Are Atheists Logical?

Having just left the chat room, I find myself bewildered by the illogic of atheists. Well, at least the illogic of one particular atheist. He appealed to logic for some reason or another (I can't remember why) and I asked him if he was a theist. He replied that he was not a theist because it is illogical to be one. I asked him which of the first principles of logic were violated by theism. his reponse, "there's no evidence" -- I asked which principle this was and he responded by saying that he had already answered. I continued to ask what principle of logic was violated by theism and his reply was the same, "I answered already, there is no evidence." -- Well, of course I had never heard of the "principle of no evidence" and I then asked what constituted "evidence" being very careful to differentiate between empirical evidence and logical evidence. He didn't seem to grasp that and then told me to go ahead and prove God logically.

Well, I first wanted to establish which type of logic he had appealed to earlier and this is a point he didn't seem to grasp either. He simply said that there were no types, only ways to view logic... Of course he had no clue about Stoic logic as opposed to Aristotelian logic, etc... which are indeed different systems of logic with different focuses. In any event, I began by asking him if he knew the first principles... He was beligerent and demanded that I prove God logically. So I began to do exactly that, but before being able to do that I needed to establish the first principles.

I began with principle of causality, although in retrospect I should have begun with the principle of Existence. In any event, I asked him if he knew what the principle of causality was, he said yes. I asked him to define it and he threw the task back to me. So of course I said, "the principle of causality states that Non-Being cannot produce Being." -- Immediately he told me I was wrong and this was not the principle of causality. I asked him what was and he said that every effect had a cause. I tried to explain how this was the same thing. He said it wasn't and I was redefining terms and arguing illogically. So as you can see we were off to a bad start. His main objection was that the word "being" was not in the dictionary definition of causality. Yet he failed to explain how saying that Non-Being cannot cause Being is not the law of causality...

When asked what logician he knew of that would disagree with my definition he accused me of the fallacy of appealing to an authority. Of course I wasn't doing this, in fact it would be impossible to do such in this case since all logicians are in agreement on the priniple of Causality. For appealing to an authority to be fallacious, one must assert one authority over another when the authorities themselves disagree. Such is not the case with this... But not to draw the story out... I continued with the first principles, such as the principle of Existence, the principle of Contingency, the principle of Existential Causality, the principle of Existential Necessity, etc... All along the way being told that these things do not prove God and are illogical.

So then I mentioned a few arguments i.e. the Cosmological argument and Teleological argument... he told me that they didn't prove God and were illogical... And this after not being able to define the first principles en toto, as well as being told that every definition was illogical and every principle wrong. So what was I to do? He then began to repeat questions that I had answered already... He drew a few false analogies saying that "nature" could fit into each argument where I place God, although I showed him how that argument fails. He then began to argue from silence claiming that just because we don't know of other universes doesn't mean that other universes don't exist and couldn't have produced our universe. I said there is no logical or scientific reason to believe in such universes and he then threw that back to me as an argument against God, yet the whole time I was making logical arguments in favor of theism.

After a while of this he began demanding that I prove God and prove God when he said so... Of course I had been making my arguments all along, although he never let me establish my foundation... I went with it... But once the demands began I told him to stop... He continued... I then made some demands of my own, first demanding that he stop making demands, secondly that he apologize three times to me, and thirdly that he do it in 3 seconds... He did not comply and I used the wonderful ignore feature that AOL offers, but the last post I saw was that I was only ignoring him because I was scared and couldn't prove God logically. Well, the purpose of this post is to show the logical proof of God. I will begin with the first principles and then make the argument based on the first principles.

1. Being Is (Principle of Existence)
2. Being is Being (Principle of Identity)
3. Being is not Non-Being (Principle of Non-Contradiction)
4. Either Being or Non-Being (Principle of the Excluded Middle)
5. Non-Being cannot cause Being (Principle of Causality)
6. Contingent Being cannot cause Contingent Being (Principle of Contingency/Dependancy)
7. Only Necessary Being can cause Contingent Being (Positive Principle of Modality)
8. Necessary Being cannot cause Necessary Being (Negative Principle of Modality)
9. Every Contingent Being is caused by a Necessary Being (Principle of Existential Causality)
10. Necessary being exists (Principle of Existential Necessity)
11. Contingent Being exists (Principle of Existential Contingency)
12. Necessary Being is similar to similar Contingent Being(s) it causes (Principle of Analogy)

OK... Now for the logical argument for the existence of God based on the first principles of rational thought.

1. Something exists (e.g. I do).
2. I am a contingent being.
3. Nothing cannot cause something.
4. Only a Necessary Being can cause a contingent being.
5. Therefore I am caused to exist by a Necessary Being.
6. But I am a personal, rational, and moral kind of being (since I engage in these types of activities).
7. Therefore this Necessary Being must be a personal, rational, and moral kind of being since I am similar to him by the Principle of Analogy.
8. But a Necessary Being cannot be contingent in its being which would be a contradiction.
9. Therefore this Necessary Being is personal, rational, moral in a necessary way, not in a contingent way.
10. This Necessary Being is also eternal, uncaused, unchanging, unlimited, and one, since a Necessary Being cannot come to be, be caused by another, undergo change, be limited by any possibility of what it could be (a Necessary Being has no possibility to be other than it is), or to be more than one Being, (since there cannot be two infinite beings).
11. Therefore, one necessary, eternal, uncaused, unlimited (= infinite), rational, personal, and moral Being exists.
12. Such a Being is appropriately called "God" in the theistic sense, because he possesses all the essential characteristics of a theistic God.
13. Therefore the theistic God exists.
    

Definitions of First Principles and Demonstration of God's Existence were taken from the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, By Dr. Norman L. Geisler (p. 250-53).