God's existence -- are deductive arguments necessary?

Great Debates
1

First off, hello to everybody on SDMB. I hope I am not breaking the rules of the house by starting a thread with only my second post.

The question I’d like to ask was triggered by another thread, where the OP presented several arguments against the existence of God, and was asking for readers’ comments. I am not looking for “the right answer” to my question, I think it’s different from person to person. I am just curious to see how people on the board relate to this issue, which I’ll spell out shortly.

First, a quick note about my first post in the above mentioned thread: not only did I not greet the other participants, as I shoud have in a first post, and as I surely would have in an offline situation, but my intervention was off-topic, and involuntarily phrased like a troll. I’m sorry, I screwed up. I’m just beginning to learn how to behave online.

Now, back to the question. Here it goes:

Is a sound deductive argument the only reasonable basis for believing in the existence of God?

A few things I don’t mean:

  1. I don’t mean it as a rethorical question. It really intrigues me; in our daily lives, we almost always rely on different means to establish the credibility of various assumptions that constitute the basis for crucial decisions. The example I always think of first is tap water. We base our lifes on the belief that tap water is safe to drink. Yet, we don’t require formal proof before we drink it. (This is where it starts sounding like a troll, but I don’t know how to put it better, so please work with me.) Why do we insist on extremely precise, bulletproof arguments, when it comes to God’s existence, but we use different standards to establish the reliability of our other vital assumptions?

  2. This is not a challenge for those who believe God doesn’t exist. I am not interested (in this thread, anyway) in a debate about God’s existence. I am interested to understand what other people regard as the basis for their beliefs (those beliefs that they tend to hold strongly, when asked, and which affect their lives directly), and if they apply the same criteria when they validate those beliefs, as they do when they debate the question whether God exists.

Could it be that, when confronted to the question whether God really exists, we perceive a positive answer as being too overwhelming? For someone who believes God doesn’t exist, such an answer would have immense consequences on all of his/her other beliefs, many of which would be (seemingly) incompatible with it. Further, is it possible that we don’t want to deal with the potential consequences on our lives, whatever those consequences may be? And so, we focus on all the reasons why this “can’t be true”, and we end up requiring deductive arguments at a level of technical accuracy that we hardly ever require in any other situation?

What do you think?

Thanks for taking the time to read the question, even if you don’t intend to respond.

2

In today’s mindset, it seems that the only appropriate way to ascertain truth is through logic and science. Personally, I like to think of god literarily and not literally. Does that make god any more or less real? Or what makes literal truths more meaningful than literary ones? There is a reason literary truths keep coming up, which I think are easily as worthy as impersonal literal facts.

Before I get carried away, my answer to your question is no. The belief in god doesn’t have to be justified by logical truths. But then again, I’m not talking about an old man with a beard in the sky. That could be different.

The big problem is that there are too many fanatics on both sides. I don’t think this fits into either shoe. There are no ‘miracle’ answers for anybody. I mostly plead ignorance.

3

side note: just realized that ignorance is what you’re fighting against…if you win, one day you’re going to wish you didn’t :wink:

4

lambda: It really intrigues me; in our daily lives, we almost always rely on different means to establish the credibility of various assumptions that constitute the basis for crucial decisions. The example I always think of first is tap water. We base our lifes on the belief that tap water is safe to drink. Yet, we don’t require formal proof before we drink it.

That’s because we have other epistemological approaches that are sufficiently effective. Water testing is well understood and routinely performed, and it meets our general standards of empirical reliability.

Many of us have other epistemological approaches to the existence of God, too. Many posters here have testified that they’ve experienced God empirically, so they don’t require formal proof of God’s existence.

The trouble (or the bright side, depending how you look at it) is that according to most people’s experience, you can’t summon up an empirical experience of God any time you want, the way you could take a sample of your tap water to be tested. If you don’t have an empirical experience of God, or any other reliable (in your opinion) evidence of God’s existence, then you’re left with deductive logic: “I have no personal reason to believe that God does exist, but I’m willing to listen to your attempt to prove that he must exist.” In fact, most atheists if left alone would be quite content to class God with unicorns and magic potions as mere objects of fantasy, and leave it at that; it’s only because you theists have historically been so anxious to get us to agree with you that we even bother with the logical arguments.

