One of the arguments against religion in the contemporary atheist arsenal is the argument that religious beliefs fuel war and terrorism. Rather than pull quotations from such well-known authors as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, I will quote a couple of passages from one of the contributors to Philosophers Without Gods, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. His piece is entitled "Overcoming Christianity." After describing his movement from his evangelical Christian upbringing to a quietistic rejection of Christianity, Sinnott-Armstrong tells us how he became an evangelical atheist:
Category: God
Multiverses, Possible Worlds, and God
A lawyer from Pennsylvania e-mails:
. . . I have a philosophy question. Is it possible that cosmology generally, with its theory of multiverses — all possible universes exist — provides an argument, somewhat like the old
ontological argument, for a non impersonal God? To wit:1) Multiverses — the set of all possible universes — exist.
2) Each multiverse is different from the other as to the arrangement of
matter, time, space, etc.3) In the set of all possible universes there exists a universe where a
personal God (the God of the Bible) exists, where Christ rose from the
dead, and where Christ was God.4) That God of the Bible is omnipotent.
5) So if there is one such universe, with an omnipotent God, there is a
set of all universes with an omnipotent God, as an omnipotent God can
operate across boundaries of matter, time, space, etc.6) A personal God exists in our universe as we exist in one of the set
of all universes.
I don't think this is a good argument for a couple of reasons.
A. C. Grayling and a Stock Move of Militant Atheists
Since A. C. Grayling has surfaced in the ComBox here, it it will be useful for people to see just what sort of fellow he is. So over the next few days I will reproduce three or four of my Grayling posts from the old site.
Militant atheist philosopher A. C. Grayling writes,
Religious belief of all kinds shares the same intellectual respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence of fairies.
This remark outrages the sensibilities of those who have deep religious convictions and attachments, and they regard it as insulting. But the truth is that everyone takes this attitude about all but one (or a very few) of the gods that have ever been claimed to exist.
No reasonably orthodox Christian believes in Aphrodite or the rest of the Olympian deities, or in Ganesh the Elephant God or the rest of the Hindu pantheon, or in the Japanese emperor, and so endlessly on – and officially (as a matter of Christian orthodoxy) he or she must say that anyone who sincerely believes in such deities is deluded and blasphemously in pursuit of "false gods".
The atheist adds just one more deity to the list of those not believed in; namely, the one remaining on the Christian's or Jew's or Muslim's list.
What Grayling is saying above is often heard from atheists. It is a stock item in their repertoire. But is there an argument here, and if so, what exactly is the argument? The conclusion is clear enough: Religious belief of every sort is irrational, unsupported by evidence, and not intellectually respectable. (One wonders if Grayling has given any thought to the nontheistic religion of Buddhism, but let that pass.) A bold thesis indeed, very significant if true or even if rationally supportable. But what is the argument? Is there an argument? If there is no argument, then we have gratuitous assertion which can be met with gratuitous counter-assertion. But our man does seem to be trying to give an argument. After all, isn't that what philosophers are supposed to do? Or is Grayling just gassing off? Let's be charitable and ascribe an argument to him. It appears to be this:
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Does the Atheist Deny What the Theist Affirms?
It seems to me that there is a sort of 'disconnect' in theist-atheist debates. It is as if the parties to the dispute are not talking about the same thing. Jim Ryan writes,
The reason I'm an atheist is straightforward. The proposition that there is a god is as unlikely as ghosts, Martians amongst us, and reincarnation. There isn't the slightest evidence for these hypotheses which fly in the face of so much else that we know to be true. So I believe all of them to be false.
This is a fairly standard atheist response. Since I picked up the use of 'boilerplate' in philosophical contexts from Jim, I hope he won't be offended if I refer to the quoted passage as atheist boilerplate. It puts me in mind of Russell's Teapot part of the drift of which is that there is no more reason to believe in God than there is to believe that "between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit . . . ."
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Validity as a Modal Concept and a Modal Argument for the Nonexistence of God
'Modally Challenged' comments:
I've run into this argument on several occasions and while the author(s) insist theists will accept the premises, it's more the validity I'd appreciate your take on.
1) If God is possible, then God is a necessary being.
2) If God is a necessary being, then unjustified evil is impossible.
3) Unjustified evil is possible.
Therefore, God is not possible.
In this post I explain the distinction between validity and soundness, explain why validity is a modal concept, and then use this fact to show that the modal distinction between the necessary and the contingent applies outside the sphere of human volition, contrary to what followers of Ayn Rand maintain. Finally, I demonstrate the validity of the above atheist argument.
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Is the Existence of God Entailed by Alternative Ways Natural Things Might Have Been?
