Infinite_Loser

I don't know where else to put this, so I guess I'll just put it here.

This is primarily aimed at (A specific group of) atheists, but anyone can answer. Now, assuming there are an infinite number of possibilities for God, then how can one claim, with any reasonable faith, that no God exists? The admission that there are an infinite number of possibilities for God precludes atheism. To make such a statement while claiming to be an atheist is-- Dare I say it?-- Logically incoherent.

(When I say atheism, I'm talking about those who claim no God exists rather than agnostics.)

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Shauk

I apply this comment


"I contend we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."


It relates, I think.

Willravel

There aren't infinite possibilities for god. The only resources for god are religious texts and stories. There are like 20 major world religions currently, but let's be very generous. Let's say there have been 1 million total gods believed in since the dawn of man. All of those gods include one thing: they're supernatural. Without that, the meaning of god changes and it's just someone calling something non-supernatural god (like when someone says they see god as the universe or some such nonsense).

Supernatural = unproven, unverified, and currently unverifiable. So when someone says "God doesn't exist" it's simply a statement made to communicate that there's absolutely no reason to believe in god that's based in logic.

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ubertuber

For that matter, there are an infinite number of ways my car could break down. It's logically incoherent to assume that it runs at all.

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Shauk

furthermore, it's not infinite or zero.

it's not about numbers, it's about "1" or "0" in a binary sense.

true, or false
yes, or no.

in that light, might as well say it's 50/50

Infinite_Loser

Will, that's nice and all, but that really wasn't the point I was trying to make.

Excluding agnosticism, atheism is characterized by an absence of belief in the existence of gods. Now, I realize that a disbelief in God is not the same thing as the belief that there is no God, therefore I'm not concerned with the first position, as it poses no problems. It's the second position which provides a whole host of nasty logical problems. It's not uncommon to see an atheist use the argument "How do you know your God exists? God could be anything!" Well, if God could be anything, then to simultaneously make the statement that God doesn't exist, would be to make a contradiction (Something can't be anything yet not exist). That's why the statement, as I see it, is logically incoherent and precludes one from being an atheist, but rather an agnostic.

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Willravel

Only an idiot would make a statement like that. If any atheist says that to you, please send them my way. I won't want morons making atheists look bad (we're all looking at you, Lenin).

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inBOIL

Some infinite sets are larger than others. For example, one might consider that the infinite set consisting of all possibilities for God is smaller than the infinite set consisting of all possibilities for no God. If the first set turns out to be infinitely smaller than the second, one might conclude that the chance of God existing is infinitely small.

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Martian

As willravel points out, this is not a logic-driven argument.

However, let's put a different spin on it. I believe, Infinite_Loser, that you're a Christian of some description, am I correct? I don't need the details and I'm not judging, I just want to clarify that as a point of comparison. Personally I'm a dedicated fence-sitter, but that's neither here nor there.

Here's the catch, though: if you are Christian, you can't use the above argument to invalidate atheism without invalidating your own religion. If we assume for the sake of argument that it would be correct to say that there are an infinite possible ways in which God or a pantheon of gods could manifest, we have to accept as a given that one of those ways is for no gods to manifest at all; non-existence is one of those infinite possibilities. From there we can then equate atheism with any other faith, with the only difference being that atheism uses empirical evidence as a 'Bible.' From that perspective, you really can't use the infinite possibilities argument against atheists any more than they can use it against you, since those infinite possibilities contain both of your 'religions.'

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Infinite_Loser

I'm not sure how one could make this distinction as, by definition, infinite is undefined and inmeasurable. So there'd be no way of knowing this aside from simply assuming it to be true.

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Baraka_Guru

I would like to contribute to this thread, but it would first help to have a definition of God.

If we are taking God to mean a singular being as Creator, then I believe that such a being does not exist. If, however, we take God to mean something different, then my own beliefs could very well be parallel to such.

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Infinite_Loser

I'm not so sure how such an argument would invalidate my religion as, assuming God is anything, then, by association, my definition of God would be among one of the possibilities. This doesn't validate the atheist position, though, as while anything can be something, anything can't be nothing. And, yes, while I realize that the argument here is, if I'm understanding it correctly, that "Nothing is a possibility of anything (Which would make the probability of God existing being zero)", the usage of the word anything excludes nothingness (Or, in other words, existence doesn't include non-existence).

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Willravel

"God is the anything" is a simple mislabeling. God is not "anything". God is a deity, whether you consider he/her/it/them to be mythology or not. It's a personhood, not some concept of all that is.

Edit: if when one says "I believe in God" they are actually saying they believe in anything, then they're not even necessarily a theist or deist. They're just way too open minded.

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Baraka_Guru

Will, you've skipped over entire bodies of philosophy through the ages.

EDIT: (God is not necessarily a personhood.)

This is something else entirely.


We need a clarification of just what we're talking about when we say God.

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"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

—"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

—"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

Infinite_Loser

For argument's sake, let's just define God as the creator of the universe.

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Martian

This assumption includes non-existence as one of those possibilities, since "an infinite number of possibilities" would by definition include any possibility conceivable.

If you wish to use a completely literal interpretation of the statement "God could be anything" and therefore exclude non-existence as a possibility, that statement ceases to be atheistic in nature (which it never really was to begin with) and becomes an implied declaration of faith. Therefore, assuming such an interpretation for the statement "God could be anything," it for the purposes of this discussion carries essentially the same meaning as "God is an all-knowing, all-powerful benevolent creator," and any atheistic viewpoint becomes irrelevant. You are essentially making an argument against the different flavours of theism, rather than an argument for or against atheism. Regardless, the first highlighted statement and the second highlighted statement are inconsistent unless one adopts a more liberal interpretation of one or the other.

