Tenspace

Umm.. I'm not making myself clear, I guess. What I mean, specifically, is: I believe that God is an invention of the Bible, which is an invention of a group of scholars in a middle-eastern tribal population totally unfamiliar with modern concepts like the scientific method, manned flight, or contraception. I am asking you for *what you believe* is proof of the existence of God, outside of (and preferably time-concurrent to) the knowledge gained from the Holy Bible, King James Version. I am not asking for Creed lyrics, Pascal's diary, or anything modern.
(And, you would stand better fare with this group if you invoked some genuine science, not just one-word answers. Tell us your hypotheses to back up your statements.)
Let me rephrase: If the bible is the *only* Word of God, then wouldn't you have to first validate the Bible in order to validate what's inside it? Does this logic make sense? I'd like to hear from others, too.

I will review previous answers, then.

Tenspace

Jesse

yguy:
I am sure that I'm not a butterfly dreaming of being a man.

Jesse:
Even a sentient butterfly, perhaps one created "in God's image?"

yguy:
Yes, because I know you made it up.

I don't want to hear about things that you "know" only in the practical sense of "know beyond a reasonable doubt", I want only to hear about what you "know" in the absolute, logically-impossibe-that-you're-wrong sense of 1+1=2. For example, is it logically impossible that even though I make something up, it could also be true? For example, suppose I make up a story where aliens are living on a base on Pluto...is it logically impossible that that could actually be true, and that I happened to hit on the truth by dumb luck? Likewise, is it logically impossible that a person could have a dream where he's a sentient butterfly, and another butterfly in the dream speculates that maybe he's actually a human having a dream of being a butterfly? If not, I don't see how you can "know" with total certainty that you're not a sentient butterfly having a dream of being a man.

Jesse:
Well, how about this--would it be possible that God designed the universe in such a way that all material systems are conscious to some extent (panpsychism), and all have some limited degree of free will (perhaps accounting for apparent quantum randomness) and some limited access to the "platonic truths" which in your view stem from God's mind, like the truth that murder is wrong or that 1+1=2? Perhaps God could also set up the rules of this universe so that He knew in advance that the process of brain complexification due to evolution by RM&NS would lead to organisms with higher and higher levels of consciousness and therefore better and better access to these truths. In this way one could simultaneously believe that we are made "in His image" but also that we evolved through RM&NS.

yguy:
I don't know what RM&NS is, but I suggest that more prima facie evidence exists for devolution than evolution, which supposedly took millions of years to advance a species, whereas we have seen entire cultures devolve hideously within the space a few hundred years. Endemic to the evolutionary model is the idea that by reacting to physical threats with a "fight or flight" response, members of a species become more viable. The biggest, baddest predators are able to pass on their genes, and those on the lower end of the food chain who are able to evade predators best get to do likewise. This, of course is the same dynamic which held sway in Stalinist Russia...which leads me to believe that the first humans would, by the very means that presumably created them, have destroyed themselves in short order under such a scenario.

RM&NS = random mutation and natural selection. And again, for the purposes of this discussion I don't care about what the actual empirical evidence indicates (if you want a debate about the evidence for or against evolution, go the the Evolution&Creation forum). I'm only interested in things you know a priori with the same kind of absolute certainty that you know 1+1=2.

Jesse:
Presumably you would think this scenario is pretty unlikely, but do you also think it is "impossible" in the sense that 1+1=3 is impossible?

yguy:
Maybe not, but the whole thing seems to hinge on a certain level brain complexity being a necessary component of human consciousness, which is unsubstantiated.

Don't care if it's unsubstantiated or not. I only want to know whether you are absolutely certain it couldn't be true, or if there is some finite chance in your mind (say, 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 %) that it could be true.

yguy

Proving God's existence is impossible, because you would need an objective standard by which to judge such a proof, and none exists, or ever will.

If you mean evidence, it's everywhere you look. You see good in some people, do you not? You think they created that good themselves? Of course not. It would be like saying a flower contrived its own beauty.

How on earth would hypotheses back up my statements?

The logic is fine, but the premise is false, as I said earlier.

