Why you should abandon your faith (logically). Part 3.

Hello again and welcome to instalment number 3 of my series on why you should abandon your faith. If you haven't done so already, take a gander at my previous posts to catch up to where we are. This might be pretty handy because I'm just going to dive straight into some true-blue philosophy (as usual).

Right... "The Ontological Argument", lets have a crack shall we? This argument is meant to establish the existence of God through definition alone. It is very different from the 'a posteriori' arguments I've already discussed because it doesn't extrapolate from real world facts in an attempt to prove it's conclusion, it just gives us a few conditionals and we are supposed to be able to see the truth of the conclusion from these. The logical structure is:

P1: God is that than which no greater can be conceived
P2: The idea of God exists in our mind
P3: If God only exists in our mind, then we can conceive of something greater - a God that exists in the mind and in reality.
Therefore,
C1: The greatest possible being must exist both in our mind, and in reality.

Lets break it down a bit shall we? A lot of people struggle with P1, which is fair enough because Anselm was pretty vague about it... P1 basically states that God is the most powerful thing in the universe; if you think of the general property of 'greatness' that some things have, then God is the ultimate form of that property. Nothing is greater than God, nothing is more powerful, nothing is more perfect...

At this stage (P1) we've defined what God is. He's pretty great (according to Anselm). So what does this mean? It means we have an idea of what God is, floating around in our head. For most of us that means we have an image of this super powerful, super sized man with a white beard... Well, that's fair enough. It doesn't matter how you imagine God, what matters is that you imagine him as super powerful. Now -. In your mental world this imaginary, super powerful God can do anything - which is pretty 'great'. But, Anselm know's what's 'greater': a God who can do anything in your mental world, and in the real world.

This is where things get interesting. Because God embodies greatness, and it's pretty great to exist in the real world (and not just in the mind) then that means God does exist in the real world. Every aspect of 'greatness' belongs to God, and existence is an aspect of greatness.

So Anselm thought he had cracked it. He thought he had undeniable proof that God existed and that, by the laws of logic, we should all agree. "Fair enough!" says I. I mean, at a glance, that's a pretty convincing argument. But, lucky for us, we've had hundreds of years to take more than a glance at this.

Lets start our objection at P1 again. "God is that than which no greater can be conceived". Well, is He? A lot of famous philosophers, who were also Christian, disagree with this statement. St. Thomas Aquinas was a believer and he was also the leading authority on Christianity for his time, and he said no human could ever come to know the true essence of God. He thinks it's pointless to try and define God, and that includes vague definitions like the one Anselm gives in P1. So we can't take P1 as true. Don't feel too relieved just yet though. The logical structure of the argument still stands, it's possible that P1 is true (it's just not necessarily true) so if it is, it's possible that Anselm does establish God's existence despite what Aquinas thinks.

But, of course, there is more wrong with the argument: Gaunilo put forward a famous objection (the first objection in fact) that rips apart the whole thing from the inside out. He used Anselms own argument structure against him. Here's how: If we replace the word 'God' with literally anything, we can prove that the perfect version of that thing exists. Gaunilo used 'an island' in his reply to Anselm. He said, 'think of the greatest island possible... white sand, sunny, warm, clear ocean, etc' now, what island would be greater than the greatest island possible? Well, only the exact same island, if it existed in reality. So because the 'greatest island possible' exists in our mind, and it is the 'greatest' island, then it must exist in reality - for if it existed only in the mind, then an identical island that existed in reality, would be 'greater'. It's tricky to explain, but the way this works is, when you define something as being 'the greatest' then you're automatically forcing it to have the property of existence because you can only be the greatest if you actually exist... it's really a problem of self referential logic, I guess.

So it seems safe to say, you can't prove something exists just by defining it in a certain way. Kant agrees with me here, he said a lot of complicated things about this and I'll try to break them down a bit, for easy reading. (Oh and by the way, I've pretty much given up on keeping the word count small, and keeping to a proper plan, clearly talking about philosophy denies me both of those, despite my optimistic attempts). Anyway, on to Kant!

Firtsly, Kant objected to 'necessary propositions' being transfered to the existence of God. A 'necessary proposition' is exactly what we've been discussing thus far - things that are true by definition. For example: 'a triangle has three angles' or 'a batchelor is an unmarried man', but not 'God exists'. Kant first establishes that just because a proposition is necessary, it doesn't mean the thing in question actually exists in reality. Yes, if a triangle did exist then it must have 3 angles, no more, no less. But - just because we've defined how triangles must be if they exist in reality, it doesn't follow that they actually do exist in reality. I could say 'a Florp has 5 eyes and 3 legs' but that doesn't mean Florps exist, it also doesn't mean that if we find an animal with 5 eyes and 3 legs that it's a Florp... I hope we haven't strayed too far from the original point here. You can't establish something actually exists, by defining what it would be like if it did exist.

Secondly Kant objects to the Ontological Argument by showing that the definition of words might make something true in an analytic sense, but this does not make it true in a synthetic sense. I haven't had much to do with this line of reasoning, but you can see it follows a similar path to the above.

