Part I is here<\/a>. Sproul thinks he can prove that the God of the Christian Bible exists from reason alone. By 'prove' he means establish with objective certainty. <\/span><\/p>\n He begins by listing four possible explanations of reality as we encounter it. I take him to mean by 'reality' the world as given to the senses.<\/span><\/p>\n 1) Reality is an illusion. Sproul considers these the only four possibilities. His strategy is to refute the first three, thereby establishing (4). Pressed for time, I will be brief. I will simply dismiss (1) as beneath refutation. <\/span><\/p>\n As for (2), nothing can create itself, if 'x creates x' means x causes x to exist<\/em>. Why not? Well, for anything to do any causing it must already exist. 'Already' can be taken either logically or temporally or both. But nothing is or can be either temporally or logically prior to itself. It is therefore impossible that anything create itself. It is a necessarily true law of metaphysica generalis<\/em> that nothing can create itself. <\/span><\/p>\n But isn't God classically characterized as causa sui<\/em>? He is indeed. But what that means is not that he causes himself to exist, but that he is not caused by another to exist. As I like to put it, the sense of causa sui<\/em> is privative, not positive. It is built into the very concept God<\/em> that God would not be God if he were caused by another to exist; that is not to say, however, that he causes himself to exist. To say that God is causa sui<\/em> is equivalent to saying that he exists of metaphysical necessity.<\/span><\/p>\n By the way, don't confuse the concept God<\/em> with God. That would be like confusing the concept chair<\/em> with what you are presumably now sitting on. Are you sitting on a concept?<\/span><\/p>\n As for (3), this pantheistic possibility is worth consideration, but I must move on. The idea is that Reality does not cause itself to exist, nor does it just happen to exist; it necessarily exists.<\/span><\/p>\n Sproul affirms (4) and he thinks he can prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt. By 'reality,' he means "reality as we encounter it." (p. 9) That includes mainly, if not wholly, the people and things disclosed by inner and outer sense experience. <\/span><\/p>\n But are those four the only (epistemic) possibilities? Why couldn't the reality we encounter just exist as a factum brutum<\/em>, a brute fact? By 'brute fact' I mean an obtaining or existing state of affairs that exists without cause or reason. <\/span><\/p>\n Sproul needs to explain why the cosmos, physical world, nature cannot just exist. Why must<\/em> it have an efficient cause or a reason\/purpose (final cause)? Why can't its existence be a brute fact? That is a (fifth) epistemic possibility he does not, as far as I can see, consider.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Part I is here. Sproul thinks he can prove that the God of the Christian Bible exists from reason alone. By 'prove' he means establish with objective certainty. He begins by listing four possible explanations of reality as we encounter it. I take him to mean by 'reality' the world as given to the senses. … Continue reading “Notes on R. C. Sproul, Does God Exist?<\/i> Part II”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[191,58,143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-and-theism","category-christian-doctrine","category-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
2) Reality creates itself.
3) Reality is self-existent.
4) Reality is created by something distinct from it that is self-existent, God.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n