That’s one flaw in the argument right there. It’s like saying that because there are infinitely many numbers you can never arrive at zero. It’s a misunderstanding of infinity, assuming that an infinite time must have a starting point.
You have an interesting usage of “therefore”; to you it seems to indicate that a non sequitur is about to arrive.
Really? Tell me something that matters to you that is not contained in space-time.
John,
My Premise B is Mendelssohn’s one. What I show is that by assuming the existence of “knowledge a priori” Kant shares this Premise B as well.
Now Kant rejects Mendelssohn’s Premise A and thereby Mendelssohn’s proof of God.
Therefore 
, it is clear that Premise B does not assume what I want to prove.
Thanks for this remark, but I apologize for insisting that in my reasoning the claim that “all novels must exist in an omniscient mind before we humans write them” is not a Premise but a Corollary of my proof.
Anyway I wish you a very happy New Year!
Again you use “Therefore” to signal a non sequitur. You will have to unpack that syllogism, because it seems to make no sense. Your premise B is this: “Answers to arithmetic questions like those referred to under Premise A do not exist in any material realm but are contents of some mind.”
That assumes that the answers to all arithmetic questions are contents of some mind, but we have no reason to make such an assumption. That assumption smuggles your conclusion into the syllogism. I have generalized the idea to show its absurdity, and let me clarify: a hundred years ago, no human being, not even Tolkien, knew anything about Frodo or the One Ring. You can’t just assume that the story existed in some mind at that time, therefore God. But that’s what your “proof” does.
I apologize for the delay in answering.
I have been participating to an interesting Conference about the question:
Is science part of a larger story about what is good and what is bad?
Here “some things” among others:
The Wavefunction and the Free Will ruling the Collapse in the Copenhagen interpretation of QM.
The Pilotwave in the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of QM.
All the Parallel Worlds inaccessible to our observation in the Many-Worlds interpretation of QM.
The Free Will deciding deviations from Probability 1 predictions in the QBism interpretation of QM.
What keeps the world going on in Discrete Space-Time Quantum-Gravity.
And last but not least:
The Personal Identity of Dr. Patrick Trischitta.
All the best for the New Year!
And what did your learn?
In order to answer these questions, it is convenient to keep in mind what happens in a black-hole:
Beyond the event-horizon in a little black-hole or the death-horizon in a larger black-hole the concept of observation does not make sense, since information from within the black-hole cannot reach any observer outside and there cannot be any observer inside. Accordingly, the very fabric of reality disappears, and it does not make sense to speak about any “physical reality” beyond the event- respectively death-horizon. Notice by the way that this makes it possible to avoid the singularity-paradox: General relativity escapes its self-destruction thanks quantum physics.
The information about the objects falling into a black-hole remains on the surface of the corresponding horizon and can come out encoded in the Hawking radiation. Notice that no dead can resurrect this way, only animal corpses can come out encoded in the Hawking radiation.
What about objects outside the “edge”?
As far as outside the “edge” there is no human observer, the very concept of observation disappears and, again, it does not make sense to speak about physical reality. Also here the knowledge acquired during the object’s accessible phase can be considered as remaining encoded in the edge’s hypersurface, very much in accordance with the holographic principle.
If you claim that “the stuff outside of the observable edge is still inside space-time”, you should consequently also claim that “the stuff inside of the event-horizon respectively death-horizon in a black hole is still inside space-time”, and then you cannot escape the singularity!
I dare to insist: The physics we can speak about relies on human observations. So the only possible “non-human physicists” are either God or angels, that is, minds acting from outside space-time.
We have certainly reasons for assuming Premise B .
So for instance we can decide by a finite number of steps whether or not a given number N is even.
This means that every natural number N is either even or not, and so either there is a largest even number or not.
Consequently, the answer to the question of “whether or not there are infinite many even number” does exist, and is not a material entity in “the world outside there”.
Here you are smuggling your conclusion into the syllogism: Why must it be absurd that the story of “The Lord of the Rings” was contained in God’s mind before Tolkien wrote it?
All possible choices humans of all times can do is huge but finite, and are contained in God’s mind, also all the choices of words Tolkien achieved to write his story.
The difference with arithmetic is that Tolkien was free in deciding to write “The Lord of the Rings” instead of another possible story contained in God’s mind. By contrast we are not free to decide that there is a largest even or prime number.
In summary, nothing speaks against assuming that Tolkien’s story did exist in God’s mind a hundred years ago, and even less against assuming that mathematical truths are contents of some mind, that is, Premise B.
Now Premise B alone is not sufficient to proof the existence of God, because one could still claim, as Kant did, that mathematical knowledge is a priori in human mind .
However Kant’s claim is proved wrong by Gödel’s and Turing’s theorems.
So in the end Mendelssohn prevails, and we can conclude that there is an omniscient mind containing as well the answers to all possible arithmetic questions as all possible stories human authors of all times can write.
“Exist” is a term of multiple meanings, and you would appear to be making use of ambiguity there. Also, “exist” and “exist in some mind” are not the same thing. You have not connected this to premise B.
