Gah. :smack: You’re right. I guess I should just shoot myself.
Guys, I’m throwing in the towel.
I really do wish I could keep up with all of you, but I have to admit to myself that I can’t. I can’t answer everybody’s concerns adequately. The sheer volume is killing me. And it doesn’t stop. It just keeps multiplying, and it’s all just repetitive. I’m becoming snitty and crazy (I’m emotional already, and this exacerbates that). When I start seeing tautologies as contradictions, it’s time to take a break. It’s like an auto mechanic mistaking a radiator for a clutch.
I want to thank everybody for participating, even (and probably especially) people whose heads I’ve bitten off. Y’all feel free to carry on. For what it’s worth, after all these discussions, the proof, in my opinion, is sound. God go with you all. It’s time for me to take a break
See you around! 
Hang in there Lib, both you and your words are appreciated.
Debating so many people simultaneously must be very difficult and very draining. You have both my respect and my thanks for the time and effort you’ve put into this debate.
Ooops, that last post took so long to get through I missed your last post, please ignore the “hang in there” bit
Lib, I’m with you. It is impossible to fend off so many at once, and especially when everyone is trying to tackle different angles.
If you gotta break, you gotta break.
Libertarian:
I had a feeling this might happen. I did have a reason for believing the definition was G -> G, rather than G = G.
http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/ontol.html#calc
This is a link to a very clear version of Trent Dougherty’s argument (provided by himself). The definition is clearly G -> G. I was unable to find any version of Dougherty’s argument with the definition G = G. I suppose it is possible that there is an alternate version of his argument floating around which uses your definition. I also think there are problems with using G = G, but kitarak has gotten into that. There are no advantages, as far as I can tell, to using your definition.
I was merely using the definition provided by Dougherty himself, although there could be alternate versions, which I would like to see, because G = G seems very wrong to me. Still, the rest of my post had nothing to do with the definition.
Av!A is a tautology, not a contradiction. If G can be proved by a tautology, then G is a tautology itself. I will have to give some thought to the implications of G being a tautology. Such as, if G is a tautology, why do we even need a proof? Incidently, I think this series of questions by kitarak has been different than any other questions about this proof, so it is unfair to say that everyone is merely repeating themselves.
Thanks.
You’re better than this too.
sigh I have been reading all your posts, despite the fact that I never get any response other than quick dismissals of small, misunderstood parts of my argument. I don’t complain, because I realize that you are faced with an overwhelming amount of posts. Also, I realize that you are repeatedly getting the same arguments thrown at you, which is sure to be frustrating.
Still, I did hope that you would address Plantinga’s argument, since you seem to have respect for him. He came up with an argument with the premise “There is a possible world which has the property of no-maximality.” I paraphrased this argument in a previous post. This is different than merely replacing <>G in your argument with <>~G. It is a different argument, and it is accepted as valid (although Plantinga said that theists were still free to accept your premise and not this one). Whether or not you accept the premise of either argument depends on your account of the nature of logical space.
I did what?
C’mon, surely you can address my post instead of just sniping at it. At the least, explain how the “axiom” of “god is possible” is more valid than “god is not possible,” since the results these two have are exact opposites.
Hmm… Though there is one more thing I’m curious about. I don’t know much about modal logic, but I think I saw it mentioned that <> and ~<>~ could effectively be used interchangably… Is that right?
No. It’s not.
I think you’re thinking of , not <>. That is, is equivalent to ~<>~. means “necessary”, and ~<>~ means “not possibly not”. If something is not possibly not, then it must be. (Tortured English, I know, but it’s 4:30 am here.)
Okay.
…What, that’s it? Nothing about the rest of it? I’m particularly curious just what you’re implying I said, since I don’t even know what that is you said I said…
Unless you’re just finished with this thread, in which case I suppose I should thank you for supplying a ‘perfect’ argument for god’s non-existance. I’m sure it should come in handy in the future.
BlackKnight, thank you, wasn’t quite sure about that. But now that brings up another question… What would the opposite of ~<>~ be? <>~?
—jab1: But a dog, for example, thinks the dog it sees in the mirror is another dog.—
I’ve never encountered such a dog. Every dog I’ve ever introduced to a mirror seems completely unimpressed by it, not even recognizing the image as another dog.