Could it be that, when confronted to the question whether God really exists, we perceive a positive answer as being too overwhelming?

Probably some atheists do deny God’s existence just because they can’t cope with changing their minds on that scale. Probably some theists insist on God’s existence for the same reason. For most people, though, I think it just comes down in the end to your personal experience: it seems evident that God is there, or it seems evident that no God is there.

*And so, we focus on all the reasons why this “can’t be true”, and we end up requiring deductive arguments at a level of technical accuracy that we hardly ever require in any other situation? *

Nope. I require deductive arguments at that level of technical accuracy in a lot of situations: for example, when I’m asked to believe that a^n + b^n = c^n for a, b, and c distinct positive integers and n a positive integer > 2. And the reason I require them, as I pointed out above, is that in this case I have no reliable means of accessing the truth of the statement except by formal logic. If God’s existence is universally obvious without proof, show it to me empirically; if God’s existence is universally logically demonstrable, prove it to me rationally; if God’s existence is neither of those things, then quit worrying about whether or not I believe in it, because you have no legitimate means of changing my mind.

5

You don’t get proof by logic you get logic to explain proof.

6

lastgasp:

I’m not sure what you mean by literary vs. literal truth. Are literary truths, in your terminology, the ones that we perceive as being true, but for which we can’t construct formal justifications?

Kimstu:

It is well understood, and routinely performed by others. I am concerned with the means we use personally in order to establish the reliability of an assumption.

When I drink tap water, I actually trust that 1)water purification is a well understood and effective process, and 2)the people in charge with water testing apply the process effectively. I regard the first assumption as valid via the strong inductive argument that water processing has been going on for decades, in countless communities, etc., so the process in general is safe. Number 2) above is by far more problematic, but I still drink tap water, because the level of trust I have in the local utilities is enough to alleviate my fear (don’t know how wise this is.) Therefore, the criteria here was trust in others: the people who invented the process, and the people who are supposed to apply it. I never test the water myself.

We don’t know yet I’m a theist; I haven’t stated my position, because I think it’s not relevant for the discussion. Also, for the record, it’s not my intent to convince anybody of anything. I can see how it may sound that way, though.

I’ve phrased that incorrectly. I actually meant “that we hardly ever require in any other practical, common situation in our daily life.” Sure, when confronted with a theorem, I look for formal proof. But that’s not what I do when I board planes, take medication, or leave my daughter at the daycare. My life doesn’t depend on whether I believe a theorem about natural numbers. But I take other things on trust that greatly affect my life, after applying much less stringent criteria than deductive logic, or direct empirical experience.

7

What, exactly, is your question? Is it “Is it necessary to have a solid argument for a person to believe in God?”? Then my answer is “No. People are quite capable of believing in God without a solid argument.” If your question is “Will I be able to convince you that God exists without a solid argument?” then my answer is “Yes.”

8

It’s more a question about what’s important. Literal truth is bankable, but can’t slice it when it counts most.

Science is limited to what we observe, and what we can infer from those observations. A scientific truth is that G=m1m2C/r^2 (universal law of gravitation). What does this mean to you? It’s useful, sure, but I find it impersonal and stale. Some people think that science can be applied unboundingly. I am just not one of those people. Quantums, quasars, quarks…what’s important? Science works perfectly well within certain parameters, but fall short when it comes to god, and many other things. In that science is an extension of logic, logical arguments lag too. That’s not really true I suppose, but logical premises are not attuned to the supernatural because we are not attuned to the supernatural. (A little weak, but you get the idea)

So logically one could turn to religion and myth to look for answers. I’m not well read in this department, but it seems to me that the metaphorical interpretation, though less sturdy, is much more meaningful than the literal one. The particulars and circumstances change, but a myth or book, imbued with metaphor and insight, can speak to us from well beyond the grave.

