Well.... I'll be honest with you....I can't imagine how anyone can refuse accepting that believing in a being that's above logic is "logically" refuted.

Because it's good to have a good time. Enjoi your beer, and don't forget to tip your bartender and wear your mask...

:mask:

There's what's beyond logic, and there's the simply irrational. People confuse these two all the time.

I think that both the Platonist tradition, and obviously monotheist religion, understands the transcendent in terms of being 'beyond' both logic and the vicissitudes of existence. But this will usually be mistaken to indicate something irrational and non-existent. Folks don't understand what it is that they don't understand, and then proceed accordingly.

How is a god who is bound by laws more powerful than one who is not? — Bartricks

Omnipotence is completely achieved if a being is able to do any logically possible thing and since doing a "logically" impossible thing is a "logically" impossible thing (I don't know how you don't get that),therefore this version of "logically" impossible omnipotence is "logically" impossible to be achieved by any being.
Therefore God being above logic is """""""logically"""""""" disproved and therefore this belief can never be accepted by the human mind.

Are there edges to logic? Is logic a continuum or discrete?

That doesn't respond to my argument. All you've done is insist that omnipotence involves being bound by the laws of logic.

No it doesn't, as logic itself will tell you. Again, a being who is not bound by the laws of logic has more power than one who is, yes? How can that not be the case?

To put it another way, if God is the author of the laws of logic - and he must be, both because he wouldn't be omnipotent otherwise and also because if he wasn't then there would be something that exists, namely logic, that doesn't depend on God for its existence - then God is not bound by them. He, and he alone, can do what is logically impossible.

So you haven't addressed the argument. Which is understandable, as it is decisive. God authors the laws of logic and thus is not bound by it, and thus is omnipotent. If he were anything less than the author of the laws of logic, he wouldn't be omnipotent.

But even if - even if - God were bound by the laws of logic, he would not be omnipotent if he existed of necessity. For if God exists of necessity, then - again - he can't not exist. And that means he can't take himself out of existence. Which is something even I can do. Now, surely it is manifestly absurd to maintain that God is omnipotent yet lacks the ability to do something that even I can do? To find oneself having to say such things only underscores that you have a faulty concept of omnipotence. Which you demonstrably do.

Just to underline this, let's imagine that I am necessarily in Australia. That is, by some strange working, it is a necessary truth that I exist in Australia. Well, then I can't not be in Australia. The laws of logic prevent me from leaving. And that, surely, is a major restriction on my power? You can travel anywhere, but I can't. Now, how would it be to respond 'ah, but being restricted by the laws of logic is no restriction at all - I am every bit as powerful as you, for though I can't travel outside Australia, that's a necessary truth about me and so doesn't translate into a lack of power". Absurd, of course. Yet that's how you're reasoning about God.

What if I define omnipotence as the ability to do things expanded to its maximum?...and of course this maximum is logical...... therefore God is omnipotent without any need for breaking logic.....and I think my definition of omnipotence is congruent to the popular definition which is having absolute power because what makes the absolute absolute is of course logic and thus being able to break logic doesn't fall under having "absolute" power or in other words it's not omnipotence it must be something else....maybe fantasy.

It appears to me that "essence comes after existence" also means "action comes before substance". Allan Watts said Buddhists sometimes say "take responsibility for your birth". We act to come into this world and obtain a body (substance) afterwards. Is this congruent with your thoughts?

This seems germane to the question of a necessary substance

we need to be very careful about these mix’n’match ideas. Buddhism and Greek philosophy have some things in common, but they’re also literally worlds apart in other ways.

What the Platonic/Aristotelian tradition means by ‘essence’. It goes back to the Greek notion of ‘intelligibility’. Platonism says that what is real is what is intelligible. That is why, for him, arithmetic and geometry have a higher degree of reality than do sensable objects. In Platonist epistemology, seeing what a thing ‘is’, is itself an intellectual act. That is what ‘seeing the essence’ means. It’s a noetic act. That in turn is really only meaningful within the tradition of hylomorphic dualism. I think the modern rejection of substance, essence etc is in keeping with the rejection of classical metaphysics generally. But it’s a digression from this thread, I think.

