....no charlie445 if it wasn't for me.

BTW, charlie445....your going straight to hell, straight to the "crazy well endowed gay rapist butt fucking sector" of hell!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STPVvd_II08

who will always say yes.

Religion is the root of all evil, bar none.

ever receive too much love.

And, I've got no proof that he doesn't. And, I've had some people come to my rescue, even where it actually meant saving my life. Guess what? All those people, who rescued me, believed in God. I can't prove he exists, but but I owe my life to some great people who believe he does!

When the time comes for you all to pass from this earth, I'm afraid you non-believers are in for a "rude awakening." I'll keep you all in my prayers.

Bible-thumper Ralph Reed lost an election to become lieutenant governor of Georgia.  Despite being involved up to his neck with Jack Abramoff, I was sure the slack-jawed droolers (GaG excepted) would elect him.  The fact that he lost is proof of God's existence.

You only exist because I permit it!

Now, it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some have chosen to see it as the final proof of the NON-existence of God. The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. QED" "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Then why do altruists always end up sneaking some form of self-interest into all of their arguments for altruism?

Should we also try to prove that unicorns, leprechauns, fire breathing dragons, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster don't exist?

do not make an absolute statement unless you can prove it....

There is nothing to prove. I can state that there are no leprechauns. I do not have to prove a negative. This is the default position until there is some evidence that there are leprechauns.

There is, however, one argument against the existence of God which is pretty sound, and that is the Primacy of Existence over Consciousness. But a true believer could easily get around it by re-defining God.

This argument has to do with the basic axioms of Aristotelian metaphysics, Existence and Consciousness, and the very nature of consciousness. Unless there exists something to be conscious of, consciousness itself cannot exist. God is supposedly a conscious being which created all of existence. Before He created all that exists, what was He conscious of? Even asking that question seems to make no sense. Unless there was something other than himself to be conscious of, he could not have been conscious at all.

You could, of course get around this by defining God in some other way, by claiming His consciousness is different from what we think of as consciousness, but this degenerates into gibberish. So does any other redefinition.

NOTHING CAN BE ASSUMED!!! You start with hypothesis and prove it.

Since NOTHING can be assumed, you can not assume a negative either.

Basic Science 101...

Also, the Primacy of Existance over Consciousness is highyl flawed. Why because of  the first points I made here. It makes assumptions about God in order to prove its theory. It assumes the following...

1. God is a spirit.
2. God is a ‘personal being’.
3. God has no body.
4. God has a mind.
5. God has unlimited awareness.
6. God has a will.
7. God has thoughts.
8. God authors judgments.
9. God is a moral being.
10. God plans the future.
11. God can love.
12. God can be angry.
13. God experiences pleasure and emotion.

This HUGE list of ASSUMPTIONS is suppose to lead to some solid conclusion ?!?!?!
This theorm starts by breaking teh FIRST law of scientific reasoning!! How weak is that!!!

I am afraid the argument you put forth is not sound at all as you propose, but highly flawed.

So back to my original point.
If you want to state it as a fact, prove it...

I did not make those assumptions, and they are not made in the argument from the primacy of existence. They are part of the generally accepted definition of God. It is what believers say about God. The Bible itself claims some of these "assumptions" are true. I can list a number of times God was angry in the Bible.

Your claiming that these are all "assumptions" is just an example of you doing what I described in my earlier post, changing the definition of the concept of "God" to evade the definition. You don't simply change the definition, you remove all possibility of HAVING a definition. You empty the concept of God of all meaning. Maybe that makes the claim that there is no God meaningless, but it does the same with any claim about the existence of God, or any statement about God for that matter. Discussion of the subject becomes utterly meaningless.

Which is, in fact, one of the very things I mean when I say that there is no God.

The first law of scientific reasoning is the law of non-contradiction. The concept of God, [i]as most people use it[/i] contains many contradictions. The most obvious one being that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. You just have to look at Japan today to see the contradiction in that.

See link below.

