Can God be proved with logic?

There is a fairly well know argument for the existence of God called the Ontological Argument. It has a lot of forms but generally it goes like this.

1-God is the greatest imaginable being.
2-All else being equal, a being or entity that exists is greater than one that doesn't.
3-Therefore, God exists.

When I first heard this one I thought something like. "This actually convinces people?" It just seemed so ridiculous that you could define God into existence. But yet, It is hard to see what the problem is with the argument, it seems to be logically sound.

Respected theologians like William Lane Craig use this argument all the time, they see it is a slam dunk proof for god.

But it isn't. There are a lot of problems with the argument, I won't go into detail on all of them here. If you are interested there is an entire explanation and breakdown of the argument here. But one easy way to see how this argument is wrong is to try to apply it to other things. The technique is called Reductio ad absurdum. All you need to do is use the exact same logical steps to see if you can get to an absurd conclusion. If you can, then the argument has problems. Although it doesn't necessarily tell you where the problems are. So let's see if we can do that in this case.

1-Shangri-La is the greatest place on earth.
2-A place that exists is greater than one that doesn't.
3-Therefore, Shangri-La exists.

1-Sasquatch is the most fearsome creature imaginable
2-A creature that exists is more fearsome than one that doesn't
3-Therefore Sasquatch exists.

But here is my favorite one

1-God is the greatest thing that can be conceived.
2-Two Gods are greater than God.
3-1 and 2 are in contradiction.

Do you see where the logic breaks down? The trick is that the property of existence is being implied, although not actually stated, in the first premise. So in effect, the Ontological Argument is simply a fancy way of begging the question. Begging the question in logical terms does not mean "brings up the question, like most people use it in normal conversation. It means to assume the conclusion in the premise. Here is a simple example

1-God has done good things for me in my life.
2-Therefore God exists.

The existence of God is being implied in the first premise, otherwise how could he do good things for you?

So how is it that a high-school educated person like me can figure out in less than an hour how ridiculous this argument is, but supposedly intelligent theologians like Craig seem to be convinced by it?

Carl Sagan and the Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan has always been one of my heroes. I still enjoy reading my dad's old illustrated copy of Cosmos. That book is actually one of the things I received when my dad died that I prize the most. In this video he refers to the Pale Blue Dot. He is referring to a picture taken by the Voyager I spacecraft in 1990, 13 years after it was sent into space, from 3.7 billion miles away. This photo was taken at the edge of our solar system, well outside the orbit of Pluto, and shows the earth as just a tiny blue dot caught in a ray of sunlight. I don't have the eloquent writing skills of Sagan so I will stop and let you watch this video. The audio is taken from the audiobook version of his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, The voice is Sagan's

The internet is the greatest advancement in the history of humanity

The internet is the greatest advancement in the history of humanity. It has already changed our lives in amazing ways and will continue to do so. Think of all the things that have changed since around 1995 when the internet was just starting to catch on. Just the fact that you could be reading this just a few minutes, or even seconds, after I finish writing it is groundbreaking. This would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago, at least without the use of expensive technology unavailable to normal people.
When was the last time you went inside a bank? I personally haven't been inside one in years. I conduct nearly all of my financial transactions online. The internet allows for the nearly cashless economy that we are becoming, without a high speed global data network it just wouldn't be possible to have such a system.
But much more important than a better financial system is the way the internet is creating communities. To illustrate my point I will tell you that I participate in a lot of online Mormon discussion boards and communities. The kinds of communities that welcome apostates like me. It doesn't matter what you think of such communities, all you need to know is that they are important to me. I have met and talked to great people. I have received support from these people and hopefully helped give some support to others. I have never met any of these people in real life, yet I feel like I know them and they are my friends. Without these communities I would know about a half dozen adults who are apostate like me. With these communities I can interact and get to know thousands. Not all of them believe exactly what I do about Mormonism, but they all welcome me and my thoughts. So these friends may not be as good as having someone that can actually come over, but can you really say that they aren't better than no friends at all?
But, possibly even more important that creating communities is the possibility of the free exchange of ideas. I have debated and exchanged ideas on the internet with people for years. Many of you are those people. The amazing conversations that we exchange would never happen without the internet. We would barely even know each other's opinions. And we would be worse off for it. But there is a danger. When we use the internet we are our own curators. We decide exactly what we read and watch. We decide exactly what opinions we hear. So ironically it is possible to have access to nearly the entirety of the worlds knowledge and opinions and still be ignorant. We have to be very careful to guard against the tendency to only access the parts of the internet we agree with. This is a very hard thing for every human to do. We tend to love hearing our beliefs and opinions confirmed. I have learned much more when I have been challenged on my beliefs than when everyone agrees with me. There is almost always another side and I should want to hear it.
But really the vast store of knowledge is probably the most useful and obvious advantage of the internet. The Library of Congress and the Alexandrian library combined pale in comparison with the knowledge found on the internet. In fact, I suspect that libraries are becoming obsolete.

