Does 2 + 2 = 4 need a god to be true?

[Adrift]

Existence exits.

If you mean by "existence" that something exists, then yes. I agree that "existence exists". Its kind of a weird phrasing though, isn't it?

Can existence not exist?

Sure.

No.

Oh. Why not?

Now we experience temporal existence.

Agreed.

The God we know and believe in an eternal existence without a beginning or end.

Also agreed.

Now the premise is existence. Existence exists. Question: Is there an uncaused existence? Yes. Now we know this to be God. The atheist or agnostic does not yet.

Hmm. Okay.

The quesetion is there an uncaused existence?

Yes, you said that for the theist that the uncaused existence is God.

The argument, there is an uncaused existence. The uncaused existence needs no God. Either this uncaused existence is the identity of God or there is none.

What in that argument does not make sense to you?

You're arguing for an uncaused existence. I think I got that. Then you say that "the uncaused existence needs no God". Which doesn't make sense to me because previously you pointed out that the "uncaused existence" IS God. Is this just another way of saying that the uncaused existence (God) does not need a creator? If so, then yeah, I agree that the concept of an eternal God does not require a creator.

If ontological, does not fit. What should it be called?

I don't know.

That was a jab. Please forgive me. I'm trying to keep it simple. I really am.

Oh ok. No offence taken.

We should be able to give reasons to others. Present the gospel to them. That is all we need to do. Give the reasons for our own knowing. And give them the gospel. If the consider God's words as His words they can know too. (John 6:45, 1 John 5:9, etc.)

We live in a world today where some people don't even believe in ANY God, never mind the God of the Christian Bible. It seems sensible then, that in evangelism we ought to provide good reasons for why we believe a god exists. At least then we have someplace to start a productive dialogue. 1 Peter 3:15 tells us that Christians ought to always be prepared with an apologia (a defense or a reason) for the hope that is in us for anyone who asks.

I have no problem with an infinite regress. Still requires an uncaused existence to be.

Well, no. That's the whole point of an infinite regress. Its just caused existence forever.

And such an infinite regress would still required some kind of uncaused cause.

Nope. To the contrary, an infinite regress requires only continuous cause forever and ever and ever.

Note that. To argue that an infinite regress needs no reason to be so is nonsense.

Exactly. That's why so many people think that an infinite regress in reality is impossible.

The reason would be the uncaused cause of some sort. At some point something is uncaused.

Then that wouldn't be an infinite regress. In cosmological debates the uncaused cause is typically either an eternal multiverse (the nontheist side of the debate) or an eternal divinity like God (the theist side of the debate).

The fact that God is or is not a material being has no bearing on God being eternal.

It doesn't!? Hmm.

Now we know God is a Spirit and not a material being. God's messengers are spirit too. Given at times what appears to be material form. Even God Himself appearing did so (His preincarnate Son). Ex nihilo meaning out of nothing, being from not anything. Since there was never nothingness. What was made was unique. Not made from something else.

I can't really parse what you're saying here.

If there was really ever nothingness. There would still be nothingness.

That's true for a materialist, but I'm not a materialist. When theologians and philosophers talk about creatio ex nihilo they're referring to God's ability to manifest material something from nothing. As far as I understand it, the nihilo in creatio ex nihilo does not include nonmaterial entities.

We would not be here either. Nothing comes from nothingness. There would be no uncaused existence. Nothingness is nonexistent. So because nothingness cannot be anything there was always something. Uncaused existence.

That argument of nothingness belabors the point.

I think maybe you're mistaken on what theologians and philosophers mean by "nothing". It kinda almost seems that you're agreeing with standard cosmological arguments for the existence of God, but you don't know that you do because you're misunderstanding or misusing the language and terminology usually employed.

Also, and maybe ironically, underneath all of this I get a sense of that you're advocating some form of presuppositional apologetics. I get a sense that you're doing natural theology while at the same time trying to shoehorn it into presuppositional apologetics, but maybe I'm off base there.

[Adrift]

Question, do proofs for God's existence presume existence or no existence?

It depends on the argument, but many (maybe even most) good apologetic arguments presume non-existence, and then, following inductive or deductive reasoning, work towards existence.

[MaxVel]

Question, do proofs for God's existence presume existence or no existence?

Do you mean (1) the existence of the arguer ; (2) the existence of God; (3) existence per se?

