The Criterial Argument for the Existence of God - Version 2.0

[Version 2.0 is below this, because of the way the search results appear on the internet.]

Version 5:

Certain assumptions are logically basic criteria of all thought. They are the standards of analysis for any possible mind.
 
Therefore, these background standards of analysis are necessary for recognizing and knowing that certain objects of our experience are minds or persons.
 
But only a mind or person using those standards can recognize and know whether any object is a mind or person, and to use these standards for this purpose is to imbue them with mind- and person-determining powers.
 
Therefore, the ultimate standards of thought are necessarily used to determine whether or not an object is a mind or person.
 
And relations between these assumptions and the objects in question (minds and persons) are themselves objects that can be predicated only by a mind.

Therefore the ultimate criteria of thought are indistinguishable from an ultimate truth-determining mind or person, since they do nothing of themselves but only authorize and supervise the evaluation of truth claims due to their necessarily-assumed authority and guidance.
 
Therefore, these criterial assumptions are necessary for recognizing and knowing that certain objects of our experience are minds or persons.
 
Any argued denial of the necessary universality and logical authority of this system of assumptions logically depends on those same assumptions for its own truth, meaningfulness, significance, goodness or value, and so on.
 
Therefore, this system of assumptions necessarily adjudicates all truth claims about everything including itself, as well as their denials.
 
Therefore, this system of assumptions is omniscient as the truth-evaluating instrument of all knowledge, ultimately authoritative as the final court of appeal, sovereign as the universally decisive inferential factor, omnipresent in it’s physically universal applicability, and transcendent in being perfectly functional at any level of supervisory authority over all issues concerning all domains of predication.
 
Furthermore, these assumptions are the specifying standards for defining everything including minds or persons and God.

Consequently, this system of necessary and logically basic assumptions are as ultimate and mind-like or person-like as any personal ultimate God is conceivable of being.

Treating this aggregate mind-structured object as a reality-wide guide in all thinking about everything is therefore unavoidably necessary, even in reasoned denials that this object has that status as an ultimate universal ruling system factor.
 
To proceed in thinking at all, we must approximate whatever reason is always indicating as the perfection standard of thought.
 
Moreover, there is no controversy about the ultimate authority of what this standard or specification reveals to me, even if I don't live up to it, or perfectly actualize the rational ideal in some way.

Those actions are what they are only when judged by that same rational ideal.
 
Any contemplation of these ultimate assumptions of mind such as reason, formal logic, the rule-set of an ordered context of reality, a hierarchy of values, and the obligation to proceed according to a system of rules---all methodological primitives---results in an endless stream of new knowledge when applied to our ongoing experience of the world.
 
Consequently, these ultimate decisive rules and ideals of thought actually communicate knowledge and even wisdom by merely contemplating them and their relationship to our belief systems and our world of objects.
 
The fact that we must reference these principles implies an equally ultimate purpose.
 
And an ultimate purpose, necessarily depends on a hierarchical set of equally ultimate values.

This system of assumptions is a unified instrument and object of cognition, which necessarily obligates, defines, and influences the mind as the ultimate operating system for thinking about anything.

Consequently, all thinking already necessarily both assumes and references an unchanging and enduring God-level personal mind object made up of prescriptive criterial evaluative principles of thought taken together as a system for the possibility of thinking, that adjudicates everything including mind and personhood themselves, and makes possible inquiry into anything and everything that can be thought.
 
Therefore, in all defining senses, this comprehensive mind object is indistinguishable from an ultimate personal mind or God.
 
The rationally necessary is necessarily the existentially real.

Any argument denying this is self-contradictory in trying to rationally necessitate its own truth about the existentially real in spite of what that argument asserts.
 
And if two objects are indistinguishable from each other with respect to all of their properties, then they are identical.

Therefore, this comprehensive mind object---this necessarily operating rational ideal system of thought---is itself an ultimate personal mind or God.

[NOTE: The only problem I see with this argument is in what constitutes a person. The ultimate nature, authority, and role of reason is indisputable.]

[Version 2.0 follows]

Our most basic assumptions are necessarily used and referenced to be able to think about anything.

Therefore, our most basic assumptions are necessary to recognize and know that certain objects of our experience are persons.

But only a person can arbitrate whether an object is a person.

Therefore, taken together like the operating system of a computer, the standards and fixed values we operate with as running assumptions or control statements, are necessarily referenced, and treated as the unified predicative and adjudicative structure of an ideal ultimate personal mind.

This criterial structure must be applied universally.

Therefore, this non-local rational structure arbitrates all truth about everything including itself.

