God Exists

I thank mfigurski80 for accepting. I shall present my arguments in this round and rebut Pro’s case in the next. Definition: I reject Pro’s definition of ‘exist’, since I did not accept Pro’s request for modification. To ‘exist’, one needs to have reality, not just interact with it. C1) Argument from incoherence As Michael Martin notes, the concept of ‘God’ does not refer to a coherent concept, thus attributing existence to it is logically impossible sans coherence [1]. The coherence of an object is determined by the nature and behavior of the object, and the nature of God is incoherent in the property of ‘greatness’ attributed to God. ‘Greatness’ is an inherently subjective term, with qualities that determine greatness dependent on the subject--the subject here being God, whose attributes of transcendence, omnipotence, and omniscience are referenced to ascribe a property of ‘greatness’. To assert that something is great requires a standard for it to become meaningful and coherent. For example, in a universe with only a pencil and nothing else, one cannot assert the pencil is ‘sharp’, since the term ‘sharp’ is a relational attribute and requires a standard to become meaningful, viz. a pencil that is not sharp, thus objectively defining the inherently subjective property. Similarly, greatness is a relational attribute, and runs into the following problems: (a) a standard is required to render the term ‘greatness’ coherent, and (b) the content of what greatness comprises of is inherently subjective. For a being defined according to being great, (a) renders God’s very nature a matter of subjective decision, thus ascribing objective properties to the concept lacks coherence, and (b) renders God meaningless unless an objective standard exists by which God can be called ‘great’. This entails a dilemma: either the standard is internal to God or it is external to God. The former begs the question, since then God is self defined, leading to a definition of God being ‘himself’, thus the term ‘God’ is ascribed to anything. The latter is false since God is transcendent, and, sans the universe, there exists nothing except God if he does exist. C2) Impossibility of a caused universe a) Requirements for Causality Physicist Sean Carroll notes two features that allow us to coherently talk about any form of causation whatsoever. i. Time & the arrow of time (determined by entropy) ii. Physical laws Time and the arrow of time are naturally required to speak of causation. Without an arrow of time, it is impossible to coherently speak of a ‘process’ of anything, or a ‘beginning’ of something. The beginning would have to have a fixed point in the arrow of time, without which it is impossible for anything to coherently ‘happen’ over a period of *time* (because there is no time). For something to ‘occur’, it has to occur with a principle supporting its possibility. Possibility is incoherent without physical laws, as objective properties or actions are incoherent without limitation. It can be illustrated by the paradox of the stone, which admittedly does not disprove omnipotence, but illustrates how physical laws are necessary for anything to coherently have a ‘cause’ or beginning. Prior to the origin of the universe, there were neither physical laws nor time. Sans these essential features of the universe, to speak of causality is incoherent. That the universe was caused is the primary assumption of deism, and without these properties, a caused universe is incoherent. b) Eternalism Another reason why the universe must be uncaused is the truth of eternalism. For something to come into being, there must be a state in time where it first doesn’t exist [2]. Under eternalism change doesn’t ontologically happen and therefore neither does causation [3]. William Lane Craig writes, “[o]n a B-Theory of time, the universe does not in fact come into being or become actual at the Big Bang; it just exists tenselessly as a four-dimensional space-time block that is finitely extended in the earlier than direction.” [4] In support of this, J.M.E. McTaggart writes, “Changes must happen to the events of such a nature that the occurrence of these changes does not hinder the events from being events, and the same events, both before and after the change. Now what characteristics of an event are there which can change and yet leave the event the same event? (I use the word characteristic as a general term to include both the qualities which the event possesses, and the relations of which it is a term -- or rather the fact that the event is a term of these relations.) It seems to me that there is only one class of such characteristics -- namely, the determination of the event in question by the terms of the A series.” [5] According to general relativity, space is ‘stretchable’. This was confirmed by the Friedmann observations and Hubble’s Law, that were used by Georges Lemaitre to propose the Big Bang theory, that states the universe is expanding, which is shown via. the cosmological redshift [6]. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin singularity theorem, derived by Arvind Borde, Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin, further supports the theory that the universe is expanding [7]. General relativity also yields eternalism, since it models time as a ‘fourth dimension’ of space itself, allowing for the block universe theory to be likely true. Causality cannot be stressed on unless one assumes the presentism ontology of time, which is dubious in light of scientific discoveries supporting eternalism, especially special and general relativity. “Many [scientists and philosophers] have argued against presentism on the grounds that presentism is incompatible with the theory of relativity.” [8] In special relativity, each observer has their own ‘plane of simultaneity’, a small section of three-dimensional space where all events are simultaneous [9]. “Special relativity suggests that the concept of simultaneity is not universal: according to the relativity of simultaneity, observers in different frames of reference can have different perceptions of whether a given pair of events happened at the same time or at different times, with there being no physical basis for preferring one frame's judgments over another’s. ... So, in special relativity there can be no physical basis for picking out a unique set of events that are all happening simultaneously in ‘the present’.” [10] This entails eternalism. Experiments from quantum mechanics have also vindicated eternalism. Photons have been entangled through time [11]. An experimenter can choose to entangle photons even when they don’t exist in the present anymore. Other experiments show time is an emergent phenomenon. An outside observer would view the universe as static [12]. There is reason to believe eternalism is true via. God’s nature. God is omniscient, he knows everything possible about the past, present and future. As philosopher David Kyle Johnson argues, for God’s knowledge to be true, there must be the event which makes it true [13]. God’s knowledge about something like, say, a cup on the table is made true by an existing cup on the table. If God’s knowledge had no truthmakers, then his knowledge would be false. What then, makes God’s knowledge about future or past events true? It would have to be the future or past event. However, since the future is causing God’s knowledge it must exist. If the future is non-existent, there are no properties about the future. Making it impossible for God to know anything about it. This entails the future must exist, as well as the past. Eternalism is therefore implied via. God’s omniscience. As we have shown above, eternalism and a caused universe cannot coexist. Thus, omniscience is incompatible with God’s own properties. C3) Occam’s razor a) Deductive Occam’s razor posits that among a set of explanations, the one with least number of assumptions is a priori most likely [14]. Metaphysical naturalism has less assumptions than belief in God--it assumes only the existence of a physical universe with laws, while religious belief assumes the existence of a physical universe with laws and God. God here is an unnecessary hypothesis, thus can be rejected as a priori unlikely, similar to Russell’s analogy of a teapot [15][16]. b) Subjective The concept of God involves the addition of various complex properties, many of which we don’t have a coherent understanding of, e.g. greatness, which is subjective, and omniscience, which contradicts God’s property as a cause. This adds to the complexity of the concept of God and the number of assumptions, making God less and less likely via. Occam’s razor. The resolution is negated. 1. http://infidels.org... 2. http://www.reasonablefaith.org... 3. http://plato.stanford.edu... 4. W.L. Craig and J.P. Moreland. The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, pp 183-184. 5. http://www.ditext.com... 6. http://arxiv.org... 7. http://journals.aps.org... 8. http://people.biola.edu... 9. http://en.wikipedia.org... 10. http://en.wikipedia.org... 11. http://www.livescience.com... 12. https://medium.com... 13. http://journals.cambridge.org... 14. http://plato.stanford.edu... 15. http://russell.mcmaster.ca... 16. http://www.tandfonline.com...