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The Painter Argument for God

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An argument God's existence is that we cannot have a painting (the universe) without the painter (God). In other words, all existence implies a creator. My counterargument is, "Then who created God?" --> "God is unknowable" --> "Then your argument is irrelevant. We must start with something we KNOW about, being existence." This still leaves plenty of speculation about God's existence, however. Is there a better counterargument?

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Recently, I've heard this argument phrased slightly differently, something like "If I see a painting, I logically assume that there is a painter. There is creation, so I logically assume a Creator." My counter argument attacked the analogy itself by arguing that the contexts were different: when you see a painting, you do so from an outside context, i.e. you are not part of the painting. You have observed, separate from the painting, that a painter is needed to create a painting. However, as a part of Existence, you are not outside the context of Existence (if I were to even admit such a possibility) and therefore can have no objective knowledge of what is required for the existence of Existence.

As far as improving your counterargument, I cannot find where I found it, but a good argument for showing that a Creator is unnecessary goes something like:

Must we posit the existence of a Creator? No, for it is an inescapable fact that Existence simply exists. Since a Creator would need to first exist before creating, a Creator is necessarily part of Existence. If one is unwilling to accept that Existence simply exists, positing a Creator will do one no good, since the Creator is necessarily part of Existence. To claim that a Creator simply exists is logically equivalent to claiming that Existence simply exists separate from a Creator, thus rendering the Creator logically unnecessary. (insert Occam's Razor argument here)

Edited by Rudmer
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Good argument as far as it goes

Here's another hypothesis : God was, but is no more.

The Creator did his thing, ie constructed all the atomic elements necessary for a Universe, and then self-destructed, for Eternity.

So the mystic/religionist/faith/worship position is null and void (still), but the 'Creator' conundrum gets an answer.

How do you reply to this one?

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Is there a better counterargument?

Yes, to put it in simpler terms, all this argument proves is that there is a cause for the universe.* It does not prove that that cause is sentient, or that it was not a one-time event, and the cause is long gone.

*Though this is wrong too, only entities have causes, and the universe is the set of all entities.

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Good argument as far as it goes

Here's another hypothesis : God was, but is no more.

The Creator did his thing, ie constructed all the atomic elements necessary for a Universe, and then self-destructed, for Eternity.

So the mystic/religionist/faith/worship position is null and void (still), but the 'Creator' conundrum gets an answer.

How do you reply to this one?

I fail to see how this changes the "posit a Creator" argument I gave. A Creator is logically unnecessary for Existence to exist, so whether or not said Creator is theorized as "alive/still exists" or "dead/no longer exists" is irrelevant.

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An argument God's existence is that we cannot have a painting (the universe) without the painter (God). In other words, all existence implies a creator. My counterargument is, "Then who created God?" --> "God is unknowable" --> "Then your argument is irrelevant. We must start with something we KNOW about, being existence." This still leaves plenty of speculation about God's existence, however. Is there a better counterargument?

That argument essentially says; "When I see a man-made thing, I can logically assume a man made it." However, when I see a non-man-made thing.... it can't logically imply anything except that man did not make it. Additionally, if one were to assume that other things were made by "something", one cannot logically deduce that there was only one something that made it... one could equally guess that each different thing out there was made be a different entity.

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This is a variant of the "watchmaker" argument. With respect to lifeforms (but not the universe as a whole, and not the mere existence of life, both of which are not addressed there) I can recommend unhesitatingly the work of Richard Dawkins on biology and evolution (NB: The God Delusion is not one of these works. The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, are).

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If it hasn't been said already, a great painting assumes a painter? So a great painter must assume some other kind of great creator? It's all very silly, and fails to the same infinite regress as the original cosmological arguments for God from Aristotle and Aquinas.

Theists and Deists like to trick people by saying "design". Who is to say the universe was designed? Fact is it wasn't, in the sense that they mean it. It was formed.

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Okay, Rudmer, save your ire for another time. :P My post was a direct, if slightly facetious, response to isinias, not you. I could have pulled a quote to make it clear, but didn't.