Kant's final objection to the Ontological Argument is a nice one. He asserts that 'existence' is not a predicate. That is, 'existence' is not adding any sort of property to a thing. Kant says "by taking the subject of God with all its predicates and then asserting that God exists, I add no new predicate to the conception of God". Which makes sense. Powerful, Loving, All-knowing, these are predicates. If you imagine a God with these properties, and then imagine a God with all those properties and the property of existence, does the image of God change? Kant says no. I say no. Lets compare this to a horse. I can tell you to think of a horse. Now think of a horse that is white. The image of your horse has (probably) changed, correct? Now think of a horse that is real. Has the image of the horse changed? No. Existence clearly is not a predicate - not a property that helps define or describe something.

And I think that's about it for the Ontological Argument! If anyone tries to claim God exists because he is so powerful he must exist, you're now properly equipped to cut them down swiftly. And if you used to think God exists, because he's so powerful he must exist, then I hope you've taken in some of the logic here and a started to reconsider the logical reasons for why you think His existence is true.

What did I say I was going to do this time a well? Ah, the Argument from Design. Well, I'm not going to do it now - I'll do it next time. It's a good one too so if you've come this far, you'll definitely want to see that.

Until next time, stay analytical people!

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.

Why you should abandon your faith (logically). Part 1.

First things first; Welcome to my Blog! This is my first post, so some introductions are due. I am a philosophy grad from Auckland University, I work a white-collar '9to5' and have radical ideas about pretty much everything I'm interested in (a common trait amongst philosophers).

My most nagging 'radical idea' concerns theism, or more accurately, Atheism. I've studied this subject in and out of tertiary environments and I've come to one conclusion: No matter how hard I try to be unbiased and charitable, you should still give up your theistic belief. Nietzsche said it before me, but I'll say it again, there is no God. Don't take me for a hype man though, what I really mean to say is that there are many reasons to not believe in God, and no reasons to believe in God.

The first thing that really needs to be addressed concerning Theistic Belief is the burden of proof. For those of you who don't know what the burden of proof is, it's this: If I claim something to be true then I need to able to to show you why it's true. If I claim gravity exists, I cannot prove it to you by saying "you can feel it". I need to able to demonstrate that in every circumstance the law of gravity holds, and so long as no true counter examples arise, then you must take it as true. That's not a hard stretch. If someone claims something is true, and it is, every time you test it, then you really should just believe its true. I could get into a long debate on epistemology and how belief structures work, but I'll save that for another Blog. So, anyway, what have I accomplished? Basically, if someone makes a claim (including claims like "God exists") then they need to be able to assert its proof logically.

This is where the first major flaw in theistic belief arises. If you claim there is a supernatural force, dictating everything, which is responsible for the creation of the universe, then you need to be able to show it. Russel makes an (in my opinion, good) analogy of belief in God to the belief in a Celestial Tea-pot. He claims there is a tiny tea-pot orbiting the Earth. Normally we could take empirical evidence and prove there isn't a tiny tea-pot orbiting the Earth, but Russel qualifies his belief by asserting that it is too small to ever be observed by man. This then shows how ridiculous it is to claim that I (the non-believer in the celestial tea-pot) must be the one to disprove his belief; we can't disprove it because it's invisible, therefore I should believe in it? Obviously this is nonsense. We know there is no celestial tea-pot. Just like we know there isn't an invisible Elephant in the room. The ability to qualify and re-qualify a belief is one of the main reasons the burden of proof is on the believer.

The 'Invisible Gardener' analogy is a perfect example of this (credit to Antony Flew). The story goes something like this: Two people are out traversing a forest when they come across a clearing in the wood. In it is a vast array of beautiful flowers, no weeds, everything is perfect. One of the people states "there must be a Gardener". A logical assumption. So they make camp at the clearing and wait a couple days for the Gardener. No one shows. At this point the person who believes in the Gardener states, "There is a Gardener I know it, He's just invisible". So now the second person sets up a fence with bells and such on it. If there is a Gardener he must make a sound when he enters the clearing. They wait. No sound is heard. The believer states "The Gardener is immaterial, he passes through the fence and makes no sound". So the second person brings some dogs along to the camp. Surely they will be able to smell the invisible, immaterial, inaudible Gardener. But alas, more days pass and the dogs barely stir. They smell nothing. Now the second person says "If your Gardner is immaterial, inaudible, invisible and odourless - how is he different from an imagined Gardener, or no Gardener at all?". And I think this is a good point. The second person concedes, he cannot keep proving that the Gardener doesn't exist in the face of all these qualifications, instead he asks the question of what 'does' exist? And the answer is nothing. The more points we raise to try and prove that God doesn't exist, the more qualifications are added to His essence to counter this, and the less He becomes. I saw this story once named 'Death by a thousand qualifications' and as we can see, there is nothing left of the Gardener, if He cannot be empirically proven. So in order to establish the truth of something we must work in the positive, showing how it is true, rather than assuming it's true and forcing others to try and prove it wrong.

Very few believers will be able to show that God exists, but the few people who do accept the burden of proof is on them, and attempt to make these arguments, are worth looking into. I'll go into each positive affirmation for the existence of God next time, and show how they fail. In upcoming blogs I'll cover the argument from evil and move onto some non-logical (not illogical!) reasons to not believe in God.

Thanks for reading and I hope this was some tasty food for thought.

Your friendly neighbourhood philosopher.



nb. check out http://www.guerrillaradioshow.com/ for some amazing audio on many different philosophical topics. I don't have anything to do with these guys, but they're funny and there is definitely something there for everyone. Cheers!