Shia Islamic Argument for the existence of God

[Alex K]

Great. Calling that God is highly misleading. You could just as well call it the Universe and be done with it. Nothing about being a person who created us, cares about where we stick what and punishes us and awaits us in an afterlife. Not God. Not YHWH, not Allah.

Language barrier. Do you remember what the OP said about parts and whole, and why it must be one or simple?

What are you trying to say?

[Mystic]

Language barrier. Do you remember what the OP said about parts and whole, and why it must be one or simple?

What are you trying to say?

It cannot be the universe. It can only be God by this argument.

[FebruaryOfReason]

Maybe I have misunderstood the subtleties of this argument, but;

How did God manage for the several billion years before we affirmed his existence by denying it? Was he independently rendered extant by some other mechanism than our denial of his existence, and just used our denial as a sort of back up when it became available?

Presumably the opposite doesn't apply? I.e. If we believe in him, that proves he exists?

And also,

The existence of a mechanism of conscious denial does not in itself affirm anything remotely relating to the various Abrahamic conceptions of God, which all envisage a combination of a highly vindictive micro-manager (grow a beard, don't eat pork or shellfish, don't wear mixed fabrics, etc) and an absentee landlord, who allows the death of millions in plagues and natural disasters, whilst rewarding cheating, adulterous, drunken sports stars with undeserved riches.

How does it follow that because I am sentient enough to recognise the flaws in the idea of God the Creator, that my sentience affirms His existence? I can recognise the flaws in the idea of Ganesh the Elephant God too. Does it follow from that that He exists?

The problem here is that we can all talk forever about things that we think are right.
But unless we have any means of checking we are right, how can we know?

[Redbeard The Pink]

Wait...that's the argument? That because we're able to deny god, it must exist? No wonder he stretched it into 10 pages of text. It would have seemed asinine otherwise.

If I deny that Bigfoot exists, does that mean Bigfoot exists?

[robvalue]

We don't need gods, gods need us.

Gods "exist" only as long as people believe in them, like fairies or something. As soon as everyone is done with that God, and a cool new one comes along, poof! It's gone. Never heard from again.

How many gods have we killed?

[TheMuslim]

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.

Bold mine. Why must there be such an extension? Will basic reality not suffice?

Here the word "absolute" is synonymous to "infinite". Why must its extension be an infinite reality? That has been explained before, in the part that says that the extension of this reality cannot be the finite beings, their totality, and their universals. Since its extension cannot be among the finite beings, it logically follows that the extension must be an infinite being. Also, let's be careful about not making judgments or understanding the nature of this "reality" prior to logically analyzing its extensions as the argument does.

Yes, they are. The only reason those exist is that we've observed them to be true. Math, non-contradiction, and causality are all based on things we observe in reality. When "experiments...tend to agree" with something, that's called empirical evidence.

No, they're not. If you read the blog post I mentioned, you would've seen that the principle of causality doesn't depend on experimental results. In fact, it is the converse; experiments and their generalizations depend upon the principle of causality. Either you didn't read it (and then mustered the courage to continue talking with ignorance) or it just didn't make it through your head. I also mentioned that unlike you, I do not believe 2 + 2 = 4 simply because I have tons of empirical evidence and experimental results for its truth. And I do not think the validity of my argument will be affected even if viewed with such an extremist empiricist lens, because even empiricists like you (hopefully) don't deny the necessity and usefulness of using reason and logic to analyze the implications of facts and/or evidence (see the last point of this post).

Maybe I have misunderstood the subtleties of this argument, but;

How did God manage for the several billion years before we affirmed his existence by denying it? Was he independently rendered extant by some other mechanism than our denial of his existence, and just used our denial as a sort of back up when it became available?

Presumably the opposite doesn't apply? I.e. If we believe in him, that proves he exists? 

