THE GOD SYLLOGISM

[jimmoyer]

Assuming a Loving God by definition is a force that would
let no bad things happen, THEN observations of bad
things without rhyme or reason proves the non-existence
of such a God.

That's circular reasoning, because the final conclusion
is based on the definition you have of what a God,
if there is one, should be.

That's a syllogism.

Likewise those who do believe in God also employ the
same circular reasoning, the same format of a syllogism.


In fact all arguments for and against God follow the same
format of defining a God first AND THEN observing events
that do or do not correspond to that definition.

It all depends on that first assumption, that definition.

 

[Finder]

I would have to disagree with you. Deism as no such assumption for the exsisting God.

Deism, though not a formal religion as more of a mode of scientific explaintion of the unknown generally believe in the absenteeism of God from this material or seculer plane of existence.

 

[jimmoyer]

Actually Deism does follow the format of circular
reasoning.

Deism has a particular definition of what God is.
Then the Deist observes.
Such observation corresponds to the original definition.

Voila !!

Thus there must be a God.

Circular reasoning.

Atheists, agnostics, fundamentalists, believers of
every stripe, all employ this circular reasoning.

 

[Finder]

But Deists believe God has nothing to do with the material world nor our existance, after creation. How so can we believe, that god lets god or bad happen when he has nothing to do with this world after he leaves? I don't get the reasoning, perhaps explain it to me how Deism as a philophy falls into this?

 

[jimmoyer]

You wanna walk through this ?

Syllogisms or circular reasoning involves:

A Major Premise
A Minor Premise
A conclusion


1. God is Nature, which is everything and Beyond.
2. We observe Nature. Nature exists.
3. Therefore God exists.

Or the Atheist definition of a GodL

1. If God exists, then this God would love and help ALL
2. Love and help is randomly observed for some.
3. Therefore God does not exist.


Each discussion of God, posits first a definition of
what God is. If we observe this definition in action,
we then conclude God exists. If we do not observe
this definition in action, then God does not exist.

This is circular reasoning, entirely based on what
your definition of God is.

 

[Finder]

So what would you say are

A Major Premise
A Minor Premise
A conclusion

I would say down to the simple form of Deism, their is no major premise besides that god some made creation, be it threw direct or indirect ways. A minor premise, maybe that god doesn't watch us, and a conclusion, which their is no conclusion to deism. So I just don't see how this fits in.

 

[jimmoyer]

You got close to the whole idea.

It just is.

Or it isn't.

All I'm saying is that any talk of logically proving
or disproving a God involves circular reasoning
in the format of a syllogism.

And this analysis of logic gives us a window
to the size of the matter we contemplate.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Deism, though not a formal religion as more of a mode of scientific explaintion of the unknown generally.

No, that is in no sense scientific, it's just the old fallacy called the God of the Gaps argument.

 

[jimmoyer]

A Major Premise
A Minor Premise
A conclusion

A Deist's logic:

1. God is Nature, which is everything and Beyond.
2. We observe Nature. Nature exists.
3. Therefore God exists.

Or the Atheist definition of a God:

1. If God exists, this God would love and help ALL
2. Love and help is randomly observed for some.
3. Therefore God does not exist.


I've seen you do the same thing.
You start with some notion of definition.
You see if you observe any of this definition.
Then your conclusion is based on whether you
observed any of your original definition.


However, your most powerful refutation of
this circular reasoning "assumes the claimant has experienced them and thus that they exist."

But this is still circular, and weak.

For every notion we posit, we check to see if we
can observe it.

You disengeniously ignore the idea that you do
indeed posit a notion and a definition that you
prove or disprove with observation.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Re: RE: THE GOD SYLLOGISM

1. God is Nature, which is everything and Beyond.
2. We observe Nature. Nature exists.
3. Therefore God exists.

That one is begging the question; the first premise defines God as something that already exists. Granting the premises, though, it's logically sound.

1. If God exists, then this God would love and help ALL
2. Love and help is randomly observed for some.
3. Therefore God does not exist.

That example I think is faulty logic; the premises don't lead necessarily to the conclusion. Moreover, God's love and help could logically be provided in forms we don't perceive or understand, and the argument further assumes that the love and help we do observe for some comes from God. I wouldn't grant the first premise either, nobody knows what God might be like. You might try, "1. if God exists, he's a mean SOB who sometimes allows good things to happen to some people" and see where that leads. That's pretty much consistent with how God appears in the Old Testament, and it's arguably fairly consistent with the contemporary world.

More generally, it seems reasonable to me to suppose that a universe with a god in it ought to be detectably different from one without. If he's not actually running it on a moment by moment basis as some fundamentalists claim, he must at least have been engaged at some point in setting things up. He must, in fact, have had some interaction with the physical universe we perceive, which makes him part of it to some extent, and to that extent his existence is an empirical question about the nature of the cosmos that we ought to be able to investigate.

I can't be the only one who's noticed that the more we know about something, the less willing we are to allow any role for the supernatural in it. Nobody, except perhaps for a few loons like Pat Robertson, blames disasters on a displeased god anymore, for instance. Any logical person, looking at such a consistent trend over the last few centuries, is likely to conclude that the postulated god probably doesn't exist.

In other words jimmoyer, not all arguments for or against the existence of god take the form you've suggested.

 

[jimmoyer]

"...is likely to conclude that the postulated god probably doesn't exist.," writes Dexter Sinister.

And that's my point.

You observe "the postulated God probably doesn't
exist."

First the definition of what God is, then observation
sees this definition or not, just as your sentence
does.

Arguments on God do indeed employ the syllogism
format, even unconsciously.

