God is an Impossibility

Why must god be perfect? All you’ve proved is that you can put up a strawman and knock it down.

You setup impossible conditions, state that god must be subject to those conditions, then claim you’ve proved something.

Who cares what a theist wants? I’m interested in what is, not what other people want.

Then disprove inferior gods. The title is “God is an Impossibility”. You didn’t qualify in the title which gods and it’s false advertising. Prove Brahman does not exist.

Why? :confusion-shrug: Why would a perfect god create imperfect stuff?

So the god that you’re proving nonexistent must be perfect so that other nonexistent gods do not kick his ass? :confusion-scratchheadblue:

Oh I see. So the title of the thread should be changed to “A Perfect God is an Impossibility, But All Other Gods May Be possible.” Wherein you define perfection as impossible, stuff god in the condition, and claim you’ve proved something useful.


I want to know if you have ever admitted you’re wrong about anything? Or are you absolutely perfect?

You’re a good example of how smart people are able to defend bad ideas :nerd: scottberkun.com/essays/40-why-sm … bad-ideas/

The thing is, though, that I measure intelligence by one’s propensity to be wrong, because in order to be right, you must first be willing to be wrong and accept correction. If you can’t be wrong, you can never be right… it’s like a blockage that prevents further progress.

:animals-dogrun: You’re running around frantically searching for ways to salvage this failing “proof” of yours because you bought it before you took it for a test drive complete with thorough inspection or else you could have easily admitted its flaws. Nobody wants to admit they bought a lemon, but I suggest you start making lemonade because this proof has soured.

Damn, that’s well-crafted! Are you the genesis or are you quoting someone? I had to stop and write that down!

For everyone who couldn’t figure it out, it means because you think the universe itself is lifeless, that you are merely an empty, lifeless machine. When you put the universe down, you put yourself down as well because you came out of it.

Why choose one over the other:

  • Consciousness is a complicated form of mineral.
  • Mineral is a simple form of consciousness.

Preference, that’s all. Do you want to put a good spin or a bad spin on it? Do you want to say the universe is alive or that you are dead? What you choose reveals who you are.

Dark matter has no charge to emit radiation, yet it has mass which affects by gravity; therefore dark matter is close to being nonexistent by your definition, but not quite. So let’s suppose, for sake of argument, that there is something out there that has no charge and no gravity. Suppose this “stuff” resulted from the creative process of the universe as a kind of “waste” product and it makes no difference if it exists except that it’s a necessary byproduct of the process that engendered it like heat is a necessary byproduct of generating usable power. Would you say that unaffective byproduct exists?

I think potential to affect necessitates existence, but existence doesn’t necessitate potential to affect. Just because something makes no difference if it exist doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

Serendipper,
Noted your points but the main one is the following;

I have argued extensively why “God MUST be absolutely perfect” all over this and other threads.

Here is a point, why God MUST be absolutely perfect.
The point is the initial drive of theism is a psychological issue and with crude reason drive theists to invent the idea of a God to soothes those psychological angst. The initial concepts of God were mostly anthropomorphic, but throughout history such flimsy [silly] anthropomorphic concepts has been questioned by rational people and even other theists.

When questioned, each group will correct their errors and shortfalls and come up with new idea of God to cover for the underlying psychological issues.
But as each new anthropomorphic or empirical concepts are raised to justify the existence of God, they are continually attacked/challenged by rational & critical thinkers and other theists as well.

This continual attack pushes the concept of God to the idea [not concept] of an ontological God, i.e. the absolutely perfect God or the absolutely Absolute which no other theists can challenge but exposes its back to the philosophical rationality.

A good example is Islam per the Quran is claiming Allah is THE GOD [absolutely perfect] while the God of Christianity as at present is a corrupted God. To counter the above the Christians [advanced theologians] has no choice but to claim their God as an ontological God, i.e. an absolutely perfect God.

Before the emergence of the idea of the ontological God, each theist will claim his God is more powerful than another’s. If one claim his God has power of X, then the next will claim his God is power of X+1 and it goes on to an infinite regression.
The ending of the infinite regression is the ontological God, i.e. a God than which no greater can exists. If every theist claim such a God then no theist can claim their God is greater than another.
As such the ontological God has to the default ultimately.

If anyone want to choose a lesser god that is inferior to another, I have no critical issue with that. In any case, to prove their lesser God is real, they will have to produce evidence to prove their lesser God is real.

That looks like a concession to me. Deal!

Perfection defined as “all yang and no yin” cannot exist. This is the essential problem of man… trying to have all good and no bad. There is no such thing and it cannot even be conceptualized.

