Debate:Logical proof of the existence of God

This is a Debate page. Feel free to add your own spin on the story. Please keep it civil! This debate was created by Zaku.

One of my Christian friends has been spreading this odd little piece of writing around... he says its the work of a yet-to-be-identified theology professor. Here it is as he gave it to me.

Logical Proof of the Existence of God

1. Reason is clear (the opposite being impossible), because it is self evident and innate (because we use reason to understand everything); consisting of the (1) law of identity (a=a), (2) the law of the excluded middle (a or not-a), and (3) the law of non-contradiction (not both a and not-a in the same respect and at the same time).

2. Existence is clear, because of the law of identity (a, must exist). Temporal is clear, because of the law of non-contradiction (can have both a and not-a but at different times). Eternal is clear, because of the law of the excluded middle (eternal is not-temporal, if a exists than not-a exists).

3. Existence is eternal (no beginning and without change) or temporal (has a beginning and changes)… Eternal existence is clear; because if all existence was temporal then being/existence came from non-being/non-existence, this violates the law of the excluded middle (because then there would be no difference between a and not-a and there would not even be a).

4. All things are eternal or some is eternal… The existence of the self or mind is clear; because of the ability to think, thought is an action and action proves existence (law of non-contradiction, a to not-a, a change proves existence of something). Mind is conscious (self aware), temporal (not all knowing), and has no extension/form. The existence of matter is clear; because (1) my mind does not have total control (more than I exists), (2) my mind has some control and involuntary sensations (I am not part of another's mind), (3) unlike minds, there is existence, outside of all minds, that has extension and no consciousness. It is clear that matter (that which is extended and not conscious) is temporal; because it is not self maintaining (entropy), had a beginning, and changes. So, some is eternal.

5. Eternal, non material existence is clear. The existence of God is clear; because eternal existence caused matter to come into existence (no other source), so an intelligent (evidenced by order and complexity), all powerful (created out of nothing), and all knowing (intelligence and eternality(sic)) Creator exists.

According to my friend, this proof demonstrates, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that God does indeed exist, and therefore Christianity is correct. I, on the other hand, believe that the existence of a supernatural being cannot be logically demonstrated, and must be taken entirely on faith. I would be interested to see some of the insights of the contributors here.

For those who are interested, an altered version of the above proof that deals with the laws of identity, excluded middle and non-contradiction can be found here at CARM.Zaku 05:08, 4 January 2009 (EST)

Against

To start, I'll offer my own ideas about this proof. My main problem with this proof is the law of excluded middles, which according to the CARM link says that "a statement is either true or false. Thus the statement "A statement is either true or false" is either true or false." To me, this statement represents an absolutely dualistic view of the world: something is either A, or it is not A. This dualistic worldview does not allow for degrees of separation between A and not A. Therefore, consider the statement, "This statement is false." According to the law of excluded middles, this statement is a paradox: it cannot be true, since that would make it false, and it cannot be false, since that would make it true. Logically, this statement is most likely the result of, to borrow a literary term, an "unreliable narrator" (i.e. a person who produced the statement unintentionally or intentionally in order to to create a contradiction). Nevertheless, according to the law of excluded middles, this statement cannot exist... and yet it does. In my opinion, this invalidates the entire proof, since it is based on flawed logical precepts.

I also see somewhat disturbing sociological implications in the law of the excluded middle. Christianity promotes the idea of absolute truth, the source of which is God. Therefore, Christians belief that some things, like homosexuality or extramarital sex, are absolutely sinful and wrong. I believe that this kind of thinking promotes the "us versus them" mentality that I see on Conservapedia and among many of my Christian friends. They believe that the world is divided into two kinds of people: believers and non-believers, and there is no middle ground. This generates animosity between these two groups, and results in conflict. The law of the excluded middle creates division and leaves no room for compromise. That is why I believe it is a flawed concept and must be discarded.Zaku 05:08, 4 January 2009 (EST)

First it says that temporal existence is ok, because it doesn't violate the law of the excluded middle, but then it says that if all existence is temporal, then that violates the law of excluded middle somehow. I don't really see how that happens, but if we accept that and move on, the proof is reasonable up until the last sentence, where it just jumps to the conclusion that the eternal existence must be intelligent, all powerful and all-knowing. It's nothing new, really, just a reiteration of "life is so complex, it must have a creator intelligent designer" -- Nx ^talk 05:50, 4 January 2009 (EST)