Also, in ADDITION to this flawed basis, the argument is extremely flawed in the fact that it limits itself to known conciousness.

For example, I could say a second is one seccond, we all know that, true whereever we go. But is it? Travel near the speed of light, what occurs? Suddenly our concepts of conciousness no longer hold.

Look at the phenomenon of black holes. Anyone would tell you a lit candle emits light. Known from basic observation, But what about when a black hole is introduced? Suddenly light is not seen from the candle. The rules of our concious universe collapse.

Let me explain it this way. For centuries there were math problems that could not be solved because Differential and Integral calculus had not be discovered. Men would attempt to resolve problems using conventional math because in their "conciousness", these were the complete math methods. They consistently tried, they consistently failed...

The Exsistence of Conciousness is very much like this. A very rudimentary, basic type of philosophy which is not sophisticated enough to address the question of God because it limits its users to the known conciousness, which in fact is in doubt based on the arguments I put forth earlier.

You are trying to solve a calculus problem with basic math, and like so many before you, you will fail if you keep relying on theorms that are so basic and limiting...

-- Modified on 3/16/2011 8:18:26 AM

The most complex calculus formula cannot contradict the fact that 1+1=2.

Much of the rest of your argument is an argument from ignorance. If God somehow is above and beyond our present conception of reason and logic, and we need to develop some new kind of reasoning to understand, OK. But in order to develop such a new way of thinking, we need something to work with. We need EVIDENCE.

Newton had the empirical evidence of centuries of astronomical observation to work with. He developed calculus because he had the need for a mathematics that could handle changes in rates of change. That is because he had empirical evidence of changes in rates of change. And nothing he did contradicted the fact that 1+1=2.

Nothing can contradict the basic Aristotelian axioms, or their immediate corollaries, because any attempt to do so depends on those axioms. Its the philosophical equivalent of Wile E Coyote sawing off the branch he is sitting on.

The web page you linked to does not make those assumptions. It gets those assumptions from other people's arguments and descriptions of God. It is God's believers who make those claims about God. That list is not of assumptions, but of ways believers describe God. All of those descriptions have one thing in common, concepts of consciousness.

Do you have some definition of God that does not in some way assume that He is a conscious being?

Read your own posts... You stumbled across the answer without even realizing it is there. You are so concentrated on these limited arguments.

You said yourself....

"If God somehow is above and beyond our present conception of reason and logic, and we need to develop some new kind of reasoning to understand, OK. But in order to develop such a new way of thinking, we need something to work with."

But use your reasoning for a minute. You've mentioned the bible several times in your posts. God DOES NOT WANT PROOF that he exists. Therefore you may have to reconcile yourself to the fact that the items you need to work with you will never have. That does not make it true or not, it just means you do not have the capacity to make an argument for or against. It is only a man's vanity that will not let him accept that he can not prove everything.

BTW, why don't you bother reading this thread again. It started with someone saying God does not exist, so why are you branching off on believers who claim he does? That is not what we are debating here, so try to keep up...

Also to quote you

"We need EVIDENCE"

EXACTLY RIGHT!! And that is to prove exsistence or non-exsistence!!

I noticed you never asked me to PROVE God exists. I would have told you I HAVE NO SCIENTIFIC PROOF, and I take it an faith. If you wanted to say the same about his not existing, I could accept that.
But to paraphrase you in your own words, if you want ABSOLUTE PROOF

"We need EVIDENCE"

BTW, just because you may have problems comprehending my arguments is no reason to refer to them as ignorant. If you need further explanation I will be glad to do so, but just because you can't grasp an argument does not make it ignorant.


-- Modified on 3/16/2011 8:23:43 PM

It seems to be enormous vanity, or conceit, to claim to believe something that you made up. That is what it means to believe something that you don't only have no proof for, but no evidence at all.