What’s important then, capturing neutrinos in salt mines, or listening to the by-product of thousands of years of shared human experience? And which is better suited to describing our existence, and our understanding of god?

I guess I haven’t answered you really, mostly because I don’t want to define literary truth, but this should (god willing) clarify to you what I meant. You’re right in that the idea of constructing “formal justifications” is antithetical to what I mean, but I think more often that not, these literary truths speak to us subliminally anyways.

Literary is a bad word to use though, I’ll try think of a new one.

9

Belief and logic don’t mix. That’s because belief is a choice, whereas logic (properly constructed) is infallable.

Say one day I’m walking down the street and I see an invisible pink unicorn. Of course, no one else is there.

I can choose to believe I saw an IPU
I can choose to believe I hallucinated an IPU
I can choose to believe I’m crazy.

These are all equally correct and incorrect, since Truth, which is a property of logic, simply does not apply to this situation. Perception is based entirely on belief, which is entirely subjective, and Truth can only be known through logic.

No, I’m not a vulcan. I swear.

10

It’s late, but I wanted to throw in my non-negotiable 2/100ths of a dollar and I didn’t read everythign above. If I am repeating something, I am sorry… Call me on it…

To answer the OP’s question as asked in the subject “God’s existence – are deductive arguments necessary?”, I have to say only in a couple of cases, and in both cases it is wrong.

First of all, you would want to come up with some logical reason for God if your own faith was weak. True faith flies in the face of evidence (or lack thereof) and whenever I see someone tryiong to justify their religion with attempts at logical deduction - such as creation scientists - I always think they just don’t have enough faith.

The other case is when a believer is trying to convince a non-beliiever that God exists and is a certain way and expects something out of the non-believer.

This also fails becuse there IS no "proof* for God, so proselytizing in this manner will not help one bit. And even if it does work, you just get someone who needs to be like the first example above 0 nneeding evidence, having a weak faith - and this defeats the purpose as far as spirituality goes (though places with a “soul pledge drive quote” might think otherwise!)

Yer pal,
Satan

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11

Asmodean

Exactly.

Lambda

If you will develop a sound deductive proof that you exist, and post it here, I will post one that proves God exists.

Warning: to do anything at all, including prove your existence, you must first exist. That makes your existence your first axiom. What then will your conclusion be? Watch out for circles.

12

An outstanding question, and one that has been tangentially addressed in tangents but never, I think, hit head on.

It is, I feel, entirely in the raison d’etre of this board to ask the question, “Does God exist?” And the answer to it, if resolved, would be invaluable to two of the main topics discussed here: what constitutes ethical behavior in [fill in the circumstance of your choice here], and what comprises the “operating system” of the cosmos. Clearly, the number of threads devoted to the God question indicates that we have no agreement on the topic.

Heinlein once pointed out that serious debate on God often founders on the lack of a referent. By this he was not denying God’s existence so much as pointing out that what different people use as their concept for God is so variable that a “refutation” in the eyes of one person is nothing of the kind to another…he wasn’t talking about the same concept at all. You may have noted the rather heated exchange between Scupper and myself in which he drew two rather antithetical propositions together to ask for a justification of the behavior attributed to God by the Old Testament. Libertarian’s doctrine of a Spirit of Love is not quite what FriendofGod means by God in his discourses, though their concepts do agree on some (rather fundamental, if you’ll excuse the term) points.

Even the reality of a deist Cosmic Watchmaker would be useful to the juncture of atomic physics, cosmology, and metaphysics that seems to be occurring, where serious questions about chance, chaos, deterministic behavior, and so on are asked, not in the context of a metaphysics bull session, but in the practical circumstance of a laboratory trying to figure out what this particular subatomic particle’s characteristics and “reactivity” might be.

