From: lizi@ocf.berkeley.edu (Cosma R. Shalizi)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: GOD is EXISTENCE
Date: 3 Oct 1992 13:15:19 GMT
Organization: Vampire Research Group at Berkeley :)
NNTP-Posting-Host: lightning.berkeley.edu
Summary: Scattering fallacies like rabbit turds...

In article <1992Oct3.090132.7052@cs.ucla.edu> robert@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Rob Karmolinski) writes:
>[deletions of no great merit] Let us regress to the *original*
>definition of God:  God is *the* Creator of the Universe.  By doing
>this, I will hopefully put an end to all of the philosophical
>discussions concerning the existence of God, by proving once and for
>all that God does in fact exist:
>	1:  God created the Universe.	(by definition)
>	2:  The Universe exists.	(by inspection)
>	3:  Assume God does *not* exist.
>	    4:  Then, the Universe was never created.	(by #1)
>	    5:  Then, the Universe does not exist.	(by #4)
>	6:  God *does* exist.		(by contradiction, #3, #2, #5)
>Whew!  Now that I've done that, it is trivial to show that God did in
>fact write the bible, and everything in it is true.  I leave this as
>an exercise for the readers, for I am tired now.  (Here's a helpful
>hint to get you started:  God wouldn't lie about a thing like that,
>would He??)  And to think, I used to be an atheist.
>Rob
    I have a feeling this was meant as a joke, but I drank six Jolts in
a row around midnight and there's not much else to do, so here goes...
    The word for today, boys, girls and larval others, is circularity.
The proof was fine through step 3 (inclusive). Unfortunately, there
was no reasoning until after step 3. Infer that "The universe was never
created" from "The universe had no Creator" is invalid. Many things, e.g.,
clouds and pandemic outbreaks of disease, are created without a purpose-
ful creator. Even if you substitute "Cause" for "Creator," you assume
that
	a) Everything must have a cause and
	b) God does not need to have a cause.
I happen to agree with a but it is by no means poven. Certainly, if it was
true, it would blow b straight to hell (pardon the expression). Something
like
	a') Everything except God has a cause
is even worse, because it opens the way for skeptics, atheists, etc. to
substitute "the universe" for "God," against which theists have never
been able to propose a decent argument. This proof of God, therefore, isn't.
   Even if we grant the theist #4 (if there is no God, then the universe
was not created) #5 does not follow, unless the universe must have had a
beginning in time. Leaving to one side the question which springs immediate-
ly to mind ("When did God begin, then?"), it is at best a contingent fact,
inferred through a long and not extraordinarily well-supported chain of
reasoning, that the universe did in fact have a beginning. The cosmlogical
state of the art has changed in the past, and may do so again.A "proof"
which depends on the majority few of a group of scientists will not stop
debate on any philosophic topic, watever else it may do; nor should it.
   In other words: Wrong.
   There, I'm feeling much better now...
	Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
	In Real Life: lizi@ocf.berkeley.edu
	larval physicist writing on a bad terminal which eats characters
	VP, Campus Crusade for Cthulhu (Berkeley)
THE STARS ARE RIGHT: CTHULHU IN '92! WHY SETTLE FOR THE LESSER EVIL?
-- 
"Some savages are persuaded by the 'natural light' that it is their duty to
 eat people, and even Voltaire's savages, who are led by the voice of reason
 to hold that one should only eat Jesuits, are not wholly satisfactory."
-Bertrand Russell on Rousseau in _A History of Western Philosophy_, p. 694