I "branch off to believers who say he does" because they set the standard for debate. They are making the positive claim. They are the ones who define what God is. I can only take that definition, and try to make an argument about whether or not such a being can exist. Since the existence of such a being, AS THEY DEFINE IT, contradicts the axiom of Existence itself, there can be no such thing. There is no God.

"Faith is the short-circuit of reason, destroying the mind"--Ayn Rand.

I am not asking for "ABSOLUTE PROOF", just a tiny smidgen of evidence.

I did not call your arguments ignorant. I said you were using an argument from ignorance. That is a formal logical fallacy. Go look it up.

For a person to believe something based on faith is not Vanity at all.

To demand someone else believe in something you believe even though you can not prove it. That is VANITY!!

And since when do "believers" set the standard for the debate? They may in your "Exsistence of Conciousness" (pun intended), but not in mine.

Once again step back and take your emotion out of the equation....

You said

"They are making the positive claim."

Remember where this thread started. With a claim for the NEGATIVE. If you are going to keep arguing the wrong premise, I would recommend you start a new thread. You are way off topic on this.

You also said....

I am not asking for "ABSOLUTE PROOF", just a tiny smidgen of evidence.

ONCE AGAIN, WRONG APPROACH.!! You are the one making the claim, you must prove it.

Finally, let me explin to you why your Objectivism arguments collapse during debate when truly considered.

1.1 Existence Exists

This is a rationalistic loop. You start with existence and then claim that it exists. The problem is that you started with existence in the first place. It's a tautological and therefore meaningless statement. It's like Swifty monsels monsel swiftily. There's no content to it. The real question is: Is there existence apart from my experience in the first place?

The first thing there is for you to start with is your experience of smell, touch, color, form, etc. If this comes from actual stuff out there or if it occurs without such stuff (like in a dream or in your imagination or "The Matrix" for example) is precisely the question of metaphysics. Claiming that this is all settled by a tautology which is -in fact- a severe case of the logical fallacy of begging the question does a disservice to the philosophical questions of metaphysics.

1.2 Free Will

If existence exists and everything acts according to its nature, then there is no room for free will. Objectivists escape this trap, as far as I can see, by a rationalistic definition game, namely by inventing (haven't heard that term before) „Aristotelian causation“, which is based upon the idea that „entities“ „act“ in accordance with their „nature“. The odd thing is that in the end Aristotelian causation is the same thing as deterministic causation with the single exception of man having free will and being able to act nondeterministically.

No idea is given about how this is possible if man consists of physical matter which acts deterministically by their very own theory, especially when you explicitly deny the existence of anything supernatural like mind-over-matter as the Objectivists do. This is a clear contradiction between the axiom of existence and the axiom of free will. Either of these can be true, but never both

Secondly, Ethics

Rand claimed „An Objectivist is above all else a moralist.“ This is no doubt a true statement clearly verified by my own personal experience. So let's take a look at her moral theory.

First of all, Rand misunderstands Darwin. She thinks animals exist to survive. This is not the case. Animals exist to reproduce. It's reproduction, not survival, that is the biological goal of all life. After all, all life dies in the end. And only those species made it, which reproduced successfully during their lifespan. This is the theory of evolution in a nutshell and it clearly contradicts the notion of life being the ultimate value of all living beings.
Ayn Rand also claims that she bridged the is-ought-gap. She didn't. Choosing life as your ultimate value, she admits, requires your conscious choice

Tara Smith, while doing an excellent job at describing the Objectivist Meta-Ethics in her book „Viable Values“ (better than Rand herself in my opinion) also fails in solving this one satisfyingly. She admits that before you choose life as your ultimate value, you exist in an amoral state. Then you have to consciously choose life as your primary value. It doesn't stand to reason that you have to choose life as your primary value to exist. Just look at the male praying mantis. It survives genetically by dying individually.

Another thing to note is the work of Albert Ellis, inventor of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. He has clinical studies to prove that the belief in the existence of self-esteem and self-worth, which have to be earned, rating other people, aswell as either-or all-or-nothing-thinking, which are all explicitly encouraged by Objectivism, lead to mental disorders like depression and constant anger among a multitude of others and can be treated effectively by making people drop these mental habits.

