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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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thank you for the kindness
It's just another re-branding of the Ontological Argument, which has been worn threadbare for as long as most of us have been alive.
Any argument for a supernatural deity (a necessarily unfalsifiable claim) which fails to cite empirical evidence (impossible for all unfalsifiable claims) is, invariably, word salad. No, I correct myself: it may have once been word salad, but now it's long-turned, stinking garbage. It's an insult every time it's presented!
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Um no. The argument from the OP is in the same "family" of arguments which St. Thomas used and St. Thomas was very critical of the Ontological argument. The Ontological argument is a priori and defines God into existence where as the OPs argument is deductive and starts with at least some observable facts and is therefore a posteriori at least in part (some things we see go in and out of existence and are therefore contingent).
No Dumb Ox the OP bases his argument on assumptions and nothing more.
Um don't some things go out of existence....?....or course they do so his argument is based on at least some facts.
Dumb Ox
No the OP hasn't proven any necessary being/god. The OP has failed to prove a necessary being/god created the universe. You have failed to prove a god exist.
you would make a great case to be studied Psychologically.
Are you saying Dumb Ox is a great case to be studied?
No, I'm saying that I'm starting to consider the doctrine of god's manifestation in Human beings. as I conclude there must be a god of stupidity and Ignorance that has manifested in You.
No god has manifested in me. I wonder if a god of childish behavior has manifested in you. All the childish name calling coming from you. You have failed to prove a necessary being is real. You have failed to prove a necessary being created or caused the universe. Can you prove a necessary being is real? All you do is make claims one is real, you never give any evidence that can be tested and peer reviewed. Just saying a necessary being/god is real will never convince any Atheist here at AR.
That is far from clear, on more than one level (that the universe is made up of contingent things, and that a set should have the properties of its elements). Just another one of the suspicious premises this "proof" is stuffed full of. Think about it:
P1: Class A is made up entirely of students with a tumor.
C1: Therefore class A itself has a tumor.
We can see that this doesn't always work; so this idea that sets have the attributes common to their members is dubious.
Name one thing in the universe which we know is not contingent.
Your counter example isn't really applicable. Before I critique it, I will prove my point positively:
If all things in the universe or that make up the universe (not including God) are contingent, then it is possible for them all to go out of existence or to never have been by definition.
Therfore, if they all go out of existence or never were, then there is nothing in the universe or nothing that makes up the universe. Therefore, there is no universe in existence which means that the universe is contingent.
Now I will critique your counter example. I believe you are making the fallacy of the undistributed middle, but I'm not sure if that the right one or applicable. Either way, possibility and contigency can be applied to both individuals groups and the universe as a whole in a way in which cancer cannot. One is a physical attribute only applicable to living things while the other is a metaphysical attribute applicable to all things except necessary things. So I would rewrite your example and demonstrate that contingency can be deduced from individuals to a group which suggests the same can be done for the inverse.
P1 Class A exists only as long as there are students in it.
P2 There are students in it but they can die.
C1 Therefore Class A exists.
But...
P1b At some future date all of the students will be shot at once in Class A.
P2b Then there are no students in Class A.
C2 Therefore Class A no longer exists.
Now keep in mind what contigency is and apply it to the above hypothetical situation. If the property can be applied to both the set and individuals in at least an analogous way (like existence or quality), then you can deduce what the set will be.
Another premise that is very suspicious. After all, removing all the elements of a set, does not destroy a set, the set still exists.
Do you guys not get it that each premise you add makes it worse, not better? Because the more you add, the more controversial/suspicious the combined collection of premises gets; and the truth of the conclusion depends on EVERY premise being true.
There is no such a thing as set that exists outside. a set is just a concept that exists in the mind. You are treating the universe as if it's a mathematical set. the universe is just a universal concept, which does not exist outside. the only thing that exists is the particulars, and the aggregate of all these things that exist outside we just call it a universe. so if we removed all the existent things we would have ended up having nothing. unless of course there would be something left we can call it a set, and i would be happy to know from you what would be that thing?
what actually makes it worse is that you don't have any idea how a debate works. I think you are just hiding behind adding-more-premises objections (which i see it far from being an objection at all) because you're really incapable of addressing them let alone refuting them.
