The possibility of a Christian God existing is highly improbable

Terms God - A being who is supreme or maximally great because he has as his nature, maximal excellence. To have maximal excellence is to possess great making properties like omniscience, omnipotence, moral perfection, etc. It seems we can gradually discover what a great making property is, without undermining the objective notion that God would, by definition, possess all such properties if he exists. I shall such a being hereafter as “God.” Possible World Semantics [1] A possible world is a maximal description of reality, not planets or a universe. It's just a way reality might be - e.g., “there’s a possible world in which aliens invade” ... yet there is no possible world where the prime minister is a prime number! So when one says that God exists in some possible world, they mean that “God exists” is true in some description of reality. Irrational cause: kid bitten by black dog then believes that all black dogs bite kids. Non-rational cause: physical events or causes. Burdens The resolution is damning for Pro since possibilities come cheap for Con. Pro must show that a supreme being’s revelation through Christ is more likely impossible, a very strong claim! He would literally have to defend that materialistic views are near certain. Such views consists of naturalism, physicalism or materialism, or a conjunction of all three. No doubt he will use reason to try and prove this view, but the phenomena of reasoning is unlikely on such materialistic views in contrast to theistic views! Insofar as this is the case, the possibility of a supreme being and its revelation through Christ seems likely given the background knowledge of reasoning, the concept of God itself and the historical evidence for Christ’s resurrection. The Likely Possibility of a Revelation by Resurrection There are two steps to proving the likely possibility of a revelation by resurrection. First is to show that the revelator, God’s existence, is likely possible. Then I must show the revelation itself is likely possible; that it is more likely that it's possible God revealed himself through Christ's death, via resurrection. I. The Revelator i.Nature of Reasoning Which came first; the the mental or the material? Christianity, as a mentalistic view, answers that the mental was prior and so rationality is fundamental to the universe. Reality is top-down, the lower levels emanate from the higher levels and the higher levels ultimately create the lower. Reason is therefore more basic to reality than matter since God is the inherently rational cause responsible for the rationality we find in the world. It wouldn’t be surprising then if matter is created with potentialities to produce minds distinct from itself with the ability to reason. On the other hand materialistic views affirm that matter came first and so non-rationality is fundamental to the universe, it’s simply a by-product of physical cause-and-effect of evolved material, which seems to be an inadequate explanation of reasoning, which involves: Presuppositions of Reasoning - intentionality or the relation that mental states have to the world, true or false beliefs, the condition of accepting, rejecting, suspending belief about propositions, that logical laws exist and humans can apprehend them, the state of accepting the truth of a proposition and the propositional content of mental states, the causal role of the apprehension of logical laws in accepting a conclusion, the entertain-ability of a premise while drawing conclusions, the reasoning processes which gives a reliable way of understanding the world, and propositionally understood representation. Steps of the Reasoning Process - First there’s experience involving the reception of facts to think about, self-evidence involving the perception of a prima facie truth of a rule permitting inference, and using logic to arrange the fact in a certain form to prove a conclusion. Explanation types - there has to be a combination of relations first of how a thought was produced and second of how thoughts are related to one another logically. Such thoughts are about something else, they are either true or false and their propositional content must cause other thoughts to take place. Further, the act of inference must be subsumed under an always true logical law according to which one thought follows another. Thus our acts of rational inference occur due to reality having a feature that corresponds to that inferential process. This reason-explanation combination exists either in a world that is fundamentally governed by blind matter rather than reasons (atheism), or it does not (theism). [3] Thus Pro must deal with the following question more adequately than the theist if his case is to even get off the ground: “if some of the fundamental causes of reality is not more like a mind, then why is it more probable that reasoning should emerge?” ii.Concept of God God, as an unlimited or supreme being, seems intuitively coherent and therefore possibly instantiated. If this is the case then such a being exists in some possible world as a metaphysically necessary being who grounds contingent things. Consider the fact that we experience in the world that at least something presently exists; and suppose that only finitely many things have existed to date. Such things exist for a finite period of time and so are contingent. If this is the case, and there have been only finitely many beings to date, then there was a state when nothing existed. But if there was a state, then nothing would presently exist! Thus, a causally or temporally necessary being (as opposed to a temporally contingent being) is possibly required to ground reality, since every contingent things has a sufficient reason for its existence. But if a thing that has a sufficient reason for its existence also has a sufficient reason for its existence that is a sufficient reason for its own existence, then there is a sufficient reason for the sufficient reason of anything. Such a thing is a being without any limitations because it is a temporally necessary being, and no temporally contingent being is a sufficient reason for the existence of a temporally necessary being. Now if God is unlimited in some possible world w1, and also in some different possible world w2, then God is greater than any other being in both those worlds; otherwise God would be limited by not possessing a great making property possessed by something else. But since w2 is an arbitrarily selected possible world, it follows that it is true in every possible world that God is greater than every other being. Consequently, it is necessarily the case that God is greater than every other being. From all of this, and since it is impossible for anything to be greater than itself, for it is necessarily the case that "greater than" is asymmetric, then it's more likely that God exists. A syllogistic summary, 1. God exists in some possible world 2. If God exists in some possible world, then He exists in every possible world including the actual world / God exists (MP 1, 2) II. The Revelation by Resurrection i.Empty Tomb It was known where Christ was buried. Disciples wouldn’t have believed in an empty tomb and neither would the people, even if the disciples preached about it, if you can easily point to Christ's full tomb. The empty tomb also enjoys early independent attestation: the pre-Markan passion story included the women’s discovery of the empty tomb “on the 3rd day.” “The first day of the week” reflects ancient tradition, so it's not a late legend because then it would have been spoken of as “3rd day” tradition. Furthermore the empty tomb narrative is simple and lacks legendary development. It also fullfills the criteria of embarrassment given the discovery of the tomb by women followers, whose testimony in those days were considered worthless. Finally, even the earliest Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb! They claimed the followers stole the body. ii.Postmortem Appearances Now Paul was acquainted with the men who saw Christ (1Cor.15:3-8). His list of eyewitnesses guarantees the postmortem appearances all occurred with Peter, the 12, the 500 brethren, James, all the apostles (Acts 1:21-22), Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9:1-9), the woman discoverers, etc. So the Gospels provide multiple independent attestation of physical or bodily appearances. iii.Origin The origin of the entire Christian religion despite strong predisposition to the contrary lends significant attention. Literally, in that time if your messiah remained dead, you either found yourself a new one or went home, you didn't start a new controversial religion in the face of the brutal Roman rule, and the Jewish influence! iv. Best Explanation of the Facts[5] Against the resurrection hypothesis R, Pro must offer a competing hypothesis with greater explanatory scope, power and plausibility, must be less contrived to fit the evidence, must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs and finally must so exceed its rival hypothesis R in fulfilling all these conditions that there exist little chance of R exceeding it in meeting these conditions. But R has scope since explains all three of the facts at once, power since it seems very probable that the observable data with respect to the empty tomb, the appearances, and the disciple's coming to believe in Jesus' resurrection should be just as it is, by this effect R also seems uncontrived to fit the evidence. R has plausibility given the religio-historical context of Jesus' unparalleled life and radical personal claims. Finally, R is disconfirmed by few accepted beliefs, except for naturalistic atheism, which Pro must now defend. Sources 1. http://www.jstor.org... 2. Victor Reppert, 2003, C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, p.73 3. CS Lewis, 1978, p56 4. Maydole, 1980, p.180 5. McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions, 1984, p.19