God Probably Doesn't Exist

Contention 1: Incoherency Con offers some objections to the idea the in order for God to know something, it must exist. First, I could concede that Con is correct on this, but this would still prove God doesn’t exist. I had this as a defense in my original round, which Con ignored, but I will go a little more in detail about it. If it is possible for God to know something which doesn’t exist, then God could know something such as the gender of my pet hamster, as that doesn’t exist. However, because there is no hamster, there are no truths about the hamster making God’s knowledge false. An omniscient being cannot be wrong about this. If God can know something which doesn’t exist, then God doesn't exist. I don’t see how negative introspection links to existence of X whatsoever. If someone knows that they lack knowledge, this doesn’t tell us the extent of their knowledge of X. Con is making a categorical error between two different events of negative introspection. Event 1: A person knows they don’t know what a car does. Event 2: A person knows they don’t know what a “jofhru” does. In event 1, the person knows some sort of essence of a car. They could know it makes noise, they might have seen one and may have been inside one. They don’t know what it’s purpose is, but some sort of thing is known. In event 2 however, a person knows they don’t know what a jofhru does, not because they know some sort of essence, but because when the undergo negative introspection they find nothing about a jofhru. Their mind is completely void of a jofhru and that’s how one knows they don’t know. So, con’s premise “the essence of x must be known (otherwise x could not be identified as not being known)” is false. Another argument against Con’s premise is that if we’re talking about something that doesn’t exist, it has no essence by definition. So, there must be another way of identifying you don’t know about a non-existent thing that doesn’t relate to its essence Abstract knowledge Con brings up abstract knowledge. We know 2+2=4, but this doesn’t entail platonism. However, abstract knowledge doesn’t need to exist in a platonic form, just in some way. It exists as relational descriptions of reality. If we have a set of objects, we call an object that is complete and alone “one” and if we were to add another one we would call that set “two”. I see no reason why they cannot exist in our minds this way. Temporal Argument Con then states presentism is true, prima facia, and we know events about the past, therefore the argument is wrong. The only way this argument would work is if we know the past in the same way God knows the past. This is obviously false, because we don’t actually know the past, we are recalling it from memory. Con uses a bare assertion fallacy to claim our memories don’t exist, but this is false. The memories exist, in our brains [1], which explains how memories can become corrupted. Furthermore, if our memories don’t exist, why is it that we usually have memories of things that have happened? My memory of me being a vietnam veteran doesn’t exist, so why don’t I know it? Claiming memories don’t exist causes us to adopt very counterintuitive beliefs and unexplainable instances of why we have one memory and not another. Con’s objections all fall flat. The very premise he is attacking is necessary for God’s existence, he uses categorical errors, and bare assertion fallacies. My argument remains standing. Contention 2: The Problem of Evil Van Inwagen’s defense Con presents Inwagen’s defense. Con’s defense of premise one doesn’t seem to be a defense, but a restatement of premise. This is a huge claim that every possible world where there are sentient creatures there is evil. There is easily a possible world in which God created the universe in 1 day as is without any suffering. In order for Con to defend premise one, he must show there is some logical inconsistency with a world that has sentient creatures without E. Con attempts to do something like that in his defense of premise two. It doesn’t succeed as he already assumes a pain making mechanism is a necessity. Con next states any world which there is no pain is deceptive. As pain would be an illusion. However, this fails. If there is no need for pain, God wouldn’t have created pain in the first place removing the need for deception. Since God created the rules and science of biology, he could have easily created it in such a way that pain never existed in the first place. This would be no more deceptive than me not receiving pain everytime I blink my eyes. Con assumes a type of moral absolutism in premise two stating God cannot be deceptive because it of his perfect nature, however the very point of his argument is to negate this type of moral absolutism. Even if pain is a necessity and if God need to deceive us, there would still be an even greater good of the world being devoid of suffering. Con does give another argument in favor of a world with E being better than this world. He states that with this deception, we would be spoiled with no appreciation of our God and the good he brings us. This argument was refuted by the very. creator of Con’s argument. Van Inwagen states It is not at all evident that an omnipotent creator would need to allow people really to experience any pain or grief or sorrow or adversity or illness to enable them to appreciate the good things in life. An omnipotent being would certainly be able to provide the knowledge of evil that human beings in fact acquire by bitter experience of real events in some other way. An omnipotent being could, for example, so arrange matters that at a certain point in each person's life—for a few years during his adolescence, say—that person have very vivid and absolutely convincing nightmares in which he is a prisoner in a concentration camp or dies of some horrible disease or watches his loved ones being raped and murdered by soldiers bent on ethnic cleansing. [2]. Premise one of Con’s defense is unjustified and premise two is outright false. Epistemic limitation Con tries to argue we are not in the necessary conditions to make the claim an event of gratuitous evil has occured. He claims we would have to be omniscient to claim this. Although, this misunderstands what probability is. It is the likelihood as far as we know. It is not a certainty claim. Furthermore, Con ignores my defense of premise one. It is intuitive, so we have good prima facie reasons to accept premise one. Con stating we could be wrong is accounted for, we might be wrong, but it’s not likely. Con ignored my second defense. The sheer number of suffering events makes it likely that at least one is gratuitous. This claim is very modest, out of the billions and billions of events which a creature has suffered, one probably could have been prevented without losing on some greater good. All it’s needed is one case. This shows Con’s analogy is a false analogy. It’s clearly not the equivalent of looking at the grand canyon and saying there is no fly. A better analogy would be stating the grand canyon is so big, that at the very least one fly, in the history of the canyon’s existence was in the canyon. This is very modest and obviously likely. Con’s analogy applies more to his position, as he is stating that every single event of suffering that has happened brings about some greater good. This is a much much bigger claim than me stating at least one event of suffering didn’t bring about some greater good. The argument remains standing Conclusion Con has provided some good objections to both arguments, however on further inspection the fail. Con’s objection to my first argument was centered in categorical errors and bare assertion fallacies. In my second argument, Con provided Van Iwagen’s defense, which is unjustified in the first premise and is false in the second premise. In Con’s next response, he misconstrues what probability is and fails to rebut my original defenses of premise one. Premise one is quite a modest claim, whereas Con’s claim isn’t. That’s all from me. I need to feed my jofhru. Now to Con for his final. Sources [1] http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu... [2] http://www.giffordlectures.org...