My Stuff

https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/rwolff_umass_edu/EkxJV79tnlBDol82i7bXs7gBAUHadkylrmLgWbXv2nYq_A?e=UcbbW0

Coming Soon:

The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."





Total Pageviews

Monday, April 8, 2013

GOD TALK FINAL POST, WITH GUEST POST BY BRUCE AUNE INCORPORATED


The proofs for the existence of God were the centerpiece of Rational Theology for almost eighteen hundred years.  They played an important part in the writings of the Scholastics, of course, but they also turned up in works by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and almost all of the other major [and minor] figures of the "modern" period -- which is to say the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  And then, abruptly and with no regrets, the two greatest philosophers of the eighteenth century, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, killed Rational Theology.  Hume began the slaughter in a series of extraordinary Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion ["natural" as opposed to "revealed."]  I venture to suggest that Hume's Dialogues are the only fully successful example of that literary-philosophical form after Plato.  Hume wrote the Dialogues relatively early in his career, but his friends, among them Adam Smith, were fearful that their publication would cause a scandal and irreparably damage Hume's literary reputation.  They successfully prevailed upon Hume not to publish them, and it was left to his nephew and literary executor to see them into print in 1779, three years after Hume's death.  [Trick question among graduate philosophy students:  How can you remember that Hume died in 1776?  Answer:  it is the same year in which Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.]  Hume lavishes his most hilarious flights of fancy on the Argument from Design, but he has no difficulty disposing of the Cosmological Argument in a few brief paragraphs, drawing on the analysis of causal inference that he had elaborated in Book I of A Treatise of Human Nature and in the Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding.  He also addresses the Ontological Argument in passing.  Hume actually is forced to deploy considerable literary and polemical skill to keep the arguments afloat for the entire series of twelve dialogues.  The truth is that he requires only a page or two of text to dispatch all of them.

Kant was aware of Hume's Dialogues.  The same year that they appeared, the philosopher Hamaan prepared a partial translation into German and circulated them privately.  Kant was at that point in the last stages of bringing his great Kritik der Reinen Vernunft to completion, and his treatment of the proofs for the existence of God, in the Chapter of the Transcendental Dialectic entitled The Ideal of Pure Reason, clearly shows the influence of Hume's arguments.  But Kant's devastating refutation of the Ontological Argument was all his own.

The combined onslaught of Hume and Kant killed Rational Theology as a respectable branch of serious philosophy.  Catholic philosophers were stuck, of course.  They were ideologically committed, so to speak, to the scholasticism of St. Thomas [who, by the way, had no use for the ontological argument], and so they soldiered on, isolated from mainstream Anglo-American philosophy.  God talk did not go away, of course, but it morphed into something a good deal more esoteric and hard to understand.  The great nineteenth and twentieth century Protestant theologians found all manner of ways to go on saying the same old things while giving them new interpretations that protected them from the crushing objections of Hume and Kant.  When I was a boy, studying philosophy, the Proofs were a standard topic in courses on the history of philosophy, but no serious analytic philosopher paid them any attention.

And yet.  And yet.  Mirabile dictu, just when we atheists thought the battle was won, up popped some smart, well-trained, logically au courant analytic philosophers to say that that old chestnut, the Ontological Argument, could be brought back to life with the aid of the latest advances in modal logic.  My memory, which all these years later may be fallible, tells me that the first brave soul to advance this implausible claim was Alvin Plantinga.  Plantinga is an interesting character in Philosophy.  Wikipedia tells me that he spent 1950-51 studying philosophy at Harvard, which was my Freshman year, but I do not think I ever met him.  At that time, the intellectual hothouse of Protestant theology was a little denominational college in Michigan called Calvin College.  Plantinga studied there, and spent almost twenty years on the faculty before going to Notre Dame.  He is back now at Calvin, apparently.

I thought the Ontological Argument bubble had burst long ago, but when I started this ill-advised series of posts on God talk, my old colleague Bruce Aune, now professor Emeritus in Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, wrote to tell me that our former colleagues Gareth Matthews and Lynne Baker had collaborated two years ago on yet another effort to give a modern formal logical rendering of Anselm's chestnut.  Aune has written a refutation of their attempt, and I think the very best way of concluding this short series of blog posts is by reproducing here, with his permission, Aune's statement and refutation of the Matthews/Baker argument.  So here it is, with grateful thanks to Bruce.




