Why you should abandon your faith (logically). Part 2.

Welcome back! lets dive right into Part 2 of my Blog on why you should abandon your faith: Positive affirmations for the existence of God.


You might ask, "What exactly is a positive affirmation for the existence of God?" Well, basically it is an argument  that intends to prove that God exists. There are a range of these arguments and they're not very well known to the general public, so lets take a look at some, and see how they fail. The first argument worth dealing with is the 'Cosmological Argument' and even though the name might be unfamiliar, I'm sure you've heard of the phrase "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" before. This is a physical principle that has somewhat of a stake in the Cosmological Argument, the logical form is as follows:

P1: Everything that exists has a cause of it's existence
P2: The Universe Exists
C1: Therefore, the universe has a cause of it's existence

As you can see the phrase we all know, and this argument, both deal with chains of causality. In this case though, we take the fairly reasonable premise that "everything that exists has a cause of its existence" and combine that with the logical impossibility (according to some) of an infinite regress of causality and voilà something must have caused the universe to come into existence, and the best explanation for that something is "God".

You may have already noticed, even if it is logically sound, it still fails to prove the existence of a personal God. There is no link here between 'the phenomenon that had to occur for the universe to have come into existence' and 'the divine, omni-benevolent force that gives purpose and morality to life'. This is the first flaw with the argument. ie even if all the premises and the conclusion were true, it still doesn't mean anything remotely like the Christian God exists.

The second flaw in the argument also happens to be painfully ironic: According to P1 "Everything that exists has a cause of it's existence", so if God exists then God has a cause of its existence. The cause of this God could therefore only be another God (sparking an infinite regress of 'who caused the causer of the universe') or we can say 'oh well some things have just always existed'. This means there is a logical flaw in the argument. Either P1 isn't true and some things (the universe maybe?) can exist without a cause, or P1 is true and if God is your cause of the universe, then you cannot give God the property of existence otherwise God too, will require a cause. Either way you look at it, there is a  paradox here which actually prevents the proof of God's existence.

Now I must be charitable here. The Argument has been modified slightly to include the property of 'beginning' to exist. This is attempt to make God exempt from the regress of causality, if God has always existed then He didn't 'begin' to exist and we don't need a cause for him. The universe on the other hand almost definitely did begin to exist. That's a scientific fact. So how do we deal with this problem? The answer lies in why God is allowed to have always existed: because He is unique in that area - He is the only thing that could have always existed. But, this is the same reason why the universe could logically have come into existence without a cause: it is unique in that area - the universe is the only thing that could come into existence without a cause. Once the universe exists, our laws of causality and reactions must apply to everything in it, but if these laws don't exist yet, then (as unfathomable as it is) the universe doesn't need a cause to begin existing.

The best advice I can give to help conceptualise the universe coming into existence without a cause is to think in terms of preconditions rather than physical objects. As the temperate of a gas drops it eventually becomes a liquid, and although we're not getting something from nothing in this chemical reaction, the analogy shows us that external conditions (rather than intentional inputs) can be the factor that changes something from being intangible to tangible. Hope that helps.

I intended to cover two arguments for God's existence in this article, but once again, the word count is creeping up. Next time I will definitely cover two: Anselm's Ontological argument (the biggest joke in trying to prove the existence of God ever) and the Teleological Argument (the infamous Argument from Design!) so stay tuned for some soul-crushingly refreshing logic. Cheers.