Do you know everything about the universe?

[Piggy]

The examples he gave were not for arbitrary values of X, but for specific ones defined in such a way as to provide additional information.

Then you don't understand what you're talking about when you make claims about arbitrary objects. You think that an arbitrary object is an undefined entity. It is not.

If I say that for any arbitrary object X, it must be bigger than a breadbox, then I'm wrong.

An arbitrary object is literally anything you choose at random.

If someone points out that ants are smaller than breadboxes, I'm proven wrong.

 

[Piggy]

Now, shall I debunk the ontological argument for you?

Why?

Because you invited me to. Or are you no longer interested?

 

[Piggy]

If you are defining "an arbitrary object X" to mean "an undefined object", then you don't understand what an arbitrary object is, or you're attempting to make statements about undefined entities, which is nonsense.

I'm not. I'm using it in context of elements and sets.

The set of arbitrary objects includes anything that might be selected at random.

 

[HeavyAaron]

Because you invited me to. Or are you no longer interested?

I did no such thing. I stated that my favorite definition of God is the one from the Ontological Argument. The soundness of the argument is immaterial to my preference for that definition.

Aaron

 

[HeavyAaron]

The set of arbitrary objects includes anything that might be selected at random.

From the set. Yes. Good job. And most all of those objects are not contingent in their definitions on the existance of other objects.

Aaron

 

[HeavyAaron]

Then you don't understand what you're talking about when you make claims about arbitrary objects. You think that an arbitrary object is an undefined entity. It is not.

If I say that for any arbitrary object X, it must be bigger than a breadbox, then I'm wrong.

An arbitrary object is literally anything you choose at random.

If someone points out that ants are smaller than breadboxes, I'm proven wrong.

I know exactly what I'm talking about. And I agree with all of your following statements.

Aaron

 

[Piggy]

I did no such thing. I stated that my favorite definition of God is the one from the Ontological Argument. The soundness of the argument is immaterial to my preference for that definition.

Well, you invited me to use that one if I liked. I can easily show you why it's invalid. When that's done, then I'm afraid you'll have to cough up something else.

And btw, without a definition, your argument cannot be sound -- except in the Franklinian sense that it is only sound.

 

[Piggy]

From the set. Yes. Good job. And most all of those objects are not contingent in their definitions on the existance of other objects.

So what?

drikitten has demonstrated, conclusively, that your claim is wrong.

Now, if you want to insist that God is the type of thing that requires us to examine every object in order to determine whether it exists, rather than the type of thing that does not, then you're going to have to pony up with a definition of God.

Otherwise, your "proof" is invalid.

 

[HeavyAaron]

The word "if" is meaningful here. But let me rephrase. Regardless of whether anyone chooses to indulge a belief in such things, it is unreasonable to claim that anyone else must confer potential reality upon them.


Good point.

But let's examine the difference between a transcendent/ineffable/deistic God and, say, branes in p-brane theory, and to the "7-bolt".

Branes are proposed as a result of verified models of reality. Also, it is possible to propose ways of testing for branes. Therefore, their potential reality (though not their actual existence) must be conceded.

The 7-bolt is a hypothetical piece of space junk. It's just a bolt with a number on it which begins with the digit 7. It may or not be in orbit around the earth, but we know that there is space junk in orbit, and we know that bolts go up on spacecraft, and we know that some parts like bolts have numbers on them. So again, the potential reality (though not the actual existence) of the 7-bolt must be conceded.

What's more, even if we invented a machine that vaporized all the space junk, so that we could never know if the 7-bolt existed, we would still have to concede that it's possible that it might have been real -- even if I just invented the notion out of whole cloth... because I could be coincidentally right.

But a transcendent God is different.

A transcendent God is not required, and does not arise from, any verified model of reality. What's more, a wholly undefined reality must be dreamed up (unlike the mathematically precise spaces where p-branes exist) to accomodate them. Moreover, the transcendent God has no qualities which link it to anything known.

For that reason, unlike p-branes and the 7-bolt, the transcendent (irrelevant) God is a non-thing in a non-space at a non-time. And no one is obliged to grant potential reality to a non-entity like that.

I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with some of the things to which you refer. I will look them up and respond to this post later.