Well in the Kantian system it seems we emerge from nothing (pure action) into substance (extended biological body). So essence is achieved after activity. Hegel expressed this as a logical act of nothing and being sublating each other. (This is consistent with emergence theory in newer debates) To then consider one's body and objects around and conclude they must be created by a spirit seems to me an impossibility and Kant said as much. He offers an alternative to classical physics which Avicenna's whole system is based

Can we both agree that by "the chain" we mean nothing but the total collection of contingent things? — BARAA

Well, no, because that's exactly the premise I challenged. There is a hidden premise in the argument to that effect.

1) contingent things exist.
2) a contingent existent needs an external cause to exist and if its cause is also contingent,it will also need a cause and so on.
3) the chain of contingent things either has a starting point or it doesn't have one.

You'd need a premise 2a) in here that states that there is a chain of contingent things that is nothing but the total collection of contingent things. But then the conclusion that there must be something necessary outside the collection of contingent things isn't very interesting. It doesn't rule out that the contingent things are part of some other whole (which is not the "chain" as defined here) which is necessary.

This appears to conflate objects and events. 'cause' is used synonymously with 'thing', but the cause of a thing isn't another thing: it is an event. The cause of you -- a contingent thing -- is not your mother, but your mother and father getting down to it exactly when they did (your mother's existence being a necessary but insufficient factor in your existence) You don't have a simple, linear chain of things from you back to the creation of the universe, rather an exponentially increasing number of causes involving a finite number of objects.

The idea of a single contingent event being responsible for everything is unshown and unassumed, since there isn't a one-to-one mapping of a thing to its effects. A single non-contingent thing might have had any number of non-contingent effects that where the causes of other, contingent things. Likewise a pluralism of non-contingent things might be reached based on your assumptions.

This appears to conflate objects and events. 'cause' is used synonymously with 'thing', but the cause of a thing isn't another thing: it is an event. — Kenosha Kid

I don't need to prove that an event necessarily has to have a begining otherwise it won't be an event at all so, either we'll have an infinite regress which is impossible or there will be a first event and since it will necessarily has to be caused(since it has a begining), therefore its cause is not an event.

we'll have an infinite regress which is impossible or there will be a first event — BARAA

Infinite regress isn't obviously any more counterintuitive than an uncaused thing.

Either way, that had nothing to do with my criticism.

therefore its cause is a thing not an event — BARAA

That way round it's a circular argument. The issue I took was with how you arrived at a linear chain of things back to an initial thing. Here your explanation is that the initial cause must have been one initial thing.

My point was that how you originally arrived at this is logically invalid. Any given thing may be caused by any number of things, each of which may be the partial cause of any number of other things. There's no path from this to a single initial thing that causes everything else. In fact, quite the opposite.

Taking your conception once again, the things involved were twofold. The things that caused them were each twofold, so fourfold. The things that caused them were each twofold, so eightfold. And so on and so forth.

Infinite regress isn't obviously any more counterintuitive than an uncaused thing. — Kenosha Kid

So you're actually saying that if infinite regress is impossible so has to be a necessary existent or in other words it's safe to say that you view the necessary existent as something that its existence isn't truly explained therefore it lacks meaning/explanation just the same as an infinite regress of contingent things does... I'd like to highlight the contradiction in your equalization and this contradiction is that a necessary existent is an existen which is self explanatory or in other words it's the existent which exists by essence of the entity and therefore it's totally logically sound to say it's completely different from the infinite regress because unlike the necessary existent,the infinite regress just delays the explanation without actually giving a true and sufficient cause for the existence and therefore it's absurd and meaningless.

My point was that how you originally arrived at this is logically invalid. Any given thing may be caused by any number of things, each of which may be the partial cause of any number of other things. There's no path from this to a single initial thing that causes everything else. — Kenosha Kid

In fact, Avicenna's point of this proof was to prove that one or more necessary beings have to exist so yes I agree with you,this proof alone doesn't prove the uniqueness (oneness) of that being.... it's very important to mention that after this proof he immediately began showing arguments for the attributes of the necessary existent and these attributes include uniqueness, eternity, omnipotence, free will, knowledge and others...
you can search for "the proof of the truthful" in islamic philosophy and have a nice trip in a new rich dimension of philosophy you probably never experienced "islamic philosophy".

I don't follow you. To be omnipotent is to be all powerful. So you can't be omnipotent 'and' constrained. For those constraints operate as limits on one's power - they wouldn't be constraints otherwise. And as reasoned reflection reveals, a being who was not subject to those constraints would be more powerful than one who was not. Yet, again by reasoned reflection, no-one can be more powerful than an all powerful being.

