Philosophy: Prove you exist

[GregoryPalamas]

Yes. Uncle Greg has to explain. How can we get him to do that? Oh! Let’s ask him.

Truth and Ani,

St. Thomas list the second of three objections to demonstrating God’s existence…

Summa Theologia Article II "“Again, (2) that the subject matter of demonstration is that something exists, but in the case of God we cannot know what exists, but only what does not, as Damascenus says (Of the Orthdox Faith, I.4) Hence that we cannot demonstrate God’s existence.”

Against which he responds:

“To the second objection, I reply that, since the cause is proven from the effect, one must use the effect in the place of a definition of the cause in demonstrating that the cause exists; and that this applies especially in the case of God, because for proving that anything exists, it is necessary to accept in this method what it is is secondary to the question whether it exists at all. The characteristics of God are drawn from His works as shall be shown hereafter, (Question XIII). Whence by proving that God exists through His works as shall be shown hereafter, (Question XIII). Whence by proving that God exists through His works, we are able by this very method to see what the name God signifies.”

This, of course, echoes St. Paul’s argument in Romans 1-2. The distinction between that it is and whether it exists is a classic rhetorical distinction. St,. Basil the Great used this distinction, though I’ve long forgotten where, when arguing the existence of
God.

One could argue for the essential unity of the Church by arguing for the similarities between Aquinas and Basil rather than for the essential disunity by arguing for the differences between Aquinas and Damascene but that is for another thread.

CDL

 

[Ani_Ibi]

What all of you seem to misunderstand is that we’re not trying to prove anything or claim that something is probable, but what’s most reasonable.

OK. Prove that it’s most reasonable that you exist. :yup:

 

[john_doran]

Okay, apparently you are convinced that you have explained how God is a necessary being.

not in this thread (and perhaps the other threads were lost when the forum servers went down a while back).

Everstruggling:

If you really give it some thought I’m sure you will realize that cause and effect are products of the way our universe is constructed. In a static universe nothing changes. There is no cause and effect because there is no cause. Thus no need for an ultimate cause. “God” is not necessary in the static universe. So it is possible to imagine a world without God in it.

there is still cause and effect in a static universe, and still a requirement for a first cause…

Everstruggling:

By the way, if you are so convinced that you have already proved your point in another post, why not link to it? I can’t find the proof, at least not in any thread I have posted in.

i’ll take a quick look for the old threads, but, as i say, many of my old posts were lost when the servers crashed.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

john doran:

in the “null” universe, what “has” the property of “nothingness”?

Everything?

 

[GregoryPalamas]

I seriously doubt that an atheist can prove anything.

CDL

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Is ‘static universe’ an oxymoron…

Maybe. Maybe not. Can you gives us a line of thinking that explains that a static universe is an oxymoron? That will be a good start. Thank you.

 

[Truthstalker]

What all of you seem to misunderstand is that we’re not trying to prove anything or claim that something is probable, but what’s most reasonable.

Now we get into the nature of “proof” - which may, I fear, be an argument based on semantics. I would rather we identified presuppositions, but I also wonder why I have than preference. It seems arbitrary.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

john doran:

there is still cause and effect in a static universe, and still a requirement for a first cause…

I could be wrong about my understanding of ‘static’ universe.

However, I believe that the ‘staticness’ or ‘dynamicness’ of a universe is irrelevant to first cause.

Because of the no-boundary conditions at the start-point of all possible universes.

This is where the sum-over-histories interpretation comes into its own. The mathematics behind this approach to quantum theory contains an oddity: the answers only come out right when the calculation is done in imaginary time… Add up the histories of the universe in imaginary time, and time is transformed into space.

The result is that, when the universe was small enough to be governed by quantum mechanics [at the Big Bang], it had four spatial dimensions and no dimension of time: where time would usually come to an end at a singularity, a new dimension of space appears, and, poof! The singularity vanishes.

In terms of the universe’s history, that means there is no point A. Like the surface of a sphere, the universe is finite but has no definable starting point, or “boundary”.

The existence of first cause needs to be proven. So far it has not been proven. I have questions as to whether it can be proven.

In any case, is proving the existence of first cause necessary to proving that you or God exists? I am not convinced that it is. However, there are other routes to the proof for the existence of you or God.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Truthstalker:

Now we get into the nature of “proof” - which may, I fear, be an argument based on semantics.

Semantics as branch(es) of philosophy? Or what we would generally understand as semantics?

Truthstalker:

I would rather we identified presuppositions, but I also wonder why I have than preference. It seems arbitrary.

A presupposition would rest on observation, would it not? Either direct observation or observation redeemed by theory.

