Argument from perfection against the existence of god

[Jarhyn]

I may not understand much about evolution, but I know that humans are not descended from potato chips.

It's about probabilities vs possibilities. In the world of possibilities that potato chip could be a god. Therefore any form of atheism is irrational because theism becomes the only rational choice in a reality defined by possibilities.

Sorry, I don't follow that.

What's not to follow? The god is mysterious and therefore could be anything.

How do you propose we get from if gods exist they may be mysterious to atheism is irrational?

By your logic--if I understand your logic--we ought to believe all propositions. Thus:

Me: "I have a magic stopwatch."

You: "We've searched you. You have no such stopwatch."

Me: "But it's a mysterious watch. It might be anything. So, logically, you must believe in it. You cannot doubt."

Caution: unlike most of what I post this is all silliness, rather than something real presented in a silly way.

"The problem is that the world in which you have a magical stopwatch exists in superposition with all the world's in which you don't, and the principle of least action indicates that the world in which you have that magical stopwatch is not going to in any way impact me, so why should I care about it?

Either precipitate that 'anything' into a thing that is clearly a stopwatch, a device which counts and displays the count thereof at some fraction of one second per second with mechanical precision and reliability, for me or face the equally effective action of my magical magical stopwatch destroying machine. It could be anything, and I have already destroyed your stopwatch with it.

Go ahead, magically sue me. You can serve the suit on magical paper, and we can have our dispute with a magical arbitrator, and I can pay you magical money for your magical loss. I'll precipitate my magical money for you as soon as you precipitate that magical broken stopwatch.

You get it. In the 'Anything I can imagine to be real can be real' sense. Problem is that doesn't work in the rational world of evidence and observation. A god exists in the imaginary world where anything is possible. The god comes from this world. If I have a worldview like this then atheism is irrational.

But if we live in a world of evidence, observation and probabilities then gods don't work.

More along the lines of "if you want to claim it is real, produce it."

I've gone through almost a decade of work to prove out to myself what would reasonably establish the reality of God with a capital THE.

It is not that gods don't work. As I have mentioned a few times, I am a god. I am also a human being, squishy and made of meat.

Being a god is sort of like being a football fan or being a foodie or being a used car salesman or being an elected representative. It doesn't prescribe anything about you, it just describes something you did.

As such I know that gods are logically possible. They just aren't logically necessary.

 

[Wiploc]

Moogly wrote, "Therefore any form of atheism is irrational because theism becomes the only rational choice in a reality defined by possibilities." That is our topic, so I reproduce the line here in order to stay grounded.

Caution: unlike most of what I post this is allsilliness, rather than something real presented in a silly way.

It seems to me that theism is all silliness. I'm hardly plumbing new depths.

"The problem is that the world in which you have a magical stopwatch exists in superposition with all the world's in which you don't, and the principle of least action indicates that the world in which you have that magical stopwatch is not going to in any way impact me, so why should I care about it?

My stopwatch has as much claim to importance as any god. I can manufacture real-world impacts for the watch as easily as any theist can do so for her gods.

Either precipitate that 'anything' into a thing that is clearly a stopwatch, a device which counts and displays the count thereof at some fraction of one second per second with mechanical precision and reliability, for me

Theist and their sacred books contradict each other and themselves all the time. If you don't demand consistency from them, you have no call to demand it from me.

or face the equally effective action of my magical magical stopwatch destroying machine. It could be anything, and I have already destroyed your stopwatch with it.

Xal-x, the demon of quadratic equations, exists in every possible world. And he is incompatible with gods, so gods exist in no possible world. (I learned this trick from Plantinga.)

Go ahead, magically sue me. You can serve the suit on magical paper, and we can have our dispute with a magical arbitrator, and I can pay you magical money for your magical loss. I'll precipitate my magical money for you as soon as you precipitate that magical broken stopwatch.

How did we get there?

The claim is that if a god can be anything then it is rationally impossible to not believe in a god.

Seems to me that, by that logic, every rational person has to believe every claim. Or at least every claim that involves something that "might be anything."

So I posit a stopwatch that might be anything.

Can anybody distinguish between the two? Must we believe in the stopwatch? If we have to believe in the one, don't we have to believe in the other?

I see no reason to believe in either. Isn't mine a reasonable position?

Or is it actually possible to undefine gods until they must exist?

 

[Jarhyn]

My stopwatch has as much claim to importance as any god. I can manufacture real-world impacts for the watch as easily as any theist can do so for her gods.

The request was not for "importance". It was to "produce the thing".

Theist and their sacred books contradict each other and themselves all the time. If you don't demand consistency from them, you have no call to demand it from me.

Well, I am no theist. Imagine that. A literal god who is an atheist. It makes me chuckle from time to time.

I demand logical consistency from them of the form that their god must be logically valid.

Interesting enough, that's another thing I suspected BEFORE I realized I was a god, and came to realize solidly after the fact.

Let's say you decide to create the same world as I create.

Let's say you decide to input the same controls as I apply.

These two worlds are the same world, with all the same touches upon it, seen the same way by all the same denizens.

It has at least two different gods at the same time. Any other human who lives in the same universe as those two humans watching them be gods can validate that fact.

This is not a contradiction, it is a superposition.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I see no reason to believe in either. Isn't mine a reasonable position?

Or is it actually possible to undefine gods until they must exist?

Yes, your position is a reasonable position.

Looking back at the OP it is fraught with semantics. And as I have said repeatedly, religion is just language.

 

[bilby]

Theists think perfection is a strength.

If their God can beat any other Gods, in any given comparison, then that makes their God better. Tougher. Stronger.

But then they go too far. Their God's not just better; Their God is perfect.

