Debate between Theism (NOT Christian Theism) and Atheism.

This topic is purely opinion since there is no proof one way or the other. However, if one simply reflects on the hundreds of previous incarnations of god that humans have invented it can easily be discarded as belief in magic and nothing more.

Furthermore, although as stated there is no proof, science marches on and bit by bit we have learned how things work which squeezes a belief in a creator or any such thing into an increasingly tiny corner of reality.

On the other hand, if there is a god who has the slightest concern for the existence of humanity, where is the evidence? To be clear, by evidence I don't mean lack of a better explanation. I mean actual evidence.

Yes although I don't think we can claim that premise one is necessarily true.

In any case, the second and third premises seem redundant and everything rests on the judgement someone will make regarding the first premise. I've seen the Kalam attempted with more stages and quite an effort to hide the part where the reader is invited to arrive at the desired conclusion, that God cause the universe to exist and that, therefore, God exists.

Yes, Modal Logic is a right load of rubbish, which is true at least in my world. I don't see it as advanced logic. It has more to to with pseudo-logical tricks in rhetoric.

Interesting… few philosophers are modal skeptics. Also, if the S5 axioms of modal logic are true, then Plantinga’s argument is valid.

Also, I was able to show that Plantinga's argument isn't deductive logic at all, and why it isn't. Since then, others have agreed with me. I may have read Gödel's one. I'll find it and post it here.

Can you tell me why Plantinga’s argument isn’t valid?

Unfortunately, the only copy of Gödel's proof I could find is in symbolic notation. Secondly, it's also clear that his arguments aren't accepted in philosophy or by philosophers because his axioms are unsound. Since the article tells us that he used Anselm's arguments as a basis, we can assume that it's identical, except that it's "tarted up" by means of applying his Many Worlds nonsense to it. All he has done, in essence, is to thoroughly disguise the flaws in Anselm's arguments, so it isn't worth learning logical symbolic notation to understand it, since it will be an incorrect argument, in disguise. I think that if it was of any use, that the Wiki article would have rendered it into English. Gödel has a cult status but I'm convinced he was a fake and that his PhD was unearned. His incompleteness theorem is another example of his ability to deceive, which adds nothing to human understanding because it's intuitive anyway and he just found a novel way to represent intuition pseudo-formally.

Strong critique of Gödel, which I disagree with. He did more than the incompleteness theorem and his ontological argument; however, even if is he truly insane, that does not undermine his argument.

We may as well, therefore, consider Anselm's argument, which, by memory, goes something like "any Being that we may imagine to be a greatest real entity is a greater entity than the same Being when it is imagined to exist only in the human understanding. Therefore such a Being is real".

Obviously, I put it in my own words; but I think that's an accurate portrayal of his argument. Equally obviously, it isn't a logically deductive argument but simply an invitation to believe something. Therefore we can assume the same about Gödel's attempt to deceive philosophers. I actually believe that Gödel was probably insane. I believe that Plantinga made a better attempt.

The problem with Anselm’s argument is that he defines God into existence. Not a good argument. Kant showed existence is not a predicate, and Anselm used it as one.

Incidentally, here's another paragraph from the same wiki article. In another discussion we were speaking about computer verification and I argued that it cannot necessarily be trusted, because they are context-dependent. The issue is that the model or Modal logic that was being used is fundamentally incorrect. Now, that should be obvious to anyone after a ten seconds glance at it. It's rhetorically based gibberish, heavily prone to all sorts of sliding meanings. It's linked, of course, to Many Worlds Theory, since Modal logic means model logic or logic that's only applicable to models of reality, with various inbuilt boundaries or sets of properties.

Computer-verified versions[edit] (of Gödel's obviously incorrect Ontological Argument):

Christoph Benzmüller and Bruno Woltzenlogel-Paleo formalized Gödel's proof to a level that is suitable for automated theorem proving or at least computer verification via proof assistants.[20] The effort made headlines in German newspapers. According to the authors of this effort, they were inspired by Melvin Fitting's book.[21]

In 2014, they computer-verified Gödel's proof (in the above version).[22]: 97 [note 9] They also proved that this version's axioms are consistent,[note 10] but imply modal collapse,[note 11] thus confirming Sobel's 1987 argument.

