Debate: Does God Exist? # 2

The Argument from Logic and Logical Absolutes

The reason is, you see, it's logically true that something cannot bring itself into existence. If the universe did not exist, it would still be true that something could not bring itself into existence.

The truth would still be true whether or not it was known and whether or not the universe existed. Also, if logical absolutes, being true or false, depends on the existence of the physical universe, then they would stop having existence and meaning in the same way that gravity and motion would stop existing and have meaning.

But this would mean that logic is a property of the physical universe in the same way that gravity and motion are properties of the universe. But gravity and motion can be measured and tested. Not so with logic.

In fact, no test can be developed to measure, weigh, or photograph logic. This would mean that logic is not a property of the physical universe as are gravity and motion. Therefore, it cannot be said that it would cease to be true if the universe ceased to exist.

A seventh explanation I've heard is that trying to ask someone to demonstrate God's existence excuse me using the existence of logic to demonstrate God's existence is nothing more than a word game.

All right, it's a word game? Show me how it's a word game. Show me where it's logically incorrect. But atheists, when I ask them to do that, they don't demonstrate how it's a word game whatever that means, incidentally and they have yet to demonstrate to me how the argument is false, so I can't accept that as a reputation.

The eighth and final explanation I've heard offered by atheists is that asking them to account for the existence of logic is asking the wrong question. Okay? Why is it the wrong question? Give a logical reason why it is not right to ask an atheist to give account for the existence of logic and the logical absolutes.

Tell me why. Just saying it is wrong doesn't make it so. I would not expect an atheist to accept me saying, asking me to prove that God exists is the wrong question. He or she would be right in asking me why it is the wrong question.

As I said before, if there are other explanations that I have not listed here, perhaps Mr. Kagan would be glad to offer them for me, and then we could cross-examine them later. But before my time is up, I'd like to also try and show that the existence of logic and logical absolutes shows that there is a God.

Also please notice that I am not first assuming that God exists. I am first approaching the issue of logic and then concluding that God exists. First, the laws of logic are conceptual by nature. They occur in the mind.

The laws of logic are concepts. They cannot be frozen, weighed, measured, photographed, any more than love and humility can be frozen, weighed, measured, or photographed. The laws of logic are not found under rocks or in test tubes.

They occur in the mind. They are conceptual. You can think of them. You can write the laws of logic down on paper. You can talk about them and listen to them being discussed in a debate, but you cannot observe the laws of logic occurring in matter.

This is because they're conceptual by nature. It's an important point. Second, the laws of logic are absolute. This means that they don't stop being true if we disagree with them. It means their absoluteness is not dependent upon our wants, our brain chemistry, popular vote, how big the universe is, or how hot or cold something is.

They're absolute. They don't change. Otherwise, logic would not be dependable and consistent with itself and with reality, and we would have no way of being rational and judging the arguments in this debate.

Third, the laws of logic are transcendent. Logic transcends space and time. This means that if you were to go to any particular direction and reach the end of the physical universe, logical absolutes don't stop being true because of where you are.

If you were to travel back to the beginning of the universe or move a trillion years into the future, they don't stop being true because of when you are. At least no one has yet demonstrated that they've stopped being true.

Now I have a question. Is it logical to conclude that if there's a concept, there must also be a mind? Seems reasonable to me. Concepts reside in the mind, and thoughts reflect the mind. Since we have absolute and transcendent logical truths which are conceptual by nature, I conclude that there is an absolute and transcendent mind that, for lack of a better term, has authored the logical absolutes.

I call this absolute and transcendent mind God. You may or may not agree with my conclusion. Perhaps you're like Frank and refuse to accept that someone else got into the room and arranged the coins in a logical fashion.

Perhaps your worldview does not allow this argument to be true any more than Frank's presuppositions allowed him to believe someone got into the room and arranged the coins. But as I said before, proof is different than persuasion.