They’ll sometimes sniff if, to be sure, but they use none of the body language that signifies that they think another dog is present. I would guess it’s probably because they don’t smell anything.
I wrote a long post, then killed it all.
f
Anyway: even if Lib leaves for good, hopefuly somone can take his place, or at least play devil’s advocate. At the very least, someone can tell me if my criticism has any merit.
Basically, what I have been arguing is that there is something distinctly different between saying that it is possible that a being has maximal power and saying that it has maximal (modal) existence. Namely, it is that “maximal power” is a characteristic that fits comfortably within a formulation of a given possible world: “maximal existence” does not, referencing as it does ALL possible worlds.
erislover has suggested that <>G is not the same thing as the plain english “possible.” But I am arguing that <>G is not even really being used as the modal sense of possible, because G involves characteristics that are beyond what any possible world can alone contain. It is distinctly different from conventional statements of possibility, such as <>X (it is possible that a unicorn exists) or even <>D (it is possible that a being with all possible knowledge exists).
As a rough example, consider a world with one strange property: objects (the exact same objects) can exist in more than one place at once.
In this world there is a room with nearly an infinate number of boxes (like at the end of Crusaders of the Lost Ark). Now, because of the special property of this world (which I added to make the example roughly analougus to possible worlds, instead of just to make it weird), if a spoon exists in box A, it can also exist in box B. Or there can be no spoons in any boxes.
Now, a man named Bob arrives, and starts talking about an object called X. X has a number of special distingishing characteristics, the pre-eminent of which is that it exists in every single box in our huge room. If X did not exist in every single box, then it wouldn’t really be X at all.
Bob then opens box A. Inside, rather predictably, is something that has every single stated characteristic of X. But is it X? And how can we tell?
But we have a problem: the key definition of X is something that opening a single box (or even many) cannot possibly resolve. Because just by examining the X in box A, we cannot establish anything about its possible “in all other boxes-ness.”
Consider the case in which there are only two boxes, box A and box B. If we open box A to find X, then we can for sure state that what’s in the box has the characteristic of “in A-ness.” But we HAVEN’T resolved whether or not the claimed X has the characteristic of “being in B-ness.” Indeed, we are not even really sure if the object is really, in fact, X.
Now, that example is too rough to prove anything, but it is at least instructive as to what I’m thinking about here.
I suggests this: when we posit that G exists in at least one possible world (call that world modal A), the most we CAN concede about its existence is that it has the characteristic of “exists in A-ness.” And if that’s not really enough to establish that it is really “G” in the full sense of G (necessary existence), that’s too bad.
So if this proof were a standard syllogism, this problem might point to a case of the fallacy of illicit minor, where the conclusion says more than the (minor?) premise actually concedes. As the proof if formulated, I wouldn’t know how or where to formally charge it with this problem.
(Oh, and hah hah: I made you say “A-ness.” Also, if you say it fast enough, “B-ness.” This would be great fun at a symposium.
Wow, there are some embarassing typos in that post… “I sugguests”?
Well, that answered one of my questions. 
—How does something like this happen? I had already stated that contradictions prove anything. In fact, A or Not A → X where X is any arbitrary element.—
Yep, that’s the really fun thing you can do if you could ever convince someone to accept a contradiction.
—What I want to know before I spend the rest of this afternoon and possibly weekend responding to people is this: why is it that when I typed it, it was so unimportant as to not even be remembered, but now that Kitarak has typed it, it is suddenly “interesting.”—
As far as I know, only one person found it to be “interesting,” and they didn’t explain why.
—I just want to know whether there is one single person here who is reading my posts. If there is, please identify yourself and I’ll address my responses to you. If there isn’t, I can spend my time preparing for my work.—
Well, obviously everyone is reading your posts (though perhaps with greater or lesser fidelity). Your problem seems to be that people are only rarely reading anyone ELSES posts.
Apos:
Well, Lib, I guess you shouldn’t feel so bad. Even after multiple posts about how you were mistaken when you thought that Av!A was a contradiction, people are still making that mistake. It must be a very difficult mistake to avoid.
Apos: Look closely at A or Not A
Does it still look like a contradiction to you? I hope not.
It is a tautology. Lib had already stated that a contradiction proves anything. Of course, he didn’t have to tell me that, because it is common knowledge. The problem is, like you, he thought A or Not A was a contradiction, when it is a tautology. In other words, Lib, and now you, are accusing me of not reading posts, when in fact you are the ones not reading (or understanding) posts. I still don’t know how you missed the previous posts pointing this out.