This post is a sequel to Ayn Rand on Necessity, Contingency, and Dispositions. There we were examining this quotation:
What do you mean by "necessity"? By "necessity," we mean that things are a certain way and had to be. I would maintain that the statement "Things are," when referring to non-man-made occurrences, is the synonym of "They had to be." Because unless we start with the premise of an arbitrary God who creates nature, what is had to be. (IOE, 2nd ed., p. 299)
Rand's argument may be set forth as follows:
1. If there are alternative ways non-man-made things might have been, then an arbitrary (free) God exists.
2. It is not the case that an arbitrary (free) God exists. Ergo,
3. There are no alternative ways non-man-made things might have been.
I rigged the argument so that it is valid in point of logical form: the conclusion follows from the premises. But are the premises true? A more tractable question: Do we have good reason to accept them?
Why God Cannot be the Creator of the Universe
Leonard Peikoff writes, "Is God the creator of the universe? There can be no creation of something out of nothing. There is no nothing."
Peikoff is arguing that God cannot be the creator of the universe because creation is creation of something out of nothing, and there is no nothing. Is this a good argument or a bad argument? Justify your answer. Be clear and concise.
Existence, God, and the Randians
This is a follow-up to yesterday's Rand and Existence Again. The following is by Leonard Peikoff:
Every argument for God and every attribute ascribed to Him rests on a false metaphysical premise. None can survive for a moment on a correct metaphysics . . . .
Existence exists, and only existence exists. Existence is a primary: it is uncreated, indestructible, eternal. So if you are to postulate something beyond existence—some supernatural realm—you must do it by openly denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and saying flatly, “To Hell with argument, I have faith.” That, of course, is a willful rejection of reason.
Objectivism advocates reason as man’s sole means of knowledge, and therefore, for the reasons I have already given, it is atheist. It denies any supernatural dimension presented as a contradiction of nature, of existence. This applies not only to God, but also to every variant of the supernatural ever advocated or to be advocated. In other words, we accept reality, and that’s all.
In this passage we meet once again our old friend 'Existence exists.' And we note the sort of linguistic mischief that Rand/Peikoff engage in. It cannot be denied that existing things exist, and only existing things exist. This is entirely trivial. Anyone who denies it embraces a contradiction: There are existing things that do not exist. We should all agree, then, with the first sentence of the second paragraph. So far, so good.
But then Peikoff tells us that to postulate something supernatural such as God is "to postulate something beyond existence." Now it may well be that there is no God or anything beyond nature. It may well be that everything that exists is a thing of nature. But the nonexistence of God does not follow from the triviality that everything that exists exists. Does it take a genius to see that the following argument is invalid?
1. Existence exists, ergo
2. God does not exist.
One cannot derive a substantive metaphysical conclusion from a mere tautology. No doubt, whatever exists exists. But one cannot exclude God from the company of what exists by asserting that whatever exists exists. Now it is not nice to call people stupid, but anyone who cannot appreciate the simple point I have just made is, I am afraid, either stupid, or not paying attention, or willfully obtuse. Here is an example of a valid argument:
3. Nothing supernatural exists
4. God is supernatural, ergo
5. God does not exist.
For Peikoff to get the result he wants, the nonexistence of God, from the premise 'Existence exists,' he must engage in the linguistic mischief of using 'existence' to mean 'natural existence.' Instead of saying "only existence exists," he should have said 'only natural existence exists.' But then he would lose the self-evidence of "Existence exists and only existence exists."
Conflating a trivial self-evident thesis with a nontrivial controversial thesis has all the advantages of theft over honest toil as Russell said in a different connection. It would take a certain amount of honest philosophical toil to construct a really good argument for the nonexistence of any and all supernatural entities. But terminological mischief is easy. What Peikoff is doing above is smuggling the nonexistence of the supernatural into the term 'existence' Now if you cannot see that that is an intellectually dispreputable move, then I must say you are hopeless.
It is like a bad ontological argument in reverse. On one bad version of the ontological argument, one defines God into existence by smuggling the notion of existence into the concept of God and then announcing that since we have the concept of God, God must exist. Peikoff is doing the opposite: he defines God and the supernatural out of existence by importing their nonexistence into the term 'existence.' But you can no more define God into existence than you can define him out of existence.
There are other egregious blunders in the above passage. But if I were to expose every mistake of the Randians, I might attain the age of a Methuselah and still not be done. Or perhaps I should liken it unto a Sisyphean labor, one of endless and futile toil. Futile, because the Randians I have so far encountered seem quite unteachable.
Which Is More Certain: God or My Hand?
A reader inquires, " I'm curious, if someone asked you what you were more certain of, your hand or belief in the existence of God, how would you respond?"
The first thing a philosopher does when asked a question is examine the question. (Would that ordinary folk, including TV pundits, would do likewise before launching into gaseous answers to ill-formed questions.) Now what exactly am I being asked? The question seems ambiguous as between:
Q1. Are you more certain of the existence of your hand or of the existence of God?
Q2. Are you more certain of the existence of your hand or of your belief in the existence of God?