What is good? What is bad? Well, it’s relative and variable. Right now i have a fever so I walk outside and the cold air feels good and then it feels too cold so I come back inside and the warm air feels good and then it’s too warm again. So, good is lack of bad and both vary. You could say, “why not set the temp so it’s perfect?” Because then it would be flat and it wouldn’t feel good. We have to eat bitter in order to taste sweet.

Why are sharks no smarter after 400 million years of evolution? Because, obviously, sharks are optimally intelligent. If they were smarter, they would get bored and be so curious that they’d get into trouble. Or perhaps intelligence just doesn’t make any difference. Who knows, but the point is that sharks ARE perfect. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have been selected for.

Nature doesn’t make mistakes. Have you ever seen a misshapen cloud? Everything that exists is perfect.

Can you imagine a perfect warrior? One that has all strengths and no disadvantages? Would he be big and strong? Well, then that’s his weakness I could exploit. Strength requires energy, so starve him. Strength requires mass, so lead his fat ass onto a weak bridge. Every advantage has a disadvantage.

What you have done is proved the jehovah god cannot exist because that god cannot be perfect as they popularly proclaim he is. Well, either he doesn’t exist or he is not perfect, but in the bible that god does have a left and right hand.

Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

They don’t like to admit that.

Jesus sits on the right hand of god, but who sits on the left? The district attorney sits on the left. The defense is on the right and the accuser is on the left.

And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

God has a left and right hand and he has a yetzer hara, evil inclination, an element of irreducible rascality. He couldn’t exist if he didn’t, as you have proven.

Nope.

I understand human believe in all sorts of God [inferior, superior, perfect, not perfect, immutable, etc.] but as I had explained and justify a God by default MUST be an ‘absolutely perfect being’ so that it does not end up eating the shit of another greater God.

Any theist who is made aware of this limitation of their God will definitely opt for the ontological God -an absolutely perfect being - since it is as easy as just a shifting of thoughts to a more secured idea of God.

Nature doesn’t make mistakes. Have you ever seen a misshapen cloud? Everything that exists is perfect.

Yes nature doesn’t make mistakes, i.e. perfect but that is only a conditional perfection.
What is perfect within Nature is relative perfect of empirical things.
What is in nature is never absolutely perfect.
Note nature as in reality is co-created by humans, thus conditional.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=193726

What I am arguing is, the idea of God is the only thing that is claimed to be absolutely prefect primarily to ensure one’s God do not have to eat the shit of another greater God.
Thus God MUST be an absolutely perfect being than which no greater perfection exists.

You said you have no issue, so I said deal, then you said you have issue. That’s underhanded. You offer a deal, I accept, then you renege.

  1. perfect god can’t exist
  2. lesser god can’t exist because it would eat shit from the perfect god that we’ve already determined can’t exist.

If you can’t see the logic in that, then I will have to renege my stated support of your intelligence as it appears I may have been wrong. I’m sorry, but look:

So either you’re wrong in one of those statements or you have a mental handicap of some sort that prevents you from seeing the contradiction.

I did not offer any deal. It was your misunderstanding and note below you fallacy of conflation.

I presume you understand sets, system and perspectives.

1) perfect god can’t exist
This is considered within an empirical rational reality.
Within an empirical rational reality, I claim an absolutely perfect God can’t exists, i.e. impossible. Theists would claim otherwise.

2) lesser god can’t exist because it would eat shit from the perfect god that we’ve already determined can’t exist.
This point 2 do not involve me and an empirical rational reality, but it is confined within the illusory world of the theists.

Thus you got it wrong, it should be;
If theists insist God exists, then the existence of a lesser god of theists-X will not be favored because it would have to eat shit from the greatest absolutely perfect God that theists-Y insist exist.

So note there are different perspectives and sense which involve different type of theists.

What you have done and lacking in thinking by conflating all the different senses and perspectives to invent your straw man.

Btw, I don’t need your patronization.
I personally know where I stand.

So either you’re wrong in one of those statements or you have a mental handicap of some sort that prevents you from seeing the contradiction.
[/quote]
Same explanation above.

What you have done and lacking in thinking in conflating all the different senses and perspectives to invent your straw man.

A contradiction is ‘P’ and ‘not-P’ in the same time and sense [perspective].

Now who is the one with a mental handicap?

Yes you did; it’s plain for everyone to see. First you cheat, and now you lie. Right here:

If you have no issue, then stop having issues.

Yes, me too.

