Whats your favorite argument for the existence of God?

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geometer said:
Jesus has never and will never demand that you adopt such agnosticism.
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As is the custom it seems, you are grossly presuming.

I am not agnostic for one. And nothing of me has been “revealed” as you put it other than my refusal to go to step 2 until someone has the courage to accept step 1. I haven’t made any arguments or theories about anything. I can’t get that far.

The non-Christians want to say, “well, maybe 2+2=4 but i don’t know, let me see where it is going to lead first. Maybe 2+2 is really 3.5 and we just haven’t discovered it yet.”

It is pointless to pretend a reasoning discussion in the environment of total insecurity.
 
James_S_Saint said:
It is pointless to pretend a reasoning discussion in the environment of total insecurity.
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Look, I’m fine as frogs hair, completely secure on my side.

You do not seem to understand what I am pointing to, so maybe I’ll try another angle.

It seems that you are saying that deduction is necessary to the functioning of most kinds of logic. Well, that is fine with me, that is what logical operations have been called in my education.

But you have introduced new symbolic language such as.

“be-cause of A and B then C must be”

Here you try to corkscrew some ontology into a statement which is much simpler.

IF A AND B, THEN C

You can not use because as the reason for the existence of A AND B. A AND B must be detected in some real way in order for the statement to have any metaphysical meaning. And C has to be observed.

It looks like, if you become completely free of your scruples, you would post some things such as A and B, as the causes of god C. That would simply multiply the problem of proof by three.

Jesus did not ask you or anyone to discover God through pure logic. Since pure logic does not bring forth gods, you do not know yet what he expected you to know…
 
geometer said:
Look, I’m fine as frogs hair, completely secure on my side.
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I wasn’t in discussion with you. I had asked others specific questions. I was merely waiting for a reply and talking to you because you seemed to have misunderstood or presumed.
geometer said:
You do not seem to understand what I am pointing to, so maybe I’ll try another angle.

It seems that you are saying that deduction is necessary to the functioning of most kinds of logic. Well, that is fine with me, that is what logical operations have been called in my education.

But you have introduced new symbolic language such as.

“be-cause of A and B then C must be”

Here you try to corkscrew some ontology into a statement which is much simpler.

IF A AND B, THEN C
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I know that. I was trying to make the point to others that ALL logic argument are about one thing being true BE CAUSE of another thing, hence the “be-cause” in my statement.
geometer said:
You can not use because as the reason for the existence of A AND B.
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I hadn’t. I was merely trying to get a simple notion concerning basic logic to be admitted by others. No new theories. Nothing extravagant. Basic fundamental common sense logic.
geometer said:
Jesus did not ask you or anyone to discover God through pure logic. Since pure logic does not bring forth gods, you do not know yet what he expected you to know…
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I am already seriously “entangled” with Jesus. I don’t need the lectures. Thanks anyway.
 
James_S_Saint said:
I know that. I was trying to make the point to others that ALL logic argument are about one thing being true BE CAUSE of another thing, hence the “be-cause” in my statement.

I hadn’t. I was merely trying to get a simple notion concerning basic logic to be admitted by others. No new theories. Nothing extravagant. Basic fundamental common sense logic.

I am already seriously “entangled” with Jesus. I don’t need the lectures. Thanks anyway.
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Well, thanks for your reply, you seem to be making progress of some kind. Bravo!

My first study of logic was in highschool. We studied boolean switching logic. It was a study of static logic.

The becauses of logic are due to the deductive functions of logic:

AND, OR, NOT, [IF(f),THEN(x)]

Logic is not about being at all, it is simply about rudimentary functionality. Switching can do the job, and on many levels binary switching is completely trivial,…
 
James S Saint,

To answer you, no, logic is not dependant on everything having a cause. The statement “Everything has a cause.” is merely a proposition that fits into the framework of logic. Logic is a tool or method used to arrive at more truth claims that are not most basic and empirically verified.

Take for example:
  1. All humans have DNA.
  2. I am a human.
    Conclusion: I have DNA.
This is a logical argument. The propositions 1 and 2 can be either true or false. If either are false, then the conclusion according to this line of reasoning is false. As you can see, there is no cause and effect in the above argument. You can say, “Well, you have DNA be-cause all humans have DNA.” (like you have been saying in other posts) but that is mere word play and has nothing to do with empirical cause and effect.

Since “Everything has a cause.” is a proposition, it can either be true or false which is agreed or disagreed upon by the people involved in the argument based on evidence or another argument that is based on evidence. But since it is a universal claim in a domain (that also needs to be defined) it is more difficult to prove than disprove because to prove it you would need to show that everything individually has a cause, but to disprove it you only need to find one example in the domain.

So as you can hopefully see, no, logic is not dependant on cause and effect.
 
Geeezz…

By the cause of
a) All humans have DNA. and
b) I am a human,

I can conclude that I am human.
 
James_S_Saint said:
I am talking about real and true logic, not someone’s attempt at logic. Someone presuming that this must be true due to that false assumption, is not using real and true logic because he has accepted a false premise.

The system of real logic requires that you accept that all things have a cause whether you know what that cause is or not. Logic is pointless if you do not accept that principle.

EVERY statement in logic is really, “be-cause of A and B then C must be”.

So do you accept that anything real must have a logical cause? If not, you are not believing in real logic.

…and later, I can explain that electron thing if you care.
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Honestly, I disagree with all that.