The innuendo (or actual insults) are getting old.
Then deal with the substance of his argument.
Yet another premise, to throw more suspicion onto the whole endeavour.
You might notice that whether or not you can apply the attributes of the elements to the set, depends on the details of what set you are talking about. That is already a huge problem if you're writing a proof. If you apply it because you think it is appropriate in a certain situation, you are just begging the question. You need to apply it universally, or not at all; and it seems it does not work universally. This is why it is suspicious.
Restated: If the procedure works in some cases but not others; then by using it on certain cases you are already assuming the conclusion in the premise.
how can you say that it's suspicion when he did demonstrate how contingency applies to the parts and the whole?
that exactly applies to you not him, did you forget that silly example in this comment ?
since we are talking about "Contingency" so the right way to disprove his argument, Is to give an example in which the parts are contingent but the whole isn't. anything else is just Irrelevant. he gave you an example to prove his point. and yet, as always, as expected, you just Ignored it rather than refuting it. However, it does not even need an example it's so obvious from the definition of contingent and necessary that there cannot be thing that has always been existed but the parts that forms it hasn't. the law of non-contridiction is enough to debunk this absurdity. it's not rocket science. but it seems that anything that has to do with logic is like rocket science for your brainless head.
Dumb Ox
Can you prove the universe had a cause or creator? Can you give any evidence that a god is real? Evidence that can be tested and peer reviewed? Using metaphysics to prove a god is not testable by science. Metaphysics is just your way of hiding from real science, because you know that you have no testable evidence to give. Claiming a god is real using metaphysics will never convince any Atheist your god is real.
Yeah, that's another good example there Nya.
That starts to get into the fallacy of composition, I think?
Another example I heard awhile back was....
P1: No part of an airplane can fly.
C1: Therefore, an airplane can not fly.
Everything that we know about and terms that we use to describe our universe involve its parts, "inside" the universe. If we could step "outside" the universe and examine it as a single unit, would it necessarily follow the exact same concepts? It may not. It may very well follow a completely different set of "rules".
troll alert
Let me make it simpler:
You guys tell us that the universe is composed of contingent things. How do you know that is true?
They also claim that a necessary being/god is real, and that is caused or created the universe. How do you know that is true? I think that metaphysics is the playground of the shady and dishonest people, who hide from real science.
1) Using your definitions, I accept this. Not the definitions I would use, but I get you setup the definitions, and that sentence works with those definitions.
2) I could argue this point, but for the most point I agree, the universe is contingent, it may have exceptions but I am not trying to argue that.
3) You suddenly switch here, now we are not talking about what the universe currently is, but you go to past tense, "have" now you are implying suddenly that the universe has to have a cause, not the current universe is a series of cause. You are talking about the reason for the universe being created, not all the stuff you were going on about, "rules of the current universe." You are trying to apply the rules of this universe you created, to "before" this universe. You do not have rules before this universe because we do not know of any rules or possibility of rules "before" this universe.
Simply put, you are using the rules created in the space of a large box, to try and explain how that box came to be, before it was a box. To the people inside the box that did not exist before the box, that cannot escape the box, cannot observe the outside of the box, it beyond foolish to apply any rules about "before" or outside the box.
The universe is our "box."
Your argument of a necessary cause uses the rules inside the box to define the outside of the box, before the box. That is the WRONG way to go about trying to define the box, and it's cause etc.
Very good points, I would also like a better clarification of 'nothing'...
I honestly don't think we as a species can even conceive the notion!
I would also like to see the steps from the second conclusion to the title in the OP 'a proof for gods existance'
I followed the link but the subsequent thread seems to skip steps.
Why does the cause of a contingent universe have to be a necessary being? Surely if we accept that all of the known universe is contingent, there is surely far more rational and logical explanation as to what necesitated existance?
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