The Rational Proof of God's Existence

[Crispy]

You raise some fair points, but I would not change the title of the thread even if I could (which I can't). The reason is that I believe I can indeed prove God's existence through rational means if I am allowed to proceed with my argument free from the kinds of interruptions that have too often disgraced this thread.

Well, you do invite them

"With me so far?"
"Um, no, that's bonkers."

Why not just do a summary - under a thousand words (far less than have been expended so far) so we can clearly see the train of thought from beginning to end without having to read 2580 posts.

 

[Diem K]

Why not just do a summary - under a thousand words (far less than have been expended so far) so we can clearly see the train of thought from beginning to end without having to read 2580 posts.

I tried to do this for/prompt Phildwyer in post 2334 (several years back now).

A short summary of what I think phildwyer has put forward in the discussion so far:

1 - Human beings perceive value in things.
2 - This value is not real; it’s a representation of human activity.
3 - This collective perception of value by Human society leads to some unsavoury results and is therefore bad and represents the Devil.
4 - If the Devil exists then so must God.

Not much to it really.

Can we just agree that these are the four steps which are being presented as the arguement.

It's up to each individual if you think these steps are logical or not.

and that is it really - end of discussion.

 

[Crispy]

That's pretty much what I thought it was. And as far as I can see, all that proves is the existence of human beings.

 

[kyser_soze]

I extend their reading by showing how the psychological power of money corresponds to certain pre-Enlightenment, theological concepts, and I suggest that these concepts are therefore not obsolete,

Are we back to 'Money is the devil' with this statement? I dimly remember around verses 1000-1300 of this thread (which should be renamed 'The Book of PhilDwyer') there was some attempt to equate money with the devil/source of evil...or was that another thread entirely?

 

[phildwyer]

Well its obviously a bit too complicated to be summarized in a few words, but basically I was starting by showing that spiritual forces are real: money for instance is a spiritual force. And then I was showing that "logos" is another such spiritual force but with the opposite characteristics from money. And then I pointed out that "logos" is God in the Bible, and that in Platonic rationalism "logos" is the conditions of possibility for human thought, so in this sense "logos" creates not only human beings, but also the world insofar as human beings can know it. This argument is hardly original--Plato, Kant, and Hegel make different versions of it, and Jacques Derrida, the most famous and well-respected philosopher of the last fifty years, says basically the same thing. But its a kind of philosophy that contradicts the common-sense empiricism that most people today use as the filter of their experience, so it seems strange to many people, hence the howls of outrage I suppose.

And I think that settles the matter. Are there any final questions or can we wrap this up now?

 

[phildwyer]

I tried to do this for/prompt Phildwyer in post 2334 (several years back now).

A short summary of what I think phildwyer has put forward in the discussion so far:

1 - Human beings perceive value in things.
2 - This value is not real; it’s a representation of human activity.
3 - This collective perception of value by Human society leads to some unsavoury results and is therefore bad and represents the Devil.
4 - If the Devil exists then so must God.

Actually your third point is only half-correct. The problem with money is not only its unsavory effect but the fact that it is a "performative" or "efficacious" sign. But signs are not naturally performative but referential. And "logos" is the ultimate referent. So money is a perverted kind of sign. There is also the fact that money represents not human "labor" but human "labor-power," which is to say huiman subjective activity considered as a whole, which is to say human life. So money is the objectified form of human life, or in other words death.

 

[bluestreak]

That's pretty much what I thought it was. And as far as I can see, all that proves is the existence of human beings.

oooh, can we rationally prove the existence of people? that'd be a good thread.