Anselm’s “ontological argument,” one of the classical arguments for the existence of a theistic god, has recently been reconstructed by Lynne Baker and Gareth Matthews, who declare that it is sound: its premises, they believe, are true and its reasoning is valid.[1] As I see it, the argument they present is only partially formalized; and although it is perhaps intuitively plausible as they present it, it is easily seen to be fallacious when its logical structure is fully exposed. In what follows, I outline their version of the argument and then identify the logical error involved in it.

The argument they present proceeds by reductio ad absurdum. They make four initial assumptions, which I quote almost exactly:

a.      The theist and atheist refer to the same object of thought with the words, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.”

b.      That than which nothing greater can be conceived is an object that exists in both the theist’s and the atheist’s understandings.

c.       Let S be the object that exists in the theist’s and the atheist’s understandings and is such that nothing greater can be conceived.

d.      S exists in thought.

What they call “the main argument” is the following. Again, I follow their words almost exactly:

1.       S exists in thought and does not exist in reality. [Premise for reductio]

2.      An otherwise exact same thing as S that existed both in thought and in reality is conceivable.

3.      If S exists in thought and not in reality and an otherwise exact same thing as S that existed both in thought and in reality is conceivable, then an otherwise exact same thing as S that existed in thought and reality would be greater than S. [By 1 and principle G.[2]]

4.      An otherwise exact same thing as S that existed in thought and reality would be greater than S. [1,2, conj., 3, MP.]

5.      If an otherwise exact same thing as S that existed in thought and reality would be greater than S, then there can be a conceivable object that is greater than S [namely, an otherwise exact same thing as S that also existed in reality].

6.      There can be a conceivable object that is greater than S [4,5, MP].

7.      There can be no conceivable object that is greater than S [from assumption c].

8.      Contradiction! [6,7 conjunction].

      Therefore,

9.      S does exist in reality [8, 1, IP]

The error here lies in the derivation of line 7. Line 7 is supposed to follow from assumption c, but this assumption contains a definite description that needs to be eliminated to obtain the conclusion concerning the object S. Let ‘Gx’ abbreviate  ‘is such that nothing greater can be conceived.’ Line c then has the form of

C*:           s = (ix)(x exists in both the theist’s and the atheist’s understanding                        and is such that nothing greater can be conceived.

There is a problem about how to eliminate the definite description here. If the definite description were understandable Russell’s way, then the sentence would be equivalent to "(for all x) [(there is a y) (Uxt & Uxa & Gx if and only if x = y) & s = x]" and line 7 could be validly inferred by quantifier logic. But on this reading C* asserts that there (actually) exists one and only one thing that is G, and this is what has to be proved (it can’t simply be assumed, since C* is an assumption). The best way to analyze C* is by means of Frege’s theory of descriptions.[3]  Frege assigned a denotation to every definite description: it was either the object in reality (as Anselm would say) satisfying the description (if such an object exists) or some arbitrary “don’t care” object, which Carnap represented by “a*”. To accommodate Anselm’s way of speaking, we can express this alternative by saying the denoted object exists merely in someone’s understanding. Understood this way, C* is equivalent to the following:

C**:          (for all x)[(there is a y)(Uxt & Una & Gx iff x = y) & s =x] or ~[(for all x)(there is a y)(Uxt & Uxa & Gx iff x= y) & (s is merely thought of as G)].
It is easy to see that line 7 cannot be validly inferred from C**. To get it the requisite conclusion concerning S (that is, to get ‘S is the greatest conceivable thing’) we have to eliminate the second disjunct. But to do this, we have to know what we are trying to prove—that is, that S is not merely thought of but exists in reality as a unique object.

 






[1] See Lynne Rudder Baker and Gareth B. Matthews, “Anselm’s Argument Reconsidered,” Review of Metaphysics, 64.1 (September 2110), pp. 31-54.


[2] Principle G is as follows: For anything x that existed only in thought, an otherwise same thing that existed both in thought and reality would be greater (not just greater in thought) than x.


[3] Frege’s theory is conveniently set forth by Rudolf Carnap in Meaning and Necessity (Chicago, 1956), pp. 45ff.

