RE: Why all "Logical Proofs Of God" fail ...
March 9, 2014 at 10:50 pm
(This post was last modified: March 9, 2014 at 11:02 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
(March 7, 2014 at 9:05 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: If there were a successful proof of God's existence...what do you actually think follows? Do you think it necessarily follows that therefore God exists?Short answer, no. IMHO, a philosophical argument just shows the thinker’s idea to be intellectually defensible. For example, a logical proof for God, does not mean God’s existence must be true; but rather, that someone can rationally believe it likely that God exists, provided that the individual's beliefs work together with his overall understanding in a coherent way.
That overall coherent understanding is key. Both solipsism and eliminative materialism are internally consistent. And they fly in the face of everything else. (like Hume’s skepticism) What I mean is that a narrowly focused inquiry producing a neat and tidy proof may appear perfectly sound on its own terms. But it can still fail to fit in with everything else. The thinker faces a choice: hold on to that proof and thereby undermine every other idea OR consider it an interesting curiosity and work with equally self-consistent ideas that have wider application.
(March 7, 2014 at 9:05 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: Objects don't have the property of 'existence', rather existence is the necessary precondition to having properties in the first place... to even do apologetics... one has to defend metaphysics from about 200 years of very powerful and convincing criticism...analytic philosophy has basically abandoned metaphysics...
An actual observer independent sensible object best serves as the precondition for manifesting various phenomena to a knowing subject. I have done little more than assert that a sensible object must both actually exist (as more than just successive appearances) and exist as something (a what). Personally and based on my own studies, I don’t find much of anything compelling enough to dismiss this basic truth.
@MMM, thanks for the support but I’m a big boy...sticks and stones and all that.
(March 9, 2014 at 11:50 am)Brakeman Wrote: I was once a christian myself and I was very heavily immersed in the bullshit of those that surrounded me. ... I have spoken and argued with a rather large number of christians, many of whom are now atheists.Most people on AF know that I used to be an atheist. Need I go on?
