God's existence cannot be proven logically!

I disagree completely, both with the statement in the topic title and with your reasoning.First the second. Your reasoning displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what logic is. Although it reads like a parody, I do not believe that you had set out to write a parody. Logic is not a function of time, but rather it is structured orderly thought characterized by the construction of a sequence (which implies order, not necessarily time) of reasoned arguments.In formal logic, these arguments are called syllogisms and are of the form, "If A and B, therefore C"; ie, if premise A is true and premise B is also true, then conclusion C is true. Now, these statements are of certain prescribed forms -- I had studied the subject 38 years ago, so I have to go light on giving examples. Only certain kinds of true premises taken together will produce a proven true conclusion -- all syllogisms so constructed are deemed valid. Certain kinds of true premises taken together do not produced a proven true conclustion -- those are deemed invalid and are considered formal fallacies.And then the conclusion of one syllogism can be used as a premise in another, and thus one would build a chain of syllogisms to construct a logical system. But, as has already been pointed out, real-world problems are complex and do not necessarily lend themselves well to solution by formal logic.All you can really determine through formal logic is whether a given form of an argument is valid or invalid. The question really isn't about whether it's true or not. If you have a valid syllogism and you apply true premises, then you will get a true conclusion. If you apply them to a fallacious syllogism, or you apply false premises to any syllogism, whether valid or fallacious, then you don't know whether the conclusion is true or false.Which brings us to my disagreement with your conclusion as stated in the title: "God's existence cannot be proven logically!".I disagree, because one can use logic to prove anything, anything whatsoever. Even something that is blatantly false, like "day is night" and "black is white". All that is required is to get you to agree with the right set of premises, for you to make the assumption that those premises are true, even though they are not. That is obviously misusing logic, even abusing it, and when practiced deliberately it is called sophistry, the practice of using logic to deceive. And when it's done unintentionally, then it's just called screwed-up thinking.So, if you start with the right premises then you can indeed prove God's existence. And if you start with the right premises, you can also disprove God's existence. Both proofs would be valid. What we would question, though, is whether they are true. And the answer to that question depends on the premises.And that is where, I believe, attempts to use logic to arrive at the truth of God's existence must fail. Because we are talking about a supernatural entity and very highly specific characteristics attributed to that supernatural entity, we cannot possibly construct premises that we know for a fact are true. We cannot possibly vouch for the truth of those premises. And since we cannot know whether our premises are true, we cannot know whether the conclusions drawn from those premises are true. Valid, yes. True? Who knows?

That last sentence is false. The truth of the premises is not open to interpretation. They must be true in fact in order to ensure that the conclusion is in fact true.Rather, what you described is the common state of affairs, in that several groups and individuals hold as true conclusions that are not true, because their conclusions are based on untrue premises which they believed to be true. Or, to put it more euphemistically, by proceeding from premises whose truth cannot be determined but which they believe to be true, they have reached conclusions whose truth cannot be determined but which they believe have been proven to be true. IOW, just because someone believes something to be true, don't make it so.In practice, most of the God-proofs that I've seen tend towards circular reasoning; ie, the premises assume the truth of religious doctrine which in turn depends on that which is to be proven, namely the existence of God with all the characteristics described within that doctrine. A classic example that I witnessed was while sitting in the base rec center one Sunday morning 30 years ago. Someone turned the TV to a televangelist's sermon. The televanglist offered a proof that their religion is true and superior to all others. Imagine that you are participating in a conference of members of all faiths and you are representing Christianity. Everyone has brought their own sacred writings upon which their religion is based. What would you say to prove that yours is the true faith? By pointing out that your sacred writing, the Bible, is the only one which is the literal Word of God Himself. Etc, etc, etc. I was astounded by the sheer idiocy of such a ridiculous "proof" and was about to burst out loud in laughter when I saw that the airman who had turned to that channel was nodding in full agreement, eating up that cr*p like it was manna from heaven. Seriously, I'm not making any of this up.Chiroptera's response is good and he's much more current with formal logic than I am. Back in my day, we used Venn diagrams to determine the validity of a syllogism. The truth tables to which he refers are constructed thus:
1. Create columns for every input and every output and label them accordingly.
2. In each row write a combination of inputs and then fill what the outputs would be for that particular combination of inputs. Create as many rows as is necessary in order to do this for all possible combinations of inputs.A 19th century British mathematician, George Boole, created a system of symbolic logic upon which an algebra, called Boolean algebra, was devised. It was used in the early 20th century to design relay networks which led to automated telephone switchboards and then to the design of digital computer circuitry. And in just about every datasheet for a middle-scale digital chip is a truth table listing all the outputs for all the possible inputs.