Yes, and I still think it is interesting. If you had read kitarak’s post on the subject, you would see that since Av!A -> G, G must be a tautology of the standard statement calculus. (This is probably an insufficient explanation, but kit’s post is still there) My first thought was that, assuming Lib would disagree with G being a tautology of the standard statement calculus, there must be something wrong if Av!A -> G. I thought this was interesting. Later, Lib decided that G had always been a tautology of the standard statement calculus. I think this has serious implications for the meaning of G. It also means we didn’t really need a proof at all. Lib apparently has no catchphrase answers to this criticism, so he is understandably avoiding the issue.
If you had been readin Lib’s posts, you would have already seen that he admitted his mistake in regards to A or Not A being a contradiction. It is even more clear that you are not reading anyone else’s posts. I’m sure there are people that have been reading all the posts. The problem is, Lib only responds to the people that haven’t. Not to mention any names, but certain people keep repeating the same questions, and Lib continues to answer them. Then he uses their repetition to accuse everyone of not reading his posts. He conveniently avoids any new lines of questioning. For instance, he has avoided kitarak’s points on G being a tautology of the standard statement calculus. And he has avoided Plantinga’s argument, which I brought up. He has even avoided my criticism of the definition, even though I provided a link to Dougherty’s argument in which the definition is G -> G.
In any case, I have noticed that his answers usually can be reduced to the same simple catchphrases over and over again, which explains why he can only answer the same questions over and over again.
—Apos: Look closely at A or Not A—
Actually, you can now certainly accuse me of not reading carefully enough: I thought the example was A AND not A, not or. I have to work on my symbols.
The reason I made this mistake is that the common demonstration of HOW a contradiction can prove anything involves setting up a “A and/or X” and then asserting not A.
—Does it still look like a contradiction to you? I hope not.—
No, A or not A is indeed a tautology.
—If you had been readin Lib’s posts, you would have already seen that he admitted his mistake in regards to A or Not A being a contradiction.—
Yep, saw that too, but I assumed (wrongly) that it was in reference to something else.
—It is even more clear that you are not reading anyone else’s posts.—
Yep, I’m skimming over some of them, because I don’t have the time to read everything.
—In any case, I have noticed that his answers usually can be reduced to the same simple catchphrases over and over again, which explains why he can only answer the same questions over and over again.—
That seems a little presumptuous, speculating about his motives. The issue here is the arguement itself, not “what Lib can and cannot respond to properly, in my estimation.” What Lib says or thinks has no bearing on the soundness or unsoundness of the arguement.
But seeing as he’s incapacitated, I nominate you play devil’s advocate for us in the abscence of a real advocate: please defend the soundness of the arguement as best as you possibly can for us so that we can explore it in greater detail.
Or else, in the abscence of any debate over the actual arguement, we can probably ship the thread to the new “look what Lib said now that we all disagree with!” forum.
C’mon, Night. I directly addressed that here. Criminey. At least when I misread a post, I admit it.
Well, umm, actually, no you didn’t. You said:
"Well, heavens, man! You could have saved yourself an awful lot of trouble by merely noticing that I had already said the exact same thing! Repeatedly, in fact! "
I didn’t notice you saying that before, but if you say you did I’ll believe you.
You then went on to say:
"Ack! What could possibly be more interesting than truth? Truth is all that exists. No, really. Not in the sense of a nod over a cup of cappuccino between two philosophy nerds in a cafeteria at Princeton. Truth. Is. All. That. Exists.
That doesn’t make it trivial. That makes it perfect. Boundless. Wonderful. Profound and simple all at the same time."
Ok, fair enough. That still doesn’t address the fact that your god is merely a string of characters of the form A, ~ and =>, which doesn’t make it much of a deity. It doesn’t even really make it an anything, it’s just a logical statement.
As to where I asked “What part of this appears in your proof?”, I’m sorry for that. I think I must have misread what you said or something, as I don’t see how that can follow either. However, the point remains that most of what you’re saying about god is merely your opinion, and not something thatfollows from your proof (which is fine, but means we don’t have to accept it as given even if we accept the proof).
Errr. I misspoke. When I said “your god” I meant “the god of your proof”