So, an omnipotent being is not constrained by the laws of logic. And indeed, those laws would have to be in that being's gift, for how else could the being escape being bound by them?

The point can be made in numerous ways. I mean, imagine that I - uniquely among us - exist of necessity. Well, now I lack a power that you have - I can't take myself out of existence. That's a real constraint, yes? I really can't take myself out of existence, whereas you can. What difference does it make to point out that as it is a true by definition that a necessary existent cannot not exist, I cannot not exist. That's to miss the point spectacularly. It's just to make a point about the concept of necessity, but it does nothing whatever to imply that I do not, in fact, lack a power.

Now just apply this to God. If you say of God - as you are trying to do - that God exists of necessity, then God is constrained. And you can play about with definitions all you like, the fact is going to remain that God is constrained. If you redefine omnipotence in such a way that this God, this God who cannot take himself our of existence, turns out to satisfy your revised definition, then all you've done is show that your definition of omnipotence is worthless and no longer refers to a being who is all powerful.

Look, your case is faulty in two directions. First, you can't 'get to' a necessary being. You're starting with contingent things, yes? But then you - or you on Avicenna's behalf - are then assuming that if something exists contingently it must have a cause of its existence. That assumption is essential - you can't get to the conclusion that a necessity existent exists without it. Yet that assumption is demonstrably false.

So, the way is blocked - you/Avicenna cannot get to your desired conclusion. You have not provided us with any reason to think that there exists a necessary being. You've just made a leap - you've leapt from 'exists contingently' to 'needs a cause for its existence'. But that's clearly a mistaken leap - that is, a leap that reason itself - logic - tells you is a mistake if you listen carefully. For something can exist contingently yet be uncaused, and something can exist of necessity yet be caused. So you have leapt in defiance of logic, and it is only by defying logic that you have reached the conclusion that a necessary existent exists - a conclusion that logic will also tell you is flatly inconsistent with God existing.

That's the other direction - in addition to not having shown a necessary being to be needed to stop the regress of causes, no necessary existent can be God. So your foundation is faulty, but so too is the building you've constructed on top of it.

God is 'not' a necessary existent, for God is all powerful and so can take himself out of existence if he so wishes - thus he can not exist.

There are other problems too (though what I've said above is decisive, I think). I mean, if God is constrained by logic, then logic is a curious force in the universe that exists independently of God, yes? So now you're positing a Platonic universe in which there is some Form of Reason that determines what else can exist and what that which exists can do. That's not a universe created by God, that's a universe in which God finds himself. Which is, of course, inconsistent with God being God if, that is, we make - as most religions do, I think - 'being the creator of everything apart from himself' - a defining characteristic of God.

Nothing I've said above is illogical. Nothing I've said above implies that I reject the laws of logic. And nothing said above implies that God himself defies them. That God can do things that defy them does not mean he actually is or has. So nothing I have argued above involves a rejection of logic. All we are talking about is logic's power - and you think logic has power 'over' God, whereas I think that logic itself - that is, reasoned reflection - tells us if we engage in it carefully that God, being all powerful, has power over logic.

I think our debate is on its way to become pointless so to end the whole thing....
Do you believe a necessary existent exists(not necessarily believe that this existent is God)?

In my opinion, @Bartricks' arguments push the rest of us to recognize that applying logic to the idea God, or even attempting to think about the idea of God as any kind of entirety or having any quality, breaks the language. And language often breaks when ideas are taken to extremes or absolute limits. One may as well ask if God can turn himself into an Ouroboros and entirely consume himself. It becomes absurd and meaningless. Which is pretty close to what the original Christian thinkers thought through and arrived at in the first few centuries AD, expressing their understandings as true as matters of belief, meaning in modern terms that the various attributes of God, when it was reckoned desirable to attribute any, were to be presupposed. The existence of God, which to question is a nonsense question, is not any kind of matter for demonstration, but rather an axiom of the larger system of belief and practice based on that belief. If weaker or less thoughtful communicants need a real God, easy enough, they can just presuppose it and believe it. Any further and one falls into fatal error, and clawing can take others with them.

Not pointless, you've just been decisively refuted, yes?

Am I wrong in saying that to get from 'contingent things exist' to 'there is a necesary existent' you need to assume that all contingent things have causes of their existence?

