A Necessary Being?

[The Grand Nudger]

Some concepts are incompatible with some means of inference.  God as a necessary being is incompatible with the modal operator just as unidirectional temporal causality is incompatible with the mp/mt switch.

Logic isn't a magical talisman that always works, under every condition, and in every combination. You might say, Muslim, that it's impossible for a necessary being to not exist, but if you accept the modal hook it simply shows you that god is no such being. If you prefer the concept of a god as a necessary being over the modal operator (they can't both be true, as you said..it leads to contradictions), so be it..but you're just referring to a preference for a concept over a means of inference...not proving one true and the other false (regardless of which we place under either category).

[robvalue]

I am amazed at the way some people are blissfully unconcerned about whether anything they are discussing has any basis in reality.

I mean, if we're talking about theoretical fantasy lands, that's absolutely fine. But you don't need to convince me of anything. You can make up whatever you want about it.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Oh good god, back to pretending you have a philosphical understanding or belief that no one else gets?

You must mean people like David Bentley Hart, or Edward Feser, or Oliva Blanchette. This is not to say the argument is sound just because big name intellectuals consider it so. My point is that at least of few notable thinkers do get it. So I have no pretense about understanding the concept of a Necessary Being. I do. And I know enough to see quite clearly that not only do you not get it but you do even try to get it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh good god, back to pretending you have a philosphical understanding or belief that no one else gets?

You must mean people like David Bentley Hart, or Edward Feser, or Oliva Blanchette. This is not to say the argument is sound just because big name intellectuals consider it so.

Yes it is.

My point is that at least of few notable thinkers do get it.

...............lol. 

So I have no pretense about understanding the concept of a Necessary Being. I do. And I know enough to see quite clearly that not only do you not get it but you do even try to get it.

-and yet you go on to make the same rookie mistakes that others have made in  thread, mistakes which you seemed to recognize when others make them, or think that you do (because, honestly, I have no idea whether or not you got that right by accident). Would nothing exist today if numbers didn't exist? Are they somehow required for there to be anything? So what's all that bullshit about the requirement of a necessary being, again?

You fucked up, hard, what you'd like to say is that there would be nothing if it weren;t for your god, but..unfortunately, all of this still exists regardless of whether or not your god exists, which is an open question...if we're being very, very generous. If you found out, tomorrow, that your god didn't exist...then the world wouldn't dissolve into nothingness on account of that realization. Learn to do this shit right.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Being, in context, is a technical term.  Numbers are necessary beings.

Curious, I seem to recall you asserting the opposite, i.e. that numbers are merely abstractions (in the modern sense). And you don't seem any too curious about how and in what manner numbers exist.

[Mister Agenda]

Premise 3 does not follow. If you have ten rooms and only one hasn an apple in it then the apple exists. But if instead all but one do not have and apple then an apple still exists...in the one that does not not have an apple.

A necessary being exists in all possible worlds. If there is a possible world in which the proposed necessary being does not exist, it is not necessary; and the supposed necessary being does not exist in any possible world...necessarily.

[The Grand Nudger]

Every necessary being, except for some versions of god, are abstractions.  That's sort of the notable thing about necessary beings and god.  It's the sole exception, (as usual) and only if you believe in it as something -other- than abstraction.

There are various entities which, if they exist, would be candidates for necessary beings: God, propositions, relations, properties, states of affairs, possible worlds, and numbers, among others. Note that the first entity in this list is a concrete entity, while the rest are abstract entities.[2]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/god-necessary-being/

Is there anything else I can clear up for you, Chad?

[Ben Davis]

Apologies if I'm covering discussions from earlier i the thread but quite a few things jump out on me here.

Easily.

We'll see...

Most of the old creations stories begin before creation with an infinite undifferentiated substance. The Greeks called this "chaos". The Egyptians called it "Nu". In Hinduism, the body of Brahma is an infinite ocean. In Babylonian myth the fresh and salt water gods come out of a previously undifferentiated watery state.

Let's put the mythology on hold for a moment.

