Of course God exists--And I can prove it.

Great Debates
81

I do not believe it is necessary to be a professional logician to observe
that such an intepretation should not be taken seriously.

Contradictory premises, rather, can lead to no conclusion.

What’s so fun about it?

Oh. Thanks. That explains everything.

82

How very counter-revolutionary of you.

83

Well, at least by knowing you were wrong you were right at least once. Not sure the same can be said for the OP.

84

And while you are at the store, can you pick up some bread?

And some mayo. I think I may have a knife.

85

There isn’t a knife in your house.

Well, there wasn’t until a moment ago.

86

I’m thinking this same logic proves the existence of trolls…

87

Don’t accuse other posters of trolling in Great Debates.

88

Not to attempt to substitute my judgement for yours, but I didn’t read that as an accusation of anyone in particular – to me it read as a logical consequence of the logic displayed in the OP.

89

Logic is lots of fun. It can be made into a game (“Wff ‘n’ Proof”) or a puzzle. It can solve problems. It can cause problems! And, as Lewis Carroll delighted in, it can be the basis for wonderful and witty forms of “nonsense.”

You might as well ask what’s so fun about learning?

90

nm

91

But seriously, you haven’t - not any more than your imagining of a chair would provide me a place to sit.

92

I remember when I was quite young – eight or nine, perhaps – and it occurred to me that whatever I imagined had to be “real” in some abstract sense. Otherwise, I couldn’t imagine it, right? So, for one wonderful, weird, scary, almost hallucinatory afternoon, I was strictly guarding my thoughts, because if I thought about, say, Frankenstein’s Monster, it would be real. (And might come and get me!)

Then I figured it out. It just plain doesn’t work that way.

(Such a pessimist; I should have thought about a pot of gold, or a magic lamp!)

Seriously, if “ideas” had concrete reality in this kind of way, there wouldn’t be a soul left alive on earth! The “idea” of nuclear war is too widespread…but, more to the point, think of all the ill-wishes people have had against one another over the millennia! If every death-curse actually carried death… Bye-bye!

93

Thank you. I followed the OP, but not his 2nd argument.

Er… how does that interpretation follow?

Understood. The 2nd sentence is true, strictly speaking.

94

The interesting thing about this is that it appears that you can create any arbitrary set membership related contradiction you want.

If the set of Unicorns is the empty set, unicorns is a subset of lesbians. It is also, incidentally, a member of the set U-lesbians (aka “not lesbians”) where U is the universal set. So all unicorns both are and are not lesbians.

However, it should be noted that the contradiction only seems like such. It’s simply in two sets that are normally mutually exclusive, to be a contradiction it would have to both be in the set and not be in the set.

95

It’s called the principle of explosion, or ex falso quodlibet, if you’re into fancy Latin. It’s quite simple:

  1. P & ~P (read: P and not-P)
  2. P (since, if both P and not-P are true, it follows that P is true)
  3. P v Q (read: P or Q; from the truth of P it follows that either P or Q (or both) are true)
  4. ~P (again, if both P and not-P are true, then not-P is true)
  5. Q (because, if P or Q is true, and not-P is true – i.e. P is false – it follows that Q must be true)

But since we have made no assumption on what Q is, it may be anything; thus, from a contradiction, anything follows. More explicitly, say that P is ‘I am a handsome devil’. So P & ~P asserts that ‘I am a handsome devil, and I am not a handsome devil’. Thus, I am a handsome devil. But then, it follows that ‘I am a handsome devil or God exists’ – this is true, because it is true that I am a handsome devil. But from the truth of ‘I am a handsome devil and I am not a handsome devil’, it also follows that I am not a handsome devil. But if I am not a handsome devil, then from the truth of ‘I am a handsome devil or God exists’, it follows that God exists.

96

Hey - Nessie exists. So there…

97

Even if he did, he would never do anything worthy of note. By definition. :slight_smile:

98

No, what really happens is:

99

According to the Psalmist all are gods,or maybe just the Israelites, He is quoted in Psalm 81 of the RC version and the 82d Psalm of the KJV, “I said you are gods and sons of the most high”, It all depends on what the word God means to someone. If God is a separate being, then he would first have to have a place in which to exist, so Place would have had to be self created.Jesus sort of backs this idea up when he was accused of blasphemy.What isn’t in existence doesn’t exist.

100

Shucks, pantheists who define “God” as “the universe” have long since proven the existence of the former by noting the existence of the latter.