<UL TYPE=SQUARE>

<LI>God is the entity than which no greater entity can be conceived.

<LI> The concept of God exists in human understanding.

<LI> God does not exist in reality (assumed in order to refute).

<LI> The concept of God existing in reality exists in human understanding.

<LI> If an entity exists in reality and in human understanding, this entity is greater than it would have been if it existed only in human understanding (a statement of existence as a perfection).

<LI>From 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 an entity can be conceived which is greater than God, the entity than which no greater entity can be conceived (logical self-contradiction).

<LI>Assumption 3 is wrong, therefore God exists in reality (assuming 1, 2, 4, and 5 are accepted as true).

</UL>

Moving to My God....

This is Anselm's Ontological Argument.

1. Prove to exist is better than to not exist. Also, existence is NOT a predicate.

2. I assume you are aware of the perfect island argument and what is wrong with the perfect island argument. Therefore the definition of God needs to require to be something measurable as the greatest. All-powerful and all-knowing can be measurable as the greatest. But, like the island argument, I can imagine a being that is all-powerful and all-knowing but greater than any other being in other ways, such as appearance and moral values, so can others who would differ from me. Therefore, like the island argument, it fails.

3. Just because an argument is logically valid, does not mean it's true. Here's an example for all you God-believers:

quote: 1. The creation of the world is the most marvelous achievement imaginable.

2. The merit of an achievement is the product of (a) its intrinsic quality, and (b) the ability of its creator.

3. The greater the disability (or handicap) of the creator, the more impressive the achievement.

4. The most formidable handicap for a creator would be non-existence.

5. Therefore if we suppose that the universe is the product of an existent creator we can conceive a greater being — namely, one who created everything while not existing.

6. Therefore God does not exist.

4. If a being like that does exist, that is so powerful it could create the world, that does not necessarily mean it created this world. It could have arisen out of this world.



[This message has been edited by Hare_Geist (edited 02-13-2007).]

Comprehensive look at this type of argument. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/)

All you are saying is that the statement "God does not exist in reality" is wrong therefor god does exist. None of the other assumptions have no connection to neither 3 nor 7 so you can basically say that god exists because he does not not exist. I'm really just typing this right now as an attempt to try to find where the logic lays for myself but I'm not finding any. Not one bit of logical ground. Based on that I figured it out. Your only joking. That's funny except Hare_Geist showed me in his reply that this form of anti-logic actually has a name. It seems the joke is on me as well as every poor sensical being about this earth. Not THAT is just depressing.

Simply because a being has "existence" as an attribute it does not follow that such a being actually exists.

The ontological argument, both forms, have been shown to be flawed over and over again; take a philosophy of religion paper if you still find them convincing.

I think it's extreamly selfish and small-minded to think that some "being" created our planet. Think of it this way... our planets revolve around the sun. Our sun is just a star, it has no special qualities compared to others. So with all the stars out there, there's gotta be other planets that can hold life.

"whatever, who created the sun and the stars and the planets then??" - ignorant religious person response

my answer 2 that is:

whatever, who created this "god" that created everything? how do you answer that one? we never gonna know so quit spreading fairy tales and devote your attention to the future and developments.

thank you

It seems as though the first argument is riddled with cop-outs for God.

I'm not sure where one would even begin to argue that existing &gt; not existing...what does that even mean?

You can't apply an arguement to God or give reasons as to why God exists/doesn't exist. We are not in that position and we will never be. Human beings cannot prove or disprove God. It's as simple as that. It will never happen.

quote:Originally posted by Guildenstern:

You can't apply an arguement to God or give reasons as to why God exists/doesn't exist. We are not in that position and we will never be. Human beings cannot prove or disprove God. It's as simple as that. It will never happen.

Just as humans will never be able to prove or disprove invisible pink unicorns.

quote:Originally posted by The_Big_Beef:

Just as humans will never be able to prove or disprove invisible pink unicorns.

Non sequitur. This is why we won't be able to ever prove or disprove these things. We are just too foolish.

