Is God Possible?

BAD NEWS FOR GOD
The Objectivist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
10/11/06

The best arguments for God presuppose that he is perfect. Some theists (persons who believe in God) argue that God exists because he alone can explain where the universe comes from. The underlying idea is the Stevie Wonder principle that you can't get something from nothing. The theist then argues that since the universe couldn't have come from nothing, God must have created it. The theists then note that because God is perfect he has to exist and hence was not created by something else.

Consider what a perfect being is like. He must be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. The absence of one of these features would be a flaw and perfect beings don't have flaws. Unfortunately for theists, no being can have all three features.

Consider whether there can be a person who is both all-powerful and all-good. Many readers enjoy malicious pleasures. These are pleasures that accompany evildoing. For example, many of Stanley Kubrick's fans enjoy watching out-of-control criminals and abusive drill instructors wreaking havoc (for example, Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket). Males who went to high school often snicker at the time-honored tradition of senior athletes giving wedgies to freshmen (pulling the top of someone's underwear until it hurts). An all-good person can't enjoy such pleasures and hence doesn't know something, namely what these pleasures are like.

A similar thing is true with regard to being all-powerful and all-knowing. An all-powerful person can't be harmed. If such a person had great knowledge, then he would know that he can't be harmed and hence can't feel fear. As a result, there would be something that an all-powerful person can't know.

A person also can't be all-good and all-powerful. For example, an all-powerful being can do evil. For example, he can kill and eat the weak just for the fun of it. An all-good being can't this because he can do something only if he can be motivated to do it and an all-good being can't be motivated to do such monstrous acts. Worse yet, given the importance that the theist assigns to free will--he needs it to account for evil--he has a problem in explaining why God has free will. A being that freely does good has the option of doing evil. However, since an all-good being can't do evil, he doesn't have that option, and lacks free will. Hence, an all-good being can't be all-powerful or have free will.

These results drive a stake into the heart of theism. The best arguments for God's existence depend on his being perfect and yet a perfect being is impossible. At this point, the theist has at three options: he can deny that God is subject to logic, he can deny that God is perfect, or he can claim that a perfect being need not have the above features.

The notion that God is not subject to logic reduces most religious doctrines to hash. For example, when persons say God is great, they mean to rule out that God tortures puppies for fun or has a temperament nearly identical to Roseanne. When they say they believe in God, they mean to rule out his not existing. However, if God is not subject to logic then neither thing follows. In fact, were this notion true, then human beings would not be able to reason correctly about God.

The theist might deny that God is perfect, perhaps by saying that perfection is no more possible than is a largest number. The problem with this move is that it undermines the best arguments for God's existence. For example, it undermines the argument that attempts to show that the existence of God explains why there is a universe.

The theist's best bet is to deny that a perfect being is all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful, and has free will. The problem with this is that the theist will then have to specify which features God has. For example, does the theist concede that God is a little bit evil or does he deny that God has free will? The problem with this escape route is that the choice of which features God has and doesn't have is arbitrary and his perfection can't rest on arbitrary things. If it did, then God's perfection would depend on chance or external causes and such dependence is a flaw.

Bad news for God, he doesn't exist. However, this doesn't prevent us from having great families, leading moral lives, and laughing at the politicians the devil has placed in Washington and Albany.

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Defining God Out of Existence
The Theist
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
10/11/06

Atheists make poor theologians. Still, we find them telling everyone about how God would have to be, if there was one (but of course, there isn't). What is going on? They're searching for a simple, knock-down argument against belief in God. Let me explain.

If some claim is inconsistent with itself, it is false. Further, once we understand it to be contradictory, we all know it is false. If I tell you that I've got a brother who is five feet tall, and who is also (at the same time) six foot three, you don't need to go asking my family whether or not I have such a brother. As soon as you understand my claim to be inconsistent, you know it's false. And if I tell you that there's exactly one god, and that there's also exactly fourteen (using the word "god" in the same sense both times), I'm propounding a contradictory religion--one which couldn't possibly be true, and must be false. Now some claims may at first appear to be self consistent, but upon inspection, they turn out to be contradictory, such as "There's a square circle" or "I drew a right triangle with an interior angle larger than ninety degrees."

The atheist is tempted to argue that "God exists" is a claim of this sort. Wouldn't that be convenient? If that were true, the atheist could ignore what feels like the voice of God calling out to him through the glories of the natural world, and the testimony of millions of apparently sane and sober people who have experienced God’s reality--his love, his presence, even his voice. The atheist could also skip a serious, thoughtful look at the reported careers and teachings of people such as Moses and Jesus. What a time-saver! How does it work? Simply define the divine attributes so as to be inconsistent with one another, making the very idea of God a contradictory one. Presto! It will follow that there couldn't be a God, so defined. So, for example, if he's all-powerful, that means he can do anything at all, but that conflicts with his being perfectly good.

The problem with this sort of argument is that only a chump of a theist would accept the proposed definitions of the divine attributes. God is traditionally thought to be a bodiless being, the Source of the cosmos, with in some sense limitless power. But pretty much no theologian has wanted to say that God can do anything we can name. For instance, God can't lie, can't commit suicide, can't make square circles, and can't steal children's Halloween Candy just because he likes to hear them cry. Similarly, God is supposed to have unlimited knowledge, as he's in control of history, is present everywhere, upholds all things in existence, and is eternal. But, one may object, if he can't do evil, he therefore can't know certain things, such as, what it's like to rob a bank. This is a lame objection--as if God would have no imagination whatsoever, no ability to vividly imagine, in perfect detail, what it is like to rob a bank.

Divine freedom is a more difficult issue. The claim that a being which is free to do good must also be free to do evil is false. If I were perfectly good, I might be able to give a certain panhandler one dollar or five dollars, even though I'd be unable to insult him and push him down. And whether I gave one or five, I would still be deserving of thanks. Still, one might think that an important kind of freedom is freedom to form one's own character for good or evil, through a series of free choices, over the course of time. All of us believe that we have this sort of freedom, but does God have it as well? The traditional answer is "no"--a being who knows everything and has no pressing needs can't even be tempted to do evil, much less go through with it. I don't see anything wrong with this answer.

In sum, this atheist attempt at a home run is just a big swing and miss. Theists should call atheists' bluff on this sort of argument, and not take refuge in the easy out of disparaging "human logic." This is a silly reply, because there's nothing specifically human about the fact that contradictions can't be true. The idea may be that, given our finite minds, when we start thinking about something as far beyond us as God, we'll run into paradoxes. Maybe so, but that's no excuse to accept contradictions only when they provide easy escapes from atheistic objections. In the rest of life, as in religion, we all eschew inconsistent claims, because we want to get true beliefs and to avoid false ones. Our human minds are the most amazing thing in God's creation, and he expects us to use them well.