 

[GregoryPalamas]

The presupposition that we really do exist seems allowable to me. The only option would be that we are simply figments of each other’s imagination. But that is simply nonsensicle. Who is the one having the imagination? If one does then that one is either God or that we all have an imagination which would mean that we all exist. In either case any argument for or against our existence would not logically be held by an atheist.

CDL

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Everstruggling:

Incorporeality? Well, I guess that it must exist in every universe.

Only in a null universe.

Everstruggling:

It is impossible to have a universe in which everything is corporeal because the state “everything is corporeal” is not corporeal.

Are you saying that ideas are not corporeal?

Is ‘being’ corporeal?

 

[I_Leatherman]

Maybe. Maybe not. Can you gives us a line of thinking that explains that a static universe is an oxymoron? That will be a good start. Thank you.

Universe = A space, matter, and time.
Stasis = A space, no matter, and no time.

Matter is related to time m=E/c2, …

er…and time is not static… so no static universe.
Static ~ universe = oxymoron.

But if you mean the theory of the static universe then I think stuff like the red-shift, and the acceleration of the universe are problems not answered by it… or something…

 

[Ani_Ibi]

GregoryPalamas:

The presupposition that we really do exist seems allowable to me.

But only based on the following line of thinking which is based on an observation which in turn has been redeemed by means of theory. Note that this line of thinking is based on an observation – not a presupposition.

GregoryPalamas:

The only option would be that we are simply figments of each other’s imagination. But that is simply nonsensicle. Who is the one having the imagination?

Exactly. So Uncle Greg gives us : I imagine therefore I am.

Yay! :extrahappy:

GregoryPalamas:

If one does then that one is either God or that we all have an imagination which would mean that we all exist.

So far you have only demonstrated that one person at a time can prove his or her own existence.

GregoryPalamas:

In either case any argument for or against our existence would not logically be held by an atheist.

Do atheists not use logic?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Leatherman:

Universe = A space, matter, and time.

No. In the early universe, time is a fourth dimension of space.
Leatherman:

Stasis = A space, no matter, and no time. Matter is related to time m=E/c2

Yes, but only in the post-early universe.
Leatherman:

er…and time is not static… so no static universe. Static ~ universe = oxymoron.

Yes, a static universe is a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics on entropy. But entropy is a function of time. And in the early universe time does not exist as time but as a fourth dimension of space.
Leatherman:

But if you mean the theory of the static universe then I think stuff like the red-shift, and the acceleration of the universe are problems not answered by it… or something…

Yes.

However, a ‘static’ universe might not mean a universe which does not change with time internally. It could mean a universe with no net entropy. That is, a universe which possesses an overall property of zero-change. Within that universe, smaller scale change could exist.

So I think you can still have time in this kind of ‘static’ universe. And you can have matter in this kind of ‘static’ universe.

Therefore ‘static’ universe is not necessarily an oxymoron.

 

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

Ahh very good, lets see

ohhhh your asprins have inspired me! There would be doctors documents of George, showing his health and illnesses. So therefore he did exist.

Would there have been. I don’t think so - I don’t think the keeping of medical records was in place until this past century, the 1900s. Usually, the doctors just knew their patients and their histories by memory. At most, there would have been mention of what he died of, but this could also have been made up by those in power. How convenient that George Washington died before the turn of the new century - before people got too suspicious over never actually seeing the supposed George Washington.

parallel:
We don’t have medical records for Jesus - or any other person back then (except maybe the Emperor, and I doubt that). But we do have an account of His death, in fact several of them. In fact, we know more about the death of Jesus then we do about George Washington’s demise.

 

[I_Leatherman]

No. In the early universe, time is a fourth dimension of space.

cool … what does it look like…so I can imagine it?

However, a ‘static’ universe might not mean a universe which does not change with time internally. It could mean a universe with no net entropy. That is, a universe which possesses an overall property of zero-change. Within that universe, smaller scale change could exist.

So I think you can still have time in this kind of ‘static’ universe. And you can have matter in this kind of ‘static’ universe.

Therefore ‘static’ universe is not necessarily an oxymoron.

Hmmm…mmm…mm … Static means static entropy, not static time? But with a universe that is accelerating exponentially, in the future there must be increased entropy in a near infinite universe volume over an ever increasing period of time. Entropy increases, though the potential energy of the universe remains the same. …

 

[I_Leatherman]

Hello,

Would there have been. I don’t think so - I don’t think the keeping of medical records was in place until this past century, the 1900s. Usually, the doctors just knew their patients and their histories by memory. At most, there would have been mention of what he died of, but this could also have been made up by those in power. How convenient that George Washington died before the turn of the new century - before people got too suspicious over never actually seeing the supposed George Washington.

parallel:
We don’t have medical records for Jesus - or any other person back then (except maybe the Emperor, and I doubt that). But we do have an account of His death, in fact several of them. In fact, we know more about the death of Jesus then we do about George Washington’s demise.