The nature and characteristics of a theist God, if there is one, are even more significant. If Fred Phelps has the straight dope on God (a rhetorical hypothesis only!), then some serious questions about human behavior need to be addressed here.

One cardinal problem in assessing whether God exists is that any means we use to address the problem lie within His creation, if in fact He does exist, and are subject to His operating rules. This makes the scientific method nearly useless in performing such an analysis; we cannot adequately define the conditions to produce a demonstrable proof. Empirical evidence is subject to a number of problems as well: while I may feel that I have experienced the presence of God, this is not only not an adequate proof for you, but leads one to question the competence, evaluative ability, and sanity of the “I” who so asserts. I have spent parts of several evenings attempting to put together a proper response to slythe’s question on the subject, since I concur with him that rational analysis of such a claim is proper. Logic cannot prove anything but the transmutations and interplays of its basic assumptions, so that any attempt to address the question from logic alone is necessarily subject to circular reasoning. In other words, your basic assumptions, while they may seem ironclad, imply the presence or absence of God immediately, though it takes working through a deductive train to show such a supposed “proof” and even more painstaking analysis to show how it was assumed in the first place.

Any “objective evidence” is certainly subject to skeptical scrutiny. But there are assumptions brought into play in such an analysis that skew the results. Suppose that 50,000 people claim that they saw an apparition of the Invisible Pink Unicorn (everybody’s favorite straw god for purposes of fanciful comparisons) at the halftime of a NFL football game. The possibilities of a real IPU, mass hallucination, and a massive practical joke immediately come to mind, but it depends on your assumptions how much weight you throw to each of these possibilities.

I have a personal non-rational concept, a hunch if you will, that it is possible to resolve the objective God question, but that we are not asking the right questions to get the answers we seek. But I fail to see how it might be accomplished.

13

An excellent question, lambda. Definitely don’t worry that you’re breaking some sort of unwritten rule by posting a new topic in only your second post; if your posts are as thoughtful and well-considered as this one, you’ll have nothing but good times from this message board.

In my opinion, there is a need to apply logic to belief in G-d. Satan has stated two reasons why this might be necessary, but he presented them as negatives. I agree with his reasons, but instead, I think of them in a positive light.

He points out that belief in G-d ultimately relies on faith rather than logic. This is true. However, religion still needs to maintain both internal and external consistency. No one (well, few people) can have faith when a faith system is riddled with inconsistency within itself or with the evidence of one’s eyes. If this sort of logic is missing, then such a religion has no chance of obtaining new adherents and will have a tough time keeping its existing ones.

Satan implies in his post that someone convinced of a religious belief through by logical arguments is by definition weak and an undesireable adherent to that faith. I’d say that believers who so blindly adhere to their faith in the face of contrary logic are a discredit to their religion. The logic means rational people can believe. Without it, all you’re left with are the crazies. Sure, ultimately, you need faith to believe in the aspects that can’t truly be proven (not in this modern, prophet-less world, at least). But without some logical support, the value of that faith is severely diminished .

14

Why not? I guess you are presuming that God does not wish to provide proof; if He wished to provide some pretty solid evidence, He could certainly do so. I agree that if He doesn’t wish to provide such proof, He can almost certainly find ways of doing so.