Huh? God is supposed to over Nature, not a part of it. God is supposed to be outside of the natural universe and above it, to have preceded it and to have created it. That means that God is supernatural.It seems to me quite obvious that God would be supernatural. Please explain your reasoning that God must be a natural entity. Those highly specific characteristics are given in religious doctrine and theology. They get very specific in telling us that God did this and God said that and God thinks and feels this and that way. And they will insist that it is the absolute and eternal truth about God.If you have a problem with those highly specific characteristics, then take it up with them. It's their claims, not mine. However, when they create one of their proofs of God's existence, then those highly specific characteristics are part and parcel of that package.Basically, employing "creation science's" "two-model approach", they establish some doubt about a scientific idea, so that proves their idea of God along with their particular theology.Now, here's how I understand the reasoning should go. First, they would need to establish that the supernatural even exists; we have no way of determining that. Then they would need to establish the existence of supernatural beings. Then they would have to establish that some of these supernatural beings could be considered to be gods. Then they would have to establish that at least one of these gods could be considered a "Supreme Being" (though these past three steps could be combined into one, if that is even possible). Having gotten that far, then they would have to prove that this "Supreme Being" is one and the same as YHWH, identified as "God" in their theology. Then they would have to demonstrate that this "Supreme Being" has all the highly specific characteristics that their theology attributes to their idea of "God".I'm not going to hold my breath waiting.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

I sincerely apologize for quoting Borat, but "What!?!".Gods, spirits, demons. Those are all so obviously supernatural. How could anyone possibly claim that they are natural physical beings? Because if they are natural, then they must be physical. They must be subject to natural law. And if they are natural, if they are physical, then they possess a physical location and they are detectable.Are you trying to claim that God is a physical being? OK, where is this God person? Everywhere? No, no, no. Not if he's a natural physical being. One of the properties of a natural physical being is a specific location. Com'on, where is he? Got any photos? No fakes, please. Got any physical evidence? Because a natural physical being would leave physical evidence. Where's your physical evidence?Come to think of it, ICANT did claim that God had given him his real estate and vehicular holdings. So God must indeed be a physical entity to have been able to have held the titles of that property and then to have signed them over to ICANT. Now why did ICANT refuse to produce those documents with God's signature. What's God's phone number? Naw, that would be useless. Not only is it unlisted, but he's notorious for not returning calls, worse even than Harold Slusher.And are you trying to claim that Heaven is a physical place? That it has an actual physical location? OK then, where is it? "In the heavens". OK, so where precisely physically is that? Precise coordinates, please. Not in orbit, because our astronauts have not seen it nor has NORAD tracked it. If it's physical, then it must be detectable and, if in orbit, trackable. Where is it? Got photos? No fakes, please.OK, so God and Heaven are to far removed for us to detect (remember, God cannot possibly be omnipresent if he's also physical; you can't have it both ways -- make up your mind). But this "Holy Spirit" of yours. Is it also a physical being? Fine show us photos. Too far removed? No, not in this case. You yourself said that it is "residing within [your] body". OK, where in your body? You have the MRI's, don't you? If it's physical, then it is detectable. If you want to convince the non-believers, then such physical evidence is exactly the thing you want. Where is that physical evidence? Oh, and if it's in your body, then it can't be in anybody else's body. A physical being or object can't be in two places at the same time, right?Are you sure you want to claim that God, Heaven, and the Holy Spirit are natural physical beings? If they were supernatural (which they clearly must be), then they are not bound by physical laws, they are not bound to a specific physical location, they leave no physical evidence, and they are not detectable.They are obviously supernatural and cannot be natural.Edited by dwise1, : Removed extraneous text fragment left from the original composition