It’s not absurd. The absurdity is in assuming that it’s true, based on nothing.
That’s an assertion that assumes God exists. You can’t use it in a proof of God’s existence.
Only by first assuming that there is an omniscient mind containing everything. Again, you assume what you want to prove.
Mainly that Evolution provides a new and strong proof of the Existence of God, and allows us to understand the meaning of Genesis’ claims (1:26-27; 5:1-3; 9:5-6) that humankind is defined by God at the moment “He makes mankind in his image and likeness”.
What? Yet another proof of God. All right, let’s see it.
We are taught by Quantum Gravity that space-time is discrete or pixelated.
This implies that “exist” can appropriately be attributed only to a mind or something “existing in a mind”. Material beings can be said to exist merely in a figurative sense, that is like pictures exist in the screen of your laptop.
In other words, the physical reality is thinkable, respectively computable, because it is thought, respectively computed, as Moses Mendelssohn stated.
You will have to make that connection. I don’t see it.
When you write a comment for this thread and move your mouse with your hand, the pointer moves on the screen on your laptop.
The pointer seems to move continuously but this is only an illusion. The screen of your laptop is pixelated and in fact the pointer “moves” disappearing from one pixel and appearing in the next one. This appearance and disappearance is produced by a program that imitates the movement of your hand on the pixelated screen.
Now the result that space-time is discrete or pixelated means that the movement of your hand is itself discrete as well, and your feeling that it is continuous is only an illusion.
So, that your hand remains your hand while moving is not guaranteed by any material substrate in space-time but by something immaterial beyond space-time: your personal identity. In other words, the movement of your hand exists because it primarily exists in your mind.
Now you could still argue that it is your self-consciousness what gives rise to your personal identity. The trouble is that every night while you are sleeping you lose your consciousness and are not aware of yourself. So you cannot by your own ensure your personal identity.
In conclusion by keeping to your personal identity you acknowledge there is a being who is conscious all the time, and so is capable of making you to be someone. And this amounts to say that this being is a mind who actually contains the answers to all answerable questions, and can appropriately claim: “my name is I am”.
Sorry. All the hidden assumptions in that “proof” went by too fast for me to notice most of them. But you start off with a bad analogy between the world and a computer screen. Just because motion is (you assume) discrete in both doesn’t mean that both are controlled by an underlying program. You’re again assuming this “something immaterial beyond space-time” in order to prove that it exists. It just doesn’t follow from quantization. Nor do we need God to explain why you wake up as the same person who went to sleep last night, or at least you haven’t shown that we do.
Are you familiar with the Sidney Harris cartoon with the caption “I think you should be more explicit here in step two”? That’s you.
I disagree.
My assumptions are the following two:
Space-time is quantized or pixelated.
John Harshman wakes up as the same person who went to sleep last night.
From Premise 1 it follows that no material connection can explain why John Harshman conserves his personal identity.
So,
either John Harshman is a personal being always aware that he is, i.e.: capable of stating uninterruptedly “I am”,
or there is such a personal being who ensures the conservation of John Harshman’s personal identity,
or John Harshman is an absurdity.
Since John Harshman while sleeping is not aware of his existence, we are led to conclude that:
either there is a personal being who can always claim “I am” and also ensures the conservation of John Harshman in time,
or John Harshman is an absurdity.
In summary either John Harshman is an absurdity or he is a thought of the being whose name is “I am”, that is, YAHWEH, also called God.
On my part I prefer to be a thought of YAHWEH rather than being none.
Sorry, but it doesn’t follow. Everything after that therefore isn’t meaningful.
I reject the 2nd premise. I think the person who went to sleep last night is different from the person that wakes up the next morning. The differences are subtle, but at the very least they include the experiences of having slept for one more night.
I wake up as an almost identical, but not exactly identical person, to the one that went to sleep last night. And there’s a good physical explanation for that. Time has passed, and I have had physical causes affect and alter my physical body during that elapsed time. Cells in my body will have died and been replaced by ever so slightly different ones.
All that needs to happen for maintaining the sensation of persistence of self is that the moment-to-moment changes are subtle enough to be unnoticable, or that the changes that happen do not substantially alter the processes responsible for creating that sense of self.
If a particular type of brain structure creates the activity we describe as a “sense of self”, then in so far as that brain structure is maintained in it’s essential attributes that cause this sense of self to persist, then that would explain the persistence of a sense of self.
Evidently, that is actually the case. While the brain certainly changes over our lifetime as our experiences change and accumulate, there are also clearly a persistence in the overall architecture of the brain that could explain why it would continously generate the “sense of self”, and so why you feel like your identity persists.
How does that follow? It seems obvious to me that it doesn’t follow at all.
Could that go some way towards explaining why patently invalid arguments are persuasive to you? Wouldn’t you agree that what we desire be true has no bearing on what is actually true?
If you do, as I suspect, then why did you even bring up what you desire be the case?
That’s just a social convention.