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.

[drfuzzy]

As may have been already stated, but why bother?
God is the creator of the universe, right?  God is all-knowing and all-powerful. If God wants our worship, the god is quite capable of coming up with a way to convince us that god exists.  Humans don't need to argue for or against god's existence, and don't need to speak for god.  A god wants our worship, but for thousands of years all we get is preachers and deeply flawed books and not one shred of real proof.  I'm not buying it.

-- oh, and I'm not dissing Esquilax.  That was beautiful.  

[robvalue]

It would be very interesting if such a thing was discovered, yes. Sadly, it has not been.

If it's omnipresent, it should be right here next to me. How do I distinguish between this thing being next to me, and nothing being next to me?

Is it over already?

I'm still waiting for an answer to the above. From anyone who subscribes to "omnipresent" gods.

Couldn't be more different to "outside space and time", really. You can see why I have trouble believing people are talking about the same thing.

[TheMuslim]

JuliaL,

What do you mean by "eternal?"  having unlimited extent in time?  Now you've got to be clearer on what you mean by time.  "A" time or "B" time?  Time is the value we insert in predictive equations to make the results match experiment.  If you're using some sort of absolute, universal clock, you need to study time a little more.  Sure, there could have been a cause of time outside of time.  You just need one more dimension we don't know about. But if you're going to try to use your primitive, intuitive concept of time, you'd better make sure it has better predictive value than what the relativists use.

The word "eternal" here isn't being used in a timely manner (no pun intended). "Eternal" here isn't only with respect to time. By saying "eternal" he simply means that this necessity will be true in every condition whatsoever (which makes it an "eternal" fact; this necessity can never not be) in contrast to only being true under certain conditions (e.g. being constrained by the existence of other things or for only certain durations).

Yet theists generally claim that that humans are more than the sum of their parts.  What you describe is an exact essential of an emergent property.  Human society exhibits many characteristics which are not found in its individual members and can be usefully considered as a super-organism.  I suspect societies' attributes are not infinite, but your claim that this is not the case is again, speculative.

The set of finite beings doesn't have anything additional to its parts. If it did, that thing would either be finite or infinite. If the former, it would itself be a member of the set (and thus the set wouldn't have anything additional to its parts). If the latter, then it would be an infinite/absolute entity - which is precisely the kind of thing the "argument" seeks to demonstrate.

You waste a paragraph describing your "ineffable" (definition of ineffable: "cannot be described in words,") dingus. You're starting to sound like William Lane Craig defining God into reality... "God, if he exists, is morally perfect, necessary, eternal, transcends space and time, Yada, Yada, Yada."  Never a good thing.

I want people to see why I would call such an entity a deity. Describing it the way I did helps.

What you claim but fail to show is whether consciousness, which must be a member of an infinite set of all things including consciousness, might not get lost in all that infinity.

What do you mean by getting "lost in all that infinity"?

Your conscious rock has "more" existence??? What units do you put on existence so you can scale it more or less?

It's really not that hard. 2 bricks have more existence than 1 brick (given that they're all identical). The rock that is conscious has consciousness in addition to just being a rock.

My logic works even if you don't accept that analogy; since the Entity is infinite/absolute and thus cannot lack anything, the Entity must also possess consciousness.


Redbeard The Pink,

(Bold mine)

What's this then?

"The demonstration of the veracious, in fact, does not intend to prove a reality, which is unknown and must be proved in a discursive fashion. It proves the primariness (al‑awwaliyya) of human knowledge with respect to a proposition, which narrates the eternal necessity of the Entity. If the demonstration were designed to prove a reality that has eternal necessity, its conclusion would not be the first ontological proposition, because every demonstration proceeds from certain premises to a conclusion, and given that the premises are antecedent (muqaddam) to the conclusion, the premises—the truth of which substantiate the existence of the Deity—would be propositional premises for the conclusion."

(Bold mine)

What's that then?

There is no logical way to get from "There is a reality" to "That reality was created by an extra-dimensional, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, all-loving, misogynistic rape-monster," even with a text-wall like the one in the OP.

Straw man fallacy. I didn't say anything about goodness, love, misogyny, rape, or monstrosity. I didn't say anything about creation either.

The mere existence of reality does not imply the existence of your god, and there is no logical way to get there.

Yes it does, and yes there is; the mere existence of reality implies the existence of an absolute/infinite, immaterial, omnipresent, one-and-only, eternally necessary entity. The ability of the POTV to show precisely this is what sets this "argument" apart from all the others. This is the beauty and the strength of the POTV. As for you, all you're doing now is asserting statements, presumably in anger, without checking if what you're saying is actually true.