So, basically, a reiteration of goddidit? Zaku 07:23, 4 January 2009 (EST)

Zaku, I think you're confusing the law of the excluded middle with the fallacy of the false dilemma. They're not the same. --AKjeldsen^{Cum dissensie} 07:07, 4 January 2009 (EST)

Well, I am fairly new to the study of classical logic, so I'm still trying to build a working understanding of these concepts. Doesn't the law of the excluded middle create false dilemmas when applied to debates like this? Zaku 07:23, 4 January 2009 (EST)

Not really, as long as you apply it to facts such as existence ("God either exists or does not exist") and "physical" characteristics ("God is either temporal or not-temporal, i.e. eternal"). If the discussion was about e.g. moral questions, it would be a different matter. For example, "homosexuality is either moral or not-moral" would be a false dilemma. --AKjeldsen^{Cum dissensie} 08:20, 4 January 2009 (EST)

I don't see how you can use the law of identity (beginning of point 2) to come to the conlusion "must exist". (dragon=dragon, therefore dragon?). The law of identity says nothing about existance. I also don't see how one can use the law of the excluded middle (end of point 2) to say "if a exists than not-a exists". If a exists, the law of the excluded middle says nothing about the EXISTENCE of not-a, but rather about the posibillity of non-existance of a. It seems to me the wole argument is based upon a slight misinterpretation of the used laws. RF

I would think Gödel's incompleteness theorems would pretty much wreck this. tmtoulouse 13:36, 28 January 2009 (EST)

It's difficult to parse the terminology, and I think the argument should be broken down further because as it stands each sentence contains many propositions. The first is a statement of the rules of logic that we are using, and despite it's lack of clarity I think it's close enough to normal logic that it can pass without comment. Sentence 2 seems to be obviously false. That "a is a." implies that "There exists an a." can be refuted by a few examples: "Santa Claus is Santa Claus." implies that "There exists a Santa Claus.", "The largest prime is the largest prime." implies that "There exists a largest prime." and "The Snark is the Snark" implies that "There exists a snark.". It seems that this error creeped in from the reading of "=" as "is", which when brought out properly is revealed to be a sophism. "Temporal is clear..." I can't make heads or tails of. I think that it's meant to show that time somehow got snuck into non-contradiction, which is taking the words of Aristotle a little too literally. Some truths depend on time, for instance the sentence ""I am alive" is true." is true only for a finite period of time. But this doesn't come from the law of non-contradiction, it's a further observation. The third proposition states that either the truth value of a sentence depends on time or it doesn't. There is some confusion about what is meant by Eternal truth. I take it to mean that the truth does not depend on time and the argument hinges on it being like temporal truth but true from the beginning of time. This is compounded by a confusion between becoming (yes, that is what it's called: "becoming". Damned philosophers.) and material implication, a confusion found in virtually all philosophers before Hume. I will quote the offending sentence: "...if all existence was temporal then being/existence came from non-being/non-existence, this violates the law of the excluded middle...". This is mistaken. There are many things that are false up to time t, then true after it. For instance, throw a tennis ball onto some velcro then end the universe. For all of time before it touches the velcro it is not stuck to velcro and for all of time afterwards it is stuck to velcro. So you see, despite the appearance of an implication, there is simply not one there. Part three ("All things are eternal or some is eternal") might be right, but only by accident. It certainly does not accept an analytic truth. I can easily claim that all is temporal. I would have to take an intuitionist view of mathematics, but that is not a heavy burden. The conflation of terms gets very bad here. Eternality is conflated with omniscience. 7 is certainly eternal, but it knows nothing at all. In addition, the goal seems to have been lost, if our souls are finite in time why not let them be extended in space and call them our brains? It is not so clear that matter is temporal, if we take your definition of temporal. After all, it isn't at all clear whether or not that a particular electron will not spend all of time in deep space moving at a very slow velocity. The last point is just silly. There is no argument for intelligence, omnipotence or intelligence (it is listed twice) in the previous points. Granting everything we can this seems more like an argument for Azathoth than Jesus. Actually, what it is is an argument for that religious Hegelian idealism that was so popular in the first half of the 20th Century. Does your friend read a lot of Josiah Royce? They should, they'd learn a bit of logic.CTrombley (talk) 03:21, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Logic and sociology

“”"'Why a thing is itself' is a meaningless inquiry."