I don’t know Poly; you talk as if everyone starts out saying “God exists” or “God does not exist” and then finds ways to justify that assumption. I don’t think that’s the way it works. Certainly everyone has an internal standard of evidence that they use to determine if a thing is “real” or “true”. The standard shouls be consistent for all decisions regarding what one accepts as truth; a person should not, say, believe in faeries solely because their uncle’s neighbor’s cousin thinks she saw one twelve years ago, yet refuse to believe that his sister owns a cat–despite the objective evidence of the existence of cats and eyewitness testimony of that particular cat–until he sees it. So you dump all the evidence you have in your internal “truth winnow” and what it spits out is what you think is true. You can willingly alter the winnow to a certain degree; say if you really want to believe something, you might be more credulous; or if you once believed something that you discovered to be untrue you might make the winnow a little more selective. But I don’t believe people assume certain specific beliefs and then decide what the standard of evidence is based on that. As I’ve mentioned, if I alter my truth winnow so that “God exists” pops out, things like “anal-probing aliens exist” and “boogeymen exist” would pop out too (in fact, the boogeymen might make it out first). Saying that people’s truth winnows imply the presence or absence of a God is like saying that they imply the presence or absence of boogeymen, or aliens, or apples. There is an internal standard of evidence, and for all I know, Poly, yours and mine are exactly the same; it might be that you simply have more personal epirical evidence of God than I do. So how can our truth winnows, if they could be exactly the same yet spit out different results, imply the presence or absence of a God in and of themselves? People do their best to create a winnow that keeps out the untrue stuff but doesn’t keep out truths, and as a result of that certain things will make it through and others won’t–but I think once the winnow is established it determines the beliefs, the beliefs don’t determine the winnow. People may find that what they once accepted as true no longer meets their standards for evidence and so cease believing; how could that happen if the beliefs wholly determined the winnow?

15

**

One man’s illogic is another man’s logic.

[quote]
Satan has stated two reasons why this might be necessary, but he presented them as negatives. I agree with his reasons, but instead, I think of them in a positive light.

I think I didn’t make myself totally clear, but you know, it was late…

**

Well, Chaim, you believe the world is 5,000-odd years old. I don’t find this logical. However, you have maintained internal logic, and sure, there’s enough of that where I don’t think you’re a total lost cause. :wink: I mean, you have disagreed with the logic employed by the likes of FriendofGod yourself, but obviously this works for him.

Anyway, the point I was trying (and failed to make I guess) is that if one has to RELY on logic (or logos as some are wont to say) in order to believe in (a) God, they are in deep doo-doo because NO RELIGION would withstand ALL SCRUTINY, obviously.

Sure, please do put thought into your faith. But I was answering as to whether you need to “prove” EVERYTHING to yourself and others in order to believe, and I believe that is an impossibility unless you want to say you are an agnostic who is practicing something just in case…

**

If I implied that, I’m sorry. What I meant was that you won’t gain many converts trying to use logic here. Even the most intensely used apologetics that try this tact - Evidence That Demands A Verdict comes to mind - still ultimately fall back on the faith portion of the excercise.

I think ultimately that there’s not a single religious belief out there which can stand purely logical scrutiny or even a barrage of philosophical arguments. And as such, trying to convert someone based on logic and/or philosophy alone is futile. However, if you can show them how to FEEL God, then you’re a winner.

I think we agree on this one, Chaim, mostly. Correct me if I’m wrong…

Yer pal,
Satan

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16

Hi again, lambda. (btw, you are right to object to my labeling you a “theist” sight unseen, and I withdraw the slur. :wink: Oh Lord, all this unbeliever-baiting is turning me into one of those classic Mean-Mouth Atheists…I’ll try to do better.) You said:

*[Water testing] is well understood, and routinely performed by others. I am concerned with the means we use personally in order to establish the reliability of an assumption. *

Ah, here we get into the question of the validity of authority and of expert opinion. I understand that there are people who know much more about water quality than I do, and that some of them are routinely testing the tap water in my area as mandated by law. I feel pretty convinced that I’m as well off, or better off, accepting their judgement on its safety than I would be if I required myself to do that testing independently.

When it comes to the existence of God, however, I don’t recognize the concept of “expert opinion.” I do not believe that there are people who know more about the issue than I do (there are plenty who know more about theological arcana of various faiths, but that doesn’t give them more insight into the fundamental question). I believe that this is a highly personal issue which everyone has to resolve according to his or her own lights, and that in fact relying on external authority to decide it would be not only inappropriate but unethical for an adult mind.

*My life doesn’t depend on whether I believe a theorem about natural numbers.But I take other things [than mathematics] on trust that greatly affect my life, after applying much less stringent criteria than deductive logic, or direct empirical experience. *

But as I said, those are issues where external authority is relevant: it is reasonable to trust other people because you believe they know more than you do and are making decisions you can rely on.

