It's odd, isn't it this thought process. In a rational context, or applied to anything but a person's pet God, defining something with 'omni-attributes' would make it less likely to actually exist...

But Mr.M has to be a troll, or psychologically/intellectually impaired, after seeing his argument about Matt Slick...

 Bob could use a shave... OA aside.

Actually, after his mentioning Kelly's porn stuff I'm wondering if he isn't one of the professional RRS stalkers.

FWIW, a final(?) statement on the OA.

Without essentially complete knowledge of Reality, it is impossible for us to establish even the possibility of the defined 'God' in this Reality, let alone prove his existence.

No amount of logical obfuscation can counter this.

Even if there occurred what purported to be a manifestation of this being, there is no way we could verify any unlimited or infinite attributes. and anything of sufficient finite power could easily deceive us utterly and undetectably, so no such manifestation could constitute proof of the actual God as defined.

We can establish whether an argument is valid, given we accept the primary Laws of Logic, but we cannot know in general whether its conclusions are true - that is dependent on its premises being true.

We do not have certain knowledge of anything, apart from the logical implications of a set of well-defined premises. But as long as contingent information has an associated reasonably based estimate of what confidence we can attach to it, that constitutes knowledge - "A is probably true with a confidence of approximately 60%" - is knowledge. Given the minimal assumption, the LoI and the LNC, the only certainly necessary propositions are those derived by well-formed arguments purely from those primary Laws.

S5 is an assumption, so any argument based on it is not universally valid. "credible" philosopher is a personal assessment. An argument from authority is a fallacy.

Philosophers deal only in ideas, including possible ways to try and ascertain the truth, but not actual certifiable truth.

If you have a plain language or logical refutation of my stated position, let's hear it.

Without complete knowledge of Reality we cannot know whether or not there is some contradiction of your defined God with some aspect of actual reality, therefore we cannot know if it is possible. Unless that can be established, any further argument is pointless. I suspect Lewis is not as dumb as your claims would suggest -  you have consistently shown poor comprehension of other peoples positions.

So there it is. I certainly do not give a Flying Fuck whether you accept it or not, you have amply demonstrated enough instances of flawed reasoning and understanding of logical implication, that your opinion on this, or anything else, counts for virtually nothing.

I do appreciate you finally responding to me. It is a small thing, but deserves some acknowledgment.

Yeah, I keep getting those mixed up for some reason.

Probably because I prefer to think in terms of the premises as being part of the argument, and that a 'good' argument can only show that the conclusion is consistent with the premises, not that the conclusions are true, rather than in terms of 'valid' and 'sound'.

And to me, the words 'valid' and 'sound' both feel like they are referring to the same thing, that the argument is 'good'. I understand the distinction, but which word applies to which just doesn't seem intuitive from my normal understanding of their general usage.

I don't think anyone here is arguing for solopsism.

But a priori, you can't guarantee that hot dogs actually exist in any possible world much less the actualized world.

On the same token, you can dream up a possible world where some necessary entity exists, but that does not mean that world maps onto the actualized world, and you can't know that it does a priori.

It's really questionable as to whether or not a hot dog really has any meaning apart from actual existence, but that's another discussion altogether.

A posteriori, we can know that a six foot hot dog exists. I can at least guarantee the possibility of such things in a possible world. That's more than I can say for a priori formulations of a god. Not only are six foot hog dogs logically consistent, they actually exist.

You said that without complete knowledge of reality, we cannot establish the modal characteristics of God; do we also require complete knowledge of reality to establish that given a deductively valid argument, it is impossible that the conclusion will be false if the premises are true?

Okay, so we are 100% absolutely certain that true premises and a valid form will produce a true conclusion, which means that we do have certain knowledge of something.

Again, can you back this up?  Are you saying that it is not necessary that something is possible, which is saying that it is merely possible that something is possible?  So if I say, 'it is possible that a six foot hot dog exists', it is not necessarily possible but merely possibly possible?  If S5 is false, then that is what you are arguing.

Actually, you are wrong.  Philosophers attempt to establish the first principles underlying the sciences, and their goal is to establish a metaphysical base which holds everything together--so as to justify what is merely presupposed in everyday discourse.  This requires focusing on that which we know with 100% certainty.

"Plain language"?  In other words, you want me to dumb it down?