In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein people of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E … ger_effect

You’ll stop at nothing to avoid admitting you’re wrong and it’s astonishing the sacrifices you will make to that end. You’ve thrown your ethics right out the window and slaughtered your dignity on the altar of your ego. I’m not sure what else I could learn from this interaction as I’m thoroughly convinced you’d throw your only son under the bus to avoid admitting defeat and I suppose I now know what I needed to discover. Thank you for you time, but there is no point to us going round and round any further.

NOtice Prismatic that this reaction to you and the way you post is becoming the rule. You are getting useful feedback about how you communicate and interact with people. There is very little we can do to ensure you learn from this. Fortunately, you lose something if you cannot learn about yourself, we don’t.

I was not looking at it as deal per se. It is just a problem of semantics.

Note you are deliberately twisting the point. I stated I have no critical issue with someone choose lesser gods of which there are plenty out there, e.g. a monkey God, elephant God, Neptune, a god that eat the shit of another, etc. The ultimate is such theists still have to provide justifiable evidence to prove their God exists if they insist such a God is real.

I still have a critical issue with theists who choose an absolutely perfect God, i.e. the ontological God. Note based on their holy books, appx 6 billion theists believe in religions that represent an absolutely perfect God.

You are going in the direction of ad hominen instead of present valid arguments.

I have no problem with that if you have run out of arguments to counter my views.

Note this is a Philosophy Forum, any one is free to express their views and any one is free to counter or agree whatever views is presented.
So just do the necessary, present your arguments or counter the arguments of others. There is no need to resort to ad hominens [an infraction in any forum].

I suggest you focus on the arguments rather than judging my character.
I will know how to learn from someone if I think there is need to and this had happened loads of time earlier in various forums and even at present [mostly elsewhere].

When I first started discussing in forums I have a disgust for homosexuality but since then have learned to accept [via knowledge] homosexuality as an unavoidable fact of humanity. There are many other things I have learned which you are not aware of.

So far what I have presented are philosophical arguments. If you think you have counter arguments then present them. There is no need to get emotionally and trying to teach me this or that.

The nasty responses I get from theists is the same since the days I started critiquing theism. I have even received threat of death in forums. Note in extreme cases, theists will even kill those who critique theism. The nasty responses I get from forum here are from the same psychological responses but of mild and low degrees.

Wow. That really explains Prismatic’s attitude!

Pris,

For the sake of this discussion, I’m going to use the term “absolute perfection” in the way that you’ve applied it in your argument, even though I think its redundant and quite nonsensical.

How do you know, qua knowledge that absolute perfection is an impossibility? Something that is absolutely perfect could exist outside of the things that you know are possible to exist. IOW, to claim “absolute perfection is an impossibility”, you must know everything, everywhere, that has, is and will be. Obviously you don’t, so the claim that “absolute perfection is an impossibility” is based upon your limited knowledge. In short, to know that absolute perfection is an impossibility, you must be omniscient. Thus your 1st premise is based upon incomplete knowledge and is therefore false.

Why your 2nd premise “God imperatively must be absolutely perfect” is false has been expounded prior to this, but you refuse to accept it. It is simply that absolute perfection is not a predicate of existence, therefore an absolutely perfect God may or may not exist “imperative” does not necessarily follow. God could exist and not be absolutely perfect and God could exist and be absolutely perfect, there is no way that we can know for sure. We cannot say that it is impossible that an absolutely perfect God could exist because there’s a list of things that we think define absolute perfection that cannot exist – that is just arbitrary and based upon limited knowledge. Who defines as a certainty what qualities make God absolutely perfect? Because theistic ideals claim that God is absolutely perfect does not necessitate that the God they’re describing exists. So your 2nd premise is false.

Because both of your premises are false, your conclusion is also false, hence your syllogism is invalid.

Yes, you’re right, I am going in the direction of ad homs, but it’s not my argument nor does it mean I’m out of arguments, just that I feel I’m arguing with a brick wall and desired to give feedback.

I agree that an absolute perfect god can’t exist because an absolute perfect anything can’t exist because it makes no sense. Something can’t be both big/strong and small/nimble at the same time. There is no advantage that doesn’t have a disadvantage.

But there is a sense in which god can be omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and that’s if god is the only entity in existence who is playing the roles of everything in the universe (the Brahman god). If there is nothing that is not god, then obviously he is everywhere all at once, knows everything, and controls everything. But that’s quite different from the Jehovah god who is a separate entity who reigns supreme with all power, knowledge, and is somehow everywhere yet still distinct from all other entities that he has created from nothing. That god seems to me a nonsensical contrivance conjured for control of the people.

