Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Garycgibson]

I wanted to write a post on the problem of atheism (and for some conversely theism). Atheism requires a proof comprehensively regarding reality of the non-existence of God, and that cannot be done any more than one can express all possible numbers, geometries and possible maths in some kind of order of non-order or non-cardinality.

One wonders about the relationship of mathematics to physics and expressions of the real construction of the Universe(s) and of what is the progenitor of Universes and temporality. The idea that time can be all wrapped up inside the Planck epoch with space, and that perhaps space has all potential energy then is fascinating, yet one believes that the relationship of mathematic's all-potential-maths that exist as pluralist pieces of an infinite whole or One isn't restricted to any finite context such a a very tiny bubble of space smaller than the Planck length.

As I believe God is a non-locality, so perhaps might one regard the One truly infinite mathematical series as non-local in character.

Logical sets comprising a theoretical ontology are implicity incapable of providing comprehensive evidence for atheism. Logical sets of trans-infinite concepts are trans-infinite only in relation to other infinite sets, none of which can be shown to contain all others including itself. Atheism would need to provide exhaustive data representation accurately regarding all Universal, trans-temporal and pre-Universal, before the big inflation and before any possible inflation or virtual loop, before anything ever was until the end of anything that could ever be (because of Wheeler's retro-causaliity idea) ways wherein God might exist to offer even minimal credibility (and it hasn't). Atheists to attain even a shred of credibility-for-others would need to demonstrate that human logic is capable of grasping the idea of God for-himself and negate that idea.

In the Bible the prophet Moses was allowed a small glimpse of the glory of God passing before him before he died. It isn't evident that even human philosophers are able to comprehend the nature of God or even of one Universe, as if it were a dot in infinite non-space less significant than a period at the end of a sentence.

Without such a logical set of inferences of the absolute trans-infinite set that captures all sets and ideas that might be represented in sets, no reasoning about the non-existence of God could be anything more than conditional, contingent and wrong. Atheism cannot be logically proven except as an existential belief for itself held by an individual in error.

Infinite mathematical series of numbers are of much interest to philosophically inclined people. Do they really exist and what value are they since it is possible only to use a finite portion?

Gregory Cantor developed the idea of trans-infinite numbers. That means that not all infinite series are created equal, though we may be biased to believe that all truly infinite series must be eternal since if they are simply in progress of increase they are not really infinite with some sort of beginning and present terminus even if only for a fraction of an instant of time.

The series of natural numbers (positive integers) are infinite in one direction; to the right, and I believe that Cantor would regard that as a trans-infinite series. What does that mean? In regard to the infinite set between the numbers 2 and 3 for example where smaller and smaller rational numbers can be expressed in fractions, the natural numbers breezes beyond it.

Infinite number series though seem to be limited and finite in some respect simply because they are not a set of all sets of any kind of number that can be represented. Even number series do not include odd numbers, and positive numbers don't include negative numbers, in fact any series of numbers or geometry is a finite slice of the infinite continuum of numbers in all forms and size.

One of the interesting characteristics of infinite sets of rational numbers is that they seem to have the potential for being implictly contradictory in time as they are expressed. Because they cannot seemingly exist a priori in infinite numbers without continuing to diminish in proportionate size retroactively from the beginning, with a kind of reverse causality, they might need to exist just in a finite temporaly context.

Numbers seem be nominal finite, proportional sets of true infinity encompassing all directions, dimensions, ordinal and cardinal sets and so forth that is inexpressible. The relationship of that infinity non-contingent One to the expression of forms in the 'real world' studied by physicists makes one wonder of the expressions of possible cosmologies in space-time by The One.

The experience of a finite element of space-time or a given Universe is a provision of from the realm of Absolute Spirit evidently, at least as a point of faith and logical inference.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Atheism requires a proof comprehensively regarding reality of the non-existence of God[...]

No, I don't think so. It seems to me you are describing gnostic atheism which is a form of strong atheism. As for the rest of your post, I think you are right that gnostic atheism seems to be an irrational position. However, I doubt very many atheists can be described as gnostic atheists. In fact, I doubt even most or for that matter even a significant minority of actual atheists are gnostic atheists. In other words, most real life atheists do no claim to know that god does not exist which would presumably require proof, but rather claim either positively or negatively/implicitly to disbelief or lack belief in the existence of any god or gods.

[GodlessDeity]

Atheism requires a proof comprehensively regarding reality of the non-existence of God[...]

