Atheists - prove it.

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I have heard some philosophical absurdities in my time but this one is a beauty. and what a sleight of hand, you propose that the number one does not need the universe to exist and when LKL rightly points to the falseness of this you pull multiverses out of the hat. So either you are suggesting that the universe/universes have always existed or that the number one exists outside time and space. Which is it?

Not at all. Admitting you're wrong about something just shows that you're willing to self-evaluate, THINK, and adjust your position when you make a mistake. And a lot of times it's not really about being "wrong," but maybe not really understanding, for instance, logical errors in what has been said. There are those who somehow feel the need to stand by the errors at all costs. Those people look a lot sillier than you do--so don't worry about it!


SLIGHT misconception...

The burden of proof is always on the one making a positive claim. "God does not exist" is a positive claim. It may be a positive claim about a negative, but it is still a positive claim nonetheless. So it is a huge mistake to cry "can't prove a negative!" if someone asks you to prove "God does not exist." You can cite whatever evidence you think is there to show "God does not exist," which of course can be refuted.

The loophole is like what I've said earlier is "I do not believe God exists." Basically what a person is saying is "I believe in lots of things...God just doesn't happen to be one of them." The idea here is really about whether one acknowledges whether one can know God exists or not. You're saying as far as you know God MIGHT exist, but you just don't believe that He really does exist. It's a sneaky way to avoid an argument, though, and from what I gather it seems that many people saying that really believe in some positive claim that could be refuted. They just don't want to admit it. I'd find it less annoying if more people would admit to being agnostics, which they really are.

If I said "I believe that God exists," the same rule applies. I'm saying that I believe something, not making a statement of truth. If you want evidence that "I believe," the fact that I made the statement and had no reason to lie about it ought to be evidence enough.

Further, evidence is never "proof." The only "proofs" that God exists are really logical proofs. The only real attack on logical proofs is an attack on logic itself. The problem, though, is by attacking the value of logic you're attacking the mechanism itself by how you came to the conclusion that, say, logic is invalid. Anything you say beyond that point becomes self-refuting. You then have the burden of challenging the truth of the actual premises.

Who are "we"?

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me existence either is or is not. There either is a God or there is not. Something like that does not leave room for "grey areas." Whether there is any consequence of existence/non-existence is irrelevant. As an example, I have a nice bicycle in my storage shed. It clearly exists. But the fact of its existence really has no bearing on the course of my day.

For the Christian believer, there IS consequence because we choose to acknowledge the consequence of our faith and accept God's role in our day-to-day experience. Just because an unbeliever fails to see the consequence of God's existence doesn't mean he can somehow just "wish God away."


How do you KNOW it's fiction, though? Why suppose there ISN'T a spirit world in the first place? You're begging the question if you assume there is no spirit world without proof that there isn't.

You mean the idea that there are no universals? Of course you can annihilate it. All known material in the physical universe is composed of atoms. That's at least ONE universal. All known organic life forms have DNA. There's another. Everyone who reads this can only do so as the end result of computer technology.

Or was your point the silliness of such a position should LKL take it?

What do even mean by a spirit world?

The absurdity was to propose the idea that mathematical truths could be different from what they are. From that you can infer whatever you like through it. The argument from abstract objects holds that we have no good reason for thinking that numerical concepts (though mathematics is just an example, it works just as well for things like the law of non-contradiction) are universe contingent and that they require ontological grounding because they have ontological influence. Grounding is an attempt to solve the problem of universals.



Nominalism is a pretty reasonable alternative, despite the fact that it is not my view. It just holds that abstract objects are contingent on physical properties. There are actually good reasons for thinking this but there are also arguments against it as well. The best reason for thinking that abstract objects need to exist would be for example the law of non-contradiction... even if the universe does not exist, it cannot exist and not exist at the same time, so we have good reason for thinking that the law would still exist regardless.

Define what is mean by 'the number 1 exists' first.

It is a necessarily existing abstract object. I already said that.

^^^ What do you mean by 1 and what do you mean by exist.

Why would an athiest have to prove anything?

I don't think any of the religions are true. I find them to be farfetched to very farfetched theories, with often illogical reasoning or/and contradictions. These theories have at best a teribbly small chance on being the truth imo.

To me it's either of two options.

Option 1: There is a god who made intial life and the universe (Why would it bother making a universe? where did it come from? what is his purpose, if any? how was it created? why would it exist?)
I would assume it never bothered to change much if anything on earth.
There is no strong evidence a god creature ever made a change or influenced something on earth. (Why would it? there is no evidence, a god creature would care about any species we know. There is no absolutely convincing, logical evidence that a god like creature exists and even in the assumption it would exist, there is no evidence it would have the motivation to register what we do nor that it would be concerned about what we do.)
Anyway I think we shouldn't care. If this god creature was there it surely never made itself known to us, nor what it wants. It be its own fault if we don't do as it wishes cause it never gave us any evidence or logic to follow to believe in it and it rules, assuming it exists and it even has rules made for us (Why? abuse of its powers? Is It egoistic? Is It sadistic? Doens't it got anything else to do? Is it bored? Is it experimenting? Would that mean it doesn't know everything? Would It have emotions? Does It use reasoning? Does It apply logic? Would it pick earth and humans?)
A random god creature making the universe, only supported by our imagination seems less likely then a scientific explanation for the universe

Option 2: There is no such god creature. Science explains the universe, that what we don't know or can't explain yet, has a scientific/logical explanation we yet have to discover.
This sounds more probable in my mind.