You don't need complete knowledge of reality; for example, many people attempt to argue that God is contradictory via the paradox of omnipotence, and others have attempted to show that omniscience is logically incoherent via Cantor's mathematics.  So obviously, being omniscient is not required of proving that something is impossible.

And we can't know if six foot hot dogs are possible, I guess.

Just saying 'your argument has been shut down' does not make it true; it's merely a fantasy that you will continue propagating until it ultimately becomes true in your own mind.  According to you, God is limited because he is unlimited; what credibility do you have to say that the argument is shut down?
 

 lol, dude, I admire your blinders, I really do.  You have some focus on you.  I think I even linked a video of Mr. Slick mentioning that your version of the OA begs the question, while this is an appeal to authority, we have all been saying the same thing since the beginning.  

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again
Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land
Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah
There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the King's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby
Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold
The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we'll do the rest
The blue bus is callin' us
The blue bus is callin' us
Driver, where you taken' us
The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother...I want to...WAAAAAA
C'mon baby,--------- No "take a chance with us"
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
C'mon, yeah
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die
This is the end

 My first encounter with modal logic was with Gettier problems. There is a failure even on an epistemological level for logic to obtain to existence. 

A

is a problem in modern

issuing from

to the definition of knowledge as

(JTB). The problem owes its name to a three-page paper published in 1963, by

, called

, in which Gettier argues that this is not necessarily the case. The basic issue is one that everyone is able to relate to: what conditions must be satisfied for a belief to become knowledge? For a proposition to count as knowledge it must (a) be believed, (b) it must be true, and (c) the believer must have good reason for their belief. Indeed, the definition of what counts as a 'reason' is itself complicated, as we feel the reason must be 'relevant', and itself based on 'facts' not merely irrational beliefs. One of the clearer scenarios, known as

, illustrates the situation when the reasoning held for a belief turns out 'in fact' to be faulty.

Farmer Franco is concerned about his prize cow, Daisy. In fact, he is so concerned that when his dairyman tells him that Daisy is in the field, happily grazing, he says he needs to know for certain. He doesn't want merely to have a 99 percent probability that Daisy is safe, he wants to be able to say that he knows Daisy is safe.

Farmer Franco goes out to the field and standing by the gate sees in the distance, behind some trees, a white and black shape that he recognizes as his favorite cow. He goes back to the dairy and tells his friend that he knows Daisy is in the field.

Yet, at this point, does Farmer Franco really know it?

The dairyman says he will check too, and goes to the field. There he finds Daisy, having a nap in a hollow, behind a bush, well out of sight of the gate. He also spots a large piece of black and white paper that has got caught in a tree.

Daisy is in the field, as Farmer Franco thought.

But was he right to say that he knew she was?

The philosopher, Martin Cohen, who described this scenario originally [1], says that in this case the farmer:

    * believed the cow was safe;
    * had evidence that this was so (his belief was justified);
    * and it was true that his cow was safe.

However, we might still feel that the farmer did not really know it; his justified true belief was actually operating independent of the truth. Herein lies the core of the problem of 'knowledge as justified true belief'.
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem

 EDIT: Yes and my friend who is a published philosopher on this very topic assures me that S5 is sound though I have read several articles by authors who believe the contrary.  We again are into language, definition and its function. How S% is understood and utilized. ... how the premises processed are defined

My current summary of Mr.M's OA:

If we know enough about reality to determine whether or not God is necessary ( S5), then he necessarily exists.

So we would have to know that we know enough to determine that... hmm, another problem, how do we know that there is no further bit of information which will confound our conclusion? How could we know when we had sufficiently complete knowledge to confidently know that we have sufficiently complete knowledge to determine that God is possibly necessary?

Anyone else see some problems here?

I know Mr.M will respond "Yes, there are problems in your 'logic' "...

But anyone else?

The problems are obvious.

1- "If we know enough" 
The obvious problem with #1 is that it's an assumption, and it's begging the question of 'what is enough knowledge'.

2- "about reality"

The obvious problem with #2, is that a priori, there is no information, or attributes known about what lies beyond our 'understanding'. Intuition, is based on 'past' events. Logic is based on 'intuition'.

3- "to determine whether or not God is necessary "

In this instance, you will only have the sufficient knowledge to make that absolute determination, in hindsight, because you will have falsified every other alternate theory/possibility.

At that point, you will have sufficient practical 'understanding' of the constant attributes, and it will become 'workable'.

You will be able to see it 'at work'.