Also note that the statement "God could be anything" is not identical in meaning to the statement "God is anything." Your terminology in general is somewhat inconsistent here, which makes deciphering your message difficult.

EDIT for cross-posting -

This definition is theistic in nature and is therefore not well suited to a discussion of theism vs. atheism. A better definition would be "an entity assumed by some individuals to be the creator of the Universe," since it will allow discussion of God without an implied discussion of the Universe.

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JohnDonCon

I'm not following, how can we assume there are an infinite number of possibilities god exists? This type of assumption doesn't get us anywhere because you're not bringing up any evidence for assuming such a thing. If you assume there are an infinite number of possibilities for god and an infinite number of possibilities that there is no god you end up right back where you started. Making assumptions like that is the complete lack of logic, not even a speck of it whatsoever.

The type of question you're asking here appears to be dealing with the probability of god existing and to determine if god exists or not you have to come up with reasons for and against and weight them based on their legitimacy.

KnifeMissile

Your logical and analytical skills are as abominable as ever. You also like to make shit up, which seriously offends me. Either that, or you're totally ignorant of the meaning of the words (and phrases) that you use...

Infinity is not undefined. Indeed, how can something, by definition, be undefined? This is a clear example of you making shit up and using words you don't understand...

Now, I think I can agree that infinity is immeasurable but that doesn't mean it's incomparable. For instance, lets define a power set of a given set as the set of all subsets of the given set. It's not too hard to prove that the power set has more elements than the given set, regardless of whether the given set had an infinite number of elements or not! Thus, some infinite sets are larger than others...

Sorry for the edit. I don't ordinarily edit to this degree but I was so incensed with the first post that I wasn't reading this one too clearly. It's very late at night so, hopefully, not too many people have read the previous revision...

I think you're misunderstanding the argument. The conclusion of the argument you're trying (desperately) to refute isn't "therefore, there is no God." The point of the argument is that the burden of proof is on the theist to provide compelling reason to believe in their particular god. The atheism comes from the sad fact that no one has provided any evidence that such a being exists and, therefore, it's most reasonable to not believe in any...

Infinite_Loser

NVM

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ironman

Trying to prove god's existance throug scientific analysis is futile as science by definition is supported in natural facts that are constant and repeatable, meanwhile god is by definition super natural or BEYOND nature. God is about faith, and faith by definition is believing beyond logic. If you or I believe in god that's fine, if you and I dont, that's fine too, just dont try to convince an atheist of God's existance rationalizing it.

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roachboy

where does this assumption come from?
how do you imagine this would involve an atheist in your op?


let's give this goofy thing the benefit of the doubt.

say there's an operation behind it---say youre transposing something like giodarno bruno's idea that there are infinite possible worlds.

so:

world=>category=>meaning understood as manifold of possibilities=>a manifold of possibilities is a collection of all possible exemplars of the category==>if the category is "world" then it follows that there are infinite possible worlds.

none of this gets started without the category "world."

the demonstration repeats the characteristics imputed to "meaning."

if you assume a meaning is a manifold, when you ask about a meaning, you find a manifold.
as a manifold, a meaning would "contain" all possible exemplars.
a manifold in this sense is maybe a "tree" diagram that would connect all possible exemplars of the category.
another way: this particular idea of "meaning" is spatialized (projected onto the world) as a tree of exemplars, say.
a tree of clay pots would be the manifold "clay pot".

for any given category, there's an infinite number (?) of potential examples of the category.
but infinite here implies indeterminate: you can't make an exhaustive list of them. your tree cannot indicate all possible exemplars. there's always n+1. so maybe an arithmetical infinity, in the sense that you can't create a closed set. indeterminate more like.


anyway: nothing here goes beyond a discussion of the characteristics of a particular idea of "meaning" as it is applied to the case of a noun.

a meaning is a manifold is a meaning is a manifold.

"world" here: world=>category=>meaning understood as manifold of possibilities=>a manifold of possibilities is a collection of all possible exemplars of the category==>if the category is "world" then it follows that there are infinite possible worlds.


possible logic to justify substituting "god" for "world":

world is a category
god is a category
therefore god=world.

so we are basically being asked about the noun "god" which exists as a noun and just as a noun---and about the meanings that are or can be attached to that noun..

if that's the case, then what you're asking us to do is agree with you that the word "god" exists, and that a conception of what a meaning is also exists such that we can think in terms of infinite possibilities without loosing all specificity.

congratulations.
we have demonstrated that the word "god" exists and is a noun.

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Hain

I think the assumption, while sounds valid, is flawed. If there are an infinite amount of universes, and then an infinite amount of universal sets (each set with an alternate form of physics), yes some god like beings are capable of existing. These beings could be without limit to their power. However, these beings would not be the alpha-and-omega God because these gods were created as a consequence of infinite possibility, not the creator of infinite possibility.

Halx

The concept of god is a human invention. That's why there are so many variations. However, it all comes down to one thing: explaining and justifying the unknown and unknowable. If you let go of the need to explain the things you do not understand, then the concept of god becomes unnecessary. If you give god credit for the things you already understand, then you're escaping reality.

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