Aaron

 

[HeavyAaron]

Well, you invited me to use that one if I liked. I can easily show you why it's invalid. When that's done, then I'm afraid you'll have to cough up something else.

And btw, without a definition, your argument cannot be sound -- except in the Franklinian sense that it is only sound.

Untrue. The proof was that that being so defined actually exists. The proof can be unsound and the being still exist.

Example proof of me which is unsound:

1) Objects taller than 6' exist. (assertion)
2) I am taller than 6'. (observed)
3) I exist. (conclusion)

The proof is unsound, yet the conclusion remains true.

Aaron

 

[Piggy]

I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with some of the things to which you refer. I will look them up and respond to this post later.

For brane theory, if you have a good library nearby, check out Hawking's "The Universe in a Nutshell".

 

[Piggy]

Untrue. The proof was that that being so defined actually exists. The proof can be unsound and the being still exist.

Example proof of me which is unsound:

1) Objects taller than 6' exist. (assertion)
2) I am taller than 6'. (observed)
3) I exist. (conclusion)

The proof is unsound, yet the conclusion remains true.

Sure, you can trump up invalid arguments for real things. I can claim that the Sears Tower exists because I eat my lunch in the park every Thursday.

But in the case of an ineffable/transcendent/deistic God, which is a totally unanchored concept, then if there is no sound argument provided, no one is obliged to confer potential reality upon it -- unlike the Sears Tower, which is verifiable.

 

[HeavyAaron]

So what?

drikitten has demonstrated, conclusively, that your claim is wrong.

My unmodified claim. Yes, but not the modified one. I thought we progressed beyond this to the point where you understood that.

Now, if you want to insist that God is the type of thing that requires us to examine every object in order to determine whether it exists, rather than the type of thing that does not, then you're going to have to pony up with a definition of God.

Otherwise, your "proof" is invalid.

Okay, I see what you are saying. But you're forgetting something. The strong atheist position refutes the existance of ALL gods. And I dare say there exist some definitions of god that are not contingent on the existance or non-existance of other things (in fact most common conceptions of god.)

DrKitten's counter examples depended on object contingency. Very few possible things do. If it makes you happy we can further define god as being non-contingent on the existance/non-existance of other objects. But this isn't strictly required for the proof to hold.

Aaron

 

[HeavyAaron]

Sure, you can trump up invalid arguments for real things. I can claim that the Sears Tower exists because I eat my lunch in the park every Thursday.

But in the case of an ineffable/transcendent/deistic God, which is a totally unanchored concept, then if there is no sound argument provided, no one is obliged to confer potential reality upon it -- unlike the Sears Tower, which is verifiable.

Ah, but now you're moving the goal posts. I am not interested in proving existance. Only possible existance. That's all that I am required to do to refute the strong athiest position.

So do you confess that even if the Ontological Argument is unsound is not a disproof of the definition?

Aaron

 

[Piggy]

My unmodified claim. Yes, but not the modified one. I thought we progressed beyond this to the point where you understood that.

The modified claim is no different from the original. All you did was to change this:

The only means to do that is to examine all elements of the set S and find that they are not identical to X.​

to this:

The only means to do that for a arbitrary object X is to examine all elements of the set S and find that they are not identical to X.​

All you did was to add the phrase "for a arbitrary object X", which was already implicit in the first statement. You changed exactly zero.

It's as though I said "My father's on the way -- he'll explain everything when he gets here" and changed it to "My father's on the way -- my dad will explain everything when he gets here", and claimed that I'd made some significant change.

drkitten's refutation stands.

Okay, I see what you are saying. But you're forgetting something. The strong atheist position refutes the existance of ALL gods. And I dare say there exist some definitions of god that are not contingent on the existance or non-existance of other things (in fact most common conceptions of god.)

I'm not forgetting anything.

Now you're the one making assertions, no? If you care to pony up with a definition of God, then do so. If you don't care to provide a definition of God, then you are not making any claim about God.

The strong atheist position need only demonstrate that no possible definitions of God obligate anyone to grant them potential reality. As I've said, God either interacts with the universe or does not. If it does not, then the definition is empty, and no one is obligated to grant it potential reality. If it does, and this interaction is consistent with natural law, then is equivalent to natural force, making God not only redundant (and thus superfluous and dispensible) but also not actually God, and therefore no one is obliged to grant it the potential of independent reality as God. If it does and this interaction violates natural law, then God is contrary to fact, and no one is obligated to grant it potential reality.