It just like aliens, we have no actual proof that it exists, saying it exists does not make it exists. Saying that there is a monkey up my ass, does not make it true. Where's the proof??

hm, yes, yes lets all copy and paste from wikipedia.



hm yes.

quote:Originally posted by Behexen:

It just like aliens, we have no actual proof that it exists, saying it exists does not make it exists. Saying that there is a monkey up my ass, does not make it true. Where's the proof??

We have no proof that aliens exist, but many, many people believe that they do. How can they be so sure? They can't, but they passionately have faith that extraterrestrial live-forms exist. I think that it's sad to look around and see how we humans think so highly of ourselves now, we believe that we are so intelligent, that we need proof of everything. We believe that without us PROVING something exists, it does not. We are far from reaching that level of intelligence and certainty. We function better and the world is a much more tolerable place with a layer of fantasy insulating our minds.

quote:"We have no proof that aliens exist, but many, many people believe that they do. How can they be so sure? They can't, but they passionately have faith that extraterrestrial live-forms exist. I think that it's sad to look around and see how we humans think so highly of ourselves now, we believe that we are so intelligent, that we need proof of everything."

There's no proof that I'm *not* a god. Oops, guess you'd better believe me if we can't ever prove anything.

quote:"We believe that without us PROVING something exists, it does not. We are far from reaching that level of intelligence and certainty."

Simply because somebody thought up an entity or entities is not enough to believe they exist. By your logic, anyone could pull any random nonsense out of their asses and we'd have to accept it all as true. Does that makes sense? Fuck no, because then nothing gets figured out or accomplished.

quote:"We function better and the world is a much more tolerable place with a layer of fantasy insulating our minds.

Sadly, most humans do seem to need the security blanket of a fantasy world to function properly in the world. This is a problem that needs to be dealt with, not embraced because your warm, fuzzy emotions tell you so. Fortunately not all of us are quite so backwards.

quote:Originally posted by Guildenstern:

Non sequitur.

It does indeed follow. It's an example that illustrates the absurdity of believing things because we cannot definitely disprove them.

quote:Originally posted by Surak:

Sadly, most humans do seem to need the security blanket of a fantasy world to function properly in the world. This is a problem that needs to be dealt with, not embraced because your warm, fuzzy emotions tell you so. Fortunately not all of us are quite so backwards.

Indeed. Whether or not it has good effects (i.e. whether or not the world functions better with it, which is debatable) has no bearing on the truth of a proposition, which is what we're discussing.



Entheogenic

quote:Originally posted by Surak:

Sadly, most humans do seem to need the security blanket of a fantasy world to function properly in the world. This is a problem that needs to be dealt with, not embraced because your warm, fuzzy emotions tell you so. Fortunately not all of us are quite so backwards.

And these are the people religion prays on. Like a virus. The old, who are afraid of dieing. The young, who don't know better and its in there very nature to listen to the old. The mentally weak, drug addicts, alcoholics, depressed, etc.

Weak minds and the people who pray on those weak minds for money is the only thing keeping religion around in modern society.

I can't see how god can be compared to aliens. there is no such thing as proof, only better odds. god has a miniscule chance of existing, while aliens have miniscule chance of not existing. it isn't absurd to believe aliens exist elsewhere in the universe

quote:Originally posted by doct0r_4rmo:

<UL TYPE=SQUARE>

<LI>God is the entity than which no greater entity can be conceived.

<LI> The concept of God exists in human understanding.

<LI> God does not exist in reality (assumed in order to refute).

<LI> The concept of God existing in reality exists in human understanding.

<LI> If an entity exists in reality and in human understanding, this entity is greater than it would have been if it existed only in human understanding (a statement of existence as a perfection).

<LI>From 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 an entity can be conceived which is greater than God, the entity than which no greater entity can be conceived (logical self-contradiction).

<LI>Assumption 3 is wrong, therefore God exists in reality (assuming 1, 2, 4, and 5 are accepted as true).

</UL>

What this actually proves is that you have to conceive it as a reality for it to be the greatest thing that we can conceive; however, what reason is there that the greatest thing that we are capable of conceiving must exist? There's clearly none. Nice job, we all know now that we have to imagine something is real for it to be the most powerful object we can imagine... Things we imagine are only in our imaginations aren't as powerful... Wow.

Lol, this thread has both kinds of crazy in it.