If the only existence the skeptic accepts are temporal existences. It makes no sense to try to prove there is a temporal existent God. An eternal existence has to be presumed for a valid proof of God's existence.

Can you support the underlined sentence, please?

Existence is presumed. It has to be an uncaused existence. The argument being God is uncaused being is it not? To me presuming existence to prove an existence for God is nonsense. Start with the uncaused existence. Identify the uncaused existence to be none other than God Himself.



You can draw both those conclusions. Since the identity of God is the fundamental self evident truth of all truth. Uncaused being. Immutable, eternal, existence who constitutes reality. (Acts 17:28)
In the classical arguments to prove God exists, existence itself is presumed. The believer is thinking uncaused eternal, the skeptic nonbeliever in temporal terms. One has to start with an uncaused existence which needs no God. (see Isaiah 44:6)

You're taking a presuppositional approach, then?

I'm not sure that Aquinas presumes existence as part of his arguments. I'll have to check that out, maybe Leonhard can help.


ETA: I have a question, 37818: Is English your native language? I'm asking because you're quite often ambiguous, and your sentence structure is sometimes ungrammatical, which all makes your argument difficult to follow.

[Leonhard]

It is very simple. Existence exists... Can we argue there is no existence? Seriously. No.

"Existence exists." Ayn Rand's favorite wording.

I think I know what you mean by it, though again I don't like the wording.

For instance if we interpret it to mean “All existing things exist", then its a simple tautology which you can't conclude anything from. However if you go by Rand's epistemology, then like her you're simple claiming that there is an objective reality outside of your mind, independent of it, which actually exists.

I think though you've got your own interpretation more along the line of "Something exists." Am I wrong?

An uncaused exsitence has no cause. Needs no Creator. Needs no God.

If by God you mean an ultimate cause of its existence, and by 'uncaused existence' (which is another vague wording I wish you ditched) you mean 'something has necessary existence', then yes. Something that exists necessarily (or who's essence is existence), doesn't have a cause of it existing, otherwise it would exist contingently. That's a tautology as well.

Any argument which sets out to prove the existence of God has already denied such an existence. As I stated there is an uncaused existence. It, this uncaused existence NEEDS NO GOD.

I'm afraid you're wrong. None of the arguments from classical theology, such as Aquinas five ways, or even Anselms ontological arguments, etc... deny that God exists without a cause. In fact they actually prove this as corollary, furthermore proving that he's timeless, simple, changeless, all powerful, the source of all goodness and the end that all goodness seeks, etc..

I think you're just wrong about them.

Then again, I could be wrong about what exactly you mean by 'uncaused existence'.

Furthermore, if we can premise that there is no God. That cannot then be show that is absurd. The concept of no God is not therefore absurd. The concept of no existence is absurd.

I'm not sure what to respond to this. You might want to take a look at the bolded sentence, its broken english.

If you meant "[the premise that there is no God] cannot then be [shown to be] absurd." that's just false, since as soon as you've established that God exists by rational argument, you've rendered the intellectual position of holding that God doesn't exist to be absurd. Furthermore its fairly easy to show that the premise 'there is no God' leads to worldviews that are intellectually inconsistent, such as Plantinga has done with his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism.

If I understand you correctly you've said the following.

'Something that exists nescessarily doesn't have a cause.' "has no cause. Needs no Creator. Needs no God."
'Something exists' "Existence exists."

And then I'm not sure what you're trying to do actually... prove that there isn't a God? I don't think that's going to be very successful.

It seems you're trying to make an argument for God, or you're trying to argue that intellectual arguments for God fail. Not sure which actually to be honest.

[Boxing Pythagoras]

Sorry BP, but in Base3, there is no such value as "4", so 2 added to 2 does not yield 4. It yields 11. It's as nonsensical as saying dog + cat = orange.

I didn't say that, in base-3, "2+2=4" is a true expression. I said that, regardless of the base of your counting system, two added to two yields four. In base-3, adding two to two gives four. In base-13, adding two to two gives four. In base-googol, adding two to two gives four.

The base-3 expression "2+2=11" still means that adding two to two yields four. The fact that we are using base-3 symbols to represent four rather than base-10 is irrelevant. The base-3 symbol "11" still means "four," in exactly the same way that the base-10 symbol "4" means "four," and the Greek symbol δ' means "four," and the Roman numeral "IV" means "four."