(Maybe I’m wrong, but I think formal written medical records were first started by the army medics during the American civil war. They were probably very simple lists of symptoms at first, - gulf war syndrome has been recognised in these war medical records, as well as in other countries through history … but I may be wrong…I know nothing…)

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Truthstalker:

Aquinas’ famous dictum comes to mind. We cannot know what He is, we can only know what He is not. and Jesus said, “no one has seen God at any time.”

GregoryPalamas:

Ah, but isn’t this St. John Damascenes argument which Aquinas seeks to refute?CDL

First of all, Damascenes. Then Aquinas’s refutation. Then Korzybski.

Damascenes

No one hath seen God at any time… God, however, did not leave us in absolute ignorance… For the knowledge of God’s existence has been implanted by Him in all by nature…

Therefore the existence of God is self-evident.

But neither do we know, nor can we tell, what the essence of God is…

Aquinas

It must be said that a thing can be called “self-evident” in two- ways, in itself and in relation to us. A proposition is self-evident when its predicate is included in the definition of its subject.

For example, in the proposition “man is an animal,” the idea of “animal” is included in the definition of “man”… I say, therefore, that this proposition, “God exists,” is self-evident in itself, since the predicate is the same as the subject…

Thus if everyone knows the definitions of both subject and predicate, the proposition will be self-evident to all…

Boethius says, that some things are common conceptions of the mind" and are self-evident "among the learned only…

Aquinas posits two separate understandings of ‘self evident’: one is culture-specific and one is non-culture-specific. The non-culture-specific understanding of ‘self-evident’ would seem to be an expression of Gadamer’s ‘merging of horizons’ and of Korbyzki’s ‘time binding.’

This is an interesting distinction, but does it address Damascene’s believe that “neither do we know, nor can we tell, what the essence of God is…”?

Can we know the essence of God? Or has Aquinas only shifted the emphasis to knowing the beatitude of God, which in turn he admits has different meanings to different people, giving rise to any number of idolatries: money, sex, leisure, power, and so on.

We know the essence of God.

Therefore we know the existence of God.

But who is ‘we’? One ‘we’ is a group defined by cultural knowledge. One ‘we’ is a group defined by philosophical knowledge.

If we define the essence of God as the ‘beatitude’ of God, then:

• the group defined by cultural knowledge will define God as what is convenient to them.
• and the group defined by philosophical knowledge will define God as “what is the good?”
  The latter position is an elitist position and flies in the face of the Gospel being for **all **humanity, but bears the hallmarks of Occam’s Razor and therefore is a quicker, simpler, and more productive route to take.

The former position … well… thoughts? Is quicker and simpler necessarily more productive? Productive of what? Accuracy?

continued…

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Aquinas:

To the first argument, therefore, it must be said that a general and confused knowledge of God’s existence is naturally infused within us, for God is man’s beatitude and man naturally desires beatitude. What man naturally desires he naturally knows…

This is not to know God’s existence specifically, however.

It is one thing to know that someone is approaching and quite another to know that Peter is approaching, even though that someone may actually be Peter. Many people think that the perfect good of man called “beatitude” is wealth, some imagine it to be pleasure, and so on.

Korzybski:

These ‘philosophers’, etc., seem unaware, to give a single example, that by teaching and preaching ‘identity’, which is empirically non-existent in this actual world, they are *neurologically *training future generations in the pathological identifications found in the ‘mentally’ ill or maladjusted… whatever we may *say *an object *‘is’, it is not, *because the statement is verbal, and the facts are not. Science and Sanity, page xxix

Damascenes: Knowledge of the identity of something is separate from knowledge of the existence of something.

Aquinas: Knowledge of the existence of something cannot be separate from knowledge of the identity of something.

Korzybski: Knowledge of the existence of something must be separate from knowledge of the identity of something.

Thoughts?

 

[Everstruggling]

Are you saying that ideas are not corporeal?

Is ‘being’ corporeal?

Yes and no, respectively.

Corporeal means having a physical form, so the ideas themselves would not be physical. They would manifest physically in the brain of the person thinking them, but not be corporeal themselves. A being could or could not be corporeal but “being” wouldn’t be.

By the way, when I am saying that incorporeality exists, I’m not saying that ONLY incorporeality exists. For instance, “equality” exists as a concept in this universe but not as a physical entity.