I don’t think there is any one “true” logic… I think logic is just the rules we use to make sense of reality.

I’m not sure why logic would require a cause for all things… logic is simply an abstraction of reality. You might as well be saying that logic requires all fruit to be orange. Well, it just doesn’t work that way.

Your “real logic” it seems is your own standard for a logical system that meets your own requirements for how you think the world works. That’s fine for you, but remember that just because you logically deduct that a train isn’t coming doesn’t mean it won’t squash you.

I’d love to hear you explain the electron thing, especially considering I’ve not heard of any explanation for it beyond the one I gave. Do tell. I also noticed you didn’t give a citation for why quantum entanglement would break the uncertainty principal as you previously claimed.
 
James_S_Saint said:
Geeezz…

By the cause of
a) All humans have DNA. and
b) I am a human,

I can conclude that I am human.
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I can just as easily say:

By the cause of
a) I have red hair
b) I have 10 fingers

I can conclude that I am a desk lamp.

Now, of course that is false… my point is that you’re using categorizations and previous assertions to then make a claim that might or might not be true. You’re taking the claim as true and thus asserting that logic is somehow only logic if it’s true, but the claim is not always true and we can’t always know of it’s true or not. A logical assertion attempts to describes reality, but it’s often wrong. Logically it appears the sun revolves around the Earth for instance.
 
James_S_Saint said:
Geeezz…

By the cause of
a) All humans have DNA. and
b) I am a human,

I can conclude that I am human.
Click to expand...
Cause and Effect is not equal to “because.”

I realized that this is probably why “Therefore,” is usually used before conclusions in logic. So people don’t get confused. :confused:
 
These things being true, we now ask if any religion in the world describes such a Creator. The answer to this is yes: the God of the Bible fits this profile perfectly. He is supernatural (Genesis 1:1), powerful (Jeremiah 32:17), eternal (Psalm 90:2), omnipresent (Psalm 139:7), timeless/changeless (Malachi 3:6), immaterial (John 5:24), personal (Genesis 3:9), necessary (Colossians 1:17), infinite/singular (Jeremiah 23:24, Deuteronomy 6:4), diverse yet with unity (Matthew 28:19), intelligent (Psalm 147:4-5), purposeful (Jeremiah 29:11), moral (Daniel 9:14), and caring (1 Peter 5:6-7).

But refuting Freud is the God of the Bible who affirms His existence and the fact that a judgment is indeed coming for those who know within themselves the truth that He exists but suppress that truth (Romans 1:20). But for those who respond to the evidence that a Creator does indeed exist, He offers the way of salvation that has been accomplished through His Son, Jesus Christ: “John 1:12-13 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13 NAS).
 
sdtouchton said:
These things being true, we now ask if any religion in the world describes such a Creator. The answer to this is yes: the God of the Bible fits this profile perfectly. He is supernatural (Genesis 1:1), powerful (Jeremiah 32:17), eternal (Psalm 90:2), omnipresent (Psalm 139:7), timeless/changeless (Malachi 3:6), immaterial (John 5:24), personal (Genesis 3:9), necessary (Colossians 1:17), infinite/singular (Jeremiah 23:24, Deuteronomy 6:4), diverse yet with unity (Matthew 28:19), intelligent (Psalm 147:4-5), purposeful (Jeremiah 29:11), moral (Daniel 9:14), and caring (1 Peter 5:6-7).

But refuting Freud is the God of the Bible who affirms His existence and the fact that a judgment is indeed coming for those who know within themselves the truth that He exists but suppress that truth (Romans 1:20). But for those who respond to the evidence that a Creator does indeed exist, He offers the way of salvation that has been accomplished through His Son, Jesus Christ: “John 1:12-13 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13 NAS).
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The topic was what argument would convince an atheist. I’m pretty sure referencing the bible ain’t gonna do it. 😉
 
sdtouchton said:
These things being true, we now ask if any religion in the world describes such a Creator. The answer to this is yes: the God of the Bible fits this profile perfectly.
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So does Ilúvatar in The Silmarillion.
 
James_S_Saint said:
As is the custom it seems, you are grossly presuming.

I am not agnostic for one. And nothing of me has been “revealed” as you put it other than my refusal to go to step 2 until someone has the courage to accept step 1. I haven’t made any arguments or theories about anything. I can’t get that far.

The non-Christians want to say, “well, maybe 2+2=4 but i don’t know, let me see where it is going to lead first. Maybe 2+2 is really 3.5 and we just haven’t discovered it yet.”

It is pointless to pretend a reasoning discussion in the environment of total insecurity.
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So let say everything has a cause, how does that = there is a god.
 
1holycatholic said:
There cannot be an infinite regress of efficient causes, there necessarily must be an initial uncaused efficient cause.
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That doesn’t answer the question. Even it was true, why should this initial uncaused cause be a god and in particular your God? Why not Ptah, why not the Big Bang itself, why not just an initial uncaused cause?
 
AnAtheist said:
That doesn’t answer the question. Even it was true, why should this initial uncaused cause be a god and in particular your God? Why not Ptah, why not the Big Bang itself, why not just an initial uncaused cause?
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Your problem is with the nomenclature?
 
1holycatholic said:
Your problem is with the nomenclature?
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Partially. The term “God” means much more than just “initial uncaused cause”. I suppose every Christian agrees to that. It takes as much faith to step from this cause to the Christian God as to believe in Him in the first place. So the initial-cause argument is, if at all, a very weak argument for a specific god.
 
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