Arbitrarily changing the symbols involved doesn't change the fact that two added to two always yields four.

[Leonhard]

I didn't say that, in base-3, "2+2=4" is a true expression. I said that, regardless of the base of your counting system, two added to two yields four. In base-3, adding two to two gives four. In base-13, adding two to two gives four. In base-googol, adding two to two gives four.

The base-3 expression "2+2=11" still means that adding two to two yields four. The fact that we are using base-3 symbols to represent four rather than base-10 is irrelevant. The base-3 symbol "11" still means "four," in exactly the same way that the base-10 symbol "4" means "four," and the Greek symbol δ' means "four," and the Roman numeral "IV" means "four."

Arbitrarily changing the symbols involved doesn't change the fact that two added to two always yields four.

I concur.

[robrecht]

Me too. Language is a symbolic system for referring to reality, a reality that cannot be reduced to language, 'though language itself is also real.

[Bill the Cat]

I didn't say that, in base-3, "2+2=4" is a true expression. I said that, regardless of the base of your counting system, two added to two yields four.

In Base 3, there is no such value called "four". So, no, it does not yield "four", it yields "one one".

In base-3, adding two to two gives four.

No it doesn't. It yields one one. The value from zero may be the same distance, but the representation of that distance is different.

In base-13, adding two to two gives four. In base-googol, adding two to two gives four.

Because the term "four" exists in those systems.

The base-3 expression "2+2=11" still means that adding two to two yields four.

No it doesn't. It means that adding two to two yields "one one".

The fact that we are using base-3 symbols to represent four rather than base-10 is irrelevant.

It is absolutely relevant. And absolutely the point.

The base-3 symbol "11" still means "four," in exactly the same way that the base-10 symbol "4" means "four," and the Greek symbol δ' means "four," and the Roman numeral "IV" means "four."

When converted to a different system that contains the term "four", yes. But within those systems, there is no such value called "four". So, in Roman numerals, II + II does not equal "FOUR", it equals "IV".

Did you read the article I linked at all?

[Bill the Cat]

Me too. Language is a symbolic system for referring to reality, a reality that cannot be reduced to language, 'though language itself is also real.

An interval scale shows this is not always true. The best example would be a centigrade (Celcius) thermometer. The change in heat between 0oC and 10oC is the same as between 10oC and 20oC. But watch out! 20oC is not twice as hot as 10oC! Why? Interval scales have arbitrary zeros (just because we decided to call it zero), rather than absolute (true) zeros. At 0oC water freezes, but that does not mean that there is no heat.

0oK = -273oC. Since one degree indicates the same heat change in both scales, we can see what happens when we compare them.

20oC = 293oK
10oC = 283oK
0oC = 273oK

Thus 20oC is not twice as hot as 10oC! Although this may seem confusing, it becomes very clear when you switch to the Kelvin scale. 293oK definitely does not even look like it is twice as hot as 283oK.

[Roy]

Does 2 + 2 = 4 need a god to be true?

No

[robrecht]

An interval scale shows this is not always true. The best example would be a centigrade (Celcius) thermometer. The change in heat between 0oC and 10oC is the same as between 10oC and 20oC. But watch out! 20oC is not twice as hot as 10oC! Why? Interval scales have arbitrary zeros (just because we decided to call it zero), rather than absolute (true) zeros. At 0oC water freezes, but that does not mean that there is no heat.

0oK = -273oC. Since one degree indicates the same heat change in both scales, we can see what happens when we compare them.

20oC = 293oK
10oC = 283oK
0oC = 273oK

Thus 20oC is not twice as hot as 10oC! Although this may seem confusing, it becomes very clear when you switch to the Kelvin scale. 293oK definitely does not even look like it is twice as hot as 283oK.

[Paprika]

Thus 20oC is not twice as hot as 10oC! Although this may seem confusing, it becomes very clear when you switch to the Kelvin scale. 293oK definitely does not even look like it is twice as hot as 283oK.

The discussion is about addition, not multiplication.

[Bill the Cat]

It shows how systems can affect the result in different ways depending on the scale used.

[Bill the Cat]

The discussion is about addition, not multiplication.

Please do us all a favor and just shut up.

[robrecht]

It shows how systems can affect the result in different ways depending on the scale used.

What exactly did I say that you are disagreeing with here?