Arguments for God's Existence from Contingency

[Mystic]

And among the arguments, I came up with in the past and no one was able to refute:

1. If hypothetical Creator (for sake of argument, we are saying this being is neither good or evil) can create morality from nothing (without it already existing), it can make it what it wants.
2. If it can make what it wants, it can be arbitrary.
3. If it can be arbitrary, then it can make it that it's inherently good to torture innocent souls for eternity.
4. It is impossible that it being inherently good to torture an innocent soul for eternity.
5. Therefore it cannot be arbitrary.
6. Therefore it can't make what it wants.
7. Therefore it can't create morality from nothing.
8. If a Creator can't create morality from nothing, neither can evolution, since it can create evolution or everything created by evolution.
9. Therefore morality is eternal.
10. Morality requires perception.

And you add the premises that will lead to God.... they are not hard....

[Edwardo Piet]

Source: http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.co.uk...thing.html

You just couldn’t resist could you?

Resist providing a source for where Aquinas is thoroughly debunked? Yeah, so what?

You have simply taken 1 part out of 5 and saying “Aquinas didn’t argue for that,”, again and again and again, which is simply untrue. Don’t  blame Aquinas just because you cannot be bothered to read the next 4 paragraphs.

Aquinas doesn't argue for a God, he argues for a "prime-mover" which turns out to be nothing more than an uncaused cause. None of the paragraphs successfully argue for anything like a god. Just because I recognize that the paragraphs fail to argue for a god and you don't doesn't mean I haven't read them.

In question 1 of the Summa, well before the 5W, Aquinas distinguishes between natural revelation and special revelation. He very explicitly states that natural reasoning cannot take you anywhere near the Christian God. But it does get you, in Question 2, to the God of Classical Theism – full stop – which is as follows:

Immutable (1W)
Eternal (2W)
Ground of Being (3W)
Perfection (4W)
Intelligence (5W)

So apparently *I* don't read things and you didn't even bother to read the fact that I stated on more than one occasion that Aquinas fails to even succesfully argue for a deist God. I know he's not bringing Christianity into it. I never suggested otherwise. But all he successfuly argues for is 1W and 2W (and 3W if all that means is "uncaused cause" (again, misleading language loading with theological bullshit is used for no good reason)). 4W and 5W are not remotely successfuly argued for. There's absolutely no reason to believe that the first unchanging and eternal uncaused cause is perfect and intelligent.

What Aquinas is really saying is equivalent to seeing the shadow on the wall and recognizing that it is a man’s shadow apart from knowing the exact identity of the person casting the shadow. Natural revelation reveals to everyone - Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Pagans alike – that there is a god without specifically identifying which god. I don’t know why that isn’t obvious to you from a plain reading of the text.

Aquinas is doing nothing of the sort because rattling on about an uncaused cause doesn't get you to intelligence, perfection, a mind or any kind of god. I never suggested anywhere that Aquinas merely fails to argue for the Christan God, I have stated more than once that Aquinas doesn't even get you to deism.

So going back to your assertion that Aquinas has been debunked, you certainly haven’t debunked part 1 of 5.

Again, the "Everyone understand this to be God" part is bullshit. I have no quibble with an uncaused cause, and in fact I believe in an uncaused cause, but everyone most certainly does not understand that to be God. That is one of the many properties of God and it doesn't get you anywhere near God by itself. People understand God to be much more than merely an uncaused cause. I believe in an eternal and immutable uncaused cause. Do you think that makes me a theist?

[Amarok]

Thats what many folks here say, but based on my observation over the past 2 years, it seems very much like for most people here it is indeed a strong disbelief, not simply a lack of belief. 

That's simply a fault of your observation 

Nonetheless, my point still stands, whether it's worded as lack of belief or disbelief.

Yes it rather does . It very much refutes the sentence.

[Mystic]

Nope, atheism is the position of not believing that there is this force, not necessarily that this force is not. Regardless, we see no justification for painting a face on it and praying for rain.

Thats what many folks here say, but based on my observation over the past 2 years, it seems very much like for most people here it is indeed a strong disbelief, not simply a lack of belief.

Nonetheless, my point still stands, whether it's worded as lack of belief or disbelief.

I would say Atheism takes almost in the form of pride of not knowing the best thing a human can know and witness.  Never seen so much pride in not knowing something.

And the proofs regarding God from Aristotle to Aquinas, etc, they are good. But the best argument is the witness argument, because, we breathe it in and out in our language, in the very words "thank you" to each other.

May God unite us all on the mystic link that binds us all and enter us through the gate he has opened for us.

I would say aside from not believing, it's hard commitment against the proofs provided for God. Most Atheists mock these proofs when they are valid, and the premises they dispute are like "who says it's wrong to torture babies" or "who says we have exact value"  or "who says there is a right or wrong" or "who says beauty actual has a basis", etc, etc.......

[Amarok]

I would say Atheism takes almost in the form of pride of not knowing the best thing a human can know and witness.  Never seen so much pride in not knowing something.

Sigh it's not pride it's simply not arrogance . That would be your sides shtick .

---

Most Atheists mock these proofs when they are valid, and the premises they dispute are like "who says it's wrong to torture babies" or "who says we have exact value"  or "who says there is a right or wrong" or "who says beauty actual has a basis", etc, etc.......

So questioning your assertions is mockery . That's very telling .

[The Grand Nudger]

@Tiz
Thou shalt not mock the lord, thy god, Mysticknight.

[Edwardo Piet]

Ugh, Hilbert's Hotel. To me, that always comes out sounding like a long winded version of 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?'

'Fap-fap-fap'?

Indeed.

[Kernel Sohcahtoa]

The following post is made out of a spirit of curiosity and is not intended to be insulting or condescending.  

With that said, in mathematics, there are the concepts of countable infinity and uncountable infinity. In a nutshell, a set is countable if its cardinality (the number of elements in a set) is equal to the cardinality of the set of natural numbers (the infinite set of positive integers).  Naturally,  a set that is not countable is called an uncountable set.  Hence, there is a 1-1 correspondence between the elements of any two countable sets (e.g., there is a 1-1 correspondence between the elements of the set of natural numbers and the set of rationals, despite the fact that the natural numbers are a subset of the infinite set of rationals).  However, no such correspondence exists between a countable set and an uncountable set (e.g., there exists no 1-1 correspondence between the countable set of natural numbers and the uncountable set of real numbers).

Now, in referencing the above, assuming that a deity exists and that it has limitations yet it can be conceived of in terms of infinity, then is it more accurate to think of it in terms of countable infinity? Why can't it be that this deity is the equivalent of a countable set contained within an uncountable set? Or for that matter, and with all due respect, why can't this deity be the equivalent of a countable set contained within another countable set (both of which are contained within an uncountable set)? Perhaps the actual meaning of reality could be part of an uncountable infinite that transcends humanity's present thought patterns (e.g., god concepts, philosophy, theories, etc.)?

[Edwardo Piet]

No, like I just realized I think the point of his argument is that either God exists or else we don't have a complete explanation of the world/universe.  Duh, obviously we do not.

We definitely don't have a complete explanation of our universe. But even if we did that wouldn't get us to God, right?

Another problem with God of the Gaps, is that God isn't the only thing that could be asserted into the gaps!

[Amarok]

@Tiz
Thou shalt not mock the lord, thy god, Mysticknight.