You will be able to make accurate predictions, based on the constants.

That's 'empirical'.

Then, it will become 'law'.

Then it will become 'objective'.

Then it will be written in stone.

Then some of us can get on with our lives, the way we see fit, and go straight to hell, because... the life we led was worth every minute of it!!

That was a nice and informative account, TG.

I found a strong resonance in there, with an idea I have long held, that where possible, when opening a dialogue with someone, especially if I already know or suspect they do have a very different world-view to mine, it is important to query them on just what are their criteria for assessing possibility, plausibility, etc of any proposition presented to them, or that they come across on their own.

If these is fundamentally at odds with my criteria, any further discussion on substantive issues is unlikely to go anywhere useful or interesting, to either party.

I distinctly remember an interview on a radio program here, which addresses issues of personal beliefs, including religious issues, but not restricted to such. The interviewee was clearly a believer in God, but what struck me when queried about why he believed, what was his personal justification, he was obviously somewhat at a loss. His belief had clearly become such a fundamental part of his world-view that he could not conceive of it as a contingent belief, any more than he could conceive of himself not existing.

To him, God just was part of reality, like day and night.

He sounded perfectly coherent and intelligent otherwise, and good-natured, just unable to conceive of a reality without God.

Very eloquently worded ideas Mr. Baker The fact that we don't share paradigms in this regard is self evident, but I ask, short of a handful of OAs how much logic does the religious paradigm really employ?  I'm not going to claim our paradigm is superior (it is, but I will not claim that ) , however, as an example, and to touch on what Bob said, let's take the recent 'debate'.  To begin with, us, as atheists are willing to at least entertain the idea that we are wrong.  Conversely, all theists are not even willing to consider that.  The majority or argumentation that goes into those debates, is for the audience, and the hope that someone will see reason.  I'm not going to say that this is inherent from the paradigm, but without this willingness to think dynamically, scientific method is all but unattainable.  

Also, I'm not sure if most people think about this as deeply as you obviously have.  The majority of our paradigms overlap, socially, politically, even morally to a degree.  So it's really a big gray area with a bit of black and white butting heads in the center.  The majority of people don't have a need for logic to back up their religious faith, in fact, the majority of OAs are very complex concepts.  If they had to rely on this to believe churches would go bankrupt.  It's only a small percentage of theists that are willing to call on OAs as pillars of their faith.  My guess is that there are other psychological reasons why they arrive at such a conclusion, they should be able to reason otherwise judging from their mental capacity to comprehend.  The vast majority of theists argue from said  authority, where as us, as atheists stand as islands in our world view.  I'm not sure why that makes me feel superior.  I am very realistic regarding my overall banality, but in this one respect, I can feel superior.

That's easy to answer.

Not much.

And it's not difficult to clearly demonstrate why their 'logic' is actually terribly weak, and unreliable. Their 'logic' is based on their *cough* intuitions in a steady state vacuum. Remember the same ones that asserted "What goes up, must come down"??

Like I've said a million times, people who work in the fields of science and technology know ALL TOO WELL, that 'intuition' and 'logic' can be an atrocious impediment, to targeting 'objectives'.

One of the most easily demonstrable areas of science where we've seen this constantly is in fluid dynamics, which used to be generically known as 'Aerodynamics', till the paradigm view was more accurately described as the current name.

That science was virtually impossible to 'predict', and model, in advance. A priori assumptions were useless.

It was often called a 'Black Art', because it was so illogical, and attributes where highly contingent on some of the widest arrays of 'variables'.

Electrical engineering, circuit design, transmission line theory, etc, etc... have also been counterintuitive to a high degree, and in some areas, still continue to be.

Reality was never logical to the uninitiated.

I don't know how many axioms you have to pound  into the thick skulls of some of these automatons, before they finally grow a brain, and clue in to "Don't count your chickens till they've hatched!!"

One only needs to crack open a history book to read the volumes upon volumes upon volumes where the church fought and argued science, tooth and nail, and had to eat crow.

Nothing has changed.

It's much easier to ignore them now. We don't need them to live, or do our work, which will ultimately make them extinct.

Because modern scientific 'understanding' is based on 'hindsight', it is of course, the exponentially better method, of arriving to firm conclusions.

There is no debate, possible, in this regard.

If you want to be successful in science and technology, you need to let go, of everything you 'think' is a given, when 'speculating'.

That's why philosophers aren't employed by science and technology...