Shia Islamic Argument for the existence of God

[TheMuslim]

As is evident from many of the comments, few have bothered to actually read the post before commenting. I have summarized it below for anyone who is unwilling to wade through its jargon.

A brief summary of the POTV as presented by TheMuslim:-
- Something is real.
- It is impossible for nothing to be real (in the event that this statement is denied, there is something that denies it and is real). If this statement can never be denied, it will always be true.
- For this statement to be always true, something must always exist.
- Finite, conditional beings exist within boundaries, beyond which they are nonexistent.
- As such, something that is infinite, or not conditional, must exist.

TheMuslim believes that this demonstrates the existence of a deity.

As I have elaborated in my previous post, I find your summaries a bit inaccurate (and/or misleading).

Here, I myself made a concise summary of the DOTV (yes, I’m taking the risk of slightly losing the original deliverance of meaning):


- Primary proposition: “There is a reality” (i.e. at least something exists).
- The primary proposition must be and will always be true unconditionally.
You can’t deny this in any condition because conditions are themselves realities – and thus attest to the primary proposition’s truth. In other words, if someone claims “there is no reality” (i.e. "nothing is real"), that claim itself - if taken to be true - implies that there is a reality; the purported fact that "nothing exists" would itself be a reality, and hence there would indeed still be a reality (in the form of there not being a reality).
- Finite beings exist only within certain conditions, outside of which they don't exist. For the primary proposition to always be true unconditionally (which we have shown to be the case), something other than finite beings must exist.
Propositions that narrate the reality of finite beings are conditional (i.e. it is only within certain boundaries that such propositions are true, beyond which they are false - because finite entities can only exist within certain boundaries). The proposition for this reality, however, is unconditional. Hence finite and conditional beings cannot be the extension (misdāq) of the reality in our primary proposition.
- Since the primary proposition is and must always be unconditionally true, and its extension cannot be a finite reality, its extension can only be an infinite and eternally necessary reality.

So there you go. That's the DOTV in a very simplified form.

One may question why we might call such an infinite and eternally necessary reality a "god" or "deity". As an attempt to answer this question, Ibn Sina made some brilliant attribute tracings that allow us to better understand this reality and also allow us to see why many of us may refer to this reality as a god or deity. I looked at some of his tracings in chapter 9 of the book Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays, edited by Peter Anderson. The DOTV, coupled with many of the tracings that I found sound, proves the existence of an existent that is necessary, eternal, one-and-only, immaterial, omnipresent, self-subsisting, independent, primary, absolute/infinite, unrestricted, unique, formless, ineffable, uncaused, without rivals, and has all things else depending on it for their existence (the last attribute seems valid only if the principle of causality for contingents is taken as a premise). You can also add in consciousness and knowledge if you find my personal attribute tracing for consciousness and/or knowledge sound (the one I mentioned in my original post).