28 comments:

Don Schneier said...

In parts, that was a pretty good department.

David Auerbach said...

I think I fixed the logic symbols of the relevant logic-y parts of Aune's post. (if not, I know a further fix). However, I think that Aune's point can be made without resort of Frege's account. The virtue of Russell's account of definite descriptions is that it nicely explains ambiguities, such as the one Aune points out; they turn out to be scope ambiguities (as in, using Russell's famous example, "I thought your yacht was longer than it is.") That would suffice here provided, I think, that the predicate G was redone as a 2-place predicate ( y is conceived of as greater than x). I haven't written it down though. What would certainly work, is making conceived an operator... There is, of course, an enormous literature on the modal logic of the ontological argument...


C*: s = (℩x)(x exists in both the theist’s and the atheist’s understanding and is such that
nothing greater can be conceived.

There is a problem about how to eliminate the definite description here. If the definite description were understandable Russell’s way, then the sentence would be equivalent to
(∃x)[(∀y)((Uxt & Uxa & Gx) → x = y) & s = x]
and line 7 could be validly inferred by quantifier logic. But on this reading C* asserts that there (actually) exists one and only one thing that is G, and this is what has to be proved (it can’t simply be assumed, since C* is an assumption). The best way to analyze C* is by means of Frege’s theory of descriptions.[3] Frege assigned a denotation to every definite description: it was either the object in reality (as Anselm would say) satisfying the description (if such an object exists) or some arbitrary “don’t care” object, which Carnap represented by “a*”. To accommodate Anselm’s way of speaking, we can express this alternative by saying the denoted object exists merely in someone’s understanding. Understood this way, C* is equivalent to the following:

C**: (∃x)[(∀y)((Uxt & Uxa & Gx) → x = y) & s = x] or ~[(∃x)(∀y)((Uxt & Uxa & Gx) → x = y) & (s is merely thought of as G)].

It is easy to see that line 7 cannot be validly inferred from C**. To get it the requisite conclusion concerning S (that is, to get ‘S is the greatest conceivable thing’) we have to eliminate the second disjunct. But to do this, we have to know what we are trying to prove—that is, that S is not merely thought of but exists in reality as a unique object.

Michael Llenos said...

In my third platonic dialogue, I put TIME in place of S. However, since TIME is finite, there needs to be a First Cause of Time, which is God; therefore, I do not assume #7.

My 4 platonic dialogues are a brief 15 pages and are free for anyone to read at my website.

Michael Llenos said...

By the way, I finished my 4 dialogues last year, so I am not stealing anyone's ideas.

Michael Llenos said...

Perhaps if you change Anselm's chapter 3 in his Proslogion, and realize it is in error, that you can have more equal ground for C.

In 2010-2011, I wrote on my website against chapter 3 of the Proslogion:

"Which is greater? A God that is so great that he cannot be thought not to exist, or a God that is so great that he can be thought to not exist?

Obviously, the latter is the greater God, since his existence is not dependent on human thoughts and awareness."

So if you accept the above, there will be more equal ground between believers and atheists for C.

Now a theist may say, in defense of his side, that he is not changing any definition to prove that God exists but the atheist is. His definition of God is: God is that which nothing greater can exist, while when the atheist says this and also God only exists in the mind, he is changing the definition to God is that which something greater can exist.

So when I say God exists both in mind and in reality, I am not altering the original definition, but the atheist is for his argument.

Michael Llenos said...

To make the above more clear: the theist keeps the original definition but the atheist doesn't.

C. Definition: God is that which nothing greater can be thought.

Theist: God exists in the mind so he must also exist in reality. (This statement keeps the original definition.)

Atheist: God only exists in thought. (Now the C. Definition has changed. It doesn't keep the original definition. The definition has now changed to God is that which something greater can be thought. The definition had to change to support the atheist position.)

Michael Llenos said...

Someone may ask: why are the above different definitions so important?

My answer is: it is important because the theist is being consistent in his logic while the atheist isn't.

Anonymous said...

