Jack the Bodiless

This does not answer my Big Question. I want to know why something CLAIMED to be metaphysically necessary (i.e. the J/C God) should be ACCEPTED as metaphysically necessary. I want to know why something ELSE claimed as metaphysically necessary (i.e. Allah, the Great Green Arkleseizure, the Invisible Pink Unicorn etc) is NOT accepted as actually metaphysically necessary. Even if the J/C God exists and is metaphysically necessary, I want to know why OTHER entities with the property of being able to create and sustain a Universe do NOT exist instead of the J/C God.

Why is God not an invisible pink female quadruped with a horn?

As for Big Bang cosmology: I have no problem with the belief that all the mass/energy in the Universe was created in the Big Bang, or that the spacetime continuum itself was created in the Big Bang. But the Big Bang can itself be uncaused. In fact, this is implied by the theory that time itself began in the Big Bang: if so, there could not have been a preceding event which "caused" it.
True. However, merely avoiding this by declaring "God is necessary" will be perceived as ducking a Big Question: why is THIS God necessary, and not some other one? The answer, apparently, is "he just IS".
Yes, maybe God- is vulnerable to Kryptonite. But there is no reason to assume this. God- can be just as powerful and invulnerable, from our perspective, as God*. For that reason, it's possible that the authors of the Bible were writing about a genuine God- who simply didn't want to admit that he was caused.

Philip Osborne

"So if we call the conjunction of all those properties P, (Ex)P(x) is a tautology (true in all possible worlds) ? *)"

You seem to be suggesting that all necessary statements are analytically true. This is not immediately obvious. At any rate, there seem to be good reasons to think that analyticity does not give a complete account of necessity.

"What would these properties look like...."

I can't tell you what these properties "look like." But this seems like the fallacy of neglected onus; my position is said to be obligated to defend an assertion which it actually does not have to. What justification is there for asserting that if there are necessarily instantiated properties, we have to know what their exact metaphysical composition is?

"....and how would you deduce (Ex)P(x) from the axioms of logic?"

Suppose q represents the proposition "God exists." I will use "L" as the modal operator for necessity.

1. q => Lq [Anselm's principle]
2. ¬Lq => ¬q [Contrapositive of (1)]
3. L(¬Lq => ¬q) [Necessitation axiom on (2)]
4. L¬Lq => L¬q [Distribution axiom on (3)]
5. ¬Lq => L¬Lq [S5 axiom]
6. ¬Lq => L¬q [Hypothetical syllogism, from 4, 5]
7. Lq v ¬Lq [Excluded middle]
8. Lq v L¬q [Substitution, from 6, 7]
9. ¬L¬q [Intuitive postulate: God's existence is possible]
10. Lq [Disjunctive syllogism, from 8, 9]
11. Lq => q [Modal axiom M]
12. q [Modus ponens, from 10, 11]

Of course, this is not definitive proof of the existence of God; we all know that (9) is highly controversial. However, this does tell that if God existed, there would be a way, in principle, to logically deduce God's existence (though as with your previous statement, I hardly see a requirement that all necessary truths be deduced from the axioms of logic).

"This does not answer my Big Question. I want to know why something CLAIMED to be metaphysically necessary (i.e. the J/C God) should be ACCEPTED as metaphysically necessary."

This was not actually your Big Question. Your Big question was why God, if He existed, would be exempt from questions such as "What caused God?, etc." And the thesis of metaphysical necessity, even if it is false, answers that question.

"Why is God not an invisible pink female quadruped with a horn?"

I have argued before that properties arbitrarily taken from features of our world, such as "pinkness," "having a horn" etc. simply entail contingency. For instance, a horn is contingent upon its molecular structure, the conditions that allow it to exist, etc. I can't get more in-depth into this argument, however, since I am pressed for time as I am writing this.

"But the Big Bang can itself be uncaused. In fact, this is implied by the theory that time itself began in the Big Bang: if so, there could not have been a preceding event which "caused" it."

Again, this makes the assumption that causes are always temporally prior to their effects. The only argument I have seen for this assumption is that if this were not so, we would have no criterion for how to differentiate between cause and effect. However, in the case of God, there clearly is such a way. God, as a conceptual matter, cannot be caused and therefore cannot be the effect of any cause-effect relationship He enters into (another reason for accepting God* over God).

"True. However, merely avoiding this by declaring "God is necessary" will be perceived as ducking a Big Question: why is THIS God necessary, and not some other one? The answer, apparently, is "he just IS"."

The only way "some other God" would not be necessary, if one conceives of Anselm's principle as being true of all of them, is if they are impossible. If there are other necessary beings, the question of which one is God becomes a question of which one, if any, is worthy of worship, and that is a theological question.

Sincerely,

Philip

[ August 23, 2002: Message edited by: Philip Osborne ]</p>

Volker

Hallo Philip!

What I find rather confusing is that there are still people around who think that you can use pure reasoning to find out wether a god exists or not.

Anselms statement can be reduced to: When god exists, it is necessary that he exists. But this is true for you, too, and even for myself.

