Therefore, God Exists.

Metaphysics and Epistemology
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300+ Proofs of God’s Existence

This website is hilarious! (Made by Atheists)

some goodies:

ARGUMENT FROM SHEER WILL

(1) I DO believe in God! I DO believe in God! I do I do I do I DO believe in God!

(2) Therefore, God exists.

ARGUMENT FROM MANIFESTATIONS

(1) If you turn your head sideways and squint a little, you can see an image of a bearded face in that tortilla.

(2) Therefore, God exists.

ARGUMENT FROM GUITAR MASTERY

(1) Eric Clapton is God.

(2) Therefore, God exists.

ARGUMENT FROM FEAR

(1) If there is no God then we’re all going to not exist after we die.

(2) I’m afraid of that.

(3) Therefore, God exists.

TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (I), a.k.a. DESIGN ARGUMENT

(1) Check out the world/universe/giraffe. Isn’t it complex?

(2) Only God could have made them so complex.

(3) Therefore, God exists.

I wasn’t sure in what forum category to post this, but God-fearers would consider this stuff of serious metaphysical import.

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ARGUMENT FROM POSTMODERNISM

(1) I’m going to prove to you that God exists.

(2) [insert any of the other arguments on this page in here.]

(3) [Atheist refutes argument.]

(4) I cannot prove there is a God any more than anyone of us can prove we really exist in a tangible world.

(5) Therefore, God exists.

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ARGUMENT FROM GEORGE W. BUSH

(1) That god won’t hunt.

(2) Y’all.

(3) Ergo, um, axle of evil, ahh, claridify, umm, supportification, ah, pretzel.

(3) Y’all.

(4) What he said.

(5) Therefore, God existifies.

(2) Launch.

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ARGUMENT FROM GEORGE W. BUSH

(1) That god won’t hunt.

(2) Y’all.

(3) Ergo, um, axle of evil, ahh, claridify, umm, supportification, ah, pretzel.

(3) Y’all.

(4) What he said.

(5) Therefore, God existifies.

(2) Launch.

thats pretty funny

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You forgot “mission accomplished.”

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I have seen a lot of these “arguments” before.

I think this one pretty much sums up the rest and is in my opinion about the rest (not that I read them all):

ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (I)

(1) I define God to be X.

(2) Since I can conceive of X, X must exist.

(3) Therefore, God exists.

Ie I can delude myself therefore delusions exist…Hmm yeah that might, might not follow :frowning:

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ARGUMENT FROM SEXUAL ECSTASY

  1. OH GOD! OOOOHHH OH GOD!

  2. Therefore, God exists.

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(I am new here, and not sure if I am permitted to quote non-Rand philosophers, but here it is.)

“There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed” (Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics 1954, pgs. 219 - 220).

Sadly, a high percentage of individuals do not see any error in these proofs. The problem is that the proofs are based on faith and to use logical reasoning to prove faith will never be valid. All of the proofs could be valid if the conclusions were not “Therefore, God exists,” but instead were “Therefore, God exists to me.” It would not make the proofs true to anyone else except the presenter of the argument. A child will say “Santa Clause exists” and may use some of the same arguments shown for the existence of God. To the child, Santa Clause exists, but to most, Santa Clause, as a physical entity in itself, does not exist. I think Bertrand Russell says it best:

“If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecutiion, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called ‘education.’” (Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, pgs. 220 - 221).

Thus, false belief or dogmatic belief in anything is not what one ought to do. Even if that Dogmatic belief is in something you “know” to be true, such as Objectivism. To continuously question your beliefs will make those beliefs stronger, if they are a probable truth, or they will be proven to be merely myths as to how the world is. I am not saying that Objectivism is false, I believe many of the arguments and concepts for Objectivism. But I do not believe that all of them are certain. I go with a Hegelian look at all thesis’, in search of the truth. I realize I am getting into other topics which ought to probably be topics of their own. I will write an introduction and start a topic on skepticism, so that I can more fully understand Rand’s Objectivism.

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To the child, Santa Clause exists, but to most, Santa Clause, as a physical entity in itself, does not exist.

To most? What are you talking about? Before deciding whether Santa Claus exists, you have to understand what you mean by that. The lighted Santa statue on my lawn does exist. So, if I say “Santa exists”, meaning that that statue exists, that is true. If there is a guy in South America who adopted the name “Santa Clause”, and I say that Santa Clause exists, meaning that this guy exists, that is true. If I have a dog named “Santa”, then Santa exists. In other words, the phrase “Santa exists” is a short-hand that postulates something about reality, and to say that “Santa exists” for some, just because my dog is named Santa, is to equivocate. That is the stuff for elementary-school jokes, not serious adult discussion.