And your other analysis show the achilles heel
of this syllogism format. You posted:

"You might try, "1. if God exists, he's a mean SOB who sometimes allows good things to happen to some people" and see where that leads. That's pretty much consistent with how God appears in the Old Testament, and it's arguably fairly consistent with the contemporary world. "


In each case and in each post a notion of god or
definition of a god is offered. The second step
involves observing or not observing that definition.


I'm sure there are other methods than syllogism
employed when people use logic concerning the
existence or non-existence of God, but I just
don't see it.

LOL !!

 

[Finder]

Deism, is not believe in some romantic notion as "God is nature" or anything else to that matter. Though some Deist may claime such a romantic view of God being nature.

Dexter Sinister, fine thats what you chose to believe, and both the irrational romantics of Christianity, Islam and others may argue this *shrugs* or the scientific Atheists and Agnostics may as well. But I tend to believe there is a god of some sort, but back onto the other point, Nature, nor the world is not god in itself, however it is apart of his creation, directly or indirectly, in which indirectly would be the modern Deists view as we now know how the world was created and how long it took to form.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

No jimmoyer, it's possible to generate arguments about the existence of God without postulating anything about his nature or purposes or using the syllogistic form. What I might call the statistical argument about the role we're willing to assign to supernatural forces, which I used in my previous post, posits nothing about the nature of God and uses inductive logic rather than the deductive logic of the syllogism. There are other such arguments too. For the sake of completeness (every post should stand alone... :wink: ) I'll reiterate it here with some others.

Statistical argument: There’s a very clear inverse relationship between how much we know about something and the role we’re willing to assign to god in it. Much of the history of the last 400 years can be seen as religion retreating from making empirical claims about the world in the face of the scientific revolution. In other words, the more we know, the less we attribute to supernatural causes. Any logical person faced with such a consistent trend wouldn’t hesitate to extrapolate and decide god most likely doesn’t exist.

Anthropological argument: Religions are historical products of changing human cultures. They are born, evolve, and die. The ancient Greek, Roman, and Norse gods, for example, are extinct by any reasonable measure. Belief in any particular god, or concept of god, is quite relative to human cultures, and there's no obvious reason to assume the current version of God promulgated by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, has any more reality than the extinct ones.

Geological argument: the earth is clearly and definitely much older than the few thousand years permitted by a strict reading of the teachings of any religion I’ve ever been able to investigate.

Cosmological argument: every religiously derived cosmology I’ve ever encountered is demonstrably wrong. And not just a little bit, but egregiously, stunningly wrong.

There are others, but my point should be clear by now. None of those posit anything about the nature or purposes of God, they're all inductive, and essentially probabilistic. Anybody who wants logical certainty... well, you've come to the wrong universe. I note that they're all arguments against the reality of God and the religions derived from various concepts of him; I know of no similar arguments in favour that have anything like the weight of those, especially the first two.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Finder, I have no clue what you're talking about. Sentence fragments and errors in grammar, syntax, and spelling have buried whatever position you're trying to present.

 

[jimmoyer]

1. The explanations for nature are NOT supernatural.
2. God is supernatural.
3. Therefore nature is not God, nor the workings of God.

Major premise.
Minor premise.
Conclusion.

1. All Nature, the cosmos exists
2. God is Nature
3. God exists.

Around and round, subconsciously we go, like an
infinite loop in a computer program, like a hamster
on a treadmill, when logic is employed concerning
God existing or not.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Is that intended to be an answer to what I posted? It doesn't address anything I said, it just reiterates your original position, which is not correct. Syllogisms are deductive and certain, if the premises and logic are correct. I presented inductive, probabilistic arguments. Induction is different from deduction, probability is different from certainty.

 

[jimmoyer]

I don't want to lose your patience.

But your statement:

"In other words, the more we know, the less we attribute to supernatural causes. Any logical person faced with such a consistent trend wouldn’t hesitate to extrapolate and decide god most likely doesn’t exist. "

Certainly sounds alot like this:

1. The explanations for nature are NOT supernatural.
2. God is supernatural.
3. Therefore nature is not God, nor the workings of God.

 

[Finder]

Dexter Sinister, I don't have enough time to reiterate nor the patients to. However it is common knowledge that deism comes from the rational enlightend beliefs of the great thinkers of the 16th- 19th centry, using a type of Scientific module and is not what you would say... "No, that is in no sense scientific".

As one observes in this world a lot of good, and a lot of bad happens. We can not prove that prayer effects either and thus we can not prove that god takes a direct roll in our world. God in no way directly talks to it's creation, but is claimed to do so indirectly which can be called into question. In a world where we can prove that the atom which can not be seen by naked eye exists, we still can not prove that god listens to prayers, nor if he/she still is here. The only leep of faith Deists take is that their is a god which explains why we are.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

... deism ... is not what you would say... "No, that is in no sense scientific".

Finder, you're completely wrong, assuming I've understood your claim correctly. I've had a 30+ year career in science and I know this from direct personal experience: there is no role for a deity in scientific inquiry. Science seeks naturalistic explanations and descriptions of what we see around us. Invoking a deity explains nothing so science doesn't do that. Individual scientists will sometimes use a deity as a metaphor for things science doesn't yet understand, as Einstein did when he remarked that God doesn't play dice with the universe (though apparently, as it turned out, He does), but no legitimate scientist will ever seriously and literally invoke a deity as an explanation for anything, professionally. They may write popularizations of their work that ill-advisedly mention a deity, but except for a very few crackpots like Michael Behe and William Dembski, who seem stuck in a particularly fatuous version of fundamentalist Christianity that promotes Intelligent Design against all evidence to the contrary, such references are not to be taken literally, but metaphorically.

 

[Finder]

Then you miss the metaphoric point of Deism completely Dexter, and what I was trying to explain to you.

I will however stop my assertions and merely leave a link for you to use, or not. The link generally explains the back ground of Deism, in philosophy and science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism