Continuing with the case against God which I outlined here:

2) “God” – to the extent the term makes any sense at all – seems to be a purely hypothetical entity which is completely undetectable by human senses and scientific instruments alike and for which no convincing physical evidence has ever been found. For all practical purposes, this renders “God” synonymous with “non-existent.”

A) “God” is such a purely hypothetical (i.e., imaginary) concept that it cannot even be deduced from other concepts.

Putting aside all the problems involved in simply defining “God” (detailed in Part 1) and putting on hold for the moment the fact that no empirical evidence exists to support “God,” let’s take a few minutes to note that the “God” hypothesis is unsupported by any sound logical argument.

Although various “proofs” of God’s existence have been offered by Plato, Aquinas, and others, and although these “proofs” continue to be cited as reasons to believe in “God,” the fact remains that none can withstand close analysis. “God” simply cannot be logically deduced from any demonstrably true set of premises.

Perhaps the most popular of these “proofs” is the so-called “Argument From Design” which asserts that the universe (or world or eye) exhibits such perfect order that it musthave been created by an intelligent entity called God. This argument has many flaws (not the least of which is that it isn’t really an argument at all). Those flaws have already been discussed here and detailed in four entries starting here.

Another of these “proofs” is the so-called “First Cause Argument.” It asserts that nothing can come from nothing, that everything has a cause, that an infinite regress of causes is impossible, and therefore there must have been a First Cause which merits the name “God.” This “proof” is fatally flawed as well:

a) If everything must have a cause, what caused God? If God doesn’t need a cause, why must the universe?

b) How do we know that nothing can come from nothing? Just because that seems to be the case here and now, how do we know it has always been the case everywhere? (There seems to be evidence that at the sub-atomic particle level, things pop into and out of existence for no reason at all.)

c) It doesn’t make sense to ask “What caused the law of cause and effect?” Either that law has always existed or it came about quite arbitrarily. It only makes sense to speak of cause and effect within the context of existence. Similarly, it seems as absurd to ask what caused the universe outside the context of the universe as it is to ask how a bird flies outside the context of the atmosphere.

d) “Infinite regresses are impossible” is an unwarranted assumption.

e) Even if a “First Cause” could be established, we would do well to simply call it the “First Cause” – not “God.” Using a vague and emotionally-charged term like “God” when a better term exists is unjustified, unnecessary, and confusing. The tendency of many to think that any “First Cause” must be synonymous with their God is especially unjustified and unfortunate.

f) Even if a “First Cause” could be established, that would not prove it survived the creation of its “First Effect,” continues to exist, is eternal, or in any other way resembles the entity commonly called “God.”

*

There are perhaps 10 such “proofs” of God. Each is at least as flawed as the two just cited. I am not inclined to analyze each and every one, for several reasons:

—– Most serious philosophers seem to have rejected them and moved on.

—– No theist I know seems to believe in God mainly because of these arguments. It seems highly unlikely that any of them is going to abandon belief in God merely because these arguments are definitively refuted. (Aquinas himself seems to have thought that belief in God had to precede belief in his “proofs.”)

—– Others have refuted these arguments better than I can. See: Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith; How We Believe by Michael Shermer; Why I Am Not A Christian by Bertrand Russell; and Critique of Religion and Philosophy by Walter Kaufmann. Or click here.

—– Years of study, thought, and research have convinced me that “God” simply is not a logical concept. The effort to prove “God” using deductive logic is an intellectual dead end. A waste of time. A wild goose chase. As Bertrand Russell says in his A History of Western Philosophy (p. 572) with regard to Spinoza (1634-77): “The Ethics is set forth in the style of Euclid, with definitions, axioms, and theorems; everything after the axioms is supposed to be rigorously demonstrated by deductive argument. This makes him difficult reading. A modern student, who cannot suppose that there are rigorous ‘proofs’ of such things as he professes to establish, is bound to grow impatient with the detail of the demonstrations, which is, in fact, not worth mastering…. We cannot accept his method, but that is because we cannot accept his metaphysic. We cannot believe that the interconnections of the parts of the universe are logical, because we hold that scientific laws are to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning alone.”

The question becomes, “Can we observe any evidence of ‘God’ anywhere or in anything around us?”

Let’s all go take a good, hard look and then come back and compare notes soon.

Go to Part 2B