I found this little gem on a blog called Philosophical Neuron written by a computer programmer by the name of Brian from Melbourne, Australia. My title is a bit deceptive, it's not really a proof that God doesn't exist. It's actually a refutation of a deductive argument that God does exist. In any event, I hope you all like it ...
1. Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary is a contradiction.
2. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non existent.
3. Deductive arguments for the existence of God attempt to demonstrate the existence of God.
4. There is no contradiction in denying that God exists. This follows from 2.
5. Therefore, deductive arguments for the existence of God fail as demonstrations because if they were sound, they would necessarily follow and could not be denied without contradiction.
6. God’s existence is not necessary, this follows from 2, we can conceive God as not existing and 5, deductive arguments for the existence of God can be denied without contradiction.
7. Ontological arguments argue that if God exists, then God necessarily exists.
8. If God doesn’t necessarily exist, then God doesn’t exist. Contra positive of 7.9. God doesn’t exist. This follows from 6 and 8.
The first premise seems reasonable. A contradiction is when we have the same statement true and not true at the same time. I.e. I exist but I don’t exist is a contradiction. If any attempted demonstration leads to the conclusion that I exist and at the same time that I don’t exist, it fails.
The second premise states the obvious fact that we can conceive of unicorns existing and we can conceive of them not existing. The same goes for dinosaurs, people and even God. In fact, even when I conceive of God existing it has no bearing on the matter, no more than my conceiving that there is no God. Existence is not a predicate as Kant said. Just conceiving something necessarily existing is no more existence than conceiving it not existing.
The third premise states what deductive arguments set out to do. Demonstrate or deduce the existence of God using formal logic.
The fourth proposition follows from the second premises. We can conceive of God existing and of God not existing with equal ease.
The fifth proposition follows from the premises 1, 3 and 4. That is there is no contradiction in denying the existence of God, which means that demonstrations (deductive arguments) that try to prove the existence of God are false.
The sixth proposition states that if God’s existence were necessary, we could not conceive of God’s non existence. Also, if God’s existence were necessary, then the conclusion any valid demonstration of God’s existence would lead to a contradiction.
The seventh statement just describes what ontological arguments attempt to do. They attempt to show that God has some property of necessary existence, and therefore if God exists, God must necessarily exist.
The eighth statement is the contra positive of the seventh. If God doesn’t necessarily exist, then God doesn’t exist at all.
The ninth statement follows from the sixth and eighth statements. If the premises are acceptable, the argument valid, then the conclusion necessarily follows.
Sounds reasonable to me ...
okay, it's going to take my a while to get my head around this!
ReplyDeleteWOW, IF only u were speaking english, i may understand you, meanwhile ill stick to islam
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ReplyDeleteBasically it's saying that God doesn't exist because we can conceive him as not existing (that's what it all boils down to)
ReplyDeleteHowever, you don't exist, because I don't conceive you existing. Just because you can't conceive His existence doesn't say that he doesn't exist.
In fact, there is a bass guitar laying nicely on the wall. However, if I close my eyes, I can conceive that it was never there in the first place quite easily, therefore it must not exist, because it's equally simple for me to say "It doesn't exist" and "It does exist"
This argument falls through, because the author claims existence and therefore must necessarily exist because he exists, but if I close my eyes and put my fingers in my ears I can say you don't exist because I can't conceive your existence, and you aren't necessary to existence. It's circular logic, using the logic that "anything follows from a contradiction" aka: The principle of explosion to say whatever it wants.
Come up with another argument.
Basically it's saying that nothing exists. Which is silly, because, clearly, things exist.
ReplyDeleteJames, you've not grasped the argument.
ReplyDeleteEssentially, it's a response to the well known ontological argument for theism. It's not the claim that since we can imagine something not existing, it doesn't exist.
Unless you understand the argument, it's best to ask for clarification rather than making confident claims about how good the argument is.
T.A.M., premise 2 looks clearly false. It basically implies that there is no such thing as a necessary truth, which surely nobody would grant. Surely you can re-formulate the argument without this dubious premise.
Hi Glenn, I'm glad (and humbled) that you dropped by. Aside from the supposed existence of god, what necessary truths do you say would be true in all possible worlds?
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