You do. For it is only if you make that assumption that we then get a regress of causes that can only be blocked by invoking a necessary existent.

So your case - your case 'for' a necessary existent - depends on a false premise.

And am I wrong in saying that if God exists of necessity then God cannot take himself out of existence - a power that even I have? No, you can't deny that. And yet that is obviously inconsistent with God being all powerful.

So you're trying to reach a destination that, if you reach it, will demonstrate God's nonexistence! You've set out in a broken car - so you won't get there - but were you to do so, you'd be an atheist!

As to your question - it seems you haven't been following at all what I have been arguing. No. I do not believe a necessary existent exists. I believe God exists. You, it seems, do not. What you believe in is not God, but a hobbled creature who must bow to laws of logic he did not create.

You claim to esteem logic, but like so many it seems you are only interested in listening to Reason when she tells you what you want to hear.

You said you're not christian but you sound jus like an extremist who refuses to think that his version of omnipotence is illogical....and no...a big No... I'm not deflecting,I just found that you believe that laws of logic are disposable and not absolute and thus I knew there can't be any common ground between us to built our arguments on cuz what ground is remaining when you believe logic is disposable!!!!!
So in order to slowly getting you back to logic I ask you a question:
Do you believe that a necessary existent exists?(not necessarily believe that this existent is God)

what ground is remaining when you believe logic is disposable! — BARAA

Time for you to tell us what it is, exactly, that you think logic is.

Logic is the mirror of absolute certainty that can be used to show weather a statement is true,false or just possible.

No, completely wrong. Look, you're the one who doesn't really respect logic, for I have used logic to refute your position and suddenly you don't care about that - rather than revise your view or address the criticism, you turn instead to me. So your respect for logic doesn't run too deep, does it?
I have already answered your question. But let me express it in the form of an argument and you can then tell me which premise you deny:

1. If God exists, no necessary existent exists
2. God exists
3. Therefore, no necessary existent exists

Logic is the mirror of absolute certainty that can be used to show weather a statement is true,false or just possible. — BARAA

Exactly, a set of rules for a game. The whole point about any idea of God is that he cannot be reduced to any game, therefore, not what he can or cannot do because that is part of the game, but rather that he's outside any game, however conceived. An indirect proof: If you know God, then he's not God: therefore God is unknowable in a very strong sense. Being unknowable, no set of rules applies. .

Your first premise is false and that's due to the fact that God by definition is absolute and contingency is an obvious lack of absoluteness unless you think that an existen might be neither necessary not contingent.

If you're right therefore the word God must be meaningless because if we know what entity does the word God stand for therefore God is logical....in fact if logic doesn't apply to God therefore there is no argument in the world that can be made to prove He is real (since logic doesn't apply to God therefore Logic doesn't apply to God's existence)

My last points:

1) Logic might be able to be broken. Is experience supreme? Maybe

2) Logic has not shown that "contingency" or "necessity" reside in the substance-core-essence of anything whatsoever. Cause and effect is real, yes. I can break a cup or spill apple juice in the hall. Those are meaningful for experience. Contingency and necessity properly belong to logical puzzles, and so this whole thread has plunged from Avicenna, in my opinion, into the den of Anslem, Duns Scotus, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibnizs' "ontological argument. People say those writers each have slightly different versions of that argument or that the modern modal argument for God is a different beast completely. But.. nop. You can't prove anything thing exists whatsoever from logical categories alone

So, just to be clear, by 'absolute' you mean 'exists necessarily' yes? So you're saying that the definition of God is 'a being who exists of necessity'?

That's not the definition of God. God is a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. Those are the 'essential' attributes of God. There are other attributes that there's debate over, but those three are sufficient to make the creature that has them God.

Now here's my defence of my premise 1. Which premise do you deny?

1. God can do anything, including destroy anything
2. If all things are destructible, no things are necessary existences.
3. Therefore, if God exists no things are necessary existences.

No doubt you will - you must - deny premise 1, as premise 2 is a conceptual truth.

But that means that by 'God' you do not mean an omnipotent being. You are just using the word 'God' as a synonym for a 'necessary existent' yes? That's all you mean by the term 'God'. Correct? You don't mean what, say, Jesus meant by 'God'; you don't mean the God of the Koran or the God of philosophical debate or the God people wonder about the existence of?

Maybe you can't take yourself out either. Maybe you would just go to Hades or Sheol. Who knows