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Oh, I like this forum already! I see that I have to be more exact in my writing than I normally am when talking with the “common” person.

That is the stuff for elementary-school jokes, not serious adult discussion.

Depending on what you are referencing with this statement, you are fully correct. If you are refering to religion or a proof for God as not serious adult discussions, then you understood my analogy correctly. I was comparing children to adult Christians, and Santa Clause to God. I should have wrote “To the child, Santa Clause exists, but to most, Santa Clause as a physical entity that lives at the North Pole and visits all the children in the world once every year, does not exist.” Which when said about Chistianity can be read, “To the Christian, God exists, but to most rational individuals, God as an entity that watches over all, is omnipotent, and offers heaven to all that believe in him, does not exist.” Or something like that.

Is that what you were refering to? Or were you saying that your overly semantic analysis is not for adult discussions? Or were you saying that for me to use the analogy of Santa Clause was not a topic for adult conversations? I know it was sarcasm, but not sure what the focus of the sarcasm was… LOL

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I should have wrote “To the child, Santa Clause exists, but to most, Santa Clause as a physical entity that lives at the North Pole and visits all the children in the world once every year, does not exist.”

Let’s start with something simpler: at best you might have meant “As far as children know, Santa the magical being exists, but most adults know that there is no such being”. That’s not actually true, but if you add the caveats “in North America” and “many children under age 7”, it could be true.

The notion “exists to X” is bizarre, when you think about it. Existence isn’t mind-relative, so if Santa exists, then Santa exists whether or not anybody know about it, and if Santa doesn’t exist, then it doesn’t matter if someone thinks that Santa exists. The idea that god “exists to Christians” suggests that because of their strange beliefs, they can actually change the universe, but only with respect to them. Although of course there are those people who would claim that Xers can “make god exist to me, despite my disbelief”. The idea of individual-relative universes is just so bizarre. We folks think, simply, that if something exists, it exists, and of somebody is confused and mistakenly believes that something which doesn’t exist does exist, well, it simply doesn’t exist, not even “to them”.

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I should have wrote “To the child, Santa Clause exists, but to most, Santa Clause as a physical entity that lives at the North Pole and visits all the children in the world once every year, does not exist.” Which when said about Chistianity can be read, “To the Christian, God exists, but to most rational individuals, God as an entity that watches over all, is omnipotent, and offers heaven to all that believe in him, does not exist.” Or something like that.

It seems I mistook what you said, because I thought you meant that to a kid Santa exists in a metaphorical sense: in the sense that goodness exists, and people who give benevolent gifts exist. I assumed you meant these things, which are true. Or, I thought that you might mean Santa as in “the child’s imagination of Santa”. I was pointing out that this meaning of “Santa exists” is different from the meaning where he is a real physical entity, living at the North Pole, actually visiting kids, etc.

I thought you were equivocating on the concept of “Santa” in the idea “Santa exists”. However, I now see that you actually meant Santa in this literal way for kids. So, my objection was invalid. However, I now see that you were equivocating on the concept “exists”. The way I use the term “exists” a physical Santa of that type does not exist – not for kids, not for anyone. That type of existence is something that happens outside of consciousness, and he cannot exist for one person and not for another. You seem to be using the term “exists” to mean “is imagined”. Normally, I’m fine with using someone else’s terms for the duration of an argument, but to use “exists” to mean “something that is imagined even though it does not exist”, would be extremely confusing.

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And, my religious-conservative Dad’s argument:

  1. Atheists are liberals

  2. Liberals suck

  3. So atheists suck

  4. Christians are conservatives

  5. So Christians are smarter

  6. I want to be smarter than those who suck

  7. Therefore, I have to always pretend to be absolutely, militantly certain that God exists, while still admitting that it’s a belief that stems from faith and “personal conviction,” not actual certainty, and hating the atheists for being so stupid that they don’t believe in God and they’re a bunch of goddamned communist fags…

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Maybe the idea argument that not all Athiests are liberals, and not all Christians are conservative (whatever that means these days) would help him see the choice more clearly.

Probably not, but I can’t think of anything more likely to help.

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The best hypothetical argument I could dream up for “pro-God’s existence” would be the question of how order in the universe came about.

Now, Objectivists pretty much agree that a thousand monkeys, typing for a thousand years on a thousand typewriters, could not write Shakespeare’s works. It is the nature of random forces not to generate coherent works.

Taking that argument loosely, a religionist could argue that, like the monkeys, random events in the universe could not bring about organized and complicated life, ecosystems and the like.

It takes an organized consciousness to write prose. It is easy to think that the creation of the universe would be the same.