DrKitten's counter examples depended on object contingency. Very few possible things do. If it makes you happy we can further define god as being non-contingent on the existance/non-existance of other objects.

That is still not a definition of God. That's just a definition of a vague something or other, which is not a definition of anything.

But this isn't strictly required for the proof to hold.

Yes it is. If your claim that we must search every element of S for X fails, then your proof fails, and you need a new one.

 

[Piggy]

Ah, but now you're moving the goal posts. I am not interested in proving existance. Only possible existance. That's all that I am required to do to refute the strong athiest position.

Then why don't you do it?

So do you confess that even if the Ontological Argument is unsound is not a disproof of the definition?

What definition? You haven't offered one. You held out the ontological argument for a moment, but you're not about to commit to it.

So far, you have no definition.

 

[HeavyAaron]

Then why don't you do it?


What definition? You haven't offered one. You held out the ontological argument for a moment, but you're not about to commit to it.

So far, you have no definition.

I've never done any such thing. And yet you continue to insist I have. Show me where. I haven't. I've given you a posible definition to use sense you (for know reason I can imagine) demand on having one. Use the definition from that proof. Not the proof itself. Please tell me you can destinguish the two, because your statements constantly contradict that.

Aaron

 

[drkitten]

The examples he gave were not for arbitrary values of X, but for specific ones defined in such a way as to provide additional information. It was a good refute. He was right.

Er, thank you, but...

The modification changes that. Just ask him.

No, it doesn't.

You may not understand the meaning of the word "arbitrary object." as set theorists use it. "Arbitrary objects" include particular objects, or more generally, a single counterexample suffices to disprove a conjecture across "arbitrary objects."

There is a term for what you want. I think the term is "in the general case."

It may, in fact, be true (although it's unproven, and probably unprovable) that "in the general case" the only way to determine that an element does not appear in a set is by exhaustive examination of all elements of the set. Similarly, "in the general case," the equation x^2 = n does not have a solution in real numbers, but there are certainly particular values of n for which it does.

However, if you want to make the argument that "in the general case, property P does not hold," then for any specific item, you still need to show that property P does not hold. In particular, if you claim that to investigate the question of whether any particular object -- say, God -- exists, it doesn't follow from your statement above that it can only be done via exhaustive enumeration.

 

[Piggy]

I've never done any such thing. And yet you continue to insist I have. Show me where. I haven't. I've given you a posible definition to use sense you (for know reason I can imagine) demand on having one. Use the definition from that proof. Not the proof itself. Please tell me you can destinguish the two, because your statements constantly contradict that.

Yes, you've given me a possible definition to use, but it's not a valid one. Since I can dispense with the ontological argument by other means, it goes on the rubbish heap.

And of course we need a definition. You are not allowed to define God as "whatever" because God is not a "whatever".

Here's why.

If you define God as a bowl of sugar, then your proof will work for imaginary realities in which bowl of sugar = God. But in our universe, bowl of sugar != God. Therefore anything you demonstrate will not be true for non-imaginary reality.

So for your approach to work, for you to be able to claim that it is necessary to search every point in the universe in order to declare that God is not real, you have to do something like this:

1. Show that there is a class of elements Q which require examining every element in set S in order to determine that they do not exist.

This is necessary because drkitten has already shown that there exists a class of elements P for which examination of all elements in S is not required in order to determine that they do not exist. I am perfectly willing to grant that class Q exists.

2. Demonstrate that God is of class Q and not class P.

If you do not provide a definition of God (a definition which includes those qualities which sufficiently distinguish God from all things which are not God) then step 2 is impossible, and your proof fails.

What you're trying to get away with here is the equivalent of saying "I'm not telling you what God is, so you can't disprove it." The problem with this approach is that if there is no definition of God, then there can be no claim that any such entity might exist, as it has no qualities.

 

[3point14]

Even if I thought I knew everything, how could I be sure?

If there was something I didn't know, how would I know I didn't know it if I thought I knew everything?