Hence, there is a sense in which this structure is omniscient as the instrument of all knowledge, ultimately authoritative as the final court of appeal, sovereign as the universally decisive inferential factor, omnipresent in it’s physically universal applicability, and transcendent in being perfectly functional at any point in the spacetime nexus.

Consequently, the characteristics of this structure are just as ultimate and inherently mind-like as any personal ultimate God is conceivable of being.

Treating this aggregate intellectual object as a reality-wide guide in all thinking about everything is therefore unavoidably necessary, even in reasoned denials that this object has that status as an ultimate universal ruling factor.

I often wonder about the reliability of my computer, but not about reason. Without even thinking about it, I necessarily try to approximate to some achievable extent whatever reason is always unwaiveringly indicating as the perfection standard of thought.

Moreover, there is no controversy about the ultimate authority of what it reveals to me, even if I don't live up to it, or perfectly actualize the rational ideal in some way.

Furthermore, we merely need to contemplate these ultimates of mind such as reason, formal logic, the rule-set of an ordered context of reality, a hierarchy of values, and so on, in order to discover an endless stream of new knowledge when applied to our ongoing experience of the world.

Consequently, there is some sense in which these ultimate decisive rules and ideals of thought actually communicate knowledge and even wisdom by merely thinking about them and their relationship to our belief systems and our world of objects.

Lastly, the necessity of our referencing of these principles itself implies both purpose and value, which are equally ultimate in this comprehensive set of guiding operational principles. We reference inferential factors for various purposes, and those purposes are based on a hierarchical set of values.

Consequently, I believe in God because my thinking already necessarily assumes and references an unchanging and enduring god-level object of mind that arbitrates all things including personhood, makes inquiry of anything and everything possible including itself, and is indistinguishable from an ultimate personal mind or God.

A Proverb for Discriminating Atheists

Question protected and unargued universals, and a lot of mind-gods suddenly disappear.

They also work who only sit and wait

Everyone has their own pace of digesting the arguments and feeling they are their own person in engaging, whenever that happens... otherwise it could be a miserable experience to try to interact in any kind of challenging way... it's also like math in that the slowest can become the most effective because they've done more low-level grappling with the basics and thus understand how most people really think through the issues than the quick study types. I'm sure there are some silent ones who are going to end up tremendously effective and influential in philosophy.

How to Get Rid of Your Competition

The pressure that induces governments to regulate does not come from reformers bemoaning abuses by powerful business interests. It comes from the business interests themselves, asking government to shield them against the harsh winds of competition.

Redacted from Dan Smoot, The Business End of Government

Wild Wild West

She threw away the key. And woe to the calamitous curiosity which might peer just once through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and look down, and sense that humanity rests upon the merciless, the greedy, the insatiable, the murderous, in the indifference of their ignorance---and in their dreams hanging on the back of a tiger.

In view of all this, where in the world does the urge for truth come from?

--redacted from Nietzsche, 1888

The Irony of Weightlifting

All ultimate and necessary truths are aspects of God's being, including the truths that are the means to all truths including themselves, truths that make up reason, logic, a set of values and conditionals, intentions and purposes.

There is a sense in which courage of one's convictions is in direct proportion to the extent to which one is willing to attack those convictions. Moreover, this way of negation is not only necessary for completing the structure of one's understanding of one's perspective and oneself, it is also required to understand surviving claims and their argumentative structures in the sharpest contrast to arguments for their negations. This prepares one more fully to examine competing claims, although again the resulting comparative analysis either contributes to the edification of one's view, or else changes it or negates it altogether. That's the necessary risk one takes.

 Moreover, one is already taking a risk in not knowing whether one will live through the coming day, and in operating according to whatever default view is assumed already. There's no such thing as a philosophical neutral zone.

The essence of the self-critical process is the attempt to approximate an ideal structure of justification. So why not an all-out attack on every front? Systematic, comprehensive, from the ground up, and developed into more than a habit---like breathing.

The result of course is to strengthen one's view, assuming it's true, and render being one's own worst enemy the greatest of friendships.

Anti-Randianism Necessarily Mimics Objectivism

I used to think that the 2D-characters complaint about Atlas Shrugged and other novels of Ayn Rand was legitimate criticism, but statist and and other coercive collectivists keep using the same arguments that the supposedly cardboard-cutout villians used in the book. The elusive 3rd dimension compulsively acts out Ayn Rand's characters for us, while criticizing her novels for not having realistic characters. One of the most striking ironies of the modern world.

I'm even starting to wonder if they are secretly copying certain passages for use in their ritualistic scolding.

If the characters are 2D, it's because Rand is holding up a mirror to flatland, even if possibly in spite of herself as well.

Adapted from a comment by robc at reason.com