No, I don't think so. It seems to me you are describing gnostic atheism which is a form of strong atheism. As for the rest of your post, I think you are right that gnostic atheism seems to be an irrational position. However, I doubt very many atheists can be described as gnostic atheists. In fact, I doubt even most or for that matter even a significant minority of actual atheists are gnostic atheists. In other words, most real life atheists do no claim to know that god does not exist which would presumably require proof, but rather claim either positively or negatively/implicitly to disbelief or lack belief in the existence of any god or gods.

I'm a gnostic atheist by your categorical statement. How profound. The burden of proof is on those who started the hearsay of god in the first place. You can not prove or disprove what was spontaneously conjured. I don't know why everyone is so oblivious to the simple answer to any religious dogma.

[Tibbir]

I'm a gnostic atheist by your categorical statement. How profound. The burden of proof is on those who started the hearsay of god in the first place. You can not prove or disprove what was spontaneously conjured. I don't know why everyone is so oblivious to the simple answer to any religious dogma.

There is no proof that there is no God and it is far from self evident that God does not exist.

You do not to read religious Dogma to believe in God. He is a perfectly reasonable philosophic proposition.

I am almost at the opposite end of the belief spectrum in that I do not how God cannot logically exist. I believe he exists. However, I do have a few problems understanding why prayers do not work the way I would expect them to.

Unless you have some form of logical mathematical proof that God does not exist then it will always be disputable and agnostic is the only logical stance to take.

The simple root of my belief is this:

Without words there can be no thoughts, no reason, no philosophy and no mathematics. Science states: “The Universe is nothing but pure mathematics.” If that is so, without the word nothing exists, with it everything exists.

This can be said: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

The Word is the most fundamental building block of life. With out a desire to share, love; we have no need for the Word. Without knowledge, we have nothing to share, nor know anyone to share it with. The whole of evolution can be seen as one slow building process in better and better forms of cooperation through communication; using love, to share knowledge. With the invention of the Word that progress exploded! Each human civilization is richer or poorer directly in proportion to the amount they communicate and with the freedom they communicate. That is the amount they cooperate. It seems that without both love and knowledge, none of creation could happen, with both love and knowledge all of it has to happen.

All you need is love all you need is God's love all you need is God.

When you recognise that God is Love, these statements are; as one.

The Word was left for you.

If we have knowledge and the Love to share it, we have the Word.

Communication is loving someone enough to share your thoughts with them, thinking as one.

Community is loving people enough to share your life with them, living as one.

Communion is loving “The Great I am” enough to respect the whole of existence, being as one.

That building tree of bigger and bigger communities goes all the way out to the cosmos. And assuming cosmoses are intelligent (e.g. Seth Lloyds explanation, there are other explanations)they will learn and evolve too.

So this infinite community of well wishers could quite easily be given the name God and is certainly not limited to our laws of physics and so could quite easily be.

So the Word is with us and in us.

Did he have a reason to create us. possibly? Does he answer prayer not most of mine, well not in ways I recognise. That does not mean I do not feel great peace when I am appreciating his creation and praising the creator which I freely admit no one can understand accademically or prove accademically. It just so much more fun to laugh with people than to think that you are alone in the world.

It is a philosophical not a religious argument. Put here because I stated a point of view and I feel I need to back it up with some form of argument and I know it is not put rigourously here because I do not want to write 180 pages.

You failed to back your position except with I do not think so. In my opinion the only sensible position is to admit we do not know, but each of us is fully entitled to our own beliefs.

In fact I believe it is essential we do follow our own beliefs as that allows us to be the most effective in our community. As an independent node in our communities neural net, thus making our community more intelligent.

[GodlessDeity]

I'm a gnostic atheist by your categorical statement. How profound. The burden of proof is on those who started the hearsay of god in the first place. You can not prove or disprove what was spontaneously conjured. I don't know why everyone is so oblivious to the simple answer to any religious dogma.

There is no proof that there is no God and it is far from self evident that God does not exist.

You do not to read religious Dogma to believe in God. He is a perfectly reasonable philosophic proposition.

I am almost at the opposite end of the belief spectrum in that I do not how God cannot logically exist. I believe he exists. However, I do have a few problems understanding why prayers do not work the way I would expect them to.

Unless you have some form of logical mathematical proof that God does not exist then it will always be disputable and agnostic is the only logical stance to take.

The simple root of my belief is this:

Without words there can be no thoughts, no reason, no philosophy and no mathematics. Science states: “The Universe is nothing but pure mathematics.” If that is so, without the word nothing exists, with it everything exists.

This can be said: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

The Word is the most fundamental building block of life. With out a desire to share, love; we have no need for the Word. Without knowledge, we have nothing to share, nor know anyone to share it with. The whole of evolution can be seen as one slow building process in better and better forms of cooperation through communication; using love, to share knowledge. With the invention of the Word that progress exploded! Each human civilization is richer or poorer directly in proportion to the amount they communicate and with the freedom they communicate. That is the amount they cooperate. It seems that without both love and knowledge, none of creation could happen, with both love and knowledge all of it has to happen.