Isinias had heard the 'painting- painter' hypothesis, and posed his own argument against it; I supplied another hypothesis, no less idiotic, and a lot more original, that he might use on his religious debaters.

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Okay, Rudmer, save your ire for another time. :P My post was a direct, if slightly facetious, response to isinias, not you. I could have pulled a quote to make it clear, but didn't.

Isinias had heard the 'painting- painter' hypothesis, and posed his own argument against it; I supplied another hypothesis, no less idiotic, and a lot more original, that he might use on his religious debaters.

There was no ire present, whYNOT, simply an explanation. I apologize for misunderstanding to whom your comment was directed.

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There was no ire present, whYNOT, simply an explanation. I apologize for misunderstanding to whom your comment was directed.

The painting/painter argument is a blatant fallacy of question-begging.

Who says the universe is a painting? To say so is to take it for granted that it is the product of intelligent design--the painter. So ask the person who makes this argument how they know the universe is a painting. Their assumption of the very thing they set out to prove will probably come to light as they try--if they bother to try--to explain that.

Mindy

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Another way to do away with God is this one. If God is her own creator, she can have created herself outside the law of non-contradiction and thus have created reality without actually haven do so. :)

With regard

Mikael

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I would think that if posed with that kind of silly argument, I'd go in reverse, and ask your friend YES BUT WHO PAINTED THE PAINTER?

I tend to think that at some point, our understanding of physics will lead us to an answer. That time has not yet come, and it seems to me that the worst possible thing a person could do would be to stunt their intellectual development by putting a stopper in and calling it a day, rather than learning and exploring.

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Asking "Who painted the painter" should be rephrased into a proper nullification.

The existence of a creator relies upon the existence of causality. That is, something that exists causes another thing to exist. A painting is created by a painter or a proton-electron pair may come from a decaying neutron. When one speaks of accepting causality as an axiom, what one is really saying is the universe moves from one state into another state, or a clock ticks from one state into another state. Thus causality may suggest that if it is 3:30 on the clock, at some time in the past the clock should have read 2:30. Similarly, the existence of the universe in the present state suggests that the universe existed previously in a different state. However, this is the ONLY thing that causality (properly defined) implies.

Causality may be phrased in at least two ways: reality exists with its own definite properties or the universe as we see it follows a logical/ordered pattern. We observe causality applying to existing objects in reality or we conclude that the existence of observable reality implies causality. Reality and causality are bound together. Outside of reality there is no causality. The only place non-causality may exist is within a conscious entity's mind. It's no coincidence that where causality exists, gods do not.

Finally, for causality to apply to a creator, the creator MUST exist. However, creation postulates that things may not exist without a creator. Thus the CREATOR MUST HAVE CREATED HIMSELF! Further, the causality that we know and I've laid out above does not apply to entities that do not exist. Therefore it is proven that the existence of a creator does not follow from logic and is thus arbitrary.

After explaining this (preferably with a diagram instead of boring paragraphs) one may then refer the questioner to the principle that the onus of proof is upon he who asserts the positive.

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What about Piekoff's example of an atom that can perceive things around it (other atoms, bonds, etc) in a fictional "atom brain" but cannot perceive the object which it makes up?

If you were that atom and you said "hey guys, I think we're a part of some big structure."

Then an objectivist atom would respond "no, you can't prove that, and I don't have to prove a negative, you're wrong."

In other words, it is possible for things to exist outside of perception and with no way to prove that they exist.

I'm not saying this proves "God" but it does illustrate the point that sometimes you just can't prove something that is true. So to be accurate, you could say "God is possible, but not certain, and not really plausible."

This is coming from Deist point of view. To say that God exists and is the basis for all of our knowledge is completely wrong.

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Yeah but honestly tell me how things that are outside of existence and unprovable could matter in any way whatsoever or have any effect on my existence. Your idea, if accepted just tells us how pointless a deist God is and how pointless the argument for a God is.

If it's so pointless (which I think arguing over God is pointless) then why do Objectivists generally feel the need to be so outwardly Anti-God?

