator/s? You know who invents that stuff? No one. It’s like the Unified Field Theory of Physics. It’s a fantasy or a dream.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

No problem.

Here’s one quick trick if you’re quoting multiple people in a single post:

1. Hit the reply button on one of the posts you want to reply to.
2. Hit the quote icon.
3. Instead of replying, copy and paste the quote (including the quote tags) in Notepad or whatever text editor you want.
4. Cancel the reply and find another post you want to reply to and repeat steps 1-3.
5. Once you’ve written what you want to reply with copy and paste it all into a single reply with each person getting their own quote box.

Important: Make sure each opening quote tag and closing quote tag is on its own separate line.

I hope that helps.

 

[MichaelLlenos]

Thank you.

 

[MichaelLlenos]

MichaelLlenos:

#'s 4 & 5 should be opposites. To exist where you are and where you are not are supposed to be total opposites in there conclusions as well. In the last three minutes I rewrote #5 so it should be correct now.

I don’t see how this resolves the issue. You wrote:

**5. If God doesn’t exist where he is not (then he exists someplace else than there)."

How does it follow that “he exists someplace else than there?” If a thing is non-existent it does not exist in any place. There is no step to “it exists someplace else” instead.

But the non-existent exists as a place, since all men know the non-existent is the non-existent.

 

[Rhubarb]

A syllogism isn’t a statement, it’s a logical argument. The following is a syllogism.

1. P
2. If P, then Q
   therefore
   C. Q

An enthymeme is a syllogism with unstated or assumed premises that aren’t spelled out. Such as

1. P
2. Q.
3. If P then S
4. If Q then R
   Therefore
   C. X
   The left out premise is If S&R then X.

Your idea of imperfect logical statements is ad hoc, it isn’t part of logic. And when an argument or syllogism has flawed logic we don’t try to plug the holes with ad hoc rubbish. We throw the argument out just because the logic is flawed. I actually have to back up even more fundamentally. Your argument just doesn’t follow. I am not recognizing any valid patterns of inference and I got my texts out to double-check. Your conclusions just don’t follow. (we call this formally fallacious) And your 6 leads to a contradiction because you say God exists if he doesn’t exist. Which means for your conclusion to be “god exists” you must first assume the contrary. Which, is the reductio. You MUST assume ~P to get P. And that together is the contradiction.

You are free to believe your argument of course, nothing is stopping that. But any serious theologian or philosopher will pull it apart. Apologists do not want obviously flawed logic to give anti-theists ammo. Don’t give up though! You might be onto something. As far as I can tell you are trying to say “God can’t not exist”. This isn’t original but you might be onto an original way of stating that.

 

[MichaelLlenos]

A syllogism isn’t a statement, it’s a logical argument.
An enthymeme is a syllogism with unstated or assumed premises that aren’t spelled out. Don’t give up though! You might be onto something. As far as I can tell you are trying to say “God can’t not exist”. This isn’t original but you might be onto an original way of stating that.

I thought an enthymeme was an imperfect syllogism? Or did you just say that? Perhaps I’ve misinterpreted Epictetus and his stoic logic?

The argument seems illogical at first but may work. For Einstein to prove his General Relativity Theory he had to use non-Euclidean geometry which was only invented in the 19th century. I’m nowhere near Einstein. But I thought the argument I thought up, by analogy, defies logic but might work. I don’t know.

 

[Rhubarb]

If you’re coming from a point of ancient logic, then you’re talking about more than just pure logic. The ancients tied up language, rhetoric, and logic all up into their conceptions. An Enthymeme is an ‘imperfect syllogism’ because it is used in rhetoric where premises are unstated. That’s how we use the term today, when we are laying out an argument (usually not in bullet-point form) and someone finds we’re missing premises in our description. It’s not a catch-all term for imperfect logical forms. The catch-all term for imperfect logic is “formal logical fallacy”

Einstein relying on non-Euclidean geometry isn’t a contradiction or illogical. Spacetime IS curved and therefore modeled more properly with non-Euclidean geometry. Illogical doesn’t mean “confusing” or “not easily understood”. Einstein has been vindicated and his reasoning (mostly) confirmed for over a hundred years once our scientific knowledge caught up. In otherwords, Einstein wasn’t arguing with false premises. He was arguing with premises that were true, but not well known to be true.

A thing cannot be, and not be. Religious thinkers understand that, this is why theologians say that God can’t do something against his nature. Because they understand that contradictions are a problem. Your argument as it is formulated is contradictory. The logic doesn’t follow, it is fallacious.

 

[Wesrock]

Wesrock:

MichaelLlenos:

#'s 4 & 5 should be opposites. To exist where you are and where you are not are supposed to be total opposites in there conclusions as well. In the last three minutes I rewrote #5 so it should be correct now.