Each of these arguments is enough to dismiss Objectivism as wrong

I did not start this thread.

Now you are getting into arguments about skepticism of existence and sense perception. You are bringing up fallacies that Rand and some of her followers debunked years ago.

I suggest David Kelley's "The Evidence of the Senses".

Rand did NOT misunderstand Darwin. You are misunderstanding her. She did not base her ethics on Darwinian evolution.

You are going WAY off topic now. The subject was God and his existence.

Albert Ellis's studies are based on self-reporting, which is a seriously flawed way to study something like self-esteem, especially the Objectivist concept. You can ask people how high they think their self-esteem is, and they might say their's is very high. But Objectivist self-esteem is actually more of a quality vs. quantity thing. There is a right basis for self-esteem, and there are many wrong ones. These self-reporting studies don't and can't take that into account. Rand's, and Nathaniel Branden's theories of self-esteem explain the results of these studies very well. The link below discusses such studies and their results in light of the Objectivist concept of self-esteem.

but generally when you post to a thread, it is to respond to the topic, not totally change it to an argument that conveniently fits the point you want to make.

If you want to start a new thread, feel free, but can you stick to the topic at hand.

Might as well, since you have not been able to prove the point you either for or against...

Like I said earlier, the Objectivist arguments are too sophmoric to address a topic like this anyways...

Basically you are taking a knife to a gun fight, which is why you have lost the debate.

Every argument I made, you countered with misrepresentations or more fallacies. Its almost like arguing with Priapus or willywonka.

Like I said, it isn't atheists who define the concept of God to include consciousness. Believers do. But you asserted that that was an unsupported assumption of the argument from the primacy of existence.

If I am to prove that something I do not believe in exists, I can only go by the definition given by those who actually believe in it. The most prevalent definition I know of for "God" is a conscious being that created the universe. The whole point of the Primacy of Existence argument is that such a thing makes no sense, and cannot exist.

I have proven that there is no such thing as God, if defined as an omnipotent intelligence that created the whole universe. If you want to shift the definition, I'll probably be able to do it again.

You simply evade the question. Its called moving the goal posts.

None of your explanations about the Primacy of Existence hold up at all. You keep using it again and again as you try to evade it. Thats one thing about these axiomatic concepts. There is no way to avoid actually using them, CONSTANTLY, if you are going to talk about anything at all.

The concept of "proof" that you keep talking about, ad nauseum, presupposes that there are conscious beings that you can prove something to. And it presupposes that there is something that exists to prove it about.

Nobody here said they could prove all things. Thats why need logic. It is not proof for anything, but the means to prove it. Why do you need a means to accomplish something that has already been done?

you took an absolute position and could not prove it, just like the person who started this thread...

I thought you have figured this out by now, but it looks like you are not catching on to my meaning...

For an individual to have a personal belief system as to what exists, and how the world works, is fine. Personal beliefs do not need to be justified to anyone except to the holder themselves.

HOWEVER, if a person states something as a an absolute condition for ALL, then they must provide the proof. Many people who like to state negatives will hide behind the fallacious argument that a negative can not be proven, therfore they do not have to, BUT THIS IS FALSE.

BOTH STATEMENTS MUST BE PROVEN...

I have also explained adnosioum about the fallacys and weaknesses why the Primacy of Exsistence argument fails, but you consistently come back to this argument as the sole defense, despite its weaknesses.

Your consisteny to push forward despite all of this only proves another point I made.

IT IS THE VANITY OF MAN THAT HE BELIEVES HE CAN PROVE ALL THINGS...

VANITY IS A SIN
GOD WILL JUDGE YOU FOR IT...

Sorry, couldn't resist

Oh My God!!! (words chosen deliberately)

Looking at some OLD history and here you are again!!!

I think you have proven my other point

VANITY, thy name is WannaBeBFE

Give it up, you failed...