God Probably Doesn't Exist

And so we go at it again. I. My Preliminary Concerns As I made clear in my first rebuttal, two considerations undercut the whole of Pro’s case against God. First, Pro inappropriately attacks the existence of the God of the Bible. He responds that he is not disproving the biblical God, but “simply attacking” Him. This is a meaningless distinction. Philosophically speaking, an attack against a position is an argument against its truth. But never mind that; Pro clarifies that he is concerned with “whether God in general is true or not.” Fantastic. But then I do not understand why the Bible was brought into the discussion. As “a well-informed example of what needs to [take] place in the time of suggesting a god does not exist”? I do not know what this means. In any case, we both agree that it is a general theistic God whose existence is under debate, not Jesus Christ, Yahweh, Allah, or Brahma. Kryptic gives two other loosely related responses. First, if he had attacked “the Islamic god” instead of the Christian God, I would have raised the same objection. That is right. We are not debating any specific God, but rather a general theism that unifies all its diverse religious interpretations. Second, there must be some sorts of limits placed on our definition of God - if Pro is to argue against it. However, if he were to set those limits, I would say “that’s not the god [we’re] talking about.” Not at all. I myself provided those limits by giving a rough and ready definition of God in my introductory remarks: the morally perfect, personal Creator of the universe. Such a definition sets limits in that God is not evil, not identical to the universe or any part of it, not a physical object, not impersonal, and so forth. Moreover, this definition does categorize God, contra Pro. God falls under the category of personal, uncreated, and morally perfect. In short, limits can be set on God without defining Him in accord with any particular religion. Second, my opponent raises irrelevant arguments and objections: (1) various errors in the Bible, and (2) the demographics of American Christianity. Concerning (1), Kryptic clarifies that he is merely trying to investigate whether “the bible could be right through testing.” Fine; but a discussion of how the Bible might be tested is still irrelevant. Regarding (2), Pro gives no response. Fortunately, though, he does not continue to attack general Christian character, so I will take that omission as a concession. II. Defining God - An Argument Deflated My above remarks should suffice to refute Kryptic’s central argument, but let us review my comments given in the first rebuttal, and incorporate responses to Pro’s latest remarks. I provided two interpretations of Pro’s argument, and because I am still unclear as to which one is the more accurate representation, I will review both. To begin, my opponent can be understood as arguing that a general theistic God is undefined, and therefore cannot be disproved. This is correct. The existence of Grappletoffer, for example, cannot be disproven because “Grappletoffer” refers to nothing. I responded by pointing out that one can give a definition of God (see above). I have already outlined how this definition sets limits on God and puts Him in the appropriate categories. Therefore, Kryptic’s remark that “[t]he ‘God’ in question…still needs to be properly addressed for me to make any other claims” is seen as an empty excuse not to engage in an intellectually responsible way with my arguments. And really, look at how desperate this entire argument is. Philosophers Graham Oppy, Quentin Smith, J. Howard Sobel, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong have no problem arguing against the existence of a theistic God, so why should Kryptic? But perhaps Kryptic might mean that the “generic God hypothesis” makes no empirically verifiable predictions, and is therefore unfalsifiable. Recall my three objections. (1) There are other ways of falsifying a hypothesis besides falsifying its predictions. Kryptic responds that observation is the only way of coming to a knowledge of the truth. This reply just is to reassert his position without dealing with the objection. As I said, demonstrating a contradiction in a hypothesis disproves the hypothesis, and yet such a demonstration has nothing to do with observation. (2) The “generic God hypothesis” does make predictions about the world. For example, the non-existence of evil, the creation of life, and so forth. No response from Pro. (3) Even if the generic God hypothesis could not be falsified, it does not follow that we can regard it as false; we must remain agnostic about its truth. Even if my opponent’s argument were sound, therefore, he would not have established the resolution of the debate: that God does not exist. In response to these considerations, Kryptic tries to construct a parallel argument for atheism: there is no way to disprove Pro's claim that he dreamed of God's nonexistence. The point seems to be that just as his “atheist-dreamer hypothesis" is unfalsifiable, so too is God’s existence unfalsifiable. Three responses. First, the argument does not undermine my above refutation. The unfalsifiablity of Pro's atheist experience does nothing to suggest that the God hypothesis cannot (a) be shown to be incoherent, or (b) make predictions about the world. Second, even if there is no reason to think Pro's hypothesis is false, that does not imply that it is true, and the same can be said concerning theism. Third, Pro's parallel scenario can be disproven. Sound arguments for the existence of God demonstrate that one cannot experience His absence. Why? Because God exists! Therefore, one ought to conclude that anyone who claims to have dreamed of the absence of God was doing just that: dreaming. III. Cosmology and Evidence for God In my first rebuttal, I fleshed out a powerful argument for the existence of God based on contemporary cosmology. Surprisingly, Kryptic failed to engage with it. Instead, all he says is that “there is literally nothing to suggest a god does exist.” Well, if you ignore that evidence when it is presented, it would appear that theism has nothing going for it. But for those of us who are not so blinded, we have at least one argument for God: the kalam cosmological argument. Kryptic does muse about “God-of-the-gaps” reasoning, but he fails to apply the fallacy to my argument specifically, and I am not going to do the work for him. So I await his response to the kalam cosmological argument. IV. A Moral Argument for God The moral argument, as formulated by William Lane Craig, looks like this: 1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. 2. Objective moral values and duties exist. 3. Therefore, God does not exist. To say that something is objectively true is to say that it is true independently of opinion. Concerning morality specifically, to say that murder is objectively wrong, for example, is to say that it would be wrong to murder even if everyone thought it was right; the wrongness of murder is independent of opinion. The claim here is that if God does not exist, moral values and duties cannot be objective so defined. 1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist - First, according to atheism, moral values are products of the evolutionary process, a process has its goal survivability, not truth. We have the moral beliefs we do because their aid in our survival, not because they are true or valid. Moreover, if the evolutionary process of homo sapiens were rerun, we probably would have developed a different set of moral values, that set no less binding than our current one. It would be arbitrary to accord objective status to our current set of moral beliefs and not the set we would have had had our evolution gone differently. It is more plausible to maintain that both sets are simply subjective beliefs developed through evolution (Craig, Reasonable Faith, 174-175). Second, according to atheism, homo sapiens are just animals, and animals have no moral duties. As Richard Taylor has written, “A hawk that seizes a fish from the sea kills it, but does not murder it; and another hawk that seizes the fish from the talons of the first takes it, but does not steal it” (Ethics, Faith, and Reason, 14). Moral actions like murder and stealing do not apply to animals because animals are not moral agents. But if atheism is true, we just are animals. It is therefore arbitrary to accord moral-agent status to homo sapiens, but not lions, tigers, and bears; we are all the same, at the end of the day. In short, if atheism is true, objective moral values and duties do not exist. The group of barbarians who rape and pillage a village do nothing worse than going against subjective beliefs ingrained into them via evolution; they do not violate some objective moral principle, and their actions cannot be deemed objectively bad. 2. Objective moral values and duties exist - When we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that premise (2) is true. We all know that it is wrong to torture others, bring a gun to school and shoot down innocent children, and sexually abuse anyone. These things are objectively wrong, and we all know it. But that entails that objective moral values and duties exist. 3. Therefore, God exists - God exists as the foundation of moral values and duties. His character is the foundation of moral value, and His commands constitute our moral duties. This proposal is known as divine command theory. Conclusion? God probably exists.