All you need is love all you need is God's love all you need is God.

When you recognise that God is Love, these statements are; as one.

The Word was left for you.

If we have knowledge and the Love to share it, we have the Word.

Communication is loving someone enough to share your thoughts with them, thinking as one.

Community is loving people enough to share your life with them, living as one.

Communion is loving “The Great I am” enough to respect the whole of existence, being as one.

That building tree of bigger and bigger communities goes all the way out to the cosmos. And assuming cosmoses are intelligent (e.g. Seth Lloyds explanation, there are other explanations)they will learn and evolve too.

So this infinite community of well wishers could quite easily be given the name God and is certainly not limited to our laws of physics and so could quite easily be.

So the Word is with us and in us.

Did he have a reason to create us. possibly? Does he answer prayer not most of mine, well not in ways I recognise. That does not mean I do not feel great peace when I am appreciating his creation and praising the creator which I freely admit no one can understand accademically or prove accademically. It just so much more fun to laugh with people than to think that you are alone in the world.

It is a philosophical not a religious argument. Put here because I stated a point of view and I feel I need to back it up with some form of argument and I know it is not put rigourously here because I do not want to write 180 pages.

You failed to back your position except with I do not think so. In my opinion the only sensible position is to admit we do not know, but each of us is fully entitled to our own beliefs.

In fact I believe it is essential we do follow our own beliefs as that allows us to be the most effective in our community. As an independent node in our communities neural net, thus making our community more intelligent.

All of this is voided, when you realise that we only mention God because of hearsay. God is not pre-existent, but inherited through hearsay and our ignorant way of associating our subjective experiences to incomprehensible measures.

Look at children for an example, before they were vicariously distorted by ignorant people, before they were brought to churches, do you ever hear them mentioning a single shred of existence in regard to a God? If God was really already here, children all over the world would have no trouble speaking the word of God without being influenced by OUTSIDE influences. Your entire argument, and every one else's is futile when you are too caught up in your own illusion of God existing already in the first place. God does not exist. The burden doesn't rest on me, it rests on those who conjured God without conjecture. You can not just 'say' it. Faith is just an excuse. A kid that tells his teacher that his dog ate his homework is no different than someone coming up with a God.

There.

Is.

No.

God.

If there is, please. Stop pussyfooting around faith in antithetical values or admit that you can't tell me to justify something that you, yourself, can not fathom yourself. And you are the one who started this flame; whom pushed the first domino by advocating what is unadvocatable.

Not me.

[Wooden shoe]

LOGIC!

What sort of logic would demand proof of the non-existence of something? Do I need to prove that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy or Werewolves do not exist? How is it possible to prove the non-existence of God when God believers are all over the place as to what the word God means. So whose God do you wish for me to disprove, the Moslem, Mormon, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, etc etc. I do not believe that there are two people on earth who have an identical view of what God is, So when all the God believers get together on which God you want the Atheist to disprove, I will just have another drink and rest easy!

Regards, John.

[Belinda]

#1

Atheism requires a proof comprehensively regarding reality of the non-existence of God, and that cannot be done any more than one can express all possible numbers, geometries and possible maths in some kind of order of non-order or non-cardinality.

There is no way to know absolutely what is the case; and this is the failing of inductive logic. We must necessarily choose empirically because that need, along with mortality, is the consequence of being natural. Induction inevitably leaves a gap however small the 'maybe' that there exists God who transcends what is natural. So , true, we cannot prove that there is no God because that possibility exists. However because science,( and even common sense), explains life and everything pretty well accurately and cumulatively, there is no need to hypothesise transcendent God to explain life and everything.

An atheist chooses to be an atheist because atheism is a more elegant, as in 'concise and tidy', stance than theism. An agnostic is nothing but someone who has not yet made a choice, perhaps because he likes to procrastinate. An atheist would tend to agree with William of Occam.

[Fanman]

Using logic to explain themselves, how do atheists think that the universe, as it is now, came to be?

[Kingkool]

Using logic to explain themselves, how do atheists think that the universe, as it is now, came to be?

I am an atheist. Not a Gnostic atheist, but an atheist. I do not know that there is not a god(s). I believe it is just very unlikely, and therefore believe in the more logical, scientific view. But I am not sure. One cannot know anything for sure, but make educated guesses based on set givens which we call axioms. Just because I do not know the answer does not mean I cannot make educated guesses about what the answer is not.

In other words, I do not know how the universe came to be, but I do think it was not by some Intelligent Design.