Irrational,

Here, it seems you are making the mistake of presuming only one broad type of "infinity". I think "infinity" is a vague word we use to try to capture multiple areas of "unlimitedness". You could apply the word to boundless space, boundless time, boundless love (infinite love), boundless afterlife (eternal heaven and hell), boundless evil, and so on. Nothing in your argument suggests that an infinite reality (in terms of space and time, I'm guessing) must have any of those other infinite qualities.

The POTV seeks to prove (or, more accurately, it seeks to simply bring our attention to the fact of) the existence of an infinite reality. This infinite reality or infinite entity has no limits whatsoever. It's infinite and boundless in every way (I'm not only talking about space and time).


Esquilax,

Can you demonstrate that "eternal necessity" has any applicability to objective reality?

We start off with an objective truth ("There is a reality") and then proceed to analyze its logical implications in the argument. Since this proposition based on objective reality cannot be untrue in any condition (as shown in the argument), it will forever be true - and that's why we say that this will have "eternal necessity" (i.e. it will and never can be untrue).

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 thatattempt to define something via elimination alone is obvious to you?

Another straw man fallacy. I'm not arguing from exclusion of other categories to the validity of a category. It's actually the other way around; I'm just saying that because the entity/reality fits in this category, it cannot fit into these other categories (because those categories are, by definition, completely different from and opposed to this category).

A bit of more exposition on the categories won't hurt. So here's more from A Commentary on Theistic Arguments so you can understand what these categories mean (page 182):


"Eternal necessity is other than essential necessity (al-dharūra al-dhātiyya), attributive necessity (al-dharūra al-wasfiyya), conditional necessity (al-dharūra al-shartiyya), and other similar sorts of necessities. In attributive and conditional necessities, the affirmation of a predicate for its subject is necessary provided the pertinent attribute or condition is secured. Likewise, in essential necessity, affirmation of a predicate for its subject is restricted to the continuance of the existence of the subject; in other words, the predicate is affirmed for the subject as long as the subject is existent. Eternal necessity is instantiated when the affirmation of the predicate for its subject is not restricted by any condition or attribute, and not even by the continuance of subject’s existence. Therefore, in eternal necessity, the predicate is affirmed for the subject in every state."

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. 

I've already explained this before, but let me spoon feed this to everyone one last time. The Proof of the Veracious (officially called the Demonstration of the Veracious, as seen in the book) is technically not a philosophical argument. The author clearly says this. It's not an argument, it's not an argument, it's not an argument. It's simply a method of bringing one's attention to something. It's an analysis of an objective fact (the fact being "there is a reality"); it's a demonstration. You may as well call it a demonstration and logical analysis of objective evidence (the evidence being the fact that "there is a reality"). The entire demonstration is based on this one external objective fact and proposition: "there is a reality". I've already said this too, but let make say it again: I was only referring to it as an "argument" in my posts for convenience purposes. But to keep it clearer for everyone, from now on I'll refer it by its original name and title: The Demonstration of the Veracious (DOTV), because that's what it is - a demonstration. I also already quoted this in my original post, but let me quote the Ayatollah again (A Commentary on Theistic Arguments, page 186):

"The demonstration of the veracious, with this exposition, sidesteps the criticism of failure of differentiation between notion and extension. This argument is not based on the notion of reality and its necessity of predication to itself by predication as essence. The argument, in fact, proceeds from the first ontological proposition, which encompasses affirmation of the basic reality and rejection of sophistry. The affirmation of reality is not based on its notion, which is held in the mind; it is with respect to external factuality. If it were on the basis of its notion and by predication as essence (al-haml al-awwalī), then just as reality is reality, sophism is sophism. Therefore, the invalidation of sophism, and consequently, the truth of the basic reality, is with respect to the external world and predication as extension (al-haml al-shā’ye‛)."


And here are some more quotes from the same book:

Page 181: "In his commentary on Al-Asfār, and in the fifth volume of Usūl-i-Falsafa wa Rawish-i-Ri'alizm, ‛Allāmah Tabātabā’ī, may Allah sanctify his tomb, constructs a demonstration for the affirmation of the Necessary. This demonstration does not depend on any philosophic principles and proceeds from the mere entertainment of eternal necessity of absolute existence to the Necessary’s existence as the first proposition of human knowledge. In view of having these unique features, the late‛Allāmah’s proof is well worthy to be adorned with the elegant title of the demonstration of the veracious."