—Aristotle

"Zaku," I take exception to your second argument regarding the law of excluded middles. Are you truly willing to throw a law of logic out the window just because it has "disturbing sociological implications"? As I have said to atheists and theists both: A is A, no matter how much that offends you. People can waste thousands of pages arguing why it is wrong and harmful to society for 2+2 to be equal to 4, but after they have finished it will still be equal to 4. ListenerX^TalkerX 02:13, 16 January 2009 (EST)

Well, I'm not saying that the law should be thrown out entirely. All I'm saying is that its application should be limited to logic, and not to political, sociological or religious issues. Saying 2+2=4 is fine, but saying "You are either with me, or you are my enemy" is not. Zaku 13:24, 28 January 2009 (EST)

A law of logic is a law of logic, and all laws of logic have applications wherever logic is used, including discussions of politics, sociology, and religion. For instance, the statement "You are either with me, or you are not with me" is true by the law of excluded middles.

By contrast, the statement "You are either with me, or you are my enemy" cannot be proven true by the law of excluded middles, since "You are my enemy" is, according to propositional logic, not an equivalent statement to "You are not with me." If anyone tries to say this statement is true by the law of excluded middles, they have only to be told to translate it into the language of propositional logic and give you a proof to that effect. They will not be able to do it. ListenerX^TalkerX 13:40, 28 January 2009 (EST)

I see what you mean. The problem would be a misinterpretation of the law in a contemporary context, such as stating that "something is either true or false" instead of "something is either true or not true." The incorrect assumption would be that not true = false.

If this is indeed the case, it would seem the above proof also misinterprets this law by stating that anything that is not temporal MUST automatically be the opposite (eternal) instead of simply not temporal. Zaku 14:44, 28 January 2009 (EST)

That is a mischaracterization of the fallacy. "Not true" is equivalent to "false." "Unknown" is not. ListenerX^TalkerX 16:07, 28 January 2009 (EST)

I would disagree with that. If something has to be either "true" or "false", what about the statement "This statement is false"? It is obviously not true (since it claims to be false), but it cannot be false either (since that would imply it was true). That statement is "not true", but it is also "not false". Zaku 18:17, 28 January 2009 (EST)

The Liar Paradox is not a statement in any logic where the law of excluded middles holds, in any logic where "a statement is either true or not true." ListenerX^TalkerX 20:28, 28 January 2009 (EST)

I might be misunderstanding you... but are you saying that the only way the law of excluded middles works is if the Liar Paradox is ignored? That would indicate that Classical Logic is inherently flawed. Zaku 00:12, 29 January 2009 (EST)

Classical systems of logic (propositional and first-order) lack the expressive power to describe the Liar Paradox, the same way that propositional logic lacks the expressive power to describe the "All men are mortal" argument in such a way that the conclusion follows from the premises by the laws of propositional logic. So the systems are not "inherently flawed," just too weak to describe things such as the Liar Paradox.

Gödel's incompleteness theorems showed that any logic with the expressive power to describe simple arithmetic can also describe a version of the Liar Paradox. ListenerX^TalkerX 00:39, 29 January 2009 (EST)

A bad argument, plain and simple

This argument absolutely fails in its' proof of God's existence. Even assuming true premises, its' conclusion does not exclusively follow from these premises. By this argument, matter could equally be considered eternal, and would, by the above argument, require no creator. While this argument does deal with a quite classic question (namely, the chicken or the egg), it proves absolutely nothing.

At the end of the day, the question still remains: did a conscious being create existence, or is existence without beginning?

And if a conscious being created existence, what is its' source?

Further and perhaps most importantly, the author of the above proof commits the watchmaker fallacy perfectly: that, because complexity in human creations is proportional to human intelligence, therefore all complex things must have a proportionally intelligent creator.

Of course, one need only look to the process of evolution to find an eternity of counterexamples to this. --Silent Tadpole^{sexes your brain} 22:10, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

false interpetation of excluded middle.

The entire proof, without reading the entire thing carefully, stems off a flawed interpretation of excluded middle. Key to the point: The negation of "There exists an X such that X is non-eternal" is not "There exists an X that is eternal" but rather "There does not exist an X such that X is non-eternal"*. So either it's true by excluded middle that "There exists an X that is non-eternal, or there does not exist an x that is non-eternal". I just deleted a sentence. It wasn't eternal. That means the excluded middle was satisfied. Hope this helps.

N.B. The statement at the "*" can also be written: "For all X, x are eternal" So the statement Ev~E means either something is non-eternal, or everything is eternal.