In addition, I have to point out that to my view, these life and death issues that you adduce as possible examples of some kind of double standard are comparatively trivial. On the level of fundamental truth, it matters very little if I die from drinking bad water or in a plane crash; it’s my responsibility to avoid taking unnecessary risks, but I can’t have a zero-risk life and after all, I’ve got to die of something.

It matters a great deal, on the other hand, if I compromise my principles or deny my most basic beliefs. (Just as it would if I denied the truth of a mathematical theorem that had been proved to my satisfaction.) That’s why I have never understood the appeal of “utility” arguments for belief in God, such as Pascal’s Wager; saying “Well, I’ll take this vital and fundamental issue on trust just to be on the safe side” is something I find morally offensive. I suppose if you don’t really have a belief one way or the other, you might as well adopt the position that’s most convenient for you; but if you possess a genuine inner conviction, then to deny it because you’re afraid of a little thing like burning in eternal torment is simply cowardly. Hell may not be much fun (although it sounds as though there’ll be some good company there! :)), but it’s better to burn than to be a liar and a coward.

And that’s why I demand “stringent criteria [such as] deductive logic, or direct empirical experience” if I’m to believe in the existence of God. See, I pay theists the compliment of believing that their convictions about God are fundamental to their whole worldview and their moral existence, and that abandoning them for any superficial cause would be a contemptible betrayal. I expect theists to pay me the compliment of holding me to the same standards. So if I’m going to change this conviction, it has to be on the only grounds that justify such a change: either undeniable personal experience, or unassailable logical proof. I hope that answers your question.

17

Satan:

Gotcha. I had interpreted the OP to be questioning whether deductive logic has a place within religious belief or if the need for faith obviates the usefulness of logic altogether. So it seems we were answering different questions.

Yeah, I think so too. That’s why I found your post to be useful as a springboard for mine.

Chaim Mattis Keller

18

Satan

I agree with you. You describe two cases: the believer who tries to use deductive reasoning to justify his belief A) to himself, so that he can continue to believe, and B) to other people (non-believers), in order to change their minds. I believe that using deductive arguments for any of these purposes isn’t very useful, because I think, as you said, that “there IS no “proof” for God”.

I further think that the duals of these two cases are not helped by formal reasoning, either. Namely, the non-believer who tries to formally justify his position A’) to himself, so he can maintain his position, and B’) to other people (believers), in order to make them re-evaluate theirs.

I tend to focus on cases A) and A’), because those are the ones that ultimately matter to the individual. I am not looking for more efficient advocacy strategies to be used in the other two cases. Instead, I am trying to shed light on the things that matter most to the individual, when he evaluates his own position with respect to the existence of God, regardless of what that position is.

Kimstu

Yes, I think this is an excellent point, and it actually makes me re-evaluate the relevance of my example.

After all, some people had access to direct evidence that tap water is safe. Of course, there are also people who claim they experienced God’s presence directly, but while nobody disputes the experts’ assesment of water safety, a lot of knowledgeable people disagree on whether God exists or not. So it’s reasonable to trust the water experts in the first case, but there are no experts we can trust in the second case.

As I said, I was originally motivated by another thread, entitled “A few reasons why I’m an atheist.” All those reasons boiled down to deductive arguments in favour of God’s existence, which the OP thought didn’t withstand serious scrutiny. What I tried to imply by asking my question (oops, so it was a little rethorical, after all ;)) was that this is not a solid basis for an atheistic position. I was trying to show that, although there is no sound deductive argument proving the theistic view, theism can still be a reasonable position, and so it follows that the OP’s stated reasons to be an atheist just don’t cut it. I’m not saying that an atheistic stand can’t have a sound basis; just that this can’t be it.

It seems to me that whether we are theists or atheists, we need to figure out what it is that makes us honestly believe what we believe.