But perfection is brittle. A powerful God can have trivial imperfections and still be a powerful God. But a perfect God cannot - any imperfection, however tiny, trivial, or minuscule, is proof positive that such a God doesn't exist.

And a perfect God, must, to retain His alleged perfection, imply a perfect universe. A powerful God can let a few things slide; But a perfect God can, will, and indeed must fix any imperfections in His purview - and His purview is (if He is perfect) unlimited.

So any imperfections, in anything, anywhere, at any time, are absolute and unavoidable proof that a perfect God doesn't exist.

Perfection makes a God brittle; It isn't a strength, it's the ultimate vulnerability.

Claims of perfection demand observation of perfection. A single observation of anything that is in any way imperfect is sufficient to shatter the claim of perfection into nonexistence; And with it, any possibility of a perfect God.

That our reality is not perfect is, I believe, trivially easy to demonstrate, and is left as an exercise for the reader.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

That our reality is not perfect is, I believe, trivially easy to demonstrate, and is left as an exercise for the reader.

Not disagreeing with the gist of your post, only use of the word perfection. Can anyone define that? If we define it as "without flaw," that sounds like begging the question to me.

 

[Wiploc]

That our reality is not perfect is, I believe, trivially easy to demonstrate, and is left as an exercise for the reader.

Not disagreeing with the gist of your post, only use of the word perfection. Can anyone define that? If we define it as "without flaw," that sounds like begging the question to me.

When used to describe god, "perfect" is supposed to mean--if I remember correctly from my Western Civilization class--"omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent." But I don't actually see it used that way.

As actually used, it seems to mean something like, "Really majorly nifty. Outa sight. So awesome that awesome stuff dulls by comparison. Like Dolly Parton's boobs, only on Twiggy."

In other words, the word "perfect" doesn't mean much, but serves as a dog whistle to true believers who already think their god is really majorly nifty.

In your context, in which the universe is described as perfect, it signals that the speaker is ready to employ Panglossian logic, reinterpreting every bug as a feature.

 

[bilby]

That our reality is not perfect is, I believe, trivially easy to demonstrate, and is left as an exercise for the reader.

Not disagreeing with the gist of your post, only use of the word perfection. Can anyone define that? If we define it as "without flaw," that sounds like begging the question to me.

Hmm. It appears that you have successfully identified some imperfections in our reality.

In a perfect world, perfection would be universally understood and unequivocally defined; And question begging (or even just sounding like question begging) would never occur.

Congratulations!

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Matthew 5:48
Therefor be perfect such as your father who is in heaven is perfect.

 

[abaddon]

If we define it as "without flaw," that sounds like begging the question to me.

Maybe it means "without judgment"?

The Matthew 5:48 quote is in the context of not being judgmental and discriminatory about who you like and don't like.

What would the world feel like if we put our subjective 'druthers aside and preferred love to judgmentalism?

It's the key to happiness and a better society that runs as a theme in the religions that arose in the axial age (600BCE to 600CE), after ritualism became less significant and introspection replaced it. Ethics became an issue of transforming one's attitude towards the world. The shared goal in these religions is "perfection" since they're idealistic instead of realistic ... they're prescriptive, not descriptive.

Looking at the world and saying "well it's not perfect so their god can't be either" would be total incomprehension if they're being prescriptive instead of descriptive. They might be overly idealistic, but they're not failing so miserably at description if that isn't the point. In this view, Jesus's God serves as an ideal to emulate ("be like your father in heaven").

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If we define it as "without flaw," that sounds like begging the question to me.

Maybe it means "without judgment"?

The Matthew 5:48 quote is in the context of not being judgmental and discriminatory about who you like and don't like.

What would the world feel like if we put our subjective 'druthers aside and preferred love to judgmentalism?

It's the key to happiness and a better society that runs as a theme in the religions that arose in the axial age (600BCE to 600CE), after ritualism became less significant and introspection replaced it. Ethics became an issue of transforming one's attitude towards the world. The shared goal in these religions is "perfection" since they're idealistic instead of realistic ... they're prescriptive, not descriptive.

Looking at the world and saying "well it's not perfect so their god can't be either" would be total incomprehension if they're being prescriptive instead of descriptive. They might be overly idealistic, but they're not failing so miserably at description if that isn't the point. In this view, Jesus's God serves as an ideal to emulate ("be like your father in heaven").

It is no doubt true that persons unable to intellectually come to terms with or understand reality can derive great benefit by pretending in a different reality. A heavenly 'Life after death' is probably the best example.

 

[Kylie]

P1:God exists and is perfect

P2: Perfection implies freedom from error

P3:freedom from error is a concept created by humans

C1:so god is error free according to a human concept

P4: but god is not error free according to human standards

C2:so he is not perfect either

P5: something that is not perfect is ordinary

P5:god is not perfect

C3:so he is ordinary

P6:if god is ordinary, he is not above humans

P7:god is ordinary

C4:therefore he is not above humans

P8:if something is not above humans, it is equal to them

P9:god is not above humans

C5:therefore he is equal to them

P10:what is equal to humans is not different from humans

P11:god is equal to humans

C6:god is not different from humans

P12:if god is not different from humans, he does not exist as a separate entity

P13:god is not different from humans

C7:so he does not exist as a separate entity

P14:if god exists, he is in fact defined as a separate entity

P15:god is not a separate entity

C:god does not exist

What do you all think ? I definitely am aware that some premises require a rather strong defence

I disagree with the implication that Humanity is as close to perfect that something can be without actually being perfect.

I also disagree with the implication that anything that is not above Humans (a term which is undefined to begin with) must be equivalent to Humans.