"(eternal is not-temporal, if a exists than not-a exists" (from 2) is fallacious.

Esponda (talk) 16:35, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

A bad idea!

God-proofs:

1. kill off faith,
2. is a general symptom of weak faith.

For the problems of proving God's existence, cf. WP:Ori (Stargate), a very nice exploration of "faith" with God-proofs. Faith is something you choose to attain ... or not. Rursus dixit (yada³!) 08:54, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

A pointless exercise anyway, since no one can construct a proof of God's existence that convinces those who do not already believe in her, or at least, are not already inclined to believe in her.

But I agree with you, I believe in God, but I gave up on proofs long ago. For me, it is about faith.

However, there is useful philosophical/theological work to do, in trying to justify faith — no one can prove that faith is valid, but people can provide a reasonable justification of faith — see for example Robert M. Adams' The Virtue of Faith (((Zack Martin)))^™ 08:58, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Argument from questionable premises

This argument starts from questionable premises - the law of non-contradiction, and the law of the excluded middle. Both have been denied - the first by paraconsistent logic, the second by intuitionistic logic. I'm not aware of anyone denying the law of identity, but wouldn't be surprised that someone has done so. Since the premises of the argument are questionable, the argument is of limited value. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 09:05, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Isn't saying that the premises are questionable in this sense (that alternative forms of logic reject certain principles) the equiverlent of saying "your mathematical proof is questionable because I can define 2 + 2 as being 5"? All "proofs" like this have an unstated 0th premise that says "in this formulation of logic" where we show what things we accept axiomatically. Otherwise you can clearly disprove anything you like just by rejecting axioms on an arbitrary basis and your challenge to the proof becomes merely trivial. ADK^{...I'll quantify your cellulite!} 09:19, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I think there's real debate over which logical system is best. Some people see differences between competing logical systems as purely formal, others see them as going deeper, which is necessary for it to be possible for one to be right and the others wrong. Your response presumes formalism as a philosophy of mathematics, but there are other options. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 09:21, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Paraconsistent and intuitionistic logic are all right as thought experiments, but for all systems of logic there is that "informal barrier," to which Armondikov alluded, that must be crossed to carry its conclusions into the real world, on which point both paraconsistent and intuitionistic logic largely fail. Also, I am unable to conceive how Armondikov's statement relies on formalism. ListenerX^TalkerX 19:47, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I suppose the aspect of Armondikov's response that seems formalist to me, is the aspect that logical axioms are fundamentally definitions. To my mind, that is the essence of mathematical formalism. To a Platonist or a conceptualist or so on, they are much more than mere definitions. Since per formalism they are just definitions, of the two positions, "law of non-contradiction is true" and "law of non-contradiction is false", we cannot say one is right and the other wrong. But per at least some formulations of Platonism or conceptualism, we can.

I can see some real world application for intutitionism - classical materialism assumes that all questions about material objects have definite answers, even if we don't know what they are. Some interpretations of quantum theory, and idealism, both imply that questions we cannot know the answers to may in fact not even have definite answers. This is very similar to the mathematical situation which was used to justify intuitionistic logic - if we don't know which of A or ~A is true, and may well never know, does it really make sense to insist that one of them must be true and the other false, even if which one is which may well be eternally unknown and unknowable?

Paraconsistent logic can also have some somewhat practical consequences. For one thing, we can take naive set theory at face value, rather than trying to construct elaborate formalisms to escape its paradoxes. For another, we can also take the naive view that self-referential sentences express valid propositions, even "This sentence is false"; the alternative is either to deny that self-referential sentences ever validly represent a proposition (which may well be considered an unreasonable limitation), or else once more try to construct elaborate and questionable formulations to justify some self-referential sentences as valid or others as not. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 11:03, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Atheism: Not a Sane Alternative.

Since the non-living material existence is lacking in means for knowledge, will, planning and conscious work for the future, then, there is no alternative to belief in the eternal, living and conscious creator of the universe; as a precondition, for belief in the future existence of self and of the universe. Without belief in future existence of self and of the universe, the only alternative is belief in the death. The life of a human being, who cannot believe in his very own life, could be much worse than the physical death because, the life that you cannot believe in cannot be real life, but is essentially a false life. This causes unbearable psychological agony and intolerable insult to the human dignity and therefore the disbeliever will have to resort to means like drugs, intoxicants, deviant sexual behavior, and even suicide, in order to escape from such a horrible nightmare:

Suicide in Atheists

Therefore, atheism is absolutely false and cannot possibly be true, because, it is incompatible with the real human life.