Can you prove the existence of anything by logic alone? You can only disprove the existence of something, ala "There is a biggest prime number" (which, of course, is false).

This is a sort of an asymmetry in nature: You can't prove that something exists (not even the world itself), but you can disprove that something can exist (i. e. it is contradictory).

To prove something exists we have to rely on empirical data.

Jack the Bodiless

...Well, OK. But the thread title implies that multiple Big Questions are permitted.

With regard to causality, this leaves the Big Question of why theists invoke an uncaused God rather than accepting an uncaused Universe.

And, for those who insist it's the J/C God, we have the second Big Question of why it's the J/C God. I guess this is actually two Big Questions: "why do YOU insist it's the J/C God?", and "even if it's the J/C God, WHY is it the J/C God and not some other God?".
If causes are not always temporally prior to their effects, then that opens up the possibility of a self-caused Universe rather than an uncaused one (including the time-travel scenario I mentioned earlier: maybe advanced humans from the distant future made the Universe).

HRG

Gödel's completeness theorem is an excellent reason. It says that the propositions which are true in every universe (i.e. necessarily true) are exactly the tautologies (i.e. analytically true).
But if you cannot present those properties, I have no idea what the three letters G-O-D stand for. "God" is certainly not a symbol of formal logic; it has to be defined by giving a set of properties, together with the claim that there is exactly one object with those properties.
Because how could you claim otherwise that they are fulfilled by what you define as "God" ?
I assume that you claim that Anselm's principle follows from the definition of q and of "God".

Let q1 be "God-1 exists", where God-1 is "a creator of the universe which exists necessarily and is necessarily identical to my cat". Then Anselm's principle would follow for q1 as well - by definition; and the rest of the argument runs the same way for q1

To your knowledge, has S5 ever shown to be consistent ? If not, then any proposition whatsoever can be deduced from it.
IMHO, your chain of deduction should be used as an argumentum ad absurdum. Since the existence of all kinds of necessars beings can be shown along your line (see my q1 above), I would argue that 9. is refuted, as leading to a contradiction: there are no necessarily existing beings.

The point is of course that the "God" envisioned in your proof is not just omnipotent, creator of the universe, eternal etc.: he is necessarily existing, necessarily omnipotent etc. (else you could not conclude 1.) While I agree that an entity of the first kind cannot be excluded, I submit that the concept of an entity who enjoys existence plus all those properties necessarily may be logically inconsistent.

Thus 9. cannot be called an intuitive postulate; in fact, your argument indicates that it is false.

&lt;snip&gt;

regards,
HRG.

Infinity Lover

Those questions (What happens to us when we die? Why are we here? What is life? etc.) are ancient. When mankind wanted them answered way back then (perhaps as far back as 5,000 years when we, ironicly, first started playing with fire) that urge resulted in poetic, supernatural reflections of the subconcious. Our fears and desires, wondering how we want our wishes fullfilled) Those answers evolved, became less abstract (still abstract, but less) and were subsequently passed on from generation to generation. We don't like being riddiculed for talking to a ghost, so a moral code where the religious ways are not to be questioned became an intergral part of it.

The mind wants questions answered, but it doesn't like its answers questioned. Once the bug is in our brain, we don't like people compromising it's make belief integrity. We end up 'defending our beliefs'. Ever heard of fact-conflicts? Whales are mammals POW! You're right, they're not big fish BOOM!

(For different answers to those ancient questions by the way, check out my post on philosophy. "the word of infinity" See it as food for thought.)
Nothing does not exist, so there's ALWAYS something, always has been, always will be.

(for some reason there's no problem with a god that's always been there, but an existence that's always been there is beyond our ability to comprehend. Guess that's because we believe time's a realm in stead of a meassurement of movement. Everybody thinks a singular 'moment' can only be static, even though we're all in it, and look... it's in motion. And so is your clock.)

[ August 24, 2002: Message edited by: Infinity Lover ]</p>

Philip Osborne

"What I find rather confusing is that there are still people around who think that you can use pure reasoning to find out wether a god exists or not."

This is merely an inductive objection to ontological arguments; it denies their conclusion without engaging any of their premisses. Imagine if I denied Godel's incompleteness theorem on the grounds that "most attempts to prove incompleteness have failed, therefore probably this one does also."

"With regard to causality, this leaves the Big Question of why theists invoke an uncaused God rather than accepting an uncaused Universe."

I have already argued that the universe is the type of entity that can possibly be caused. And when something can possibly be caused, it seems reasonable to assume it does have a cause and ask what that cause might be. On the other hand, it is a conceptual truth that God cannot be caused.

"If causes are not always temporally prior to their effects, then that opens up the possibility of a self-caused Universe rather than an uncaused one...."

I don't see how this is so. Even if temporal priority is ruled out, there is still the question of logical priority. A thing's existence must come logically prior to it taking any action and so no actio it takes can bring about its existence.

"Gödel's completeness theorem is an excellent reason. It says that the propositions which are true in every universe (i.e. necessarily true) are exactly the tautologies (i.e. analytically true)."