[Tibbir]

All of this is voided, when you realise that we only mention God because of hearsay. God is not pre-existent, but inherited through hearsay and our ignorant way of associating our subjective experiences to incomprehensible measures.

Look at children for an example, before they were vicariously distorted by ignorant people, before they were brought to churches, do you ever hear them mentioning a single shred of existence in regard to a God? If God was really already here, children all over the world would have no trouble speaking the word of God without being influenced by OUTSIDE influences.

If children did not have any outside influences they would not know how to speak. They certainly would not know how to philosophise and would probably die within in a day or two due to a lack of food and attacks from wild animals and the nurture from a loving family.

No human is an island.

BTW by Christian tradition children do speak the word of God, mainly because they are embarassingly truthful.

There.

Is.

No.

God.

This to my mind is preaching. It is a statement of faith a point you have already mad and not a philosophical or even logical argument.

My post was not intended as a flame. It was intended as one example, the second in this thread, of a philosophical argument for the existence of God.

I want a sensible philosophical discussion nothing more.

[A Poster He or I]

Garycgibson, Tibbir, and Fanman,

Have you ever considered that some of us atheists (such as myself) are atheists for ETHICAL reasons? We consider the concept of God immoral. I acknowledge the historical necessity of the concept in the social evolution of the human species, but consider the concept now to be outmoded and its continued use and belief to be the surest path toward the mid- to long-term extermination of the species.

So save your logical arguments: I don't CARE if God actually exists or not. If He came and proved His godhood on the spot to me, I would happily slap His face for the evil His existence has brought into the world.

Fanman said:

Using logic to explain themselves, how do atheists think that the universe, as it is now, came to be?

A quantum fluctuation with subsequent evolution of its dynamics into increasingly complex states yielding emergent highly-ordered states.

Now let me turn the question around on you: How do theists think that God came to be? The usual answer I hear is that he has alway existed. So, logically, which is more plausible:

1) an uncreated omnipotent intelligence;

2) an uncreated non-omnipotent, non-sentient universe whose dynamics can be modeled into a long-term evolutionary path toward sentience?

Occam's Razor is on the side of choice #2.

[Fanman]

Kingkool,

You're right, atheists are entitled not to believe that the universe was created by an ingelligent designer, but if atheists, using logic, cannot explain how the universe came to be, what right or reason do they have to rule out, dismiss or ridicule, a theist's belief that the universe has and intelligent creator?

A Poster He or I,

I also believe that God has always existed.

A Poster He or I wrote:

A quantum fluctuation with subsequent evolution of its dynamics into increasingly complex states yielding emergent highly-ordered states.

How would you explain this to a lay person?

A Poster He or I wrote:

So, logically, which is more plausible:

1) an uncreated omnipotent intelligence;

2) an uncreated non-omnipotent, non-sentient universe whose dynamics can be modeled into a long-term evolutionary path toward sentience?

Of the two choices you give me I will choose # 1.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

You're right, atheists are entitled not to believe that the universe was created by an ingelligent designer, but if atheists, using logic, cannot explain how the universe came to be, what right or reason do they have to rule out, dismiss or ridicule, a theist's belief that the universe has and intelligent creator?

This is a fallacy. Because one cannot explain how something happened does not mean they cannot rule out any otherwise possible explanations. To be able to knowingly explain how something happened is to rule out ALL other possibilities, where as to not know how something happened means to NOT be able to rule out ALL possibilities but still potentially rule out ALL but even just more than one of the infinite possibilities.

[A Poster He or I]

I also believe that God has always existed.

A Poster He or I wrote: A quantum fluctuation with subsequent evolution of its dynamics into increasingly complex states yielding emergent highly-ordered states.

How would you explain this to a lay person?

I'd first suggest introductory reading on both quantum physics and complexity theory because without initial orientation, any layman's explanation will seem too counterintuitive to be plausible.

A Poster He or I wrote:

So, logically, which is more plausible:

1) an uncreated omnipotent intelligence;

2) an uncreated non-omnipotent, non-sentient universe whose dynamics can be modeled into a long-term evolutionary path toward sentience?

Of the two choices you give me I will choose # 1.

Fine, by your own criteria, break a leg providing a logical modeling of omnipotence.

[Wooden shoe]

Hi Fanman, you wrote: Of the two choices you give me I will choose # 1.

This is hardly a surprise Fanman.

Once the atheist has chosen #2 it is done, job completed. However the theist now has a very difficult and dangerous decision to make. Which of the multitude of Gods is it going to believe in, and what will happen if the wrong choice is made? Seeing that none of the candidates have a stellar record, and many are downright brutal, I think the atheist has by far the easier time of it, and likely sleeps better most of the time.

Regards, John.