How does an apostate view faith promoting experiences?

Faith promoting experiences. Mormons love faith promoting experiences. They show up in General Conference, Sacrament meeting, Sunday School, Relief Society, Priesthood, and in virtually every other place that Mormons gather. They are given as evidence of all sorts of things, and they can be very versatile. There are some famous ones and some infamous ones. I imagine that every Mormon has a few that they hold dear.
I have had a few myself. I have had experiences that I viewed as evidence of a loving God or even evidence that The Church was true.
One particular summer, when I was a teenager, we were headed on a vacation to Oregon. We had just left my Dad's house in Provo when I started to feel very, very motion sick. It should be noted that motion sickness is not at all unusual for me. I am the type that gets motion sick playing video games. As I have grown up this tendency has lessened a little bit but it still catches me off guard sometimes. This particular time being motion sick was pretty bad though, so much so that I didn't feel I could stay in the car. We had only been on the road for an hour or so and just happened to be near my Grandparent's house. So my Dad decided to stop there and let me rest for a while.
As soon as we stopped the car and got out we saw a huge bubble on the sidewall of one of our front tires. My dad quickly went to get it fixed and by the time he was done I felt better and we were on our way again. I used to see this as God's way of keeping us safe by making sure that my Dad saw the problem before it turned into a dangerous blowout while traveling at freeway speeds.
Now? I view it as a simple coincidence. If you are thinking to yourself, "How could that be just a coincidence?" My answer would be, which is more likely, that God purposely made me sick so that I would get my Dad to stop the car so that he would see the problem, or that it was a lucky break? Wouldn't it have been easier to just stop the tire from developing a problem? Coincidences happen all the time. In fact there are so many things happening all over this world at any one time that it would be strange if there weren't weird coincidences.
Here is another example.
When I was 8 years old my mother accidentally put a gardening fork through my hand. We were weeding and she thought I was done and just casually threw the fork down, into my left hand. It entered about a half inch below the ring and little fingers. It went right between the two bones and missed all major nerves. Other than a cool scar I have no negative effects from this incident. This was always put out as a miracle. That God saved my hand from major damage by making the fork go right where it needed to go. If you are still with me this far you will know that I don't view this incident as miraculous at all. I view it as lucky.
If God wanted to impress me he could have easily stopped the fork in mid flight before it hit me. Or how about a simple prompting to my Mother to not throw the fork in the first place? The reason I still have full use of my hand today isn't thanks to God. It's thanks to good doctors, medical science, and luck.
Here is a good summary of why coincidences should not only not be surprising, they should be expected.

Why aren't you afraid of the Muslim hell?

I am going to start this post with the assumption that you are not a Muslim. If I am wrong in my assumption than just substitute the word Muslim for Christian and the point will work just as well.
It is a fact right now that millions of Muslims think you are going to hell. They are convinced of it. Their holy book tells them so and all of their leaders confirm what the holy books say. They are convinced that Islam is the only true path to god and that anyone who does not follow Islam will end up burning in hell for the crime. (I know not all Muslims think this is true but that doesn't change the point). These people are also convinced that the best world would be one in which every person on the planet were Muslim.
Now think for a second about how easily you dismiss these claims, how easily you can see that Islam is not true and is obviously not the best way for humans to live. Think of how little sleep you lose worrying about whether or not you are going to burn in the Muslim hell, how little desire you have to go to a mosque and pray to Mecca five times a day. Why is this the case? Why haven't you looked deeply into the claims of Islam to see of they are true? Why haven't you read the Koran? Incidentally, how you view Islam is very similar to how I view your religion. Which is why telling an atheist he is going to hell is akin to telling your teenager that Santa isn't bringing any presents, but I digress.
The obvious answer to why you are not a Muslim is that your parents weren't. You were born into a Christian family and were taught it from birth. With some exceptions of course, very few people who are Christians came from a non-Christian background, it just isn't very likely to happen. From an outsider's point of view though, there is nothing any more plausible about the claims of Christianity than there is about the claims of Islam, or any other religion for that matter.
Author John Loftus has proposed what he calls "The Outsider Test for Faith". Basically the idea is to try to approach your own faith with the same skepticism and critical thinking that you automatically do all others. Attempt to look at your own religion the way an outsider would.
This can be a very scary thing to do. When your religion is wrapped up into your entire life it isn't easy to face the fact that it just might possibly be wrong. It is hard to even entertain the thought. Maybe the first question you need to ask yourself is this one. "If it isn't true, would I really want to know."

