Shia Islamic Argument for the existence of God

[Esquilax]

I'm going to rebut the summarized version of the argument, just so that I don't have to wade through a huge wall of text, and can just get to what I need to quickly.

Firstly though, there's an overarching problem with this entire endeavor, which is generally the death of these theistic arguments, and that is that you can't skip over the "evidence" part of demonstrating a thing. You cannot prove the existence of something in reality via argument, particularly not through a philosophical argument: you can't, essentially, talk something into existence. Philosophy has its uses, but nowhere among those is the ability to demonstrate objective reality. You're really doing nothing more than playing word games, and worse still, they're all negative word games anyway, as I'll soon show, but for now, there's this: logic is only as good as the data you feed into it. You have included no data here, and thus cannot come to a conclusion that shows anything about reality. Only about some hypothetical reality where everything works exactly as you've said; you've done nothing to demonstrate that our reality is that reality.

Now, on with the show:

Basically we start with the primary proposition of human knowledge: "There is a reality." Reality cannot be annihilated in any condition - because even if everything is nonexistent or is an illusion, the fact that everything is nonexistent or is an illusion is itself a reality. Therefore this proposition ("There is a reality") has eternal necessity.

Can you demonstrate that "eternal necessity" has any applicability to objective reality? This is sort of the problem here: you're using manufactured, conceptual definitions without ever establishing that they correspond to something real. It's nothing more than a word game, reaching for a term that just so happens to fit the characteristics of your god, while simply assuming that managing to do that means that the term itself has some real world value. Can you even determine that this term isn't merely philosophical shorthand from a long gone era, eclipsed long ago by that pesky science and its empirical and demonstrable evidence?

That is, the modality of this proposition is not attributive necessity, conditional necessity, or essential necessity.

No, no, no, that's not even how good argumentation works, let alone demonstrable evidence. You don't just get to define four categories by fiat, assert that a given thing doesn't fit within three of the categories, therefore it belongs in the fourth, that's fallacious. You'd have to demonstrate that there are, in fact, only four categories first, and then you'd need positive demonstrations that the thing belongs in a given category, not just that it seems to you like it doesn't fit in the other three.

I can't, for example, point to my dog and tell you "there are only four different kinds of animals: birds, cows, cats, and octopi. Since this animal has no wings, udders, or tentacles, it must be a cat." I trust the clear logical issue with that attempt to define something via elimination alone is obvious to you?

Since the truth of the propositions. that relate the realities of finite and conditional beings, is subject to certain conditions, and it's only within certain boundaries that they are true, finite and conditional beings cannot be the extension of the reality that has eternal necessity (the reality mentioned in this proposition).

And again, how do you even begin to determine the "eternal" part of that?

 

Given that the aggregate of finite beings is not another entity, which has something additional to its parts, it does not have any reality at all.  Similarly, their universals (jāmi‛) do not have any external reality either, and they are notions that exist in the mind by the mental mode of existence (al-wujūd al-dhehnī) in such a way that if the mind did not exist, the universals would not even have found the mental existence.  Therefore, the reality, the eternally necessary existence of which is axiomatic and primary, is other than the finite beings, their totality, and their universals, as the first have finite realities, the second has no reality, and the third has a limited mental reality. Therefore, the first ontological proposition, which the human being cannot not know, is the affirmation of the basic reality, and its modality is eternal necessity.  And since, as just explained, finite entities, such as the heavens, the earth, the cosmos, and so forth, cannot be the extension of this proposition, its extension is only an Absolute Reality—Who is above the restrictions of conditions, is present with all of the finite realities, and no absence or termination is perceivable with respect to Him.

Do you just think nobody will notice the huge leap of logic from "absolute reality" to "who"? Where did the idea that this absolute reality is a person come from? This is just yet another theistic "logical argument" that seeks to skip basic, establishing steps.