36 Arguments For The Existence of God Debunked With Logic

[LegendarySandwich]

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/goldste ... index.html

Any comments? Any theists want to give a shot at debunking the debunkings?

[Will]

I finally got finished reading this and it's outstanding. I've bookmarked it for future debates in the instance I'm feeling kinda lazy.

[Achronos]

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/goldstein09/goldstein09_index.html

Any comments? Any theists want to give a shot at debunking the debunkings?

I barely got into this and already noticed the first problem, from the first proof offered:

1. Everything that exists must have a cause.

2. The universe must have a cause (from 1).

3. Nothing can be the cause of itself.

4. The universe cannot be the cause of itself (from 3).

5. Something outside the universe must have caused the universe (from 2 & 4).

6. God is the only thing that is outside of the universe.

7. God caused the universe (from 5 & 6).

8. God exists.

That's a straw man argument. The actual first premise of the syllogism is "everything that begins to exist has a cause." If you're going to attempt to say an argument is illogical, it is best to attack the argument as presented by the adherents. The second objection she has, which invokes Humean skepticism, has been debunked by both theists and atheists alike. I'll leave it to you to research that.

And just glancing through some of her arguments, while some of her critiques are accurate, others are based upon straw men arguments; she presents syllogisms that even adherents wouldn't hold to and actually argue against (for instance, her explanation of free will made me chuckle, because the type of free will she describes is a type that no one believes in).

Suffice it to say, her incredulity towards such arguments is unwarranted because she's targeting straw men and not the actual arguments.

[LegendarySandwich]

I barely got into this and already noticed the first problem, from the first proof offered:

1. Everything that exists must have a cause.

2. The universe must have a cause (from 1).

3. Nothing can be the cause of itself.

4. The universe cannot be the cause of itself (from 3).

5. Something outside the universe must have caused the universe (from 2 & 4).

6. God is the only thing that is outside of the universe.

7. God caused the universe (from 5 & 6).

8. God exists.

That's a straw man argument. The actual first premise of the syllogism is "everything that begins to exist has a cause." If you're going to attempt to say an argument is illogical, it is best to attack the argument as presented by the adherents.

After looking it up in Wikipedia, you're right, although I'm not really sure how that affects the argument in any way.

The second objection she has, which invokes Humean skepticism, has been debunked by both theists and atheists alike. I'll leave it to you to research that.

Secondly, the premise of causality has been arrived at via a posteriori (inductive) reasoning, which is dependent on experience. David Hume highlighted this problem of induction and argued that causal relations were not true a priori (deductively). However as to whether inductive or deductive reasoning is more valuable still remains a matter of debate, with the general conclusion being that neither is prominent.[13] Even though causality applies to the known world, it does not necessarily apply to the universe at large. In other words, it is unwise to draw conclusions from an extrapolation of causality beyond experience.

Can you at least give me a starting point for why this is wrong?

And just glancing through some of her arguments, while some of her critiques are accurate, others are based upon straw men arguments; she presents syllogisms that even adherents wouldn't hold to and actually argue against (for instance, her explanation of free will made me chuckle, because the type of free will she describes is a type that no one believes in).

Suffice it to say, her incredulity towards such arguments is unwarranted because she's targeting straw men and not the actual arguments.

I can't ask you to go through each of the ones you think are false one-by-one, so I won't, although that's what I'd prefer.

[Stevil]

The Cosmological Argument

1. Everything that exists must have a cause.

2. The universe must have a cause (from 1).

3. Nothing can be the cause of itself.

4. The universe cannot be the cause of itself (from 3).

5. Something outside the universe must have caused the universe (from 2 & 4).

6. God is the only thing that is outside of the universe.

7. God caused the universe (from 5 & 6).

8. God exists.

I have issues with this.
"1. Everything that exists must have a cause" - scientific answer "quantum fluctuations"
"2. The universe must have a cause" - This is oversimplifying things. It suggests that all existence within the universe was spontaneous in an instant. This is a huge assumption and not what I guess actually happened. My guess is that over aeons of time, billions of billions of billions of years this energy collected together in a massive black hole or collection of black holes that eventually reached a critical limit and exploded. This is a guess of course, but I am just saying that one can't say for certain that the universe must have a cause as if the Universe is a creation of existence event. The Universe isn't an event at all, it is a collection of energy and matter.
"3. Nothing can be the cause of itself." - This should actually be No event can be the cause of itself.
"4. The universe cannot be the cause of itself " - Silly statement, should be rewritten as the Universe can not be the cause of the creation of the existence of the Universe. This does not follow from 3 as the Universe is not an event
"5. Something outside the universe must have caused the universe" - This does not follow from 3 and 4 as the Universe is not an event. Also we have a problem with the definition of the Universe. Before the Universe existed there was no outside or inside. You could also say that there was not house, only a pile of bricks and concrete and nails and glass and stuff. But when it was all put together it because a house, but the existence of the material was already there. Or similar to a caterpillar turning into a moth.
"6. God is the only thing that is outside of the universe." - Even when our Universe exists it seems logical to me that the vast, vast, vast majority of energy and matter in space exists outside of our Universe. Our Universe is infinitesimally small compared to the vastness of space. There is also nothing to suggest that God exists inside or outside our Universe, so big assumption there.
"7. God caused the universe " - Huge assumption, given my stance on 5 and 6
"8. God exists" - This is a result of the assumptions of 6. These assumptions of 6 are that God exists outside the Universe and that nothing else exists outside the Universe. So based on the assumption that God exists we have now gone full circle and "proved" that God exists (obviously given the premise that God exists in assertion 6, OK getting Circular here, I'll stop on this item otherwise I'll never end.

