Atheism? Theism? No Thanks, I'll Take Agnosticism

You are quite right when you indirectly point out that you can't prove a negative. This is indeed the case.

However, on the subject of god, atheism (little a) is the correct rational position for two reasons:

1. The entity "god", so called, is purported to be omnipotent. This leads to a contradiction, namely: can god create a rock he cannot lift, if so he's not all powerful, if not he's not all powerful. And as we know contradictions cannot exist in reality, therefore an entity whose attribute is omnipotence cannot exist either.

2. Rational skepticism (already partially mentioned above). There is no reasonable belief for god. It is an unreasonable belief, ie prejudice. That is: there is no correct chain of reasoning whence one might derive the possibility of god from the empirical facts of nature alone. If there is no reason to expect that god would exist, then leaving the possibility open is not irrational, but giving equal weight to the probability that he exists and the probability that he does not exist is irrational.

 

But if it is the case a boulder which god cannot lift cannot exist, then this logically means that god is unable to create such a bolder, therefore god is not all powerful.

It's a contradiction whichever way you try to cut it because it violates the basic principle of causality, from which you derrive the logical method (reasoning from premises to conclusions) to begin with. If you invalidate causality then you necessarily can no longer reason about it, because reason itself rests on causality as a premise.

So, to give a concrete example. If it were the case that I was all powerful, then I would be able to change my past. But if I can change my past then future actions have consequences in the present. Thus I can no longer reason from cause to effect, from premise to conclusion.

If I know what actions I will take in the future, this still does not help me, because it would still be reasoning from premises which are true in the present to conclusions about the future, when these premises may actually change seemingly at random due to future interference with them.

So, having invalidated causality to hypothesize a universe in which an omnipotent being can exist, one can necessarily reason no further about events and consequences in that universe. The universe can thus be said to be illogical.

Even to reason about an illogical universe the way we have just done is at least somewhat fallacious, because technically we know only that it is illogical and nothing more about it.

So yes, you can have the blackbox universe in which causality doesn't exist. But clearly this isn't the universe in which we live, because causality is the basis of everything we observe and do. Thus we return to the original point of the omnipotence attribute being in contradiction with reality.

I'll also just address this quickly. Philosophically "power" is an expression describing the degree of efficacy one's actions have in causing the intended outcome.

For example, if I say I have much power of thought, what I mean is that the efficacy of my actions of deliberate thought is great enough that those actions have the desired outcomes.

For example, if I say I have great physical power, what I mean is that the actions I undertake physically have the desired outcomes.

And, for example, if I say I have great power of authority, what I mean is that the efficacy of my actions is such that when I command something others obey it to that degree I intended them to obey.

So to say that something is all powerful is to say that the efficacy of literally any action one might undertake will be great enough to produce the exact outcome required.

 

Right, but to then go ahead and reason about a god divorced from causality is meaningless:

Reason presupposes universal causality: That which is not causal is not the domain of logic.

Why is this the case?

Logic is of the form:
Premise + Premise + ... = Conclusion.

It presupposes that causes have effects. If we can no longer assume this to be the case (as with an object or entity divorced from causality) then what is the point in reasoning about it? Cause no longer necessarily leads to effect, things in the future can change things in the past, even multiple times, and in so doing change events in the future again. Essentially you lose your capacity to say X therefore Y, and thus your capacity to reason in any case.

So how do we deal with these cases?

Well in the case of something explicitly illogical we can simply say that the universe is rational, and that illogical things cannot exist. This is not because we say it is so, but because logic is derived from reality. That is: reality has told us that it is so a billion times before.

In the case that someone proposes some testable hypothesis for something which is explicitly illogical with respect to current understanding, then we can no longer apply reasoned speculation. In these cases we must simply wait for the empirical data to determine the facts of the matter. One should not become agnostic in these cases. If something is illogical, the rational position is to expect that it cannot exist. However we know both that humans are fallible (our reasoning or premises might be wrong) and that reason itself is derived from empirical reality, therefore if someone wants to make a case in terms of empirical reality, we _must_ always pay attention.

 

Reasoning about it would be a contradiction in terms, as established above.

It has no impact whatever.

I did a thread a while back called the roots of reason:
http://www.sythe.org/showthread.php?p=5781589#post5781589

Essentially if you hypothesize that there might exist some thing or event at some point which would change the laws of nature, there is nothing more you can say after that point, because logic itself is derived from the laws of nature.

That is: if tomorrow causality, the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, object constancy, and other fundamental metaphysical laws abruptly changed, the only thing we could possibly do is try to develop new systems (new logics) that relate to the new state of things -- that is if we still existed in any form whatever, and also assuming forms still existed, and that existence still existed.

So to be more specific: everything we reason about and do are based on metaphysical principles which have no further root. They are observed principles from the nature of reality as reality. These include causation, form, matter, identity, and existence, among others.

Although this is not actually the direct root of the rational structure we invoke in order to reason, it represents a sort of reflective copy of the root of all truth: the nature of reality as reality.

See/search metaphysics for more information. You might start here for an introduction to rationalist metaphysics: http://solohq.solopassion.com/Objectivism101/Metaphysics_Main.shtml