Note “absolute perfection” is not my invention for the idea of God.
This term and idea is used by advanced theologians as the final and ultimate definition to represent their idea of a God.

Note my first premise should read with this phrase - within an empirical-rational reality.
Thus,
P1. Absolute perfection is an impossibility within an empirical-rational reality.

Note my basis of knowledge in this case is based on reason, i.e. reasoning and arguments.
Surely you know 1 + 1 = 4, 5 or >, is absolutely impossible within the decimal system and the empirical-rational reality.
Do you or anyone has to “know everything, everywhere, that has, is and will be?”
Answer: Has to be NO!
So does anyone has to be omniscient to know the above?
Answer: Has to be NO!

Thus your counter is blown to pieces.

Your above is a straw man.

Why “God imperatively must be absolutely perfect?”
Due to psychological desperation, the idea of God was invented [conjectured]. But because the idea started of with crude speculations which are irrational, the
silly’ idea of ‘God exists’ [as bearded man in the sky, etc.] were bombarded with sound rational counter by atheists and others.
Thus over time, there was a continual trend of defenses against the irrational arguments till it was pushed and reached the ultimate arguments [‘ceiling’], i.e. the ontological God [absolutely perfect] as thought out by various theologians, e.g. St. Anselm, Descartes and others.

But in arriving at the idea of the ontological God, it takes the thought of God outside the empirical-rational realm of reality into the realm of pure reason which is a crude primal form of reason.

Note I have given many arguments [e.g. have to eat sh1t, etc.] why the thought of God must be idealized as an absolutely perfect ontological God than which no greater exists.

What is great is I have also provided the answer why the idea of God must be idealized, i.e. the reason is,
Due to psychological desperation, i.e.

  1. The above point has been recognized by many Eastern spirituality since thousands of years ago. So I have theoretical and practical evidence to support for my view, the idea of God is “Due to psychological desperation.”

  2. I have also shown how the idea of God and experience of God can ooze out from the brain/ mind due to an altered state of consciousness from various mental illness, brain damage, drugs, chemicals, electronic stimulation, etc. etc.
    Most of the religions [especially theistic religions] were founded by a ‘personality’ who have had altered states of consciousness of God which is likely to have arose from the above reasons of activities in the brain rather than a pre-existing God choosing them as the messenger or prophet.

  3. Others -

In addition to my reason-based demolition of the God argument, i.e. an impossibility, based on Occam’s my explanation in 1 and 2 as supported by empirical evidence is a more simpler and reasonable explanation than the idea of a God [illusory and impossible] based strongly on faith reason.

Hey, you are admitting to ‘ad homs’?? =; , becareful, the moderators will be taking note of this admission.
As to you points above, note my reply to Fanman above.

Pris,

I never claimed that it was. I understand that there is a consensus amongst theists that God is absolutely perfect.

What difference does that make to your syllogism/argument? It is a given that when you say “Absolute perfection is an impossibility” you mean in reality. The qualification “within an empirical-rational reality.” isn’t necessary.

I don’t understand how what you’ve stated here invalidates my refutation of your argument? Perhaps you could make it clearer/explain in more detail? My point is, how do you know that absolute perfection cannot exist in reality? You have to substantiate that claim, but it is not something that you could possibly know, because your (our) knowledge of reality is limited. Should I just take your word for it? You might as well be claiming that absolute perfection is impossible to exist in reality because you say so. The term “absolute perfection” is not self-contradictory or an oxymoron, it is used for emphasis.

What you’ve stated seems like a straw man, because I didn’t claim that 1 + 1 = 4, 5 or > is possible. You are refuting something of your own design, not something that I’ve claimed.

A straw man? Please explain why you think its a straw man? You’re arguing that “God imperatively must be absolutely perfect.” I’m not attempting to refute a claim that you didn’t make.

This is clearly speculation, not fact. This does not demonstrate why it is “imperative” that God must absolutely perfect, it demonstrates why you think that people have arrived at the conclusion that God is absolutely perfect. There is an epistemological difference that you don’t seem to recognise.

Pris,

IMV, we cannot claim as a premise that X is impossible, unless we know that X is impossible or that X being impossible is axiomatic. Since in this case we cannot know that X (absolute perfection) is impossible, and we know that X being impossible is not axiomatic, the premise that X is impossible is false. Are you claiming that to know that absolute perfection cannot exist and/or that absolute perfection being an impossibility is axiomatic?

What?

Your conclusion is that god does not exist, that god was invented.

But here you are using the “fact” that god was invented to justify one of your premises. Your premise is based on your conclusion. That makes your syllogism circular.