To my admittedly limited knowledge, Gödel's theorem showed that every proposition of first-order logic which is true in every model of that logic is provable in it. How does this conclusion lead to the statement that every necessary truth is analytically true?

My other question regarding this is whether or not you are using "tautology" in the sense of having every truth table value as being true or in the sense of linguistic tautologies, such as "All bachelors are unmarried men." It seems to me that Gödel's theorem uses tautologies in the former sense but your argument requires it be used in the latter.

"And, for those who insist it's the J/C God, we have the second Big Question of why it's the J/C God. I guess this is actually two Big Questions: "why do YOU insist it's the J/C God?", and "even if it's the J/C God, WHY is it the J/C God and not some other God?"."

I have not argued we can arrive at "The Judeo-Christian God" exists from answering the question, "Why does the universe exist?" If this is possible at all, it will take argument of a very rigorous sort.

"But if you cannot present those properties, I have no idea what the three letters G-O-D stand for. "God" is certainly not a symbol of formal logic; it has to be...."

I will take God to have the properties traditionally ascribed to it by monotheism, which at minimum includes omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence.

"Let q1 be "God-1 exists", where God-1 is "a creator of the universe which exists necessarily and is necessarily identical to my cat". Then Anselm's principle would...."

Yes, Anselm's principle would be true of God-1, but premiss (9) would not be. Allow me to quote myself: "I have argued before that properties arbitrarily taken from features of our world, such as "pinkness," "having a horn" etc. simply entail contingency. For instance, a horn is contingent upon its molecular structure, the conditions that allow it to exist, etc. I can't get more in-depth into this argument, however, since I am pressed for time as I am writing this."

It seems pretty clear that your cat has properties which entail contingency. However, the other properties of God-1 entail necessity. Since you reject the essentialist distinction between essential properties, it follows that if God-1 exists at every possible world, God has all and only the same exact properties at every world. Since God-1 has "necessary existence," it follows that God-1 exists at every possible world. The property of "identity to HRG's cat" (I will call this "F") is contingent, and so does not obtain in every possible world. But F obtains in every possible world in which God-1 obtains. Hence, F obtains in every possible world. But this contradicts our assumption that F is contingent. Hence, God-1 leads to a contradiction. A similar line of criticism can be made, in my opinion, for any arbitrary feature of our world taken to be an ostensible parallel to the ontological argument.

Sincerely,

Philip

Jobar

"Why is God not an invisible pink female quadruped with a horn?"

Why... She *is*, of course.

Seriously, I cannot see logic ever answering the EoG question, because logic only applies to clearly defined entities and propositions, and God is not clearly defined. (The 3-O version most monotheists assert is self-contradictory; vis., the Problem of Evil, and several other internal problems with absolutes.)

While reading this thread, another interpretation of the first line of the Tao Te Ching occurred to me-
"The Cause that can be known is not the Ultimate Cause."

hinduwoman

Theists usually put God beyond the reach of logic anyway: he can only be felt and realized, not explained by reasoning.

rainbow walking

Hi Jamie,
It appears your question has escalated into the ontological arena. There is no logical reason allowing anything said to EXIST to be exempted from these questions. The modal logic of necessity is just a very clever attempt to reverse the metaphor of the dog chasing its tail. By re-working the argument to create a tail chasing the dog, the theist imagines he has an answer that eliminates the cascading effect induced by the WHY's and WHEREFOR's. The problem resides in the metaphysics of EXISTENCE itself.

An EXISTENT entity who is claimed to be both necessary and non-contingent is easily edged onto the slippery slope of contradiction when pointing out that the claim of EXISTENCE of said being implies and incurs all the same problems inferred in any claim for EXISTENCE attributed to any other thing, entity or event. If everything that EXISTS has been observed to have a cause, require the time to do so, and be contingent, then even a supernatural being that is claimed to EXIST must be contingent on all that's implied in the concept of EXISTENCE.

With a little careful consideration one can easily formulate an argument to disarm the rationale that there must have EXISTED an uncaused first cause. If such an entity truly EXISTED he is no less contingent on EXISTENCE, and all that implies(especially time), than any other EXISTENT entity. After all, anything said to EXIST must have the TIME to do so. Conversely, any claim of a time frame, whether it be eternal, infinite or otherwise, must imply that even TIME has to EXIST as a corrollary of EXISTENCE, so you now have two axioms of BEING (ontology) that irrefutably deny the non-contingency of a GOD. And once you negate non-contingency, necessity vanishes like a puff of wind in a hurricane.

But your common everyday household theist has simply chosen to suspend logic at this point and let that be the end of it. To date, no effective set has been established that sidesteps the Big Questions...just religiously intepretive denominations that anticipate it to be true based on their "say-so". The metaphysical arguments being put forth today to defend and isolate a god from the Big Questions are so easily diffused one wonders why anyone would waste their time conjuring them up. The only true necessity to maintain the god concept is indeed the "double standard", which produces the effect of the "dog" sitting on its tail or, as they say, "dog-matism".

[ August 24, 2002: Message edited by: rainbow walking ]</p>