Saeed H H Alyousuf^{— Unsigned, by: Saeedalyousuf / talk / contribs}

Thank you for your contribution. Much as I agree with your ultimate conclusion, I must say your attempts to argue for it are somewhat lame. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 10:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Apart from the fact it's rubbish it's also a case of argument from adverse consequences. On the other hand the "drugs, intoxicants, deviant sexual behavior" could be fun.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 11:25, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

A comment on the article linked to

“”This in not a sample of the population at large. The starting set of people met,” DSM-III-R criteria for a current major depressive episode…” Your starting group is a small sub set of very depressed people. This type of diagnosis requires human interpretation and is subject to unintentional bias. Additionally, this is not a blind study (forget double blind) – that is the people collecting the data knew which person gave which answers. Another problem is that the some of the data is self reported. People are poor at giving self reported data. I imagine this could be worse if your are very depressed. I also could not find in the study how they decided who did or did not have a “religious affiliation”. These are all huge problems for this study. In this sub group there is a material variation in personal networks (which could affect suicide rates – again – no control is provided) “Religiously affiliated subjects reported a more family-oriented social network, reflected in more time spent with first-degree relatives.” I loved this little gem – “Therefore, it is possible that depressed patients who stated that they were atheists or had no religion had abandoned religion as a consequence of depression or hopelessness.” So… When you are really depressed you may claim to not care about religion – DUH! When really depressed you are likely to not care about a lot of things.

From here Bad Faith (talk) 11:39, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps an Alternative

I would like to challenge part of premise one. Specifically, if we use reason to understand everything, what then do we use to understand reason? Indeed it seems an ounce of uncertainty is coped with in the process of attempting to understand at least part of everything, including reason itself. This [ounce of uncertainty] becomes 'faith' when it is coped with once a belief is formed. For example, I cope with the uncertainty of my belief in other minds, or the belief that the past happened. In other words reason has a presupposition as well.

The question then arises, where should one place this coping, or faith? Since ultimately a coping with uncertainty must be placed somewhere, if one chooses to offer their faith to reason, then they must realize reason, as such, is a manifestation of mind, whether a subjective or objective mind: And here we have the presupposition, albeit rarely alluded to as an objective mind. But why can't it be an objective mind? For the logic it manifests appears objective; certain logical laws couldn't be possible otherwise. So when people are saying they have faith in God, they are really saying that they place their inevitable uncertainty in the hands of an entity which is gradually discovered rather than invented. As opposed to a person who places their inevitable uncertainty in the hands of something unintelligible. Therefore, it seems that theistic faith is a "reasonable faith" and not just fideistic.

I would take the paragraphs above as communicative prose rather than rigorous argument, although this idea has been formulated as such by thinkers much greater than myself. I believe it's called an argument from reason or whatever.

Not the Last word

I have been investigating this issue a lot recently. When listening to people like Sam Harris, Aron Ra, Matt Dillahunty, David Smalley and so many others who are passionate about the issue come up again presuppositional apologists like Erik Hovind and Sye Ten Bruggencate, you start to realise that the only real choices you have are to either accept some level of fault in your reasoning "inevitable uncertainty" (depending on the reliability of the EVIDENCE), or make up an elaborate story that requires extreme levels of mental gymnastics and logical word games to posit a highly improbable transcendence source for why you are always right (that has no way of being test or falsified).

"Because GOD revealed it to me so that I can know it to be true" Sye Ten Bruggencate

Feel free to rebut. ^{— Unsigned, by: Core.adrift / talk / contribs}

Pure logical tautology reasoning for the divine

This is something I am still working on... but here it goes;

Assuming nothing (i.e. using no non-logical axioms) it follows that there is an assuming, or thinking. And this particular thinking, having no content, amounts to the existence of the empty set.

nothing is nothing

reason; ({} ≡ {})∧({} ⇒ {})∧(id{}:{} → {})∧(∃{} → ∃{})

Logical Tautology (1); nothing is nothing

Four senses of “is” are meant here; of identity, of implication, of predication, and of existence;

