my life

1- we can’t prove our bodies exist, so they must not.
2- we can’t prove that god exists, so he must.

Beautifully concise, ben. Thanks.

I rather like the refutation, too. :D As a friend of mine said long ago (paraphrased): “The best way to refute a person who claims we can’t know that wall is there is pain. Tell him to run full force into it.”

d

“I AM”
Therefore “You ARE Not".
Redneck philosophy
“I Drink” Therefore “I Don’t Care".
Now you know why they say that arguing religion with a religous person is like banging your head against the wall. The results are the same, the wall is still standing and you walk away with a tremendous headache.

Ah yes, Rick. Fun with Descartes’ “cogito, ergo sum” (although this is strange, since Descartes was French, and would have actually said “Je pense, donc je suis.” (But it seems he never even said that, exactly. He simply made a statement: “Je pence, je suis,” or “I think, I exist.”

Here’s my favorite manglement of it: I doubt, therefore I might be.

There’s some interesting bits in that Wikipedia article, if you have the fortitude to wade through it. First, this saying didn’t originate with Descartes; he just made it famous.

More interesting (to me) is that this is accepted as a basic starting point in most existence (of self) arguments, but is in fact an example of a circular argument. That is, it assumes the existence of what it is attempting to prove (that an “I” exists with which to think). I never gave that much thought to it, probably because the truth of “I think, therefore I am” seems to self-evident to me that I never dissected it. Not that I plan to give up believing that I’m me, and that this computer exists and there are actual people out there typing responses to my random musings, etc. I’m a bit to pragmatic to be drawn too deeply into the “how can we know anything?” bottomless pit, me.

And I submit to you that, in reality, everyone is just as pragmatic.* They just veer from their acceptance of sensual reality to silly, “Oh you can’t even prove you exist!” arguments when it suits them. But they don’t believe this themselves. If I were asking for proof that there’s a cow in the front yard, they’d take me to a window and point at it, or lead me to it so I could touch it. If a scientist tells me there’s a planet we can’t see at a certain point, he won’t fall back on “we can’t know reality!” to support his assertion; he’ll explain how we can observe gravitational pulls in neighboring planets/moons that support the theory.

* And this is probably why this argument irks me so much. I’ve never met or heard of a single person who lives day to day assuming things around them are figments of their imagination, because we can’t KNOW them.

When someone produces the “but what do you really know?” argument, it’s just a red flag that he has no real evidence/argument to support his belief.

d

Those are some deep thoughts you are throwing around. I had to read it twice, laydown for a nap, get up, have a drink, laydown again, get up, and then read it again.
My head hurts.(or does it?)

I think the best argument anyone has ever given me for the existence of God is more of an argument against why anything else is not possible: For the big bang theory to actually be possible is a stretch when you consider how perfectly things fell into place if a big ball of gas exploded.
\nFurther, that everything maintains a delicate balance between the seasons of the year, the ecosystem, etc. It’s hard to believe that all of this exists without some force being out there somewhere maintaining it all or at least creating it.
\n

Blondie,
As far as the delicate balance issue I guess now we can rule out those silly arguments for gravitational pull and planetary rotation.

Hi, Melissa.

I have a few thoughts on your post. Coming from me, you know these will be reasons I don’t find that argument convincing. Food for thought, if you wish, or…you’re welcome to ignore them, of course, if you so desire. :)

1. The first and probably most obvious problem with it is that that argument commits something called the Either/Or fallacy (or “Bifurcation,” if you want to sound fancy). That is, it assumes there are only two possible explanations and therefore, if one is disproven, the other must be true. Creationists commit this fallacy when they attempt to disprove evolution, assuming that this somehow proves creationism true. We may have no other explanation available at the moment, but that doesn’t mean other theories aren’t possible, and won’t pop up to be debated and tested in the future.

For example, people assumed the earth was a flat disk for many centuries; the lack of the “theory” that we’re actually on a globe didn’t make the idea that the world was flat true. Further, attempts to disprove the globe “theory” didn’t make the idea that the world was flat any truer. Just because a theory hasn’t been thought of yet doesn’t mean our current explanation is therefore true, so disproving the lead competing idea doesn’t make our current favorite explanation any more true, either.

