Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate

[案山子]

If a god exists it would be literally impossible to ever know without the god itself deciding to reveal itself.

It's not like we'd one day walk in on one if it existed, as if it had forgotten to lock the bathroom door that day. We'll never know for the rest of time, unless again, one existed AND decided to show itself.

[Kalovale]

If a god exists it would be literally impossible to ever know without the god itself deciding to reveal itself.

This is called Agnosticism, and it should also be justified, not just claimed. I'm not adequately prepared to challenge it, but if you have any justifications for it, we'll try and work with that.

[DrRusty]

God's attribute is the reason the argument is flawed.... Because it's impossible to be ALL-powerful. We're going around in a circle here

[Eos]

For the record;
If an immovable object is hit by an unstoppable force what happens is deflection.

If for example a ball that could not be stopped hits a pillar that can not be moved one of the following two would occur;

If the 'unstobbale' does not refer to movement in a straight line it would deflect off and continue moving.
If the 'unstoppable' also arbitrarily requires that it can not be impeded in the direction it were moving the mass containing the immovable object would be pivoted on the point of the immovable object. Using the ball/pole example and a planet, the immovable pole would function as an axis, itself remaining stationary while the rest of the planet shifted.
If the unmovable object were sufficiently large enough, say a mitt, and the unstoppable object a ball aimed right at it, one of the two objects would annihilate the other depending on which was the sturdier. Assuming both have equally infinitely powerful thrust holding/moving them, it's pretty much a moot point since physics doesn't provide a way for it to ever be a feasible scenario since we can not create anything with virtually infinite power or virtually indestructible.

And yes, an omnipotent being can create an object they can't lift/move/interact with. Because that's simply a matter of them choosing not to. They should even be able to create an object they're not aware of, simply by choosing to be unaware of that item. Being omnipotent would also mean they could later choose to change their mind and reclaim that ability, or forget that they had done it in the first place to prevent themselves from being able to reclaim it, or prevent themselves from reclaiming it. Omnipotent really does mean omnipotent. I've never understood why people have trouble with that concept.


And really none of this has anything to do with whether or not a deity exists; still arguing attributes of the deity, not the existence thereof.

God's attribute is the reason the argument is flawed.... Because it's impossible to be ALL-powerful. We're going around in a circle here

If you write a virtual reality, ala The Sims, and are running it in debug mode using an interpreted language and snapshotted isolation for full rewind, is there anything you can't do to it? Seems you'd be pretty ominipotent to your virtual peeps.

[DrRusty]

Well, if you toss in him being all knowing, how do you become unaware of it? For the sake of just omnipotence alone, that's a little weird to say omnipotence isn't really omnipotence.

as for not being able to reproduce an unstoppable force vs an immovable object, that's why we're forced to use arguments rather than experiments.

If you write a virtual reality, ala The Sims, and are running it in debug mode using an interpreted language and snapshotted isolation for full rewind, is there anything you can't do to it? Seems you'd be pretty ominipotent to your virtual peeps.

Of course, but as its been said, if he exists outside the realm of logic (implying our own logic) then there's no point in discussing it.

[Kalovale]

I can wrap my mind around that physics, but I can't wrap my mind around thought experiments involving infinity. Certainly rationality is not strictly limited to physics, how would you then extend the explanation?

[DrRusty]

There are 3 things you can do with infinity even if you can't grasp the concept.

-Any number minus itself is 0
-Any number divided by 0 is 0
-Any number multiplied by 1 is itself

using this in the omnipotence paradox comes out to 0, meaning he wouldn't be able to lift the rock, just mimic its force

[Kalovale]

There are 3 things you can do with infinity even if you can't grasp the concept.

-Any number minus itself is 0
-Any number divided by 0 is 0
-Any number multiplied by 1 is itself

Infinity is a concept, not a number.

[Eos]

Of course, but as its been said, if he exists outside the realm of logic (implying our own logic) then there's no point in discussing it.

Why is there no point of discussing it if it exists outside our own logic?
And why would it need to exist outside our logic, if our logic is merely a virtual extension of our creator's?
We are capable of discussing and exploring most anything through analogy; we translate everything into the nearest closest analog until we understand it well enough to be it's own individual concept which we then use to further extend other analogies.

My understanding was the question being asked was 'Does a God Exist' not "does it matter".

[DrRusty]

Infinity is a concept, not a number.

ummm okay? You can still divide it by 0, subtract it from itself, and multiply it by 1.

Why is there no point of discussing it if it exists outside our own logic?
And why would it need to exist outside our logic, if our logic is merely a virtual extension of our creator's?
We are capable of discussing and exploring most anything through analogy; we translate everything into the nearest closest analog until we understand it well enough to be it's own individual concept which we then use to further extend other analogies.

My understanding was the question being asked was 'Does a God Exist' not "does it matter".

If you try to use logic to define god, and get the response "he exists outside of your logic", every time, then it seems kind of pointless to discuss it. As for the question, it's already been answered. Using our logic, and what is defined as god (omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolance), he or she is a logical impossibility.