Lobstrosity

Well let's see. Two is defined as 1+1 and three is defined as 1+1+1, so 2 + 1 is by definition equivalent to 1+1 + 1 (please note that this is a trivial relation), which is defined as three. Yeah, it seems this doesn't do anything to bypass the original problem you had with 1+1=2. I think you can see this but are simply choosing not to because it destroys your analogy for explaining how you can know God exists without actually having to put any thought into it. Mathematical relations can be proved via predefined axioms to be tautologies with regards to those axioms, so your knowledge of them is quite trivial. They do not explain how one knows God exists.

Of course it is, but please, you've repeated yourself quite enough--you don't need to keep giving the same bogus arguments over and over. That's why you can no longer justify the relation 1+1=2 and are futilely trying to add complexity (ooh, I can add one to both sides and now it's not a tautology!). This is what you said, you just seem unwilling to admit it (or to be unaware of it, for some baffling reason).

yguy

Something in general, perhaps, but not this particular idea.

For all I know, aliens could well be living on a base on Pluto.

No, but I don't see how that is comparable to the original example, since it is all predicated on a person's dream.

Here's another interesting bit on an individual level: how did the capacity for embarassment evolve - even the capacity to be embarassed when no one else is around? Where else in the animal kingdom is there such a thing?

None. I'm aware that none of this logically excludes evolution with respect to humankind, but it is such observations which brought me to the realization of the truth of the matter.

Kimpatsu

Like I said, check out The Math Forum for details.

yguy

That's a lie.

Since you insist upon attributing to me arguments I have not made, further discussion is pointless.

yguy

They have proof of the postulates there? And proofs of the postulates on which THOSE postulates are based?

Kimpatsu

Would you understand it if they did?
Go read the page for yourself.

Jesse

Jesse:
For example, suppose I make up a story where aliens are living on a base on Pluto...is it logically impossible that that could actually be true, and that I happened to hit on the truth by dumb luck?

yguy:
For all I know, aliens could well be living on a base on Pluto.

But that's something I just made up too. My point is that if you're going to say that you being a sentient butterfly having a dream of being a man is absolutely impossible, your justification for thinking it's impossible can't just be "because I know you made it up."

Jesse:
Likewise, is it logically impossible that a person could have a dream where he's a sentient butterfly, and another butterfly in the dream speculates that maybe he's actually a human having a dream of being a butterfly?

yguy:
No, but I don't see how that is comparable to the original example, since it is all predicated on a person's dream.

Yes, and the original example was predicated on the dream of a sentient butterfly, where he dreamed he was a human and another human in the dream (me) speculated that he was actually a sentient butterfly having a dream of being a human. Even if that's not very likely, how is it logically impossible? Is there anything inherently impossible about sentient butterflies (if you can accept the possibility of aliens on Pluto, I don't see how sentient butterflies would be any more outlandish?) Is there anything inherently impossible about the idea that your conscious experience is just a dream, and in a minute you'll wake up into the "real world" which may differ in certain ways from the dreamworld?

Again, I don't want arguments about why this isn't likely to be true (such as, 'you can't read text in dreams'), I just want to know whether it's logically possible.

Jesse:
I'm only interested in things you know a priori with the same kind of absolute certainty that you know 1+1=2.

yguy:
Here's another interesting bit on an individual level: how did the capacity for embarassment evolve - even the capacity to be embarassed when no one else is around? Where else in the animal kingdom is there such a thing?

Again, I don't want to debate empirical facts here, just what we can know a priori with absolute certainty. This might be an interesting topic for the Evolution & Creation forum, though.

Jesse:
Don't care if it's unsubstantiated or not. I only want to know whether you are absolutely certain it couldn't be true, or if there is some finite chance in your mind (say, 0. 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%)
that it could be true.

yguy:
None. I'm aware that none of this logically excludes evolution with respect to humankind, but it is such observations which brought me to the realization of the truth of the matter.

But if you formed this opinion based on "observations" it obviously wasn't something you could know a priori with absolute certainty. Do you see the difference? I can think up plenty of arguments that tell me I can be sure beyond all reasonable doubt that the earth isn't flat, or that all the people around me aren't aardvarks wearing human suits, but I don't have the kind of absolute certainty about this that I do of 1+1=2. If you can't see the very basic difference between these two kinds of knowledge, then this discussion can't go anywhere, so we may as well drop it.