Tristan Scott

Ion,

Again you are saying that the innacuracies in the bible prove that god doesen't exist. Do you know how illogical that is?

I read that George Washington really didn't chop down a cherry tree and tell the truth about it. I also read that he didn't really throw a coin across the river. By your logic that would prove that George Washington didn't exist.

HRG

Santa Claus is defined as the entity which is described in the myth.

HRG.

Denshuu

You're avoiding the points made, Tristan. If something is defined as having two contradictory properties, it doesn't exist, be it natural or supernatural. Where you got this idea that supernatural entities are "immune to being disproven" I'm not sure, but I'd appreciate it if you tried to back that up with something. AGain, here's another example of proving that something does not exist:

If a square circle exists, it has four sides.
If a square circle exists, it does not have four sides.
A figure cannot have four sides and not have four sides simultaniously.
Therefore, a square circle does not exist.

Even placing your "supernatural immunity" sidestep to this analogy, you would have no teneble way to dispute this because square circles, by definition, are not supernatural.

RogerLeeCooke

As logic: First, you don't need statement #1. Second, I'm not sure what is meant by "Exists" with a capital E. Third, Statement 3 does follow from statement 2 by substitution, and statement 4 follows from the definition of God and statement 3.

OK, the devil is in the application to the real world. As *words* 2,3,4 and the definition of God imply the proposition "God Exists". But does this existence have any meaning in the real world? It's subject to the counterargument of Kant's famous "100 Thalers" from his Critique of Pure Reason. In other words, it's a variant of the ontological argument, given originally by St. Anselm and demolished many times. But it keeps coming back again. Bertrand Russell once reported that, as a young student at Cambridge he once had an epiphany telling him that this argument was correct. He had gone out to buy a tin of tobacco, and he threw the tin up into the air and exclaimed, "Great Scott! The ontological argument is sound!"

Spinoza gave a variant of the argument, defining God as "being actually infinite", and concluded that God necessarily existed, since "otherwise his essence [definition] does not involve existence, which is absurd." This is a superfine kind of God he's got there, and his contemporaries called him an atheist because of it.

[ July 13, 2002: Message edited by: RogerLeeCooke ]</p>

Ion

If more claims about Washington are correct than incorrect, then he existed.

Which one claim in the Bible, defining 'God' is correct, Tristan?
I still haven't seen one.

I only see false claims, and I gave two huge examples.

Ion

Also Tristan, I would like to consider this post by Denshuu:
Your example about Washington chopping a cherry tree, doesn't contradict any definition of Washington, and chopping a cherry tree is minor.

In the two Bible example I gave, major contradictions hinder the definition of 'God'.

One example is that 'God' created the universe, deemed it "...very good.", but it's not.
It is akin to Denshuu defining a circle that cannot be done by contradictory simultaneous properties.

Also, like Denshuu wrote, I would like you Tristan, when something is defined, to remain coherent with ensuing logic, and not to resort to 'supernatural immunity', for which there is no proof, but is an 'apology' for inconsistency.

[ July 13, 2002: Message edited by: Ion ]</p>

Philosoft

I thought we were talking about Santa Claus?

<strong> Dude, get over yourself and pay attention to the topic. You asked for a sound proof of non-existence. Mageth gave you one. Nobody ever said the same framework can be used to prove the non-existence of all conceptions of God.

Theli

Maybe I'm out of line here, but what I thought should be considered to exist is that wich is most likely based on the observation at hand.
Not that wich has not been disproven.

If we would consider everything that hasn't been proven/disproven as existing (or possibly existing) we leave the realm of science and logic and enter the realm of fantasy and make believe, ruining any chances to advance in terms of knowledge.

We get disputes between godbeliefs (for instance) that are just as unlikely, but haven't been considered false yet because noone has disproven them successfully.

Isn't there something wrong with this picture?
How can anyone gain knowledge from thinking like that?

I would say that to ask someone to disprove an unproven claim would be like asking someone to kill a dead animal.

Perhaps I'm just talking out of my ass.

RogerLeeCooke

Not at all. Your are right on target. In another thread I used the example of a proposition I haven't disproved: "The walls of my house are filled with gold doubloons." Obviously, this proposition, if true, is of great interest to me. But merely imagining the gold doubloons doesn't make them real, even if I haven't disproved their existence.

Automaton

This is an arbitrary definition that analytically loads existence into a concept. This cannot be. Plus, this is not the definition of God, but the author probably wants us to assume that this is only highlighting a part of the whole definition for the sake of argumentation.
This appears to be trying to establish an axiom, that is required to enforce the premises of the below "argument", but is not actually continued on in the below premises. In a word, very bad argumentative form. 1 is false, if a proposition exists, nothing says that proposition has to have logical coherence, or even have the ability to be comprehended by finite minds (can we conceive of an infinite plane, or a 7 dimensional shape?) I think the author is trying to bastardize modal propositional logic, only by using "conceivable" in place of the "possible" or &lt;&gt; operator. The connection between the two is meager. But p -&gt; &lt;&gt;p is an actual modal rule, as p must represent an actualized proposition in modal logic. 2 is simply the modus tollens converse of 1.
This is, if the nonexistence of the being that cannot be conceived not to exist, cannot be conceived, then the being which cannot be conceived not to exist exists. This is just a pointless repetition of terms. If we say q = all of God's properties besides "necessity", it would be the case that ~C~q, following the above, it would state ~C~~C~q, which cancels to ~CC~q, which cancels to ~C~q.
Now, let's say, if one can arbitrarily define God as a being that cannot fail to exist, let's say I arbitrarily define a being that cannot fail to exist, yet knows (knowledge implies truth) that there is no God. Following the same "reasoning", it would necessarily be true that God does not exist.
This argument is missing a premise. It would require "~C~G" before this to be a valid modus ponens.