Anti-Religion I can fully understand. Anti-Altruism is of course a great way to be.

Evangelizing for Atheism and ridiculing anyone who mentions God is not a good way to attract new minds to Objectivism. If that's something we want to do...

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What about Piekoff's example of an atom that can perceive things around it (other atoms, bonds, etc) in a fictional "atom brain" but cannot perceive the object which it makes up?

If you were that atom and you said "hey guys, I think we're a part of some big structure."

Then an objectivist atom would respond "no, you can't prove that, and I don't have to prove a negative, you're wrong."

In other words, it is possible for things to exist outside of perception and with no way to prove that they exist.

I'm not saying this proves "God" but it does illustrate the point that sometimes you just can't prove something that is true. So to be accurate, you could say "God is possible, but not certain, and not really plausible."

This is coming from Deist point of view. To say that God exists and is the basis for all of our knowledge is completely wrong.

Possibility only relates to man's knowledge of reality, as does certainty. You cannot make a claim to impossibility, possibility, probability or certainty without reference to human sense perception and logical abstraction. There is 0 reason to consider that since existence exists, God must exist to have created existence. In fact, that's a logical contradiction and an application of an argument inconsistently. What we know: existence exists. That much is self-evident. What we are not sure of: the events that gave way to this universe. What we, by the very definition, can't know: the existence of an ultimate prime mover that exists outside of the existence he himself created out of nothing.

As to why Atheists CAN be passionate about the God idea: it's one of the biggest and most embarrassing ideas in our culture and directly correlates to religion which you said is fine to be passionately against.

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As to why Atheists CAN be passionate about the God idea: it's one of the biggest and most embarrassing ideas in our culture and directly correlates to religion which you said is fine to be passionately against.

I disagree for this reason: It's one thing to say "I think there is a creator, because nothing comes from nothing, everything had to come from something."

It's quite different to say "The creator talks to me/my predecessors so I will order you to live this certain way and you can't question my authority."

The first is not a contradiction of reality or of Objectivism. The second clearly is irrational and evil. I think it's a distinction worth making.

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Yeah but a mystical being is not a likely answer and still it is impossible to prove. A creator is the one theory that people believe in with no evidence. Any theory in any other field to even be considered there would need to be some basis or justification. The closest thing to a justification for the existence of God is the absence of other justifications because we have not yet approached that level of knowledge.

Also I think that the answer to a huge question of existence is not an answer that was theorized before the bronze age or existence of science.

And your first supposedly non contradictory statement can never be fully answered because as long as it can be discerned the something that created the something must have come from something forever and forever.

Edited by fountainhead777
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... it seems to me that the worst possible thing a person could do would be to stunt their intellectual development by putting a stopper in and calling it a day, rather than learning and exploring.

Yes. That.

Pretty much all there is to say on the subject, when it comes right down to it. It's strange how religionists expect that if there is an answer, we must already know it somehow and just need to come to some consensus and stop asking. Nope ... there's obviously an answer, since here everything is, and if you want to know what it is then go fucking find it already, stop asking us, how the hell would we know? SCIENCE, people.

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I disagree for this reason: It's one thing to say "I think there is a creator, because nothing comes from nothing, everything had to come from something."

It's quite different to say "The creator talks to me/my predecessors so I will order you to live this certain way and you can't question my authority."

The first is not a contradiction of reality or of Objectivism. The second clearly is irrational and evil. I think it's a distinction worth making.

Ok, so the first is irrational and a waste of time to even discuss, so why are you discussing it? It is a contradiction of reality and of Objectivism to say "hey, here's this thing I imagined in my own brain with no imput from reality, I'm going to choose to belive that it's real".

Creator, no creator, whatever: there are exactly two possibilities. Either something, at some point, came from nothing; or else there has just always been something. Do you have anther suggestion? Do you understand why Objectivism posits that the latter is the case, and that that "always-existing-something" could not possibly have been consciousness? If not then I'd suggest you look into it, it's spelled out pretty clearly in OPAR.

Deism is not better than theism. Historically, sure, it's a step in the right direction; factually, not so much.

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