Now I again turn my attention to you, Edwin. You may or may not like my conclusion, but whether you do or do not, and no disrespect meant, your liking or disliking it has no bearing on it being true or false.

If my argument is not valid, please demonstrate to me how it is not valid. Please give me a logical explanation stemming from your atheistic perspective that accounts for the existence of logical absolutes.

Of course, in order to do this, you would need to use logic. I would even go so far as to say that to do so, you have to borrow from the Christian worldview to try and make your case in order to argue against the Christian worldview.

So how do you account for the existence of logic and logical absolutes from your atheistic perspective? I don't believe you can, and I conclude it is because your atheistic worldview does not comport with reality, but the Christian worldview does.

Thank you. Thank you, Reverend Flick. Edwin Kagan, your opening.

Atheism, Burden of Proof, and the Problem of Hiddenness

Good evening, sinners. I am Edwin Kagan, and I am an atheist, and I think I am somewhat overdressed for this audience. I really do. If you hear about the atheist funeral, a fellow goes and sees an atheist and says, here lies a sign that says, here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.

Oh my, a sad, sad atheist. Fifteen minutes, you say, the guy is in the church with his kid, and the preacher takes out a watch and puts it on the pulpit, and the kid says, what does that mean, daddy? And the minister says, nothing.

But here we have a triangle. Now, how many of you have ever met an atheist before? Well, this is great. Okay, fine. Now, how many of you believe in Zeus? Okay, you believe in Zeus. The green shirt believes in Zeus.

How many of you believe in Odin? How many of you believe in Isis? Osiris? Neptune? Quetzalcoatl? Jehovah the War God of the Hebrews? How many of you believe in Jehovah the War God of the Hebrews? Why don't you raise your hands?

God, God Almighty, big G, the logical imperative. Now, you see, you are atheist as to all of those other gods. All the term atheist means is without a belief in God. It's that simple, okay? Now, if you do not believe in Osiris and Poseidon and Zeus and the Titans and many, many others, Horus, then you're an atheist as to Horus.

You don't believe in that god. So I'm merely an atheist as to one more god than you are, you see. It's that simple, okay? These things get really convoluted and involved in questions of morals. I'm sure we'll get there in questions about how you have watches and how Frank can't know whether the coins are put in the room.

There are only two possibilities and so on. Well, of course, there usually are more than two possibilities. The thing you need to understand about debate and about proofs and arguments and discussions like this is I don't have to prove a thing.

Matt has to prove something. The person who is asserting that something is true has the burden of proof. It's that simple. Now, you would think that if what Matt says is this is so compelling a thing and so self-evident under the rules of logic, whatever that may be, not defined, that the god that is thereby revealed would also be rather self-evident, then why do we have all these different gods?

Why don't we know very clearly and for certain, and if it is the will of the god or gods that people believe in the god or the gods, why give mysterious coded messages in strange places to mentally retarded children and things like that?

Why not put on the moon, I, the Lord thy God, am one. Sahiro Israel, I am the Lord thy God. Why not put on every radio and television station simultaneously the great message of salvation? Why let people take chances with their immortal souls?

But of course, that's what God's always done in the storybook. God supposedly knows what he's doing, creates people. He's not happy with the results, so he creates a flood to kill them all. Even little children enter out of the womb, depending on your predilection.

They're scratching on the side of the Ark of Salvation, being shoved back down, and only four breeding couples survive. Noah and his wife, unnamed, maybe Joan of Arc, I don't know, and their three sons and their unnamed wives are the only breeding people.

Then things go along and they replenish the earth and then things get sinful again. God sends a mythical exodus from Egypt into the land of Canaan, not for a war of conquest, but a war of extermination where they morally slaughter every living thing.

Let everything that has breath be dead. Conquer and kill every one of those creatures of the one God who made them all. Then things still aren't going so well, so God decides that it's necessary to have a child sacrificed.

So God, following the form of Zeus and various other divinities of the time, makes a baby on the body of an unwed.