Corollary (1); nothing equivalents nothing; {} ≡ {}

Corollary (2); nothing implies nothing; {} ⇒ {}

Corollary (3); nothing has the property of nothing; id{}:{} → {}

Corollary (4); nothing exists as nothing; ∃{} → ∃{}

something is self-reasoning

reason; ({} ≡ {})∧({} ⇒ {})

Logical Tautology (2); nothing equivalents nothing and nothing implies nothing [C1 & C2]

ergo nothing is not implicated with something

Note; "nothing is not...", is the contraposition of "everything is..."

ergo everything is implicated with something

Note; Two or more things that are solely and exclusively implicated with each other can be understood as one thing implicated with itself. e.g. If a group of cells (such as the ones that make up your body) are solely and exclusively implicated with each other, they can be understood as one thing (namely your body) implicated with itself i.e. you are cybernetic.

ergo something is self-implicated

Note; Relevant implication suggests causation and is correlation. When it is impossible for there to be missing variables correlation necessarily is causation. Since everything is implicated here it is impossible for there to be missing variables.

ergo something is self-causal Q.E.D.

Note; "causal" is not in the same declension as "caused"; the latter refers to an event in time, the former refers to a process through time. Self-causal means self-deterministic or teleological. Self-determinism is consciousness.

ergo; cause is reason and self-causal is self-reasoning

something is self-descriptive

reason; ({} ≡ {})∧(id{}:{} → {})

Logical Tautology (3); nothing equivalents nothing and nothing has the property of nothing

ergo Nothing is nondescript. - Something is self-descriptive.

Note; Endomorphic self-description is self-manifestation.

something is essentially existence

reason; ({} ≡ {})∧(∃{} → ∃{})

Logical Tautology (4); nothing equivalents nothing and nothing exists as nothing

ergo Nothing is nonexistence. - Something is essentially existence.

everything is made of something

reason; ({} ⇒ {})∧(id{}:{} → {})

Logical Tautology (5); nothing implies nothing and nothing has the property of nothing

ergo Nothing is made of nothing. - Everything is made of something.

something is the reason for all things

reason; ({} ⇒ {})∧(∃{} → ∃{})

Logical Tautology (6); nothing implies nothing and nothing exists as nothing

ergo Nothing is the reason for nothing. - Something is the reason for all things.

Ergo nothing is reasoning out nothing - something is reasoning out all things

Ergo something is reasoning itself out and something is it's own reason

something has always existed everywhere

reason; (id{}:{} → {})∧(∃{} → ∃{})

Logical Tautology (7); nothing has the property of nothing and nothing exists as nothing

ergo Nowhere and at no time has nothing existed. - Something has always existed everywhere.

One thing is self-reasoning, self-descriptive, has the essence of existence, that everything is made of, that is the reason for all things, that is reasoning out all things, that is reasoning itself out, that is it's own reason, and has always existed everywhere.

reason--The direct generalization of a thing neither involves nor expresses anything beyond the particular characteristics of the thing generalized. From this it follows that--No generalization implies or expresses how many individuals of the generalized thing exist, inasmuch as it expresses nothing beyond the particular characteristics of the thing generalized. There is necessarily for each individual existent thing a reason why it should exist [T6]. This reason for existence must either be contained in the particular characteristics and generalization of the thing generalized [T2], or must be generalized apart from such generalization. If a given number of individuals of a particular thing exist, there must be some reason for the existence of exactly that number, neither more nor less. Consequently, the reason for the existence of each of them, must necessarily be sought externally to each individual thing. It therefore follows that, everything which may consist of several individuals must have an external reason. And, as it has been shown already that existence appertains to the particular characteristics of something [T4], existence must necessarily be included in its generalization; and from its generalization alone existence must be deducible. But from its generalization we cannot infer the existence of several things; therefore it follows that there is only one thing that is self-reasoning, self-descriptive, has the essence of existence, that everything is made of, that is the reason for all things, that is reasoning out all things, that is reasoning itself out, that is it's own reason, and has always existed everywhere. Q.E.D.

[adaptation from the end of Note II, PROP. VIII, Of God, Spinoza's Ethics] [3]

conclusion

The one thing is a monism (essence of existence), pantheism (that everything is made of), that is omniscient (self-reasoning that is reasoning out all things), omnipotent (the reason for all things that is it's own reason), eternal (has always existed), and omnipresent (everywhere). By virtue of the identity of indiscernibles the one thing is the Divine. Therefore the Divine necessarily exists. Q.E.D.

Selfreasoning4all (talk) 22:52, 23 July 2014 (UTC)