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be easier to dispatch the argument by just rejecting the notion that someone can hold the notion S in their head: i.e. you can construct the sentence saying something is greater than anything else, but that's not the same as actually believing it and treating it as a given. Because the argument proceeds by proof by contradiction, something that was originally assumed makes the argument inconsistent, and since the logic is assumed correct, it must be one of the assumptions that is wrong. The argument insists that the only possible place this incorrect assumption could be is the notion that you can think about something greater than everything else, but that this object doesn't actually exist. Why not just use the argument as proof that you can't actually think very clearly about God in a logical sense?

In short, this is an issue with comprehension - something that has killed a lot of formal systems in the past (cf naïve set theory and Frege's work before Russell got to it). On its face, it would seem to me that the reason it isn't a proof of God's existence isn't bad logic, but the notion that holding an idea in our head has anything to do with existence. I can think about Pegasus as being the best winged horse possible, but that doesn't mean Pegasus actually exists: ordinary language can deal with inconsistencies without any issue, so you don't need special axioms of comprehension to make sentences - you can just say any old thing and proceed from there. Formal logic, not so much.

Further, I think a conversation about God is probably not possible in logic - the idea of God is too big to be held by consistency requirements - and any notion of omnipotence escapes the constraints of consistency, so that's going to break a lot of logical machinery. After all, think about the inconsistency theorems - there's more truth in the world than logic will allow us to reach with any set of axioms we can think up. It's a bit presumptuous to think that you can pin down God with some logic when you know that there's a lot of basic truth about simple numbers you couldn't find with logic.

Michael Llenos said...

I thought up this logical formula to better explain my points:

A = God is that which nothing greater can be thought.

Theist: A + God exists in the mind, so he must exist in reality; therefore, A is logically kept and still logically holds and the logic is still logically consistent.

Atheist: A + God exists only in the mind, so God doesn't exist in reality, therefore, A is cancelled out because God is now something which something greater can be thought, and so A doesn't logically hold and so the argument is not logically consistent.

goliah said...

Theology and it's counterfeit 'proofs' now look set for oblivion. For what philosophy and religion, not to mention the rest of us, thought impossible has now happened. History has its first literal, testable and fully demonstrable proof for faith and it's spreading on the web.

The first wholly new interpretation for two thousand years of the moral teachings of Christ has been published. Radically different from anything else we know of from theology or history, this new teaching is predicated upon a precise, predefined, and predictable experience of transcendent omnipotence and called 'the first Resurrection' in the sense that the Resurrection of Jesus was intended to demonstrate Gods' willingness to reveal Himself and intervene directly into the natural world for those obedient to His will, paving the way for access, by faith, to the power of divine Will and ultimate proof!

Thus 'faith' becomes an act of trust in action, the search to discover this direct individual intervention into the natural world by omnipotent power that confirms divine will, law, command and covenant, which at the same time, realigns our flawed human moral compass with the Divine, "correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries." So like it or no, a new religious teaching, testable by faith, meeting all Enlightenment criteria of evidence based causation and definitive proof now exists. Nothing short of an intellectual, moral and religious revolution is getting under way. To test or not to test, that is the question? More info at http://www.energon.org.uk,

Michael Llenos said...

To further clarify my previous posts, I will try to write the following...

In the last part of the atheist version of the ontological argument, the definition for God: 'God is that which something greater can be thought' cancels out the definition: 'God is that which nothing greater can be thought' (at the beginning of the argument) since the assumption: 'God only exists in the mind', at the very end of the atheist argument, simply implies: 'God is that which something greater can be thought'.

So you could say the atheist version of the ontological argument is not logically consistent from beginning to end. However, the theist version of the ontological argument is logically consistent because its ending doesn't alter the first part of the ontological argument, which is: 'God is that which nothing greater can be thought'.

Michael Llenos said...

Parallel logic for my above posts...

Theist ontological argument:

If it is light, it is day,
But it is light, so it is day.

--So both God is that which nothing greater can be thought & God exists in the mind so he must exist in reality as well are logically fluent.

Atheist ontological argument:

If it is light, it is day.
It's not day, so its not light.

--Light is God is that which nothing greater can exist. So Day is God also exists in reality.

--Not Day is God exists only in the mind (and God is that which something greater can be thought) & therefore Not Light is: God is not that which nothing greater can be thought.

