God Probably Doesn't Exist.

Thanks Con. The Ontological Argument This is a neat variation of the ontological argument which states since God is a boundless being, nothing must restrict his existence and therefore must exist. I cannot say I find anything obviously wrong with premise one (at least nothing I’m willing to argue for) , so I will attack premise 2 and 3. Premise 2 Pro argues that it’s impossible for God to have a contradictory property, since he has only a single property of being a boundless being. All other properties simply follow as logical collieries. However, it seems “boundless being” gives us two properties. Boundless being unlimited and being as relating to sentience. This isn’t claiming existence is a part of God’s properties like Con suggested, as sentience is a property of in its own right. It’s not synonymous with existence, but nonetheless God cannot exist without it. Since God has two properties, the defense for premise 2 fails. From the above, it seems to be that a boundless being is contradictory. God is bound to sentience. He cannot be insentient, therefore he is bound. God cannot go beyond his nature and therefore isn’t totally boundless. Lastly, Con argues existence isn’t a predicate. I agree with this, but I don’t see how Con can. The argument states, by God’s definition, nothing is prohibiting God’s existence. This is synonymous with saying God exists by definition. A definition is merely the description of an entity or the meaning of its word. It would entail that existence is a part of these meaningful descriptions, that would mean it’s a predicate. I guess it can be said the the definition of God only entails his existence, but isn’t a part of the definition itself. This doesn’t seem correct, because a definition is about an entity and can only entail existence in the form of other innate properties in that entity. This premise’s justification is unsound and the premise itself is false. Premise 3 I don’t find Con’s defense here satisfactory. Con argues that God by definition has no bounds and therefore no external constraint exists. If we look at Con’s example of an external constraint, we’ll see it’s related to the inductive world. However, Con’s defense is an a priori defense. It deals with the definition of God, not with the external world. A priori arguments cannot tell us about the nature of the complete external world. An a priori deductive argument can only tell us tautological things about definitions [1] like that a married bachelor is impossible. It doesn’t deal with the inductive world. It might be true that in the external world, sentience is needs to be realized in biological material. Or some other external factor which constrains God that we cannot even begin to conceive. Premise 3 is unjustified. Argument from Religious Experiences Another argument I wasn’t expecting. As with the first argument, I don’t think there is a satisfactorily response to the first premise, so I’ll be attacking premise 2 and 3. Premise 2 & 3 Con gives a criteria of 3 points to justify the premises. 1. Background knowledge 2. Explanatory power 3. Principle of simplicity I will respond to Con’s justifications for these and posit why the alternate explanation is likely correct. Explanatory Power and Simplicity: I’m pairing these two together, since they are related and they way my argument works, it would just be better if they were together. The existence of God may posses some explanatory power if such revelations were consistent. Different concepts of God have existed and developed through the ages [2][3]. The fact that there are different experiences that cater to different religious belief is enough to claim God isn’t that great of an explanation. It also doesn’t seem like a good explanation because what can be counted as a religious experience can be experienced by many people even non-believers [4] I contend that hallucinations and misinterpretations are a better explanation. The brain tends to look for patterns in nature. This is called apophenia, we want to make sense of random occurrences [5]. This can explain any signs from God, but what about actual auditory and visual experiences? Con states a majority of people who have some sort of experience are of sound mind. although he doesn’t specify the exact nature of the experiences, I’ll assume he means visual experiences. There is a common misconception that you need to have something wrong with you to have a hallucination. This most certainly isn’t the case. Something such as not getting enough REM sleep can cause hallucinations [6]. Suggestibility can cause hallucinations in completely normal individuals [7][8]. This is a better explanation since we already know these things happen and they’re all that’s needed for a religious experience to come about. It explains inconsistent revelations perfectly. This makes it a simpler explanation too. Since we don’t have to appeal to anything we don’t already know exists. However, what of Con’s defense of simplicity? It appears to be a bait and switch. The argument is about the simplicity of God being the explanation of religious experience, so why is Con talking about explanations about the origin of life and the universe? Anyway, if this justification was relevant, it still wouldn’t mean a thing. God being the origin of life and the universe tells us nothing about the details and inner workings of such things. Atheism uses the details and inner workings, but concludes that’s all there is. A theistic explanation would still need the details and inner workings (to have a complete explanation), but add on the existence of God. That isn’t necessary. Background knowledge: Just because we have knowledge about other sentient beings doesn’t entail we would have knowledge that a God would interfere in the development of humanity. Many humans would follow something akin to the prime directive, not wanting to interfere in human culture. Furthermore, just like a beetle’s sentience will likely not tell us much about a human’s sentence, there’s no reason why a human’s sentience would tell us much about a supreme being’s sentience. An atheist explanation fits the dataset better than the theistic one. To Pro! Sources [1] Modern Intellectual Tradition - From Descartes to Derrida, Lecture 7 “The Radical Skepticism of Hume” [2] http://www.religioustolerance.org... [3] http://www.religioustolerance.org... [4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... [5] http://skepdic.com... [6] http://www.ninds.nih.gov... [7] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... [8] http://www.sciencedaily.com...