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Maybe the idea argument that not all Athiests are liberals, and not all Christians are conservative (whatever that means these days) would help him see the choice more clearly.

Probably not, but I can’t think of anything more likely to help.

Believe me, some people just don’t have the ability to think anymore. I think they usually give it up in church at an early age, in a prayer.

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The best hypothetical argument I could dream up for “pro-God’s existence” would be the question of how order in the universe came about.

Now, Objectivists pretty much agree that a thousand monkeys, typing for a thousand years on a thousand typewriters, could not write Shakespeare’s works. It is the nature of random forces not to generate coherent works.

Taking that argument loosely, a religionist could argue that, like the monkeys, random events in the universe could not bring about organized and complicated life, ecosystems and the like.

It takes an organized consciousness to write prose. It is easy to think that the creation of the universe would be the same.

Evolution isn’t a random process, though.

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ARGUMENT FROM POSTMODERNISM

(1) I’m going to prove to you that God exists.

(2) [insert any of the other arguments on this page in here.]

(3) [Atheist refutes argument.]

(4) I cannot prove there is a God any more than anyone of us can prove we really exist in a tangible world.

(5) Therefore, God exists.

You laugh, but a surprising number of Christian philosophers argue like that:

“If my belief in other minds is rational, so is my belief in God. But obviously the former is rational; so, therefore, is the latter.’ As I now see (with the acuity of hindsight), my chief aim was to make a suitable reply to the evidentialist objection to theistic belief: the objection that theistic belief is irrational or unreasonable or intellectually second- or third-rate because there is insufficient evidence for it.”

  • Plantinga, God and Other Minds
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Taking that argument loosely, a religionist could argue that, like the monkeys, random events in the universe could not bring about organized and complicated life, ecosystems and the like.

All that is meant by “random” is “unpredictable”. At the quantum level, there is obviously much more unpredictability, because the equations are too complicated and the measurements must be too precise. But at the macro level, the quantum randomness/unpredictability cancels out, and you get objects which have behavior that is more easily predicted (although you are not trying to predict this behavior to as great a precision as you would be at the quantum level). Basically, if you have a ball made up of tiny particles jittering in individually-random (unpredictable) directions, the chances of them all moving in the same direction, and thus producing a noticeable motion at the macro level, are nearly impossible. The more likely case is that their individual motions will collectively result to nothing.

As for order - all that is necessary are means for particles to interact, and a source of energy to permit them to interact. In the case of life, the means are the intermolecular forces and the source of energy is the Sun (and the Earth). The increasing entropy of the universe as a whole need not apply to its individual parts - these can exhibit order temporarily, although they must ultimately succumb to entropy.

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A gratuitous Peikoff quote regarding God belief from OPAR

“The ideal of the ‘supernatural’ is an assault on everything man knows about reality. It is a contradiction of every essential of a rational metaphysics. It represents a rejection of the basic axioms of philosophy (or in the case of primitive men a failure to grasp them.) This can be illustrated by reference to any version of idealism. But let us confine the discussion here to popular notions of God.

Is God the creator of the universe? Not if existence has primacy over consciousness.

Is God the designer of the Universe? Not if A is A. The alternative to ‘design’ is not ‘chance’. It is causality.

Is God omnipotent? Nothing and no one can alter the metaphysically given.

Is God infinite? ‘Infinite’ does not mean large; it means larger than any specific quantity, i.e.: of no specific quantity. An infinite quantity would be a quantity without identity. But A is A. Every entity, accordingly, is finite; it is limited in the number of its qualities and in their extent; this applies to the universe as well.As Aristotle was the first to observe, the concept of ‘infinity’ denotes merely a potentiality of indefinite addition or subdivision. For example, one can continually subdivide a line; but however many segments one has reached at a given point, there are only that many and no more. The actual is always finite.

Can God perform miracles? A ‘miracle’ does not mean the unusual. If a woman gives birth to twins, that would be unusual; if she were to give birth to elephants, that would be a miracle. A miracle is an action not possible to the entities involved by their nature; it would be violation of identity.

Is God purely spiritual? ‘Spiritual’ means pertaining to consciousness, and consciousness is a faculty of certain living organisms, their faculty of perceiving that which exists. A consciousness transcending nature would be a faculty transcending organism and object. So far from being all knowing, such a thing would have neither means nor content of perception; it would be non-conscious.

Every argument commonly offered for the notion of God leads to a contradiction of the axiomatic concepts of philosophy. At every point, the notion clashes with the facts of reality and with the preconditions of thought. This as true of the professional theologians’ arguments and ideas as of the popular treatments.”

“Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”, p.31-32, by Leonard Peikoff, ISBN 0-525-93380-8