 

[laptop]

oooh, can we rationally prove the existence of people? that'd be a good thread.

solipsists' forum ----------------->

(It's very quiet in there )

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Well its obviously a bit too complicated to be summarized in a few words, but basically I was starting by showing that spiritual forces are real: money for instance is a spiritual force. And then I was showing that "logos" is another such spiritual force but with the opposite characteristics from money. And then I pointed out that "logos" is God in the Bible, and that in Platonic rationalism "logos" is the conditions of possibility for human thought, so in this sense "logos" creates not only human beings, but also the world insofar as human beings can know it. This argument is hardly original--Plato, Kant, and Hegel make different versions of it, and Jacques Derrida, the most famous and well-respected philosopher of the last fifty years, says basically the same thing. But its a kind of philosophy that contradicts the common-sense empiricism that most people today use as the filter of their experience, so it seems strange to many people, hence the howls of outrage I suppose.

And I think that settles the matter. Are there any final questions or can we wrap this up now?

Did you start this thread to pontificate or to genuinely test your ideas? That settles no matter whatsoever. I'm sure someone has already pointed this out, but everything you are saying is back-to-front. You think of an idea and then end up believing that the idea thought you. We invented the concept of money, and any other abstract concept that you can come up with. The only sense in which there is a god is the one in which we are all gods as we have free will. And it is impossible for us to prove that we have free will. Like most on this thread, I have neither the time nor inclination to read the whole of this thing. I can only assume through your arrogant manner that you haven't been listening to any of your critics. Name-dropping a bunch of philosophers does not constitute a proof. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Russell: they all say different, so there.

 

[phildwyer]

Did you start this thread to pontificate or to genuinely test your ideas? That settles no matter whatsoever. I'm sure someone has already pointed this out, but everything you are saying is back-to-front. You think of an idea and then end up believing that the idea thought you. We invented the concept of money, and any other abstract concept that you can come up with.

Ah, but that's where you're wrong. There are concepts which make us possible, and without which we could not exist. There are, to use the technical term, "a priori" concepts.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Ah, but that's where you're wrong. There are concepts which make us possible, and without which we could not exist. There are, to use the technical term, "a priori" concepts.

I hear the ghost of Hegel in what you say. A load of unsubstantiated mystic nonsense. 'Does an idea exist before somebody has thought it?' as a genuine, humble, question would have been a better starting point for your thread. I don't mean to patronise, that is talk down to, you but you appear to assume that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot.

 

[nino_savatte]

Did you start this thread to pontificate or to genuinely test your ideas? That settles no matter whatsoever. I'm sure someone has already pointed this out, but everything you are saying is back-to-front. You think of an idea and then end up believing that the idea thought you. We invented the concept of money, and any other abstract concept that you can come up with. The only sense in which there is a god is the one in which we are all gods as we have free will. And it is impossible for us to prove that we have free will. Like most on this thread, I have neither the time nor inclination to read the whole of this thing. I can only assume through your arrogant manner that you haven't been listening to any of your critics. Name-dropping a bunch of philosophers does not constitute a proof. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Russell: they all say different, so there.

He did it for both of those reasons but there is something else at work here: patronising arrogance and the desire to make himself feel better by belittling others. Phil's a Freudian's wish come true.

 

[red_gordon]

As this is a very long thread could someone please give a summation of the 'proofs' for Gods existence?

 

[Fruitloop]

balls!

double post

 

[Fruitloop]

the problem with efficacious signs

a) the causally efficacious sign (for this example we'll consider 'value') - is not purely conceptual because that would undermine its ontology - i.e. it could be paraphrased away to a sentence like 'people in X mental state do Y', without needing to believe in the propositional object of mental state X

b) it isn't immanent either - i.e. there is nothing physically 'in' a cow that means it's worth 2.5 sheep

c) therefore it's an abstract entity. It is non spatio-temporal.

d) it has real ontological status - i.e. it can't be paraphrased away to 'the average exchange rate at the moment between cows and sheep is 2.5' either, since this would mean that it was just like the exchange rate between the dollar and the pound, which is obviously a fictional entity (a 'useful fiction') representing the average buy and sell rates of all the forex transactions between dollars and pounds over a certain period. i.e. whilst you might decide whether to buy a house in Cape Cod at the moment based on it, you don't need to have ontological faith in 'the exchange rate' as a causal entity - it's obviously just an indication of how many dollars you might be able to buy for your pounds at the moment (all things being equal), similar in its ontological status to a cricketer's batting average.

