K

Taffy:

Millions have also claimed experiences with the Greco-Roman gods, the Hindu gods, and the Norse gods. Do you believe that somehow that makes those gods real? Millions have had experiences with ghosts, vampires, and gnomes. Do those experiences imply the existence of those entities. Many have had alien abduction experiences and visitations from succubi. How real do you think those are? Millions have had amazingly accurate life forcasts from astrologers and psychics. Does that make them any more real?

You can replace the IPU with any of these other supernatural explanations of natural events. Then the comparison with God should be obvious.

Taffy Lewis

Another important different between the concept of God and the concept of the invisible, pink unicorn is expressed by Thomas Morris in his book Our Idea of God. He says:

Morris means that the theism/atheism debate turns on the question of what is the most fundamental aspects of reality. Is reality fundamentally impersonal or is it fundamentally personal? What is at the ground floor of reality (assuming there is a ground floor)?

Theism is based upon a distinction between personal and impersonal objects or states. This is a distinction that people naturally make. For the theist, reality has at its ground floor a personal being. And the atheist must at least refrain from believing this.

However, I am not aware of an invisible, pink unicorn/non-invisible, non-pink, nonunicorn distinction being made by anyone. Clearly, no one seriously considers whether or not reality is fundamentally unicorn-like rather than non-unicorn-like.

Autonemesis

I don't accept your contention that there is no evidence that some versions of God do not exist.

Some people tell me God is everywhere. I look under the table, and find no God. Therefore, the God-that-is-everywhere does not exist. That he is absent from under the table proves he is not everywhere, and so cannot exist as described. Perhaps some other god exists that is everywhere but under the table. But that would not be the god that was claimed to exist.

I can come to this conclusion with as much confidence as I can conclude that there is no planet orbiting the Sun closer than Mercury. I looked. There was no planet there. I've proved its non-existence by looking where it was claimed to exist, and failed to find it.

Proof of the non-existence of God is obtained in the same manner. A theist claims God possesses a certain property or quality. If it's a statement from which an observational prediction can be made, then it is testable. If the test fails, the claim cannot be true, therefore a god with that property has been proven not to exist. If the statement cannot be construed to make an observational prediction, then it is not scientifically interesting. It might be philosophically interesting, but without a material, testable prediction, there can be no scientific approach to the claim.

luvluv

K:

Well, if you want to say that the vampire created the universe then we would be talking about different concepts of God. That's the point. God is sometimes evoked as an answer to questions that may be unknowable. If you want to use the vampire to answer these questions, then you have made the vampire God, and the vampire thus has the same value. But the existence of a vampire or a pink unicorn or whatever that does not claim any explanatory power (who did not create the universe) is an extraneous hypothesis. That God is the fundamental cause of existence is not an extraneous hypothesis so long as we don't know the cause of existence.

I'm not trying to argue for the existence of God here or offering any version of the cosmological argument. I'm just saying that comparing the existence of God to the existence of a vampire or a unicorn is a little disengenous until there really is absolutely no need for a God. That is far from the case at present.

K

luvluv:

What I'm trying to point out is that using a god, a vampire, or the IPU as the reason for existence buys nothing. Since the fact that the universe exists tells us absolutely nothing about what god might have created it, the IPU is JUST as likely the creator as the Christian God. Do we gain anything at all by assigning the creation of the universe to an invisible pink unicorn? I contend that we get the same benefit by assigning it to God.

Autonemesis

Luvluv, forgive me, but I have this feeling that if you and I were to dance, you'd step on my feet even while claiming to see them clearly and to be taking pains to avoid stepping on them. Or at least, that is an apt analogy to how I see in your preceeding paragraph.

You correctly understand why IPU has no explanatory power, and yet you seem unable to apply this same insight to God. The cause of existence is imputed to IPU. There'd be little point in bringing up IPU if that weren't one of its powers! Yet the claim that IPU caused existence has no explanatory power, because it begs the question, "What created the IPU?" If IPU is an inadequate explanation on the grounds that it begs the question then so is God, in exactly the same way. I don't understand how you fail to see the analogy, when what you've said seems to indicate that you understood it - until we swap "God" for "IPU", then your insight evaporates. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

luvluv

K:

FINE. But, if you are comparing the existence of God to a vampire or a unicorn who DIDN'T create the universe, then it is a totally false comparison. If you chose to give the IPU explanatory power than we are simply talking about theologically distinct Gods. But if you are saying that positing the existence of a God who can explain things for which we currently have no explanation is equivalent to positing the existence of an entirely extraneous being you would be totally unjustified.

Kind Bud:

That's fine. You're right. I'm sorry, I've never seen the IPU given explanatory powers before. Usually, I just hear people say that I don't believe in God for the same reason I don't believe in IPU's. If someone were to say that God was an IPU, I would have no definitive way of proving that was not the case.


It wouldn't beg the question if part of your definition of the IPU was that it was Necessary Being.

Autonemesis

The material universe is Necessary Being. There is no need to invoke God or IPU. If I "stop" looking for Ultimate Causes with the physical cosmos itself, that has just as much explanatory power as taking an extra leap, and only then "stopping" at God, or IPU. Except that I know the physical cosmos exists in a way that I can never know God exists, or the IPU exists. "Stopping" at the cosmos itself is much more parsimonious, because it requires no further assumptions, other than that "What you see is what you get."

Do you now understand the argument we've been trying to describe?

[ September 24, 2002: Message edited by: Kind Bud ]</p>

luvluv

Kind Bud:

This really does not apply because we know that this physical universe, and everything in it, does not exist necessarily. We know that because there was a time at which it came into existence. (the Big Bang). It is one of the first principles of logic that a Necessary Beings exists necessarily, i.e., it has no beginning. The fact that the universe had a begining automatically disqualifies it from being a Necessary Being. A Necessary Being has no potential to not exist, and anything which has the potential to not exist has a cause. The universe has a potential to not exist, since at a certain point it did not exist. Therefore, it is Contingent Being, that which does not hold it's cause within itself.

sir drinks-a-lot

One of the first principles of logic? I don't think so.

The term "necessity" in logic is only applied to propositions. Logic has nothing to do with beings.


Logic is only concerned with the relations between terms and the meaning of connectives and operators. It tells us nothing of the real world, since it is true in any possible world.