I don’t see how this resolves the issue. You wrote:

**5. If God doesn’t exist where he is not (then he exists someplace else than there)."

How does it follow that “he exists someplace else than there?” If a thing is non-existent it does not exist in any place. There is no step to “it exists someplace else” instead.

But the non-existent exists as a place, since all men know the non-existent is the non-existent.

It does not exist as a place. Are you referring to the concept in the intellect?

 

[MichaelLlenos]

This morning I just realized the solution to my argument. My argument is now posted fully on my website. With all of the extra notes I can’t tell if my argument is still a priori or not…

 

[Freddy]

This morning I just realized the solution to my argument. My argument is now posted fully on my website. With all of the extra notes I can’t tell if my argument is still a priori or not…

Posted fully…Llenos…que risa!

 

[Wesrock]

Note (1) The existence of a non-existent place must exist. For all men know the non-existent exists since the non-existent is the non-existent.

An existing, non-existing place is a contradiction and so cannot be. If a non-existence place exists it is by definition not a non-existence place by any metric other than name. If an existing place doesn’t exist then there is no such existing place. And how do the latter two sentences demonstrate such a thing must exist?

[T]he difference is that Santa Clause (among many other infinite number of things) cannot exist outside of space and time, but God can. So Santa Clause cannot be used as a stand in for God when stating my argument with a parallel argument in its place.

As an ontological argument you’re just begging the question. You haven’t demonstrated a priori or a posteriori that there can be any being outside of space and time, let alone God, or that even if it were possible that it actually is.

St. Anselm’s argument (while I think it has issues) attempts to demonstrate God as an a priori truth in the same way that once you know (1) what a bachelor is and you know (2) what an unmarried man is you then know a priori that all unmarried men are bachelors. In St. Anselm’s case it attempts to show that if you know what God is you know he necessarily exists as opposed to only possibly existing (otherwise what you were conceiving was not God at all).

 

[webmasterpdx]

I took a quick look at it and while I’m not a theologian I am an engineer and I can follow logic, and I see a fundamental flaw in your argument. If God doesn’t exist, then “where he is” is meaningless, since he doesn’t exist. This is why you end up with the 1 == 0 logic at the end…

 

[po18guy]

Encapsulate it and present it to Dr. David Anders on “Called to Communion.”

 

[Rhubarb]

There are many problems still with your argument as formulated. Firstly, it still derives a contradiction. Secondly, in logic existence is not a predicate. It is a quantifier. Thirdly and most importantly, your answer to the Santa Claus objection begs the question - you are trying to prove God by using God in the argument: " the difference is that Santa Clause (among many other infinite number of things) cannot exist outside of space and time, but God can.

I would say the Santa Claus objection is the most problematic - even if your logic was sound that objection still stands. The issues with logic is bookkeeping.

 

[MichaelLlenos]

I wrote 4 short Platonic dialogues on God’s existence which I think I finished around 2016. At the end of the first short dialogue (or) P1, I came to the same conclusions with my recent onto. argument but with different term labels. E.g. the label ‘infinite existent’ in P1 is my onto. argument’s non-existent. And the (finite) non-existent in my P1 dialogue is my onto. argument’s place of the ‘dead’ in note 1. This was clearly a case of deja vu.

I have finally realized why no one has come up with another ontological argument, or great proof of God, so far. Thinking about it makes people go in circles and feel crazy like what Socrates did to Euthyphro.

 

[MichaelLlenos]

I wrote 4 short Platonic dialogues on God’s existence which I think I finished around 2016. At the end of the first short dialogue (or) P1, I came to the same conclusions with my recent onto. argument but with different term labels. E.g. the label ‘infinite existent’ in P1 is my onto. argument’s non-existent. And the (finite) non-existent in my P1 dialogue is my onto. argument’s place of the ‘dead’ in note 1. This was clearly a case of deja vu.

I have finally realized why no one has come up with another ontological argument, or great proof of God, so far. Thinking about it makes people go in circles and feel crazy like what Socrates did to Euthyphro.

I just realized that my onto. argument was a negative existence assertion & not a positive existence assertion. So it makes sense that my P1 infinite existent place is my onto. argument’s non-existent place. For the infinite existent is positive and non-existent is negative. And the place of the dead (or) the dead in note 1 of my onto. argument means the same thing as my P1 finite non-existent. So I came to the same conclusion with Plato’s dialectic at the end of P1 as I did with my onto. argument that I concluded today: except the former was a positive approach and the latter was a negative approach. A clear case of reasoning de ja vu!

 

[MichaelLlenos]

They say: All roads lead back to Rome.

So far I said that a positive existence assertion and a negative existence assertion will lead to two different terms: either the infinite existent or the infinite non-existent. But what if the term INFINITE has a neutral property to it and one could then use both arguments to prove that God exists? So God exists if you approach the argument that he exists, and God exists
if you approach the argument that he doesn’t exist.

 

[IWantGod]

Bizarre…