And also,

The existence of a mechanism of conscious denial does not in itself affirm anything remotely relating to the various Abrahamic conceptions of God, which all envisage a combination of a highly vindictive micro-manager (grow a beard, don't eat pork or shellfish, don't wear mixed fabrics, etc) and an absentee landlord, who allows the death of millions in plagues and natural disasters, whilst rewarding cheating, adulterous, drunken sports stars with undeserved riches.

How does it follow that because I am sentient enough to recognise the flaws in the idea of God the Creator, that my sentience affirms His existence? I can recognise the flaws in the idea of Ganesh the Elephant God too. Does it follow from that that He exists?

The problem here is that we can all talk forever about things that we think are right. 
But unless we have any means of checking we are right, how can we know?

You have completely misunderstood the entire argument. Did you even bother to read or did you just assume that my argument was some other one that you read a while back?

Wait...that's the argument? That because we're able to deny god, it must exist? No wonder he stretched it into 10 pages of text. It would have seemed asinine otherwise.

If I deny that Bigfoot exists, does that mean Bigfoot exists?

I knew it. You're relying on your equally intellectually deficient atheist buddies to do the work. Are you afraid that it might be a sound argument? If not, why don't you actually read it and refute it so that I can shut up and leave?

If your "argument" doesn't use any premises, then why does the very quote you used reference the premises of the argument?

The quote does not reference premises of the argument. Wake up.

Also, regardless of what it "technically" is, it's still not a piece of evidence, and evidence is what's required to prove a thing exists. If you can't show it, you don't know it

Ah, little children. Just because you can't see or feel something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Do you realize the stupidity of asking to see and feel an infinite being? You may ask why I am assuming that you're asking to see and feel it. It's because apparently you won't accept any other mode of evidence.

I found that a proposition ("There is a reality") was true in every situation, and I presented the logical implications of this "observation". That's really all what the argument is. Consider me a scientist that discovers a fact or observation and then proceeds to logically analyze its implications. That's all I'm doing.

Look at the original "proposition" as a fact that I discovered, i.e. evidence (definition of evidence is: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid), and the rest of the "argument" is simply an in-depth analysis of its logical implications.

Note: I will be going on vacation for a couple weeks, so I might not respond to this thread for some time. Thanks to everyone who contributed and/or attempted to refute the argument.

[Minimalist]

Ah, little children. Just because you can't see or feel something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Likewise, it certainly does not mean that it does.  So you still need to produce evidence for your fairy tales.  Work on that while you're on vacation.

Have a bacon, lettuce, or tomato sandwich or two.  Learn what you are missing because of your superstitions.

[JuliaL]

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1. Brevity is the soul of wit.

I agree with this 100% and have told this to many of my friends. However, I was just being extra careful not to miss anything and minimize room for confusion. I'll try summarizing it below, but be warned this might come off as different from the actual proof (that is a risk we have to take for brevity's sake).
 

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Basically we start with the primary proposition of human knowledge: "There is a reality."

OK, I'm with you so far.... However that's as far as I go.  Everything else, particularly for us brains in vats, is speculation.

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.

mybold
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.

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

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 categoricaly not the case is again, speculative.

  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

Whoops!  you made a big jump here going from a "reality" to a "who."  You rationalize this later, but I wanted to highlight it here so you know I didn't miss it.

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.

Now you went from a "who" to a "Him," still without explanation.  Let's keep this gender neutral, shall we?

 So the argument proves the existence of a Necessary Existent that cannot be finite. One mistake that I and one of my atheist friends made was that we tried to understand or visualize the "reality" talked about in the proposition - without even analyzing its extensions as the argument does right after. One you realize what extensions are possible for this reality, you'll see why trying to understand or visualize it would be impossible.

To trace some more divine attributes I sought help from Ibn Sina (Avicenna) from chapter 9 of the book Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays edited by Peter Anderson.

I might have known your arguments would be tenth century.  The Arab civilizations of the mid-east made some great contributions to learning, until Al Ghazali killed it ca. 1100 CE.

Can you briefly state which properties this proof shows the proven god to have?