In all, this logic sequence has no substance and really falls apart from 6 onwards where huge assumptions and assertions are being made, not to mention the injection of the god concept which conveniently avoids the necessity for any logic with regards to its existence and then at the end because it is there based on the assumption that it exists, Oh, here I go again, spinning in a circle.

[Stevil]

Is this stuff really the best proof theists can come up with? They have had thousands of years to come up with something.
Most (if not all) of the arguments here, simply point out an unknown factor and then inject an unproven god concept as if it is assumed real. It is a really dishonest approach to presenting a proof. It highlights to me that the author knows there is no god and is simply trying to twist things on purpose. It is not particularly intelligent and assumes the audience are intellectually challenged.

Maybe it works for people who desperately want to believe, but it simply does not work for people that are genuine in their search for the truth.

It highlights to me that the people who are promoting this stuff simply do not have the truth on their side and they know it hence they resort to attempted confusion.

[AnimatedDirt]

Maybe it works for people who desperately want to believe, but it simply does not work for people that are genuine in their search for the truth.

Are you suggesting you're in genuine search for biblical truth or in search of that which establishes your bias?

It highlights to me that the people who are promoting this stuff simply do not have the truth on their side and they know it hence they resort to attempted confusion.

Yes, I can't believe it's taken a few thousand years to realize this with logic on your side!

[penfold]

The second objection she has, which invokes Humean skepticism, has been debunked by both theists and atheists alike. I'll leave it to you to research that.

Before I get onto proofs of God, did just want to call foul on this. While there are many who reject some aspects of Human scepticism, most noticeably his work on the self; as far as I am aware his central critique of induction has never been 'debunked'. In fact one can easily trace a golden thread of metaphysical scepticism from Hume through Kant [the noumenal], Nietzsche [impossibility of absolute truth] and Wittgenstein ["that which we must pass over in silence"], into contemporary philosophy. Could you provide some authority (or better yet an argument) to substantiate your claim?

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Onto proofs of God. My own personal standpoint is that the atheist community is wasting its time with debunking 'proofs' of God. What should be understood is that God is, by her very nature, not susceptible to proof. There are, broadly, two ways in which we use proof.

First is logical or mathematical proofs. These proofs test logical consistency of a claim. For a claim to be proved logically two things must be logically demonstrated, first the consistency of the claim being true, and second the inconsistency of the claim not being true. There are some attempts to prove God this way, however they are based upon a misunderstanding. The important point is that such logical proofs cannot demonstrate existence. That this is the case is fairly simple to understand, logical proofs only cleave to language (including, importantly, logical form and mathematics); the move from such a proof about language to a claim about existence simply cannot be substantiated. As Kant (a theist) so elegantly put it: "existence cannot be predicated". All ontological proofs fall into this category.

The second type of proof is based upon evidence. This includes cosmological, teleological and scriptural proofs of God. What theists consistently do is fail to understand what is required for an evidential proof; confusing possibility with certainty. Essentially the problem is this: evidence based claims cannot tell us about the cosmos qua cosmos; only the cosmos qua the observer. Normally this does not matter; whether an electron really exists is not important, what matters is that our model correctly predicts behaviour. So I can have two models of the cosmos, one where the electron really exists, the other where the electron is merely a model for some unknown deep process. As long as both models predict the same behaviour then we have no good reason to pick one model over the other.

So on what basis can one, using evidence, chose between models for the cosmos? The answer is testing. If two models make different predictions about the universe then I can only find out if one of them is correct by testing. So if model A predicts the cosmos will exhibit behaviour X and model B predicts the cosmos will not exhibit behaviour X; then I prove one to be correct by seeing if the cosmos does exhibit behaviour X or not.

The problem with evidence based proofs of God is that they never have this testable component. In fact the theist and the atheist could completely agree on the way the cosmos works; the only difference being that the theist says it is designed, the atheist that it is not. There is nothing we could possibly test to show this one way or the other (I can elaborate if people want - should be fairly self explanatory and am concerned about the length of this post).


Actually none of this should worry the theist; it seems to me that all theists ultimately come back to the same point. For them God exists and the real proof is personal revelation. That's faith. Those theists who spend their time trying to prove God, and those atheists who try and debunk them, are just pissing into the wind. The task is, by its very nature, impossible. Ontology is simply not susceptible to proofs (or, for that matter, disproofs). As that great theist Kierkegaard said "faith without doubt would not be faith at all".

peace

[Stevil]

Are you suggesting you're in genuine search for biblical truth or in search of that which establishes your bias?

I'm glad you have seen the importance of distinguishing the biblical truth from the truth.

[Stevil]

Yes, I can't believe it's taken a few thousand years to realize this with logic on your side!

I have never seen the arguments that theists use before. I have never really been interested in religion and hence generally don't talk about it or investigate it. My experiences on this forum have been rather enlightening to me, I didn't realise just how weak the argument for a god was. I used to think the definition of a god was that it could do anything and thus it was unprovable, but looking into the details here and these terribly bad logic arguments, I am astounded that there are people that believe in gods. But to each their own. Your god loves you, yay for Yhwh, creator of the Universe!

[hackenslash]

That's a straw man argument. The actual first premise of the syllogism is "everything that begins to exist has a cause."

That would be true if the criticism was specifically of the Kalam fallacy, but it isn't. It's a critique of cosmological arguments in general, and the Kalam wasn't the first. Indeed, that 'begins to exist' canard is constructed precisely to remove the charge of special pleading. It presents its own problems, though, in that no instance of something ever beginning to exist ex nihilo has ever been presented. Indeed, there are good scientific reasons for thinking that everything that exists constitutes merely a change in state of previously existing matter/energy, which provides a reasonable refutation of the premise even in it's Kalam fallacy form.

Perhaps I need a PhD in making shit up about made-up entities not to be able to avoid seeing that, though.