By stating numerical concepts are necessarily existing abstract objects, I have already told you the answer to this question. By one I mean the ontological truth of numerical laws and by two I mean that these laws are necessarily existing (there is no logically possible universe where they could not exist).

Quite simply a reality that exists apart from physical reality. Most, if not all, religions teach that the human body is inhabited by a spirit/soul/ghost/etc. and upon physical death said entity is freed from the aforementioned human body. What happens to it from there is a matter of debate. Some say it goes to heaven. Some say it goes to hell. Some say it goes to an intermittent realm, like the Greek concept of Hades, before going somewhere else. Still others believe that the departed soul returns in a new physical body of some form, not necessarily a human one, and through some transcendent exercise of that being the soul escapes the cycle of life and enters a perfect peace.

There are any number of ways of thinking of a soul and/or a spiritual realm. I'm thinking in fairly broad terms, not necessarily terms that fit my own ideas of the spiritual plane of existence. It's not really that "deep."

91, you are missing my point entirely. Numbers are NOT abstract, in this universe. Intergers have physical reality completely outside of our minds, in this universe. In some separate universe (or prior to the big bang, as I already mentioned)- NOT a multiverse that is merely the unfolding of our own into multiple universe-petals, but a completely separate system, the constants that make reality what it is for us might well be different, meaning that mathematics, intergers, and everything else would also be different. 'One' is a product of this universe, not a cause of it. The fact that you cannot conceive of such a universe does not mean that it is impossible.

Numbers ARE abstract, though. They only really describe what we see and observe. You can call a single atom "one atom," but is it really one? Atoms of various elements have a plurality of particles, specifically electrons, protons, and neutrons. OK, so you can count these particles and list atoms on a periodic table that describes the internal plurality of those atoms. But you can still dig deeper and show that even these particles are made up of still more particles. Fixed numbers are essentially meaningless in terms of their physical properties--which, btw, there is no such thing. It appears you have to prove the physical existence of numbers.

I need to know something about "1." What color is it? What does it taste like? You have to describe physical properties of "1." What you CAN'T do is attempt to describe "1" in terms of describing quantities. You can't say, for instance, there is 1 car parked in front of my house, therefore "1" exists. We're talking about numbers, not cars, or anything else that you can count. Neither can you say that I typed "1," therefore it exists. Typing or writing "1" is merely showing a symbolic representation of an abstract concept, not showing the actual concept itself. And you can't point to mathematical formulas, either, because that would be begging the question.

Mathematics is abstract. It is our mental modeling of what physically exists in the universe. Numbers - how they work in the real world, in this universe - are not abstract; you are confusing the model for the thing itself.

Intergers have real-world, physical confirmation in the ordering of the elements on the periodic table; the fact that hydrogen might have neutrons, and the fact that protons are made up of smaller subunits, does not change the fact that exactly one complete proton makes exactly one hydrogen atom (or ion), and nothing else. Exactly two protons makes exactly one helium atom. Exactly three protons makes exactly one Lithium atom, and so on. These things exist outside of our minds, and those intergers were there long before humans were scratching marks onto sticks or shells to count.

OK, so demonstrate physical properties of "1," or any number for that matter.


Begging the question. Besides, elements don't seem to care where they're placed on a table. The ordering of the elements is a an arbitrary HUMAN construct. Basing the ordering of elements tells us nothing of, for example, what those elements actually DO. That is merely a type of organization which exploits certain characteristics of those elements. Note that I'll never once dispute the usefulness of such organization.


Merely a physical manifestation of the abstract--you are using numbers as descriptive language. You have not demonstrated that they physically exist.


2=1? Or 2x=1y? I don't care about variables. Where are "2" and "1"? Again, you are using numbers as adjectives in abstract ways. Once again, USEFUL, but not what I'm looking for.



So 3=1? I'm getting confused... I thought 2=1. (ok, I'm just kidding...)


I'm not saying that pluralities ONLY exist in the human mind. And I'm not saying numbers don't exist at all. But using adjectives to prove an abstract thing physically exists is pointless.

In my own personal experience, "music" is another one of those physically non-existent things. You can, for instance, show the behavior of sound waves. You can analyze various collections of frequencies and show harmonic relationships within given timbres and maybe even show how rapid fluctuation of collections of sound waves affect the emotions of an audience (even if subjective responses are merely anecdotal, in THIS case it's the best available data you can get). But "collections of sound waves," while accurately describing what goes into a person's ears, is not what a person will tell you they are hearing. They perceive the organic unity of those sound waves and label that unity "music." Music is abstract, but it is intentional (well, usually). It has some creative source, some communicative encoding/decoding that gives it physical substance UNTIL it is perceived by another mind from which it did NOT originate.

Numbers operate the same way. If I conceive of "1," all I have to do is type or write "1" and you know exactly what I'm talking about. Mathematical disciplines such as algebra are dedicated to manipulating these abstractions and helping us learn clearer paths to understanding relationships all around us. One proton is still one proton. But is one proton "1"? Is "1" a proton? Surely they aren't the same thing! Hence the difficulty. You can't really attribute any kind of physical manifestation of any number to anything without using it as descriptive language, at least not in any way I can think of (and even if you could, my point would still stand). It does not, in and of itself, physically exist.