Proof of God

[Harris]

Trusting this is what Descartes argued, we can have at it beginning with premise (2),

I am sorry that I had not provided the reference. You can check:

Meditation III.
Of God: that He exists.
In
Meditations on First Philosophy
Rene Descartes
1641

Please note that Descartes has not presented his Meditation III in form of premises. The Meditation III spread roughly over 15 pages.

which introduces an artificial dichotomy. Why does the source of an idea have to be either inside or outside ourselves? Why can't it arise from a response we have to an outside thing, so that both inside and outside are involved?

Normally, concepts and ideas are indeed gained by sense experience and to offer an account of the mental processes involved.

However, innate concepts do not derive from, or depend for their being understood on, sensory experience. Innate concepts are in the mind from creation but are not present in consciousness until we actually, conceive them.

For example, instinctual act of seeking and sucking of the breast in the new-born infant demonstrates an innate knowledge associated with the nourishment.

Other good example of innate idea is the idea of God, which is in our minds without having any sensory experience.

Plato argued that humans know many things and have many concepts, which they have not learned or acquired on earth. Hence, humans must have learned them in a previous existence.
(Phaedo 73a-78a and Meno 81b-86b)

Leibniz put it this way:

“This fits in with my principles, for nothing naturally enters our mind from outside; and it is a bad habit of ours to think of our soul as receiving messenger species, or as if it had doors and windows. We have all these forms in our mind and indeed always have had; because the mind always expresses all its future thoughts, and is already thinking confusedly of everything it will ever think clearly. We could not be taught something unless we already had the idea of it in our mind, the idea being like the matter out of which the thought is formed.”

Section 26.
Discourse on Metaphysics, (1686)
trans. G. Montgomery, La Salle

If we've passed on (2), then the conclusion in (4) itself adds a new premise, that no effect can be greater than its cause. Yet we have abundant examples of effects (Atlantic hurricanes) which are much greater than their initial causes (tropical waves over the Cape Verde Islands). We could add the sun heating ocean water as an additional cause and say that the energy dissipated by an effect cannot exceed the energy supplied by all its causes, to rescue (4).

The case in point is wrong. Sun is the cause of winds on earth. Here the effect (blowing of winds) has no match to its cause (the powerful sun that drives those winds)

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/win...auses-wind
http://www.weatherquestions.com/What_cau...icanes.htm

But once we get to (5), we must ask why the idea of God must have either the energy of God or some "greatness of qualities" he mentions there which God may have. The idea is not the thing idealized. I'm seeing a bit of Jello quaking here.

In other words, we are finite beings with finite conceptions. We are not capable to comprehend infinite because it overflows every intentional state and overflows consciousness and its objects. A good example is physics, which does not favour infinity. Infinity in normal conditions is considered as error or a scientific way of saying, "we do not have the answer."

We are incapable to provide sufficient rational grounds to justify the idea of infinite and thus cannot be the originator of this idea yet the idea of infinite God is part of our beings.

I'm pretty hip to God, but arguments along various lines-cosmological, ontological, first cause, and so on-have been running for centuries with no positive results. I don't believe the existence of God can be proved using any of the commonly accepted tools for reasoning. If things like quantum foams and inflationary epochs likewise are purely speculative, at least they can be analyzed within the rubrics of mathematical physics and some relation between them and the present state of the universe be derived and thus rendered plausible.

I propose that we accept God without proof. Perhaps based on the age-old prevalence of religious beliefs. I've heard the story that gods were invented to fill roles of agency for the frightening unknown, i.e. a god of storms to account for lightning, which we then conveniently know is caused by electrostatic discharges. I don't really buy that early peoples were so fearful as we suppose; they bravely confronted things much worse than summer thundershowers. In general, when humans coin a noun for something and begin talking about it, they are responding to some aspect of reality, not just to a mass delusion. So I accept that religious belief is a response to something real. However, I'm not foolish enough to think this constitutes an existence proof.

I continue by extending my previous point.

The content of the belief that fish swim is characterized by the concepts “fish” and “swimming.” If we do not have any knowledge and information about X then we cannot have the opportunity or possibility to build any idea because we are not even conscious of that X, proving or disproving is out of the question.

