Measured Against Reality

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Over Three Hundred Proofs of God’s Existence

Here's Over Three Hundred Proofs of God's Existence. They're "classic" proofs for the existence of god(s), reworked to show how dumb they are. The biggies are at the top:

TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT
(1) God exists.
(2) If God exists, then if reason exists then God exists.
(3) Reason exists.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
(1) If I say something must have a cause, it has a cause.
(2) I say the universe must have a cause.
(3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (I)
(1) I define God to be X.
(2) Since I can conceive of X, X must exist.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (II)
(1) I can conceive of a perfect God.
(2) One of the qualities of perfection is existence.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

MODAL ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
(1) God exists.
(2) God, existing, is either necessary or unnecessary.
(3) God is not unnecessary, therefore God must be necessary.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
(1) Check out the world/universe/giraffe. Isn't it complex?
(2) Only God could have made them so complex.
(3) Therefore, God exists.


I really enjoy those ones, (especially the ontological argument) because they're so stupid. By the way, that's really how they go, just look any of them up on Wikipedia. This is also a good demonstration of why I loathe professional philosophy, you can really give a philosophical proof for anything. Unlike math which has a rigorous language where every "word" means only one thing, no human language has such constraints. As such, you can easily make "proofs" which "prove" what they set out to, but prove nothing.

Give the list a glance, there are some funny ones in there, if too many to read in one sitting.

[Via Russel's Teapot]

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