God Probably Doesn't Exist.

Argument 1 – Ontological ArgumentPrefaceInspired & adapted from our fellow member DylanCatlow. God is defined as a “boundless being”, which I argue later will entail a God of the description provided.The argument is formalised as follows:1. If God does not exist, then either God is internally incoherent, or is externally constrained2. God is not internally incoherent3. God is not externally constrainedC. Therefore, God existsDefence of Premise 1To contest P1 would be to forfeit that ontology, or “being” is an objective fact, i.e. that we cannot apply a priori notions to justify anything in ontology- including simply “if --> then” statements. Metaphysical impossibility arises if and only if it is metaphysically incoherent, and thus entails a contradiction with either itself, or something else in reality (law of excluded middle). To quote Baruch Spinoza “there are only two possible explanations for a thing’s non-existence. The first is that the thing is prevented from existing by something external to it. The other possible explanation is that something doesn’t exist because its nature is internally inconsistent.”[1] This holds true even if modal realism is true, since there would always be something in some exemplified world that contradicts the impossible. Purely logical propositions this follows rather obviously from – every logical falsity indeed entails a contradiction with other truth-bearing propositions – which applies to mathematical truths, logical systems, etc.To contradict reality is thus to be under external “constraint”, for example the ontological claim of “my closet is completely full of water” is metaphysically contradicted by the fact that “my closet contains a broom”. The presence of the broom constrains “a closet full of water” from existing. Absent any external or internal constraint, there is nothing to prevent actualisation of the concept in question – which is the case with God. Given that metaphysical possibility is a subset of logical possibility, then of course internal contradictions also render a thing non-existent.Defence of Premise 2God possesses a single attribute in the description (boundless being), which while it will entail logically collieries (such as omnipotence, omniscience, etc.), does not do so out of necessity – thus the exact nature of of omnipotence, and omniscience are determined by what is logically possible of a “boundless being”. Thus, it is impossible for God to be internally contradictory, since you need a minimum of two terms/necessary attributes to entail a contradiction. Furthermore, even if God did contain a multiplicity of terms, the fact that God is boundless means that God would transcend these internal constraints anyway.To argue that God has a multiplicity of attributes would entail arguing that existence itself is an attribute (since existence is the only other thing God “has”) – which runs into Kant’s famous refutation of existence being a predicate.[2] Existence as a predicate would also entail non-existence as a predicate – and we would have an indistinguishable differenceof a “non-existing essence” and “an essence that doesn’t exist” – essentialism presupposes existence to exemplify itself. Thus, the coherent multiplicity of primary attributes of God is impossible.Defence of Premise 3This is true by definition. A boundless being with external constraint would by definition not be boundless and hence not be God.Justification of attributesGod would contain all logically consistent attributes, lest God be bounded. God as the ground of all being (since everything is tautologically included within God itself) would thus ground all objectivity. Thus, God’s will also is objective, and moral facts and thus derived from this. God would also contain all knowledge, since everything is contained.[3]Argument from Religious ExperienceOverviewThis argument is not explicitly deductive (and hence will not be presented in such a fashion) – it is an abductive one, i.e. an inference to the best explanation.The argument follows:1.There exists a dataset pertaining to noetic religious experiences of God/transcendence2.The best explanation for this dataset is a being of the ontology entailed by such experiences3.The ontology of such experiences is that of God – therefore the best explanation is that God exists Defence of point 1One does not actually need to have had a religious experience themselves in order to accept this assumption. If we are capable of accepting the assumption that our fellow humans are conscious, and are themselves having a “first-person movie” playing from their perspective, then we are also capable of accepting that these people have had genuine noetic experiences of God. These are broad and exist across a span of socio-religious-cultural barriers. Thus these experiences are relatively non-specific, as we would expect of a religious experience of a genuine origin.Defence of point 2&3Inference to best explanation works from multiple criteria:[4]1. Background knowledge2. Explanatory power3. Principle of simplicityTo demonstrate how we use this everyday, and how it is used to justify stuff in science, take your subjective experience of the computer/information device in front of you (whatever you are reading this debate on).1. You are receiving a noetic experience of the computer, you are receiving sensory inputs that you associate with a being with ontology. Thus, the hypothesis that “a computing device exists in front of me” gives excellent explanatory power over the dataset you are receiving from your sensory inputs2. We have plenty of examples of experiences with computing devices in the past, and we have established ideas of what they are, etc. Thus the hypothesis is well within background knowledge3. It posits a single assumption – that the device from which your noetic experience is derived, exists. Additional assumptions don’t need to be added when new data is collected, for example if you receive data that “a device with a wifi signal is emanating from in front of you” – this single assumption is still explanatorily sufficientThus, we conclude that device exists as an abductive solution to our dataset.Now let’s apply this to religious experiences and the hypothesis “God exists” to provide explanatory power:1. The theists typically receives a plethora of sensory inputs, which match a being with a common core of ontology: transcendent of physical reality; an ‘ultimate reality’ of something holy, eternal and of supreme value; loving, pardoning, personal; intimate union with beholder; discovery of man’s ultimate purpose. A benevolent all powerful being would provide excellent explanatory power over these experiences. Given their demonstrated capability in enabling/instigating a personal relationship with God where one did not exist before, we have a relatively well-established purpose for these, even if it is not the full picture.A non-theological explanation must provide an ad-hoc argument for why these religious experiences exist in the first place, and provide enough explanatory power to account for *each and every one*.Given that it is well established that the vast majority of people who undergo religious experiences are of sound mind, and also partake in virtually every echelon of human civilisation, then appealing to hallucinations etc. isn’t going to hold much explanatory power of these experiences.[5]2. The concept of God is well-within our background knowledge & experiences, for we already know of at least one type of personal, loving beings – which would be us, humans. Thus to posit another, albeit of different ontology and capabilities, is not a significant step. Furthermore we have plenty of theological experience with the multitude of past religions, and divine entities that have been worshipped over the past millennia – such an explanation has been shown to be immensely versatile in the coherent attributes it can undertake.3. God posits a single assumption, a single brute fact of reality. It the ground of all reality, and the single explanatory factor that is lacking in everything that exists. I assert that a theological universe is a scientists “wet dream”, an even wetter dream than string theory was, with its elegance and relative simplicity. Frequently used to mock religious beliefs – the very fact that God is the ultimate panacea, the ultimate unbounded being goes a tremendous way to explaining a lot (high explanatory scope) while keeping assumptions down to a minimum. The atheist, or naturalist would need to posit a whole plethora of explanations, such as origins of life explanations, origins of the universe, origins of everything. What is more likely, a cobbled together collection of speculation, or one single, simple explanation?References1. http://goo.gl...2. http://goo.gl... pp 563-5673. http://goo.gl...4. http://goo.gl...5. The Evidential Force of Religious Experience- Caroline Franks Davis pp 191