however:

e) the physical world appears causally closed from a third-person point of view (and has to be thought so if we're going to avoid an old-fashioned interactionist dualism), even if conscious experience isn't reducible within it (for example to functions).

f) if there were actually existing non-mental abstract entities, they couldn't have causative efficacy either in themselves or through our knowledge of them because that would violate the closed causal nexus of the phenomenal world, of which individual consciousness is non-reducibly a part. You cannot know that which has no effect, but things that do have effect cannot be abstract - they must be conceptual or material (assuming the non-identity of these two categories for a moment).

g) therefore there are no efficacious signs.

The above is considered from the point of view of value, but I think that it could trivially be extended to any of the other categories like abstract labour.

 

[phildwyer]

I hear the ghost of Hegel in what you say. A load of unsubstantiated mystic nonsense. 'Does an idea exist before somebody has thought it?' as a genuine, humble, question would have been a better starting point for your thread. I don't mean to patronise, that is talk down to, you but you appear to assume that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot.

Well to be fair, many of them *are* idiots. By no means all though. The point is that there are ideas that make human experience possible, and so precede (or better are "prior to") human experience. Did they exist before human beings? Of course not: they are qualities of the human mind. The question is whether we can deduce from the fact of their existence the further existence of a superhuman source from which they derive. Like Kant, Hegel and (yes) Marx, I believe we can.

Fruitloop: I'll answer your intriguing points later on.

 

[red_gordon]

A lot of the technical philisophical terms escape me

I don't see that human ideas precede human experience.
1. This is to assume a quintessential human experience with universal ideas which we can see from the variety of human experiences (plural) isn't true.
2. I would also like to know how this allegedly conforms with Marx. From the standpoint of dialectical materialism ideas do not make existence possible but existence neccesitates ideas:

That pure mathematics has a validity which is independent of the particular individual is, for that matter, correct... But it is not at all true that in pure mathmatics the mind deals only with its own creations and imaginations. The concept of number and form have not been derived from any source other than the world of reality. The ten fingers on which men learnt to count, that is, to carry out the first arithmetical operation, may be anything else, but they are certainly not a free creation of the mind. Counting requires not only objects that can be counted, but also the ability to exclude all other properties of the objects considered than their number - and this ability is the product of a long historical evolution based on experience. Like the idea of number, so the idea of form is derived exclusively from the external world, and does not arise in the mind as a product of pure thought... The fact that this material appears in an extremely abstract form can only superficially conceal its origin in the external world. But in order to make it possible to investigate these forms and relations in their pure state, it is necessary to abstract them... Even the apparent deriviation of mathmatical magnitudes from each other does not prove their a priori origin, but only their rational interconnection... Like all other sciences, mathmatics arouse out of the needs of men.

Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, p.47-48

 

[phildwyer]

a) the causally efficacious sign (for this example we'll consider 'value') - is not purely conceptual because that would undermine its ontology - i.e. it could be paraphrased away to a sentence like 'people in X mental state do Y', without needing to believe in the propositional object of mental state X

b) it isn't immanent either - i.e. there is nothing physically 'in' a cow that means it's worth 2.5 sheep

c) therefore it's an abstract entity. It is non spatio-temporal.

d) it has real ontological status - i.e. it can't be paraphrased away to 'the average exchange rate at the moment between cows and sheep is 2.5' either, since this would mean that it was just like the exchange rate between the dollar and the pound, which is obviously a fictional entity (a 'useful fiction') representing the average buy and sell rates of all the forex transactions between dollars and pounds over a certain period. i.e. whilst you might decide whether to buy a house in Cape Cod at the moment based on it, you don't need to have ontological faith in 'the exchange rate' as a causal entity - it's obviously just an indication of how many dollars you might be able to buy for your pounds at the moment (all things being equal), similar in its ontological status to a cricketer's batting average.