Your biblical maunderings have absolutely no bearing on the question. Those passages refer to a future new heaven which does not yet exist. They do refer to the current heaven without establishing whether that's a physical place or a supernatural one. Waste of bandwidth.However, as we do agree, what we are currently dealing with is supernatural, which is something with which we humans are unable of dealing. We cannot form any known-true premises about the supernatural, only repeat what we ourselves believe or have been told by other fallible humans. Therefore, we cannot logically prove anything about the supernatural.However, logic still plays a role in theology. Even though a theology's axioms (basic premises that are accepted as being true, even though they cannot be proven) cannot be proven, you can still -- and should still -- test whether the conclusions and chains of reasoning built out from them are valid. The disadvantage is that regardless of how elegant or rigorous your logic is, you can never know for sure whether your conclusions are actually true. It's similar to navigation by dead reckoning: you can set a course and steer to it and know that you should be at a particular location, but until you physically pull your head out of the cockpit and get an actual fix, you don't really know for sure where you are. There's no way to test theology's results.Or as the situation is described in a quote that is purported from an essay by Carl Sagan:

quote:

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The Physicist and the Metaphysicist

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In the 1920s, there was a dinner at which the physicist Robert W. Wood was asked to respond to a toast. This was a time when people stood up, made a toast, and then selected someone to respond. Nobody knew what toast they'd be asked to reply to, so it was a challenge for the quick-witted. In this case the toast was: "To physics and metaphysics." Now by metaphysics was meant something like philosophy -- truths that you could get to just by thinking about them. Wood took a second, glanced about him, and answered along these lines: The physicist has an idea, he said. The more he thinks it through, the more sense it makes to him. He goes to the scientific literature, and the more he reads, the more promising the idea seems. Thus prepared, he devises an experiment to test the idea. The experiment is painstaking. Many possibilities are eliminated or taken into account; the accuracy of the measurement is refined. At the end of all this work, the experiment is completed and ... the idea is shown to be worthless. The physicist then discards the idea, frees his mind (as I was saying a moment ago) from the clutter of error, and moves on to something else.

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The difference between physics and metaphysics, Wood concluded, is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.

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On the positive side, in comparing theology and science, theology will tackle questions that science won't even go near. The really hard questions. The really important ones. So does philosophy, BTW. And as Jonathan Miller's TV documentary, "A Brief History of Disbelief" (No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.abriefhistoryofdisbelief.org), points out, it is philosophy, not science as is so often assumed, that has played a larger role in the gradual erosion of belief. Science is not the enemy of religion; competing philosophies are. Actually, science is only the enemy of religion if religion chooses to call it an enemy. I am and I was. Which is why I could immediately see that your claim was not truthful (EvC Forum: Evolution or Creation): By requesting to see God's signature on the titles -- prompted by your using this claim to bolster your claim that your god exists -- , I was trying to show you that your statement was not true, offering you a chance to correct it. You would not.God did not give you those things. You did by your own work. You believe that God have given you the abilities and opportunities which led to your aquiring those things -- and that is what you should have said. However, if your god does not exist and instead it was some other god in charge or even no god at all, then you would still have had those same abilities and opportunities. The only real contribution by God (and this too regardless of whether that god exists or not) would have been the motivation and direction given to you by your beliefs and the aid and assistence of others, also motivated and directed by their beliefs, as well as the religious institutions built and run by people motivated and directed by their beliefs.Long ago on CompuServe, there was this retired mathematician who argued fervently and tirelessly for word magick; ie, for the philosophy that what you believe to be true becomes true. I believe that there are some here who do likewise. Obviously, what we believe to be true will affect our perception of reality, but it will not affect the objective reality shared by all of us. At the same time, it is not objective reality that we deal with but rather our perception of it, regardless of how delusional that perception is.There was, however, one thing he said which did make a lot of sense. He said that Christianity has had an overwhelming influence on the development of Western thought and culture, but that is not because Christianity is true. Rather it is because people believed it to be true. Even if Christianity were completely and utterly false, as long as the people believed it to be true, then it would have had exactly the same influence as it would have if it were actually true.Again, as I have said, believin' don't necessarily make it so. Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Made a link message specific. The link had ended with "m=211", which may or may not get you to the correct page, depending on how your profiles page display setup is. The link now ends with "m=217#217", which will get everone to the correct page and directly to the correct message.Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