Page 189: "Although the sole indication of the demonstration of the veracious is with respect to the Necessary’s Essence and it does not prove His attributes or actions, it still has a number of unique qualities. In addition to its lack of need of ontological premises, its accomplishments far exceed the other arguments. In fact, it arrives at the infinite reality of God in the first step, an objective the other arguments accomplish only after going through many steps."

[Excited Penguin]

You fail to comprehend that the totality of entities and their universals are just as real as the finite entities are. You seem to think they aren't because the totality of entities is nothing more than a sum of its parts and therefore cannot be considered as a separate entity. I would have to disagree, since the same could be said about any separate entity in particular - namely, that it is nothing more than a sum of its parts. So if we were to take this part of your argument to its conclusion we would have to conclude that nothing could possibly exist, and yet we know that not to be true. Everything does exist, including finite entities, their totality and their universals.

You argued that universals have only a mental existence. That's true, but so does everything else. Reality itself is only a mental concept.

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.

This is a non sequitur, plain and simple. Everything else you wrote is irrelevant, even if I granted it as logical and consistent, which I do not.


I understood everything you wrote very well, despite not having any training in philosophy(well, almost everything, there was one word that was in a different language and I couldn't even translate it). My advice to you, however, would be that you engage us in less formal debates and keep the sophistry, which, ironically, is exactly what the OP was, in its essence,(and still more ironic is the fact that this second proposition of yours, "Sophistry is void", is a clear example of such sophistry at work), at a minimum.

[pocaracas]

"Eternal necessity is other than essential necessity (al-dharūra al-dhātiyya), attributive necessity (al-dharūra al-wasfiyya), conditional necessity (al-dharūra al-shartiyya), and other similar sorts of necessities. In attributive and conditional necessities, the affirmation of a predicate for its subject is necessary provided the pertinent attribute or condition is secured. Likewise, in essential necessity, affirmation of a predicate for its subject is restricted to the continuance of the existence of the subject; in other words, the predicate is affirmed for the subject as long as the subject is existent. Eternal necessity is instantiated when the affirmation of the predicate for its subject is not restricted by any condition or attribute, and not even by the continuance of subject’s existence. Therefore, in eternal necessity, the predicate is affirmed for the subject in every state."

It always strikes me as odd the necessity that muslims feel to include arabic words, even if transposed to the latin alphabet...
It's like arabic has some special property that will make us non-speakers aware of the veracity of what's being said/written.

Here, try to see if this makes any sense:
- In the days of old (antigamente), people were more in tune (mais atentas) with their natural surroundings (à natureza). There were the druids (druídas) and the shamans (shamãs) who mediated the spirit and the natural worlds.

Did that translation add anything to the english text?

[robvalue]

God should have written it in a special language everyone can understand, if he actually wanted them to understand it.

Writing it in Arabic, and complaining about non-Arabic speakers misinterpreting, highlights the divisive nature of the whole thing. Divisive, regardless of whether any of it is true.

[robvalue]

It would be very interesting if such a thing was discovered, yes. Sadly, it has not been.

If it's omnipresent, it should be right here next to me. How do I distinguish between this thing being next to me, and nothing being next to me?

Is it over already?

I'm still waiting for an answer to the above. From anyone who subscribes to "omnipresent" gods.

Couldn't be more different to "outside space and time", really. You can see why I have trouble believing people are talking about the same thing.

Still no answer to this yet.

[Society]

Is this the religion that worships the pedophile?

---

God should have written it in a special language everyone can understand, if he actually wanted them to understand it.

Writing it in Arabic, and complaining about non-Arabic speakers misinterpreting, highlights the divisive nature of the whole thing. Divisive, regardless of whether any of it is true.

If he was real then he would have.

[Mudhammam]

I haven't read any Avicenna, or Ibn Sina, but based on everything I've read about him, that is, as he influenced later thinkers such as al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and Aquinas, he seems like a great philosopher. If I'm not mistaken, he originated the "Floating Man" thought experiment which basically became the cornerstone of Descartes' argument for the total separation of thought and extension, or body and mind.

Anyway, the argument is compelling in some ways, but it basically sounds to me like an equivalent of Spinoza's God, which is to say, Nature is infinite and everything is eternally necessary. In other words, this is hardly the God of Islam or any particular deity that vies for the attention of certain regions of the terrestrial spheres. So... why call it God?