However, for the atheist argument to work, the second sentence must be in league with the first sentence, and this is what the atheist logic fails to do, since the second sentence destroys the first sentence. Both sentences need to survive too support both the theist and atheist positions. And only the theist logic does so.

Michael Llenos said...

For my above posts...

The theist argument creates a constructive syllogism while the atheist argument creates a destructive syllogism. So the atheist argument cancels itself out while the theist argument is self supporting.

Remember, 'It is light', or 'God is that which no greater can be thought' must be valid at all times for the argument to work consistently and economically pro or con.

Michael Llenos said...

For an above post...

I wrote:

--Light is God is that which no greater can exist.

I meant to say:

--Light is: God is that which no greater can be thought

Michael Llenos said...

There is really more to my previous logic than meets the eye...

Theist version:

If it is light, it is day,

If God is that which nothing greater can be thought (and God exists in the mind), then God exists in reality.

But it is light, so it is day.

But God is that which nothing greater can be thought (and God exists in the mind), so God does exist in reality.

Atheist version:

If it is light, it is day,

If God is that which nothing greater can be thought (and God exists in the mind), then God exists in reality.

But it is not day, therefore it is not light.

But God does not exist in reality, therefore God is that which something greater can be thought (and God therefore only exists in the mind).


To conclude

The atheist argument is a counter argument to the first argument no matter what. So when you change (God is that which no greater can be thought) to God is that which something greater can be thought, you have no grounds for saying God only exists in the mind as a conclusion, since you are using a flank attack and are not arguing the problem head on. So if you alter a premise in the original argument you will end up with a faulty conclusion.

Michael Llenos said...

You might ask:

Why can't you just say...

But God does not exist in reality, therefore God only exists in the mind?

Because this will pop up: God is that which something greater can be thought,

after you say But God does not exist in reality.

And if that doesn't pop up than this will still be part of the argument: God is that which nothing greater can be thought

And you can see the contradiction in that.

For if you put this argument last:

God is that which something greater can be thought,

It's not fit to be last since its counter argument:

God is that which nothing greater can be thought

was the first primary premise in the original argument.

Michael Llenos said...

Dr. Wolff,

I'm sorry for messing up your blog. I was having fun this entire time until I began to realize that my lack of skill in logic has brought me to an impasse. Although you may have been busy these last couple of days off the internet, I thank you for my being able to post stuff on your blog.

Michael Llenos said...

Although I thought I was done with my posts, I believe I have left something unsaid that must be said...

If God exists in the mind alone, than that which nothing greater can be thought is that which something greater can be thought: which Anselm says is obviously impossible but that is all he says...

However, to solve this you must ask the question: Can that than which a greater can be thought be the definition of God?

For if it can never be the definition of God than Anselm wins / while if it can be the definition of God than non-believers win...

In my Platonic Dialogue #2, at my website, I say that there is only one perfection in existence which is God / And if my argument does hold up, than God can only be that than which nothing greater can be thought...

How does that work? Well if there are plural definitions of perfection than there can be plural definitions of God, while if there is only one definition of perfection there is only one definition of God...

So if you can figure out why there can be no such thing as a perfect island or perfect car or anything else perfect except for God (which is what the monk Gaunilo writes against) than Anselm's argument wins...

Michael Llenos said...

By the way...

I didn' t mean by not having plural definitions of perfection that you could not say God is both omnipotent and that than which nothing greater can be thought. What I meant was that you could not include, with these definitions of perfection, opposite and contradictory definitions to those definitions which would be possible with more than one perfection in existence.

Descartes saying: perfection includes existence, only works if God is the only perfection, which is what I believe to be true...

Michael Llenos said...

Sorry about the confusion...

What I meant to say was that only perfection and God are interchangeable terms. And that perfection does not include other terms like a perfect island, or perfect meal etc..

If God is the only perfection, than God cannot be that than which a greater can be thought, since he must include existence.

Michael Llenos said...

To sum up my last 3 posts:

If God is the only perfection, than God is that which nothing greater can be thought; and he can never be that which something greater can be thought. So he must necessarilly exist, since if he exists in the mind he must necessarilly exist in reality, which is greater than just existing in the mind alone. For he is that than which nothing greater can be thought, and he can never be that than which something greater can be thought if he is the only perfection.

Michael Llenos said...

Try this argument I just thought up...