The only truly honest position that is possible is that of agnosticism. We don't know. It is not humanly possible for us to know anything about the supernatural. We cannot sense it (barring some individuals' subjective feelings that they believe is sensing the supernatural), we cannot measure it, we cannot study it directly nor even indirectly. All we have is what other people tell us they know about the supernatural, along with what has been logically deduced or speculated about those teachings.What we end up doing after admitting that we can never know for sure is what we have to do next. Some will just give up, but I do not believe that path should be taken -- we believe in the open-ended search for truth. We decide which path to take (which, sadly, could be to give up) and then make some assumptions. To the basic question of whether or not the supernatural exists, we make our basic assumption of yes or no. If yes, then we have to make another assumption as to the nature of the supernatural. For that, about all we have are the multitude of ideas and teachings that exist, so most who choose to believe that the supernatural exists will then choose one set of those teachings.True, the vast majority of people don't go through those steps. Rather, most of them are born into a belief system, one particular set of teachings about the supernatural; their decision was made for them by accident of birth. Many, if the society and circumstances allow it to happen, become involved with a different set of teachings as part of a conversion process.But others, commonly raised as believers, become disaffected for a variety of reasons. A common theme I've seen in atheists' testimonials is that they had discovered that their religion or religious teachers had betrayed them or had lied to them. Have you done similar research? Have you actually tried to find out from atheists why they had deconverted? If you had, then you wouldn't be using "creation science" claims as you have been doing. I did show you that "creation science" destroys faith, but you decided to ignore that as well, at the peril of the faith of all who come in contact with you. But I guess you don't care about anybody's soul and faith except your own. There are a number of ex-Christian sites, including No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.exchristian.net/, if you have any desire to learn, which I doubt. BTW, go there to understand, not to try to re-convert them. Not only is it not received well, but you would be acting in complete and abject ignorance and failure is inevitable; to put it bluntly, they do not suffer idiots.My path? The gods are human inventions, the result of human attempts to understand the world and the supernatural. Even your god is a human invention and would be even if such a thing as could be considered "God" did in fact exist. As you yourself pointed out, God is beyond human understanding. At the very best, what you call "God" is a human-created representation of the true God, if such actually exists. Theology, the study of the gods, is likewise flawed. At the core of many theologies is Revelation, but then the vast body of theology is human-created interpretation and speculation. I do not believe in human infallibility. I believe that most theology and religious doctrine have been created and are studied for the best of intentions, that they are sincere and honest attempts to seek the truth. But at the same time, I cannot put complete faith in any theology, nor in any of the gods. Therefore, my chosen path is non-theistic and skeptical of absolutist claims. I do not dismiss the possibility of the existence of the supernatural, though I do not entertain it either, nor do I believe that any human-created set of teachings about the supernatural could come anywhere close to being accurate.BTW, I was Christian up to about the age of 12 or 13. I was baptised about a year before that, after years of church attendence. Guess what it was that made me stop being a Christian. I started to read the Bible. It didn't take me long to realize that I couldn't believe any of it. So, since I couldn't adhere to one of the most basic requirements of my religion, believing the Bible, I realized that I could not be a Christian, so I left. Years later, I became more familiar with the history of Christianity, which confirmed that I had made the right choice, albeit not necessarily for the right reasons. And then when I started college the "Jesus Freak" fundamentalist movement hit the area and I learned fundamentalism through friends who converted. What I learned made me extremely glad to not be a Christian. Part of that theology was early "creation science" whose claims I could immediately see were completely bogus (the story of the NASA computer detecting "Joshua's Lost Day" was part of that), so any religion that required me to believe lies and falsehoods could not ever be considered. Since then, in dealing with creationists, I have found their Christianity to also promote active lying and deception, which I had learned as being immoral but which apparently are virtues in their theology. Edited by AdminPD, : Warning