The POTV (Proof of the Veracious), coupled with some of the sound attribute tracings that I got from Ibn Sina, proves the existence of an entity that is necessary, eternal, self-subsisting, independent, primary, absolute/infinite, unrestricted, unique, one-and-only, omnipresent, immaterial, formless, ineffable, uncaused, doesn't have any 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 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.

To prove the entity's consciousness, I personally came up with the following argument: "Whether or not the entity is conscious may depend on your outlook. If you think that ignorance and unconsciousness are restrictions or limits, then the entity can be considered knowledgeable and conscious (because the entity cannot have restrictions or limits). Or you could say this: Since the entity is absolute/infinite, nothing limits it, and it cannot have any lacks; it must possess all and every degree of existence. Consciousness is a degree/aspect of existence (a rock that is conscious has more existence than an unconscious rock), and since the entity cannot lack anything, it must possess infinite consciousness. The same can be said for knowledge."  One of my atheist friends tried refuting this and you can read our conversation in my original post.

Congratulations, you discovered Anselm.  And your ontological proof is no better than his.
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 the heck is "infinite" consciousness anyway?  Maybe you should study infinities in addition to time... I recommend starting with Cantor. 
Your conscious rock has "more" existence??? What units do you put on existence so you can scale it more or less?
Theists generally try to keep things vague so they can get away with not being able to usefully interact with "reality."  You really shouldn't do this.  It makes you look bad when compared to scientists and (shudder) engineers.

[Redbeard The Pink]

No, they're not. If you read the blog post I mentioned, you would've seen that the principle of causality doesn't depend on experimental results.

According to some blogger. Cool.


"Depends on" and "is based on" are slightly different concepts, but either way I think we might just be misunderstanding each other. The principle might not "depend" on empirical data to function or exist in and of itself, but the reason we observe/discover the principle is that we observe it empirically, so yes, our concept and definition of the Principle of Causality is directly based on the fact that we observe it empirically.

In fact, it is the converse; experiments and their generalizations depend upon the principle of causality. Either you didn't read it (and then mustered the courage to continue talking with ignorance) or it just didn't make it through your head.

I'm simply addressing assertions you've made in your posts. Their source is not my concern. You're the one asserting them here.

I also mentioned that unlike you, I do not believe 2 + 2 = 4 simply because I have tons of empirical evidence and experimental results for its truth.

I do not care why you believe 2 + 2 = 4. Seriously, I don't care at all. The fact remains that the only reason anybody believes 2 + 2 = 4 is that somewhere along the way somebody figured out how to observe and demonstrate that in objective reality and then came up with a way to represent it conceptually (that is a vast oversimplification of the invention and development of math, but the point is that math primarily exists to describe objects in reality, and the reason it's useful is that it can be demonstrated to accurately describe and predict objectively real things).

And I do not think the validity of my argument will be affected even if viewed with such an extremist empiricist lens, because even empiricists like you (hopefully) don't deny the necessity and usefulness of using reason and logic to analyze the implications of facts and/or evidence (see the last point of this post).

We still haven't gotten to the part where you explain why an argument alone proves anything, ever, at all. It doesn't matter how "sound" your argument is. What matters is what the premises are based on, and to use an argument to prove that something exists in objective reality, you have to use premises that are based on evidence that's demonstrable in objective reality. You cannot claim something exists without good reason and have any expectation of being believed by a skeptical person.

I knew it. You're relying on your equally intellectually deficient atheist buddies to do the work. Are you afraid that it might be a sound argument? If not, why don't you actually read it and refute it so that I can shut up and leave?

If everybody like you shut up and left, I'd barely have any reason to come here and post.


And no, I'm not afraid of your cute little argument. Like I said, the "soundness" doesn't matter. It's possible to construct a logically sound argument on premises that are incorrect or even entirely fictional. As long as the conclusion of the argument follows from the assertions in the premises, the argument will be considered "sound," but if the premises are flawed or simply incorrect then there's no reason to believe the conclusion is actually true, even if the argument itself is sound.