2. Considering the unimaginable immensity of the universe, it seems limited to believe that “things fell into place perfectly.” I’d say it would be more accurate to say that “things fell all over the place, and a tiny fraction of it was capable of supporting life.”

3. To restate ben’s comment with another example that I like even better than the banana. I stole this from Orson Scott Card (paraphrased): to state that the earth is at just the right tilt on its axis to maintain the ecosystem and support life (etc), and therefore God must have created it, is similar to being amazed that the pothole is just the right shape and depth to hold the rainwater in it. Evolution argues that life grew to suit the environment in which it found itself. Those things that aren’t suited to the environment are dead. It’s called natural selection. So…of course we fit well. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be alive to argue the point.

Consider how many billions of stars there are, each the center of its own solar system. Now…consider what are the odds that at least one of the billions of planets isn’t just perfect to support life.

I’ll bow to the fact that I can’t explain how life originated, but you’ll have to bow to the fact that you can’t explain how God originated, either. The claim that he always existed doesn’t solve the problem, because I get to work with the same rules.

While I cannot solve this problem, it doesn’t leave me with no option but to believe in God, either. It simply leaves me wondering where and how it all started. I don’t even know things that are imminently more knowable, such as who placed fifth in last year’s canasta tournament; for this reason, it doesn’t bother me in the least that I don’t know something ultimately unknowable: how life began.

Incidentally, I don’t feel a need to know, either. This is where I seem to be quite different from theists, who feel more comfortable, I suppose, because they think they know. Although I don’t know why. It doesn’t affect either of our lives in any appreciable way, “knowing” that we are the result of a creator or a big bang….

d

PS. Check argument #98. ;)

Ok, I gotta jump in here, although through the years you have known me to be avidly agnostic. I can prove god does not exist.

There are three sentences in this paragraph.Two of them are true. God exists.

So basically I can prove or dis-prove anything. Does that make me god? But wait a minute, I just proved he doesn’t exist. So then I don’t exist, but wait.. Who wrote this?

I still think man was designed around the banana, too much proof of a God to be the other way around. But what do bananas think about this?

You hit the point when you said that you didn’t have the need to know. Enter faith. Faith is the alternative to what you can’t emotionally tolerate. So if you don’t need a God, there isn’t one. If you need one, there is one.

Riddle solved. If I wasn’t sitting here with time on my hands, I would be doing something else. But other than being ignorant and complacent, I just don’t know and don’t care.

Love,
Rog

By the way, 133 was my favorite.

Roger. :D

Faith is the alternative to what you can’t emotionally tolerate.

Wow. I’ve never heard it stated so succinctly. You get a second entry on my “quotables” list.

You’re aware, of course, that Tercel (of entry 133) is/was a regular poster/apologist on IIDB, and that is a summation of one of his arguments for the EoG?

A propos of nothing, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, Rog, but I miss you a great deal.

I hope you’re well, and I additionally hope we can get together again someday. Incidentally…I quit not drinking. ;)

d

Melissa,

I can’t believe I left this one out, because it seems so obvious, but another problem with any attempt to reason from “where we came from” to the god you believe in has an almost impossible task in bridging that gap. I mean, even if you manage to establish that there must be a higher being and that being created the earth and the life thereon, you must then find a way to prove that that being is still interested in our activities (what makes you think he didn’t just create us and leave?).

If you manage that (good luck), you then have to find a way to prove that this is the god you think he is. Hundreds (thousands?) of gods have been imagined by men from all ages, past and present. How do you pick one?

‘Tis common that so many people “reason” from (1) All this had to come from somewhere, to (2) Goddidit, and straight to (3) and it was MY god.

d

Argument from the Heart:
My heart beats when I am asleep or unconscious. Therefore God exists.

I heard this yesterday at IIDB Existence of God/s forum. I thought I’d heard them all, but this just stunned me so much so that I couldn’t even reply.