Proof that the Christian god cannot exist

You aren't convinced by proof.. so it makes things a bit tricky.. but then again.. you aren't just anyone. You are the guy who can post "Wrong!" to everything, and then struggle for 10 years to understand it!

 

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From SEP:


/.../
Most famously, Ryle (1949) introduced the idea of the category mistake as a way of dispelling the confusions he thought to be rampant in the Cartesian theory of the mind, and thus of dissolving many apparent problems in philosophy of mind. According to Ryle, one makes a category mistake when one mistakes the logical type or category of a certain expression (1949, 16-17). Thus, e.g., a foreigner would make a category mistake if he observed the various colleges, libraries, and administrative offices of Oxford, and then asked to be shown the university. The foreigner mistakes the university for another institution like those he has seen, when in fact it is something of another category altogether: “the way in which all that he has already seen is organized” (1949, 16). The category mistake behind the Cartesian theory of mind, on Ryle's view, is based in representing mental concepts such as believing, knowing, aspiring, or detesting as acts or processes (and concluding they must be covert, unobservable acts or processes), when the concepts of believing, knowing, and the like are actually dispositional (1949, 33). Properly noting category distinctions may help alleviate a variety of philosophical problems and perplexities, and the idea of the category mistake was widely wielded (by Ryle and others) with this aim.

Another potential application of work on categories lies in the idea that various mistakes and puzzlements in ontology can be traced to the mistaken belief that category-neutral existential and quantificational claims are truth-evaluable (see Thomasson 2007). A great many arguments in ontology rely on claims about whether, in various situations, there is some object present (or how many objects there are), where the term 'object' must be used in a category-neutral way for the argument to go through (Thomasson 2007, 112-118). But if truth-evaluable existential and quantificational claims must tacitly presuppose some category or categories of entity over which we are quantifying, then such arguments go astray. Thomasson (2007) gives independent grounds for thinking that all quantification must at least tacitly presuppose a category or categories of entity over which we are quantifying, and argues that adopting that view provides the uniform basis for dissolving a number of problems supposed to arise with accepting an ontology of ordinary objects.
/.../



From Wiki:

The term "category-mistake" was introduced by Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind (1949) to remove what he argued to be a confusion over the nature of mind born from Cartesian metaphysics. Ryle alleged that it was a mistake to treat the mind as an object made of an immaterial substance because predications of substance are not meaningful for a collection of dispositions and capacities.

The phrase is introduced in the first chapter.[2] The first example is of a visitor to Oxford. The visitor, upon viewing the colleges and library, reportedly inquired “But where is the University?"[3] The visitor's mistake is presuming that a University is part of the category "units of physical infrastructure" or some such thing, rather than the category "institutions", say, which are far more abstract and complex conglomerations of buildings, people, procedures, and so on.

Ryle's second example is of a child witnessing the march-past of a division of soldiers. After having had battalions, batteries, squadrons, etc. pointed out, the child asks when is the division going to appear. 'The march-past was not a parade of battalions, batteries, squadrons and a division; it was a parade of the battalions, batteries and squadrons of a division.' (Ryle's italics)

His third example is of a foreigner being shown a cricket match. After being pointed out batsmen, bowlers and fielders, the foreigner asks: 'who is left to contribute the famous element of team-spirit?'

He goes on to argue that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body rests on a category-mistake.


There are, of course, objections to the theory of categories ...

 

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@ Signal:
Uh, yes, I know what a category mistake is.
What I meant was "How is what I'm doing a category mistake?"

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Free will does not apply at the biological level. To test cells to see if there is evidence of free will in them, would be a category mistake.

 

Where did I suggest "testing cells"?

 

Earlier on you suggested this would be possible, and that this is the "real" level, while what we think is an "illusion."


If you want to go back to the reasoning that since God is omniscient, this cancels out our free will: As I pointed out, if God gives us identities, and identities are necessary for there to be action, then God's omniscience and our free will can co-exist.

 

I think what I suggested was that the concatenation of structure/ cheistry/ physics etc resulted in our behaviour. And, as per your words, that behaviour is known perfectly by god: thus we are "predictable" to god.

If god knows (perfectly) our identities then we are "prefectly" predictable. How can there be "free will" in the presence of perfect predictability?

 

I'll leave the chemistry/pysics aside for a while, along with the body-mind problem.

And there is another category mistake:

God's omniscience does not apply for us in the category of our free will.
That is, as far as we and our free will are concerned, it is beyond our scope that God is omniscient.
God's omniscience is none of our business, so to speak.

You seem to assume that all these concepts that are under discussion here - "human free will," "God's omniscience" - apply within the same category.

I don't think they do.

 

So it's more a question of "perspective"?
Or just a case of "god is god and we poor humans can't "dictate" to him through logic or anything else"?

 

No, of categories.

No, this is precisely what I want to avoid.

 

So what are these categories?
Human and godlike?

Is that not effectively "whatever is godlike is beyond human ken/ explanation"?

 

God's omniscience is to our free will something like university is to the lecture hall.

The lecture hall doesn't cease to exist because the university exists.

 

Sorry, but this comes across to me as being another way of saying "goddidit".

Except that no one is claiming that it does.
:shrug:

 

In some Hindu schools, they speak of five basic ontological categories:
1. God, 2. individual living entities, 3. matter, 4. time, 5. activity.

You probably remember that in Western philosophy, it was fashionable for some time to set up elaborate systems that specified categories of what exists.

No, I specifically want to avoid this direction of reasoning with its demoralizing implications.

 

If you say that God's omniscience cancels out our free will, then you are claiming it does.

 

Has it been shown (not just claimed but shown) that analogy is valid?
I can't see it.


I give up.

 

Given the nature of the problem, I do not think it can shown that it is a valid analogy. Back to the problem of extreme epistemic egoism.

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From the Qur'an a verse about predestination:

Allah hath created you and what you do. [Quran, 37.96]

 

100 pages and still unresolved?

 

@Rob --

Oh it was resolved about two or three pages into the thread, but some people here, namely the theists, would rather chew off their own arms than admit something that's contrary to their worldview.