The quote does not reference premises of the argument. Wake up.

"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 this then?

Also, regardless of what it "technically" is, it's still not a piece of evidence, and evidence is what's required to prove a thing exists. If you can't show it, you don't know it

Ah, little children. Just because you can't see or feel something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

You're right. Some things can be accepted even though I can't see or feel them because those things can still be demonstrated to me with evidence, which I can see and feel.


For instance, I can't necessarily see or feel the evolutionary processes that caused life to progress to the point that it produced me, but I can see and feel the evidence in nature that those processes took place (fossils), and I can see and feel the evidence in nature that those processes are still going on (DNA).


You, on the other hand, are asking me to believe in the existence of something that you can't demonstrate with any evidence because you've cooked up a philosophical argument that you think is logically sound, even though it's not based on anything we observe in objective reality (except for the mere existence of that reality, which isn't enough). You cannot claim knowledge of that which you cannot demonstrate to be true. If you can't show it, you don't know it...you just believe it, and if you believe without evidence, that's faith, which is the most intellectually dishonest position it's possible to hold.

Do you realize the stupidity of asking to see and feel an infinite being?

What is it about being "infinite" that would suggest I shouldn't be able to see or feel it, or at least the evidence it leaves behind? "Infinite" and "invisible" are two different words, are they not?


Regardless of whether Allah is "infinite," you're positing the existence of an extra-dimensional being that affects physical reality, are you not? If he affects physical reality at any time in any way, he should be leaving behind evidence of his interference. If he deliberately withholds evidence so that we have to believe on faith instead of with the reasoning brains he gave us, then he is, quite frankly, a dick.

You may ask why I am assuming that you're asking to see and feel it. It's because apparently you won't accept any other mode of evidence.

I either want to see and feel it, or I want to be looking at it through a scientific instrument that allows me to see and feel it. If you have evidence of your god, produce it. If you don't, no argument will support that conclusion.


Evidence is that which shows something to be true. It is by definition something that you show someone (or yourself, even). That is practically its only job. An argument isn't evidence, and it can't demonstrate the existence of something unless its premises are based on evidence.

I found that a proposition ("There is a reality") was true in every situation, and I presented the logical implications of this "observation". That's really all what the argument is. Consider me a scientist that discovers a fact or observation and then proceeds to logically analyze its implications. That's all I'm doing.

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. For that position, you would need additional evidence (or I would, anyway).

Look at the original "proposition" as a fact that I discovered, i.e. evidence (definition of evidence is: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid), and the rest of the "argument" is simply an in-depth analysis of its logical implications.

Note: I will be going on vacation for a couple weeks, so I might not respond to this thread for some time. Thanks to everyone who contributed and/or attempted to refute the argument.

Like I said, the mere existence of reality does not imply the existence of your god, and there is no logical way to get there. To demonstrate that your god exists, you have to actually demonstrate that your god exists.

[GrandizerII]

Bold mine. Why must there be such an extension? Will basic reality not suffice?

Here the word "absolute" is synonymous to "infinite". Why must its extension be an infinite reality? That has been explained before, in the part that says that the extension of this reality cannot be the finite beings, their totality, and their universals. Since its extension cannot be among the finite beings, it logically follows that the extension must be an infinite being. Also, let's be careful about not making judgments or understanding the nature of this "reality" prior to logically analyzing its extensions as the argument does.

Why infinite being? Why not infinite something instead?

Ok, I see you address this later on.

Since the entity is absolute/infinite, nothing limits it, and it cannot have any lacks; it must possess all and every degree of existence. Consciousness is a degree/aspect of existence (a rock that is conscious has more existence than an unconscious rock), and since the entity cannot lack anything, it must possess infinite consciousness. The same can be said for knowledge."

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.

Also, knowledge could be a sign of "limitedness" rather than "infiniteness" as you don't need to know anything if you're infinite in space/time.