The Case Against the Existence of God

One doesn't need a foundation of information, Purple Dawn. Just a mind. See message #191.ABE: the second 191.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 04-07-2006 05:42 PM

The problem, Ifen, is that I've never understood what you meant (in past posts) when you use terms like "non-dualistic" and so forth. It's all mighty vague to me. So I was unable to respond to your ideas adequately.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 04-08-2006 10:59 AM

A being is that which is conscious, which has a mind.We, for example, are beings. We have a private experience of consciousness. Now what consciousness is exactly nobody knows for sure. It's a big mystery. But whatever it is, we know about it privately.In addition to beings like us, there are other beings such as animals (presumably). Certain creatures (insects, say) may or may not be Beings. We are not sure.Everything else, mindless stuff, like rocks and planets and the physical universe as a whole is a thing.So the question is, whether an eternal mind created the universe, or whether this thing, the universe, has always existed, and from it sprang forth creatures with minds, such as ourselves and perhaps certain animals.

What a high-falootin' bunch of stuff you have here, Ifen. So the universe is a thing-being which dreams us up and we don't really exist except as this being-thing's dream. And the only reason I think as I do, so "naively" and so "sophomorically," is that I am mired in this extremely limited little mental world called "Western thought," and the most simple and naive version of it as well. My ideas are really just the result of language structures that I was born with. Sentence structure dictates my thought.I think I got it.

It has a certain literary flashiness.

Logic pierces the veil of subjectivity.I don't know this for certain, of course, for just as we do not have a ground for morals, we have no ultimate ground for logic either. But it's something we have to assume--at any rate for the sake of argument. If we don't assume it, then science, for example, need not be taken seriously.Some people on this forum speak as though Logic was just whatever you wanted to be--that anything is possible no matter if it contradicted itself or not. Purple Dawn speaks of "my" logic, as though logic was something personal. Logic is not personal; it's impersonal. It's objective.Perhaps Purple Dawn understands this, and just means that "my" logic is flawed. That may very well be; I'm no great logician. It has to be pretty simple before I can grasp it.Logic puts limitations on what can be. That which contradicts itself cannot be. A round square cannot be. Something cannot come from nothing--which would be another contradiction.But if you are like Ifen, you despise what he calls "Western" logic. You prefer subjectivity. Not me.NWR makes this to-do about the word "belief"--says it's always emotional. I just mean by "belief" the idea of being convinced by some proposition. Unlike NWR, apparently, I think it is possible to reason objectively--no doubt another naive idea of mine.Arguments against the existence of God consist of finding flaws in the arguments given in favor of God. I was looking for some argument we could make that was not just that, but something beyond finding flaws in arguments for the existence of God.I set up a concept of God (a common one, I think) that made sense to me, to see if we could find an argument against such a being. The concept of God does not make sense unless this God is an ideal Being, the answer to everything. For if He is not an ideal being, then there would be something anterior to Him which would render him unnecessary. It's like the old response to the First Cause argument: Who made God? Exactly, unless God is defined as eternal, and then there would be no maker of God.So either the universe has always existed or an eternal Being made it. If the universe was made by another universe, then of course we just revert to option #2--the universe has always existed. It does not matter what form it was in for the sake of this argument.I thought at one time there was a "moral argument" against the existence of God. It is indeed a very common claim. If there was a God as described in the OP, he would not allow the suffering we see in the world. This God would be immoral, having done harm to innocent creatures. Certain Christans answer this charge with the concept of the Fall, but evolution does away with the possibility of a Fall. I think now, however, that this argument fails. Our morals, being ungrounded, are presumably subjective. If so, a subjective moral judgment accusing God of cruelty fails, because a subjective judgment is no good at all as evidence of any charge against anybody, God or people.So I have not yet found some argument against the existence of God. It is not quite true, however, that the existence of God is "unfalsifiable," if we have some definite qualities of God that we can consider. We have that in the God described in the OP.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 04-08-2006 12:08 PM

I meant the moral argument against God fails.

Actually, I have the idea that it is the only possible God, the only God that makes sense.Ifen, of course, would disagree. But if so, he needs to set out his arguments one by one starting at the beginning.

I mean deduction and induction, upon which all our knowledge is built.If somebody wishes to reject "sweet reason"--as the Medieval thinker put it, recognizing its vast significance--they should tell me ahead of time, for there is no point in talking to them.

Ifen, there's isn't any such thing as "classical logic" as opposed to some other kind of logic. There's only one Logic, and we know what it is and use it all the time. Your author is using logic just like everyone else. One could think of it that way. I am not the exact identical person I was last night. I have a new set of memories (last night's), I've probably forgotten some things I knew last night, I have some new cells, maybe gained a pound or lost a pound and so forth. So yes, in that sense everything is constantly changing. On the other hand, isn't there a lot about me that is exactly the same? Doesn't that count? Our sense of identity is based on memories--memories of ourselves last night, last year, 30 years ago. Those memories shift in the sense that some are forgotten and new ones are added all the time, but what about the ones that are not forgotten, that are always there? I have this memory from a very young age (I was 3) of a night when our house burned down. The memory is identical to what it's always been. These stable memories provide our identity, let us know who we are.In other words, there is change but there is also stability. The Earth keeps changing but it's still the Earth--been that way for 6 billion years. For all the changes it has gone through, much of the Earth is exactly as it was billions of years ago.At any rate, your author is not using some other type of "logic." He's using induction and deduction as we all do; there isn't any other way to think. He just has a different way of thinking about "things."All things are in a constant process of change.Apples are things.Therefore, apples are in a constant process of change.Deduction.

To count toward the idea that there are such entities as things and beings.

I'm a sentient being, and I exist. There's no question about it.

Why is that?