The necessary being is "stuff", matter, extant-ness, substance. Pure being is matter taking up all space.  In atomic matter 99.999999% of the space of the atom is not taken up by matter.  There is hardly anything there to "be" at all....yet here we are, made of them.

It is before the "first cause". The first cause is what causes cavitation of this substance into stable void spheres aka universes.

So we're talking about the 'singularity' then? The proposed 'concentration' of all universal matter/energy & space/time? Given we don't comprehend the state of the universe before Plank time, how can we possibly describe, with such confidence, the necessities of that state? Further, we don't know if other 'worlds/universes' actually exist so how can we do more than postulate the attributes, let alone the necessities? And I'm assuming there that necessities could apply to those other possible worlds; I can imagine universes which exist with neither matter/energy nor time/space (e.g. proposed quantum potential universes) where substance is not an applicable attribute. The necessities of those could not possibly be anything like those of universes similar to our own.

As for first cause, if we can neither describe the state of the universe before Plank time or the cause of universal expansion, how can you so positively assert that the consequence was cavitation? I mean, you may be working on the cutting edge of both quantum & cosmological physics here and maybe I'm woefully under-informed but there are a lot of barriers to acceptance of your statements.

The point here is that since it's nigh-on impossible to accurately define 'necessary' or 'being' and almost equally difficult to describe what triggered the expansion of our universe, nothing you've said brings us any closer to an honest proposition of a theistic god (e.g. Yahweh, Brahma, Ymir, Zeus, Aten...).

[LadyForCamus]

Apologies if I'm covering discussions from earlier i the thread but quite a few things jump out on me here.

Easily.

We'll see...

Most of the old creations stories begin before creation with an infinite undifferentiated substance. The Greeks called this "chaos". The Egyptians called it "Nu". In Hinduism, the body of Brahma is an infinite ocean. In Babylonian myth the fresh and salt water gods come out of a previously undifferentiated watery state.

Let's put the mythology on hold for a moment.

The necessary being is "stuff", matter, extant-ness, substance. Pure being is matter taking up all space.  In atomic matter 99.999999% of the space of the atom is not taken up by matter.  There is hardly anything there to "be" at all....yet here we are, made of them.

It is before the "first cause". The first cause is what causes cavitation of this substance into stable void spheres aka universes.

So we're talking about the 'singularity' then? The proposed 'concentration' of all universal matter/energy & space/time? Given we don't comprehend the state of the universe before Plank time, how can we possibly describe, with such confidence, the necessities of that state? Further, we don't know if other 'worlds/universes' actually exist so how can we do more than postulate the attributes, let alone the necessities? And I'm assuming there that necessities could apply to those other possible worlds; I can imagine universes which exist with neither matter/energy nor time/space (e.g. proposed quantum potential universes) where substance is not an applicable attribute. The necessities of those could not possibly be anything like those of universes similar to our own.

As for first cause, if we can neither describe the state of the universe before Plank time or the cause of universal expansion, how can you so positively assert that the consequence was cavitation? I mean, you may be working on the cutting edge of both quantum & cosmological physics here and maybe I'm woefully under-informed but there are a lot of barriers to acceptance of your statements.

The point here is that since it's nigh-on impossible to accurately define 'necessary' or 'being' and almost equally difficult to describe what triggered the expansion of our universe, nothing you've said brings us any closer to an honest proposition of a theistic god (e.g. Yahweh, Brahma, Ymir, Zeus, Aten...).

He just opens his mouth, and stuff comes out. I don't think he even knows what he's going to say in the seconds before he types it.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Every necessary being, except for some versions of god, are abstractions.  That's sort of the notable thing about necessary beings and god.  It's the sole exception, (as usual) and only if you believe in it as something -other- than abstraction.

There are various entities which, if they exist, would be candidates for necessary beings: God, propositions, relations, properties, states of affairs, possible worlds, and numbers, among others. Note that the first entity in this list is a concrete entity, while the rest are abstract entities.[2]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/god-necessary-being/

Is there anything else I can clear up for you, Chad?

Amazing...you can Google and find three sentences you think support your belief. (Sarcasm) You're so fair a field that you're not even right.