however:

e) the physical world appears causally closed from a third-person point of view (and has to be thought so if we're going to avoid an old-fashioned interactionist dualism), even if conscious experience isn't reducible within it (for example to functions).

f) if there were actually existing non-mental abstract entities, they couldn't have causative efficacy either in themselves or through our knowledge of them because that would violate the closed causal nexus of the phenomenal world, of which individual consciousness is non-reducibly a part. You cannot know that which has no effect, but things that do have effect cannot be abstract - they must be conceptual or material (assuming the non-identity of these two categories for a moment).

g) therefore there are no efficacious signs.

The above is considered from the point of view of value, but I think that it could trivially be extended to any of the other categories like abstract labour.

What about language? When the priest says “I now pronounce you man and wife,” or when Chamberlain said “This country is at war with Germany,” they are not describing a prelinguistic state of affairs, they are bringing a state of affairs into being through a speech-act. Their words *do* something: they are performative, or efficacious. So there *are* in fact efficacious signs.

Obviously such signs are neither subjective nor objective, rather they mediate between these two spheres. Among other differences between them and referential signs is the fact that they do not depend on the subjective intention of the speaker: the couple will be objectively married by the priest’s saying the words, no matter what his subjective intention may be. Nor are such signs “true” or “false,” they are efficacious or nonefficacious—that is all. Such signs therefore do not derive their function from the *logos,* which is the prelinguistic guarantor of truth upon which denotative, referential language depends.

The manipulation of such efficacious signs is *magic.* In magic, rituals and incantations and images are manipulated so as to produce objective effects: sticking a pin in an symbol representing a person will give the person represented cancer and so on. Because such signs do not derive from the logos, they are in most societies adjudged ethically reprehensible. Witches and magicians are generally viewed with at least suspicion and often violent hostility.

In capitalism, financial value (in the expanded form of money) is a system of efficacious signs. It has no objective existence, but equally it is not purely subjective (as you say in point a above). Money represents human activity in the form of representation: it is human life in externalized or “alienated” form. Money achieves objective effects that do not result from any humanly subjective intention.

We can deduce the ethical status of these facts from material phenomena like the class struggle, and that is doubtless appropriate to a certain stage of history. The collapse of socialism and the global domonance of capital suggest that that era may be past. But we can also deduce that status by analyzing the *psychological* effects of efficacious signs. And to do that we need to apply pre-Enlightenment intellectual techniques that predate the global predominance of capital.

 

[Fruitloop]

OK gotcha. I will ponder and come back to you.

As an aside, I don't think it matters for a hypothetical 'soft' version of this thesis whether signs really are efficacious or not. As far as I understand it Augustine didn't think that signs could be efficacious in themselves, it was the belief in the efficacy of signs (that would have to be actually mediated by evil spirits or whatever) that is satanic. This is all way outside my area of expertise though.

 

[phildwyer]

OK gotcha. I will ponder and come back to you.

As an aside, I don't think it matters for a hypothetical 'soft' version of this thesis whether signs really are efficacious or not. As far as I understand it Augustine didn't think that signs could be efficacious in themselves, it was the belief in the efficacy of signs (that would have to be actually mediated by evil spirits or whatever) that is satanic. This is all way outside my area of expertise though.

No, you're exactly right. Not just Augustine but a dominant strand of thought in all monotheistic faiths (and also in Platonic rationalism) reasoned that because signs obviously *can't* achieve objective effects, when people act as thought they *do* produce such effects (and thus bring those effects into objective existence), they are being inspired by Satan. The manipulation of signs for objective effects is Satanic magic, involves a "pact" with Satan and so on. It is interesting to apply such critiques to our own world, which is completely ruled by efficacious signs.