Abortion and Gun Control

Abortion and gun control. Two of the hot button issues in our society that just don't seem to want to go away. After all these years we don't seem to have made much progress in solving them. How is it that we haven't been able to find any common ground on these issues?
Most people think of these issues all wrong. People identify as either pro-choice or pro-life, for or against gun control. These labels are only stopping us from finding common ground. Let's look at the gun control issue first and see where we are going wrong.
First we need to make a change in definition. We are not really talking about gun control, we are talking about weapons control. I would venture a guess that nearly everybody is in favor of weapons control of some kind or another, I imagine that if you found out that your neighbor had a small nuclear bomb in his basement that you would promptly notify the authorities. I would probably wait to hear the story of how the hell he got the thing in the first place, but I digress. I think I am also probably right in assuming that nobody is in favor of outlawing box cutters. Yet we all know that given the right scenario those can be as deadly as guns. So the question isn't whether we want our government to control deadly weapons, I think we all clearly do. The question is where to draw the line. If knives are okay, what about swords? If a rifle is okay for hunting what about a semi-automatic rifle that clearly is never used for hunting? What about grenades? explosives? machetes? RPG's? guided missiles? An aircraft with a 30 millimeter high explosive gun? I think you get the point.
The truth is that most of us would agree on this issue when applied to almost any conceivably deadly weapon, except guns. Guns fall somewhere near the middle of the deadly weapon spectrum. They are certainly deadly but they also have practical uses, and they sure are fun to use.
The abortion issue presents a similar problem. I highly recommend this article by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan which explains the problems with thinking of abortion as a black white issue. To summarize, basically think of it like this. Almost all of us would agree that birth control is not murder. We would probably also all agree that aborting a full-term baby is murder. The question is at what point does potential human life become actual human life. It is not an easy question to answer, but polarizing ourselves into two camps that seem completely opposite of each other is not any kind of solution.
We live in a pluralistic society. One in which we are going to disagree in issues. The solution is to throw away the black and white thinking that we love so much and move into the grey areas.

Of Frodo and Jesus

I am a fairly open and militant atheist. I am doubtful that Jesus even ever existed and if he did I am fairly certain that he didn't do most of the things that are attributed to him... and yet I love the story. I love the idea that someone would suffer infinitely for the whole world. I feel a similar way about Mormonism, and yet I enjoy the myths, the hymns, the stories, and even enjoyed the temple ritual sometimes. I realized recently that all of that is perfectly okay. I can enjoy all of that stuff without believing any of it is true. I am a big fan of Tolkien, especially The Lord of The Rings. I enjoy the books, the movies, the art, the music, language, etc. And yet I am perfectly well aware that it is all made up. I know Frodo Baggins never lived, yet I can still appreciate the things that he did. I think that many times when we give up a belief we think we have to give up the cultural aspects of it. There is a lot of beauty in my religious heritage, whether it be Mormonism or Christianity. There is no reason to throw all of that out the window simply because I no longer take it literally. After all, I still hang stockings on Christmas eve even though I don't believe in Santa Clause.

Pragmatic Morality

I have had a few discussions recently with friends, and on the usual forums, about morality. More specifically about whether or not a god is the source of all morality. I have no intention to rehash that debate here, because I have come to the conclusion that we have been asking the wrong question and looking at it all wrong.
The question about whether or not morality comes from god is an interesting one, but one about which there is simply not any evidence to support much on either side. In any case I don't think it really matters.
I am willing to grant, for the sake of argument, that god is the actual source of all morality. But my next question then becomes a problem for believers. What exactly does god have to say about morality?
If you are believer you probably view your particular set of morals as the ones god has commanded, but how is an outside observer to tell the difference?
Consider a thought experiment. Let's say that first contact occurs and that an alien but very human-like species lands somewhere on earth. Think Star Trek aliens, but hopefully more vulcan than klingon. They have no prior knowledge if human culture, thought, or religion. How would they know which version of morality to follow? To what books or people would you refer them?
Would you have them read the Bible? I have no intention of getting into detail about this but if you think the bible is a good source of morality you should read it.
The Koran? I assume most Muslims would say so, but if that is true I urge them to read their own holy book as well.
The Book of Mormon? A better attempt but still has plenty of problems.
I could go on and on but I think we can easily see that any religious book someone proposes is going to present problems, mostly for the people who don't belong to that religion.
What about religious leaders?
Most of these sources would say similar things about the vast majority of moral questions. The question of whether you should murder your children has a nearly unanimously agreed upon answer. These aliens could get the answers to the majority of moral questions from my kindergartener.
It is in the fine details where they differ. But within those fine details they have such a wide variety of views that it is impossible for any impartial observer to say which one of them is really speaking for god.
Which brings me to pragmatic morality. Since we cannot ever realistically use god to answer our questions about morality we are just going to have to do the best we can on our own. If there is a god I assume he would know the situation and understand.
So how do we pragmatically answer these questions? I think we use the most valuable tool that we have as humans, our intelligence. We use, reason, logic, and evidence to determine what moral behavior is healthy for humans and what behavior isn't. While at the same time being tolerant of honest differences of opinion. There doesn't have to be just one answer about how to live a moral life.

The dream of a 7 year old.

My Dream,

I have a dream
It will come true for sure.
It is free free.
I love my dream.
I will live in peace with my family.
Don't worry I will have fun.

I have a dream to be free,
Free as can be.
Peace, love, fun
It will be great
This dream will lead people to peace.

The End