If God exists only in the mind, than God is that which something greater can be thought...

However, if that is the case, the definition of God: that than which something greater can be thought, will cycle upwards through all those things that apply to being greater than God, until the definition is cancelled, when it reaches: that than which something greater cannot be thought--which is the end and top of the cycle.

And the only thing the latter can be is the source of all perfection (or the only perfection): and this is what we all know to be God.

And this God must exist in reality or it would be the same thing as the first God--which is impossible.

Michael Llenos said...

Re-written to be made clearer:

If God exists solely in the mind, than he is that which something greater can be thought.

And the above definition will cycle through everything superior to it until it stops at: that thing which nothing greater can be thought--which is the end of that cycle.

This: that which nothing greater can be thought, must be the greatest perfection, or the only perfection; which is what we all know to be God.

However, this God must exist in reality, and not just in the mind, or he would be the same as the first God--which is impossible.

Michael Llenos said...

Introduction:
I do not know if this is a more persuasive version of my two previous posts; if it is not, do not pay any attention to it...

If God exists solely in the mind, than he is that which something greater can be thought. And God woulld be less than everything greater than himself; including that which is greater than everything except itself; and that would be: that which nothing greater can be thought.

And this, that which nothing greater can be thought, must be: the greatest perfection; the only infinite perfection; the source of all perfection; which is what we know God is.

Therefore, this God must exist in reality, and not just in the mind, or he would be the same thing as the first God mentioned--which is a logical impossibility.

Michael Llenos said...

If God exists solely in the mind, he is that which something greater can be thought. And God would be less than everything greater than itself, including its finite creator: the human mind, which itself was created by something prior in time.

And the greatest that which something is greater than God, must be the First Cause of the Universe, the First Cause of all time, and the First Cause of everything except itself. And we all know this to be God.

Therefore, this God must exist in reality, and not just in the human mind, or he would be the same thing as the first God mentioned--which is impossible.

Michael Llenos said...

1. God must exist in reality, if he is that which nothing greater can be thought: since to exist in reality and in the human mind is greater than just existing in the human mind.

2. However, if God just exists in the human mind, than he is that which something greater can be thought.

3. And if God just exists in the human mind, the two greatest things to exist (that are greater than God) in both the human mind and in reality are the Universe as a whole and Time itself.

4. However, because the Universe and Time are finite in nature, they need a First Cause--which can only be God.

In conclusion, if you take the theist standpoint, God is proven to exist, while if you take the atheist standpoint, God is also proven to exist. However, when you take the atheist standpoint, God is proven to exist more eloquently and more economically.

Michael Llenos said...

Hopefully revised...

1. God must exist in reality, if he is that which nothing greater can be thought: since to exist in the human mind and in reality is greater than just existing in the human mind.

2. However, if God just exists in the human mind, than he is that which something greater can be thought.

3. And if God is that which something greater can be thought, the two greatest things that exist (which are greater than God), which both exist in the human mind, and in reality, are the Universe as a whole and Time itself.

4. However, because the Universe and Time are finite in nature, they need a First Cause--which can only be God.

5. However, this God must exist in reality, and not just in the human mind, or he would be the same God mentioned in #2--which is impossible.

6. In conclusion, if you take the theist standpoint, God is proven to exist in reality, while if you take the atheist standpoint, God is also proven to exist in reality. However, when you take the atheist standpoint, God is proven to exist in reality more eloquently and more economically.

Michael Llenos said...

Before my last post can be considered a complete argument, I must explain why the Universe and Time are finite and are part of creation...

A. The Universe is finite because parts of it are finite, and it would be rediculous if parts of the Universe are finite but not its whole.

B. Now we must discuss why time is finite. If the Universe were made up of an infinite amount of time, there would exist more of an infinite number of hours than an infinite number of days, since there are 24 hours to every day.

C. However, there can only be one number for the infinite, since an infinite number of time would be that amount of time which has no greater amount of time.

D. But an infinite amount of time would include both hours and days in it. So both hours and days in infinite time would be both an infinite amount of hours and days. This is impossible, however, since there are 24 hours to each day. Therefore, there only exists a finite amount of time in the Universe. Meaning, time and the Universe needed to be created by a First Cause: and this is what we know to be God.