 

[I-Roy]

Well its obviously a bit too complicated to be summarized in a few words, but basically I was starting by showing that spiritual forces are real: money for instance is a spiritual force. And then I was showing that "logos" is another such spiritual force but with the opposite characteristics from money. And then I pointed out that "logos" is God in the Bible, and that in Platonic rationalism "logos" is the conditions of possibility for human thought, so in this sense "logos" creates not only human beings, but also the world insofar as human beings can know it. This argument is hardly original--Plato, Kant, and Hegel make different versions of it, and Jacques Derrida, the most famous and well-respected philosopher of the last fifty years, says basically the same thing. But its a kind of philosophy that contradicts the common-sense empiricism that most people today use as the filter of their experience, so it seems strange to many people, hence the howls of outrage I suppose.

And I think that settles the matter. Are there any final questions or can we wrap this up now?

so the bottom line is - God exists because we create it?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Is this an attempt to create the longest thread in history?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

If so...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I believe I have now done my bit.

 

[Negativland]

signs obviously *can't* achieve objective effects, when people act as thought they *do* produce such effects

Surely the 'power' of a sign such as the declaration of war lies in the social situation which gives it meaning? There is a pre-existing power system that allows the words to have an objective effect.

 

[WouldBe]

Well its obviously a bit too complicated to be summarized in a few words, but basically I was starting by showing that spiritual forces are real: money for instance is a spiritual force. And then I was showing that "logos" is another such spiritual force but with the opposite characteristics from money. And then I pointed out that "logos" is God in the Bible, and that in Platonic rationalism "logos" is the conditions of possibility for human thought, so in this sense "logos" creates not only human beings, but also the world insofar as human beings can know it. This argument is hardly original--Plato, Kant, and Hegel make different versions of it, and Jacques Derrida, the most famous and well-respected philosopher of the last fifty years, says basically the same thing. But its a kind of philosophy that contradicts the common-sense empiricism that most people today use as the filter of their experience, so it seems strange to many people, hence the howls of outrage I suppose.

And I think that settles the matter. Are there any final questions or can we wrap this up now?

There was a horizon type program on a few years ago that claimed religion was a type of mental health problem.

Congratulations on backing up that theopry.

 

[phildwyer]

Is this an attempt to create the longest thread in history?

I did one more than twice this long once. It would be about 10,000 pages by now if it hadn't been binned.

 

[Aldebaran]

Well its obviously a bit too complicated to be summarized in a few words, but basically I was starting by showing that spiritual forces are real: money for instance is a spiritual force…

On which base do you make the claim that spiritual forces are real.(ref. to former post ?)
When you then talk about money as if that is a spiritual force : money is a human invented tool to specify a value of human invented activity or thought. It is as such artificial, but not abstract in reality although manifestations of its force can – eventually - be considered to constitute an abstract, whereas a spiritual force rises from within and by force of logos, is only able to manifest itself in the abstract where it resides although when it becomes manifest as result of reason-driven force, this manifestation can be considered as constituting a force in reality (and what about societies who don’t know money?).

Without manifestation of logos through human reasoning money would not be possible. Hence you compare an artificial tool, dependend for its existence of a logos driven creation with its very creator and even make it the opposite thereof.

In my reading of your last posts your observervation come with a one-sided, Christian/Western biased approach. How would you prove God’s existence to those who have no clue of what you talk about (or do you support a vision that only Christian./Western belief in God’s existence is valid)?

Some of your other points
Language as performative signs etc..:
Only to those who understand meaning and/or value, which is not universal and even within the group that understands not equal.
Just like the creation of money “words” derive their existence from logos becoming manifest by human reasoning, hence are its creation.
Magic: What you call magic can also be called spiritual and placed in that category of abstract, eventually becoming manifest in reality as result of reason-driven force (and are as such often mistaken for being themselves that force).
How magiciens and witches are viewed in societies not used to them is in my opinion besides the question and hence of no importance.
Money again: Use of money is merely construction of objectives following from subjective intention and does not represent human life but only human action within human life.
Capitalism: The global dominance of Capitalism can’t manifest itself, nor can it be sustained withouth global enslavement of the logos manifest in human thought. The same counts for every human invented system and with changes of the system come changes of ethics.