There are few arguments that atheists commonly use to disprove the existence of God. Two of them are:

1. There is no perceptual evidence of God.
2. God is a manmade concept.

Regardless of how efficacious or ineffective those arguments are, the main point to which I am trying to draw your attention is the idea of God itself. My main idea is to show how your views about idea God could be rational, despite the absence of empirical access to that domain.

Try to build an idea on X of which you have no knowledge, no data, no information and there is no mean to approach X because it is outside the realm of human perception. No one can make idea out from oblivion. There should be something from where to start.

But wait! How comes we not only have the idea of that X but we also talk about its particular properties and even try to give images to it. We argue and fight over its existence and non-existence and we blame each other for the misuse of its name. Furthermore, and most interestingly, we have laws from that X, which guide us on how to live our lives, and we are rebellious or obedient to those laws. How that idea resides in us when no one can make it. This is exactly my point and this is the thing to what all-great thinkers have referred as innate-idea.

The idea of God in embedded in your consciousness. This idea does not depend on abstraction from sense experience. Whether you want it or not it will remain there until the end of your life. The only freedom that you have is the freedom of rejection. You can reject that innate-idea only by intension. You can try to eradicate it by means of deceitful dichotomies, which support your pleasure seeking behaviour.

“But when they forgot the warning they had received, We opened to them the gates of all (good) things, until, in the midst of their enjoyment of Our gifts, on a sudden, We called them to account, when lo! they were plunged in despair!”

Al An'am (6)
-Verse 44-

Harris, it looks like you understand the lengths to which some AF members will go to shelter themselves from the truth. I’ve noticed one particular strategy of theirs. I call it the but-but-but method. Once they realize that their first objection is bullshit they jump to the next in line, as in, “but but but…who created god?” After you point out that the universe had a beginning they say, “…but but but…the multiverse…”. Then when you show how unscientific, unparsimonious, unfalsifiable that theory is they say “but but but..the anthropic principle.” Then when you present the logical necessity of and evidence for teleology, they say, “but but but…but but but…but but but…” We’ll see how that strategy plays out when they stand before the White Throne.

Apart from “but but but” I have noticed one more characteristic. When these fellows confront some staggering point, they pretend to be ferocious and start throwing emotional and provocative squabbles to distract the attention of others.

Of course, the bolded never happens, so...

Sorry, I'm just being snarky.  That's another one of our defense mechanisms.

Additionally, I will point out that... well... you and Harris might have very different conceptions of the "White Throne."  We atheists will get pwn'd for denying teleology, and Harris will get pwn'd for denying Jesus.

Or maybe you'll get pwn'd for denying Muhammad.

(Noting how many incompatible religions exist, and that the arguments for each of them are always the same - that's another of our strategies)

I know I know you are a tiny subversive transgressor of constituted order, a protohuman cheerleader for indignant humanity.

Show me one thing that supports the notion of a god, that cannot be explained by more mundane things which might themselves need explanation, that doesn't have its basis in crusty mythology. That's all I ask. The stone in my shoe is capable of proving its existence. Why can't a god?

The stone in your shoe is your own conscious experience, which you feel but cannot show. First, display your senses, which should be perceivable and after that ask me about God.

A proper reply to your request will take some time to craft. Before I go to all that effort and reply are you seriously interested in what might say and give it fair consideration?

Chad you are trying to smooth a bowed tail of a dog by putting it into a straight pipe. No matter how long you keep it there, it will instantly retain its original shape as soon as you will take it off that pipe.

And what have we learned?

Make appeasement to me in the form of human sacrifice and if it pleases me, I increase your Internet speed. The figures prove it - what can't speak, can't lie.

Atheism is about 3000 years old and yet atheists are only 2% of the world population after passing of 3000 years. Are you able to see the hidden truth in these figures (what cannot speak, cannot lie) or you need some assistance in order to understand them?

That loser. No wonder his dad kicked him out.

Arrogance is the hallmark of atheism.

Hate to break it to you there is no god.

If god does anything to mess with the world or even showed the slightest bit of his power it would mess with the laws of physics because this is a being with infinite power of course. But he never has and there would be some sort of prints left on time space left from him and again nothing. No god its all made up lets move on and go to Denny's tabs on you.

You are advocating the idea of “NOTHINGNESS.” Before doing so, you should give a proper conception of “NOTHINGNESS.”