In the same paper, they suspected Gödel's original version of the axioms[note 12] to be inconsistent, as they failed to prove their consistency.[note 13] In 2016, they gave a computer proof that this version implies ◊◻⊥ , i.e. is inconsistent in every modal logic with a reflexive or symmetric accessibility relation.[24]: 940 lf  Moreover, they gave an argument that this version is inconsistent in every logic at all,[note 14] but failed to duplicate it by automated provers.[note 15] However, they were able to verify Melvin Fitting's reformulation of the argument and guarantee its consistency.[25]

Apparently, G based his arguments on Anselm, so we can assume that they are unsound. Unlike Elroch and others, I don't assume that an argument given in formal logic is correct. My scepticism leads me the other way: I assume that if they don't put it in English, it may well be faulty and they want to hide that.

Well his argument obviously isn’t only in formal logic. He wrote a treatise on it but never published it. It was found later, and someone corrected his logical proof because it was initially incorrect. That assumption (because he based it on something faulty the new thing is faulty) is itself wrong. He fixed many problems with Anselm’s argument. 

I don't think one can show that existence is not a predicate. I take that to mean that existence doesn't alter the quality of something. If the object of an idea exists, it would certainly seem to make it different from the same thing that's only an idea and doesn't exist. We can have an idea of something, whether or not it exists: but then we're only talking about the qualities of our ideas. If Kant was only discussing his ideas of something (either existing or not existing) then he wasn't talking about a "thing", except inasmuch as an idea is a thing.

If existence is a predicate, Anselm’s argument is valid. You can only define things into existence if existence was a predicate.Even then, if we have an idea of a thing and that thing is found to exist, then our idea is part of our picture of reality. If it doesn't exist, it's merely imagination. It seems pretty clear that Kant's idea that existence is not a predicate is an example of having an idea which isn't based on any reality; and so Kant has merely defined into existence the idea that existence isn't a predicate, because to him, all his ideas are good, even if they are not realistic or accurate. That falls in with a picture of Kant, which I gained when studying for my philosophy degree, which was of someone undoubtedly clever; but who pulls the axioms he uses out of thin air. Ultimately, his ideas are meaningless and rather useless.

I’d suggest you not use an argument from authority (or lack of) here. It has no effect on the truth value of Kant’s ideas. His axioms are addressed in his tomes as well. If they aren’t, someone would have identified them and explained them in the introduction, before each chapter, or in footnotes.

I certainly wouldn't trust Kant's ideas any more than those of Gödel.

People also ask "what is modal knowledge?"
 
 
 From ANSWERS ON THE INTERNET:
 
 
"Modal reasoning is central to human cognition, since it is pervasive both in philosophy and in every-day contexts. It involves investigating and evaluating claims about what is possible, impossible, essential, necessary, and contingent."

Sounds like scientific reasoning dressed up in several new dresses at once.

Modal logic came way, way before any sort of modern science.

I think it's drivel and should be rejected as such. The problem is that it's clearly an invitation to opinionatedness and even bigotry. Of course people, in context, try to decide on these things regarding specific cases. A typical modal retort to what I'm writing here and now might be that what I'm writing is impossible.

Wait a minute, they even think essential and necessary are different.

Necessary holds a special place in modal logic; essential does not. Regardless, they just use two similar words with slightly different meaning. All they do is reference two different concepts. 

The point is that modal philosophy was rejected as being a tool of religious apologists. I'm sure the internet will be full of it but that doesn't mean it's philosophically useful. It's an unnecessary invention, used to hide arguments from the unwary. So I would be an extreme modal sceptic. Into the same waste bin with it as Gödel and Kant. It's fake.

His "argument" isn't constructed as an argument should be, with propositions that lead unerringly to the desired conclusion. So not only are his axioms incorrect but the way he deals with them doesn't amount to a properly valid argument.

I think that if you would wish to use modal logic to prove anything, you would have to show that such a proof fulfils the demands of syllogistic logic. Otherwise you or anybody haven't proved a thing. If an argument cannot be tracked logically, it's fraudulent.

Well, modal logic isn’t sentential logic. All statement used with modal logic such as possible worlds, contingent truths, possible truths, necessary truths, etc… are all just ways of recognizing that the philosopher is using modal logic instead of regular logic.

It seems to be the case that modal logic attempts to use inductive reasoning where induction is incorrect or inapplicable, probably by attempting to set up a series of situations or models where it has a façade of correctness and then smuggling in a syllogism. Ontological arguments use slippage of meaning, ambiguity and/or straightforward deception to achieve that. It's impossible to prove that God exists and it should be thought undesirable to try.

Why is it impossible to prove that God exists?

Sorry I'm arguing in a very robust fashion but after all, it's an important subject and should be treated seriously. I'm very aware that Elroch and/or some others might approach this differently from me but the way we argue depends on what we're capable of seeing and understanding clearly. Deduction is deduction and if a modal argument intimates that God exists, it certainly isn't via deduction and therefore it cannot be a proof.