I can’t see how anyone but you can be happy with or about your conclusion or how you can defend it as rational.

salaam.

 

[I-Roy]

There was a horizon type program on a few years ago that claimed religion was a type of mental health problem.

Congratulations on backing up that theopry.

Well I do think God is linked to serotonin - Buddha under his datura tree, the calmness and rapture people feel when they have religion, the awful feeling that God has died when some people are depressed.

 

[Fruitloop]

What about language? When the priest says “I now pronounce you man and wife,” or when Chamberlain said “This country is at war with Germany,” they are not describing a prelinguistic state of affairs, they are bringing a state of affairs into being through a speech-act. Their words *do* something: they are performative, or efficacious. So there *are* in fact efficacious signs.

Obviously such signs are neither subjective nor objective, rather they mediate between these two spheres. Among other differences between them and referential signs is the fact that they do not depend on the subjective intention of the speaker: the couple will be objectively married by the priest’s saying the words, no matter what his subjective intention may be. Nor are such signs “true” or “false,” they are efficacious or nonefficacious—that is all. Such signs therefore do not derive their function from the *logos,* which is the prelinguistic guarantor of truth upon which denotative, referential language depends.

The manipulation of such efficacious signs is *magic.* In magic, rituals and incantations and images are manipulated so as to produce objective effects: sticking a pin in an symbol representing a person will give the person represented cancer and so on. Because such signs do not derive from the logos, they are in most societies adjudged ethically reprehensible. Witches and magicians are generally viewed with at least suspicion and often violent hostility.

In capitalism, financial value (in the expanded form of money) is a system of efficacious signs. It has no objective existence, but equally it is not purely subjective (as you say in point a above). Money represents human activity in the form of representation: it is human life in externalized or “alienated” form. Money achieves objective effects that do not result from any humanly subjective intention.

We can deduce the ethical status of these facts from material phenomena like the class struggle, and that is doubtless appropriate to a certain stage of history. The collapse of socialism and the global domonance of capital suggest that that era may be past. But we can also deduce that status by analyzing the *psychological* effects of efficacious signs. And to do that we need to apply pre-Enlightenment intellectual techniques that predate the global predominance of capital.

My only reservation with this is that what is being changed is function not ontology. For example, all that's necessary to designate something a christmas present is to hand it to someone saying 'Merry Christmas', but no change takes place in that process that would be discernible to someone who didn't have prior awareness of the redesignation - it's still just a toaster or whatever. There's no (admittedly mediated) interaction with the Real, in the way there would be if I hit it with a sledgehammer.

So I guess personally I would situate the whole thing in the realm of the symbolic order - i.e. that is where the efficacy lies. In the same way, sticking pins in the voodoo doll if only efficacious if the other person a) knows that's what you've done and b) believes that it will have some effect. If the person is either blithely unaware or an extreme materialist skeptic like Richard Dawkins then it's just not going to work (so really you might as well throw yours away )

None of this is in any way troubling, although I still don't really get whether the proof of God's existence is meant in an ontological or a symbolic sense - I mean, you could say that Sherlock Homes exists in the sense of being an efficacious sign that compels American tourists to visit 42 Baker Street or wherever it is, but I think most people imagine the 'existence' of the thread-title to have a more purely ontological quality than what's implied by this.

Anyway, rather than rehearsing these arguments yet further, it might be more interesting to hear exactly which elements of pre-enlightenment thought can be used to combat efficacious signs, since if we provisionally accept this analysis it looks like a struggle that's being comprehensively lost at the moment.