Just like proving there are no square circles, something as simple as "God doesn't exist" can be proven.
It seems to me the above coupled with....
Silhouette wrote:1) God must be at least in part beyond human conception
(if God were wholly within human conception then He would be entirely mundane with no divinity and therefore not God)
2) Human conception is limited to that which is not in any part beyond human conception
3) All within human conception does not qualify as God
means you are concluding that you have proven that nothing beyond your conception exists. In the specific case, God, but in general, if this argument works, then it ought to work for anything beyond your conception. I don't think that holds.
I also think that proofs are the wrong way to go, for both sides, or any side.
Can one infer that there is something beyond our conception or that has facets beyond our conception. I think so. In fact I think this is common and that we all do. I think there are facets of my wife and even myself, let alone the universe, that are beyond my conception, but at the same time I have good reasons for inferring are present. The clues I find are, yes, within my conception and from them I infer that there are things beyond my conception. The whole problem of other minds I think falls within a reasonable inference that there are other minds. I can't prove it, even to myself, but I think it is a reasonable conclusion. An inference to best explanation. Here we are talking about entities that are quite immanent with what for us are transcendent qualities, and God, at least in the (I think horrific) monotheisms, is mainly transcendent. Of course there are other conceptions of a deity, but it is trickier than my belief that aspects of people I know are beyond my conception.
Let's jump to a thought experiment: I get emails from someone who seems able to read my mind, make predictions about the stockmarket, read the minds of people around me, predict events. I think it is reasonable for me to conclude that this is an intelligence entity, one that I have not experienced elsewhere as far as I know. I might wonder if it is a deity, a psychic, an alien, an AI in some Chinese lab. I have the aspects I am in contact with: the emails and their amazing qualities. I experience these facets of the entity. But much I do not. Neverthe less I conclude that I am dealing with an entity that has facets beyond my comprehension (pretty much as i do with experts in many fields). I think in such a situation it is reasonable to infer that I am encountering a portion of an entity with facets that are beyond my comprehension. I may make guesses about what this entity is, but all my guesses, some listed above, are words that don't really show comprehension, just vague labels. I don't comprehend an alien that can do this shit. I don't comprehend the AI that does this. I mean, it's a machine of some kind, though so different from other machines the words don't really mean anything in terms of my comprehension and I certain do not comprehend it's abilities how it does this, what it is like to do this, how it is experienced by the AI or alien or deity. Just as I really don't comprehend what it is like for physicists who understand things and reach conclusions about things way beyond my abilities. I can use words like deductive processes or intuitive genius coupled with mathematical processes (none of which I understand) but I don't comprehend even these earthly more or less mundane creatures. In part they are beyond my comprehension. Though
it is rational, I think, to conclude, via inference to best explanation, that these uncomprehensible processes and facets of these mundane creatures exist. So also could I be convinced of someone I don't get to touch except via incursive thoughts, images and experiences in my head, should these consistantly lead me to things I could not have arrived at otherwise. I can't prove it to others, I can't even prove it to myself. But then proofs are really just the domain of symbolic logic and math, and I have never understood the theist and atheist attraction to proofs for such things. It seems like a category error to me.
Shit, we could use logic to proof things like quantum physics type stuff we know is true now COULD NOT be true using deduction. But then our deduction had hidden paradigmatic assumptions we didn't realize before.
The guy who cannot conceive of relativity theory or spooky action at a distance cannot use his inability to conceive of something as proof it does not exist.
One can of course attack the proofs of theists along the lines you've run here.
But demonstrating problems in the proofs of others is not proof the opposite is true.
We all use abduction, even to believe in 'the past' 'the coming future', to have some trust in our memory and evaluation of our own arguments. We all infer to best solutions about things we cannot conceive in full. That there is something beyond our conception. And in any case it would be foolhardy I think to think we have proved that if we cannot conceive of it it does not exist and also that no one else could be rational for believing in it. We should be able to find examples where others do not believe in things because they cannot conceive of it and we know better.
To have a rational belief does not entail it can be proved or even demonstrated to others. We all have beliefs we cannot demonstrate are true to others. In many cases these are specific contingent events - like something happened in private we cannot prove to others but they do accept the existence of such events - iow the ontology is not controversial, like say Jimmy raped me might be impossible to prove or even give much evidence at all of, but the ontological category of rape is not the issue. But we should be able to go beyond this and see how earlier people would not have been able to conceive of categories of events and processes, but we now consider them real.
And some people are vastly better than others at specific forms of abduction/inference and in general at this. Professional poker players, the best mathematicians, and so on. Take a walk in the woods with an indigenous shaman and you may not come to believe in animism, but you will realize that entities he refers to that you consider real, he can notice and understand better than you and also know, himself, that part of them is beyond his comprehension, just as even your best friend is. He can tell you who was recently here, what they were doing, what their state is (nervous, heading for sleep, rutting...) and you will not, in many cases, be able to see the clues at all, let alone the animals involved who are elsewhere. And all mammals, for example, have facets that are beyond our comprehension. There is stuff going on in there minds we do not know about. What it's like to be a bat and all that. But then also things we can infer, with different degrees of confidence. The indigenous shaman, if he is skilled, with greater confidence. Our axioms are set in place not via proof but via abduction. Our axioms about memory, the past, the futures, our perceptions and how they relate to the past, reality, the future. Yes, we can test these, but then the whole damn thing could be a dream with built in confirmation biases and saturated with illusions. Yet, we ground our understanding on these unprovable but useful (it seems) axioms we arrived via abduction. And then when others use abduction or inference, we get all ontologically and epistemologically puritanical.
Inference, interactions with entities that ALL have facets beyond our comprehension that we can be rational inferring, not proofs.
I have that within me that passeth show.
-Shakespeare
I think I can safely say that no one understands Quantum Mechanics.
-Richard Feynman
I think it is fairly rational to think there is something just prior to the earliest point in time in the Big Bang we think we know something about. That stuff existed. I think that's a reasonal assumption. But I can't prove it and whatever it was is beyond my comprehension.