[Eos]

If you try to use logic to define god, and get the response "he exists outside of your logic", every time, then it seems kind of pointless to discuss it. As for the question, it's already been answered. Using our logic, and what is defined as god (omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolance), he or she is a logical impossibility.

Then you should probably bow out of the conversation, having admitted having nothing to add to it.

[Kalovale]

ummm okay? You can still divide it by 0, subtract it from itself, and multiply it by 1.


If you try to use logic to define god, and get the response "he exists outside of your logic", every time, then it seems kind of pointless to discuss it.

You can't divide a deer by 0, or subtract a deer from a deer, or multiply it by 1. Neither can you do any of that with infinity. While I'm grateful that we're talking about Math now, since I feel a lot more secure in my statements and how to express them, I regret that I let it slip this far from a very basic misunderstanding.

This is our situation in a nutshell:

Claim: God does not exist.
Justification: BOGUS
Result: Claim is invalidated by default.
Post-mortem result: neither 'God exists' nor 'God doesn't exist' is proved or disproved, that single argument is invalidated, and that's that. It gets taken off the table.

[DrRusty]

You definitely can use infinity in math. I do it nearly every day in my nuclear power classes. An open is defined as infinity ohms of resistance and a short causes infinite current. Of course, that's only the math of it, in reality you aren't going to get infinite current or you would have endless energy. We also use imaginary numbers which are the negative square roots of a number.

[Leaves]

Why is there no point of discussing it if it exists outside our own logic?
And why would it need to exist outside our logic, if our logic is merely a virtual extension of our creator's?
We are capable of discussing and exploring most anything through analogy; we translate everything into the nearest closest analog until we understand it well enough to be it's own individual concept which we then use to further extend other analogies.

My understanding was the question being asked was 'Does a God Exist' not "does it matter".

I think there are three answers to "Does a God Exist" -- yes, no, and "I don't know". He seems to have picked the latter, which may also come across as "it doesn't matter" (these two are often directly tied, for obvious reasons).

To refine this further, there is really only one answer, and that is "I don't know", because truthfully, we don't know. But if we were to get really philosophical here, we as humans don't really know anything. Everything we believe in is a theory, no matter how grounded we think it might be, as that "grounding" is based on other concepts which are theories themselves. I'd assume this is why he meant there was nothing to discuss. Otherwise, I'm not sure.

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Just for fun, I want to voice my actual opinion on the question in the OP. My personal view is that of "we don't know, we can't know, and it also doesn't matter". But it's not that it doesn't matter because we can't know - it's that it doesn't matter because the answer would not change my life or how I live it in any way, shape, or form.

I don't believe in devoting myself to any sort of "authority" figure - whether that be a God, or even a human figure like a parent, teacher, etc. - and this is regardless of whether said figure is real or not. I don't personally go out of my way to conform to a given set of rules (except the obvious "generally accepted" societal rules that are more-or-less unavoidable). I feel that, within the realms of "live and let live", I can make my own decisions that are only governed by said societal laws, nothing more.

Furthermore, I don't owe anything to a higher power nor do I entertain the notion of after-life. That's something I can worry about when I get there (if I do!). I marvel in the fact that I rely upon my own abilities to achieve what I want rather than treat everything as "God's will". It seems almost too easy to do that.

[Kalovale]

You definitely can use infinity in math. I do it nearly every day in my nuclear power classes. An open is defined as infinity ohms of resistance and a short causes infinite current. Of course, that's only the math of it, in reality you aren't going to get infinite current or you would have endless energy. We also use imaginary numbers which are the negative square roots of a number.

I should have made myself clearer: You cannot do arithmetic with infinity, it is a concept, not a number, not a thing that arithmetic applies to.

Reminder: I find it hard not to sound annoyed, but please refrain from claims without justifications. Even if you have to back up those claims with "because I ate sunny-sideups for breakfast today", please do so.

[DrRusty]

You're not really making an argument here. Anything minus itself is 0. Even your deer example. A deer minus itself is 0 deers. Infinity is no exception.

I also made a mistake up top. You don't divide a number by 0 to get 0, you multiply it by 0. Dividing by zero is infinity.

[Leaves]

Not sure as to the purpose of this infinity argument. Infinity is a concept used to describe a number so endlessly large that we cannot possibly have a real grasp on it. That's all it is. infinity * infinity or infinity / infinity are meaningless operations, so are infinity + infinity, or 1+infinity, etc.

[DrRusty]

we're discussing infinity because of the omnipotence paradox, which I brought up as an argument against god's existence.

[Kalovale]

we're discussing infinity because of the omnipotence paradox, which I brought up as an argument against god's existence.

Since I've made that plea, I will try to comply with it. @DrRusty

[DrRusty]

Since I've made that plea, I will try to comply with it. @DrRusty

lol this is hilariously ironic. Just as we're trying to use logical vs illogical in determining god's existence, we're using different definitions of infinity to describe the argument itself. Using arithmetic, yes, you are right. Since infinity is indeed indeterminate it can not be used for anything. In mathematics, you use things that lead up to infinity (like my infinity ohms example) allowing it to be used in formulas.