Following Paul Draper, I'm going to define my terms as follows.[1]
By "naturalism," I mean the view that the physical exists and, if the mental exists, the physical explains why the mental exists. If naturalism is true, then there are no purely mental beings which can exist apart from a physical body and so there is no God or any person or being much like God.
By "supernaturalism," I mean the view that the mental exists and, if the physical exists, the mental explains why anything physical exists. If supernaturalism is true, then there is no purely physical matter which can exist without some sort of ultimate mental creator. "Personal supernaturalism" is a type of supernaturalism; it adds on the claims that one or more personal mental entities exist and, if a physical world exists, it or they produced the physical world for a purpose. "Theism" is a type of personal supernaturalism; it adds on the claim that there is just one mental entity, God, who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect.
"Otherism" is a catch-all category. It says that both naturalism and supernaturalism are false.
1. If Christianity were true, then Christ is divine. [Given]
2. If Christianity were true, then Christ is human. [Given]
3. If Christ is divine, then Christ is immutable. [1: divine nature entails immutability]
4. If Christ is human, then Christ is mutable. [2: human nature entails mutability]
Therefore:
5. If Christianity were true, then it would be true that Christ is immutable and it would be false that Christ is immutable. [From 1-4]
Therefore:
6. It is impossible for Christianity to be true. [From 5 by the law of noncontradiction]
Source: Alchetron
In this post, I want to assess an argument for atheism called the Transcendence-vs.-Personhood Argument (hereafter, "TvP Argument"). The first section is an exposition of the argument as formulated by Theodore Drange. The second section is a partial assessment of the argument. The work of William Lane Craig appears prominently in this section. Craig is a highly regarded philosopher of time and philosopher of religion who has written extensively on the relationship between God and time. He is also, of course, a theist. Thus, his work on divine eternity provides a useful "test case" for the TvP Argument.
In his 1983 book, God and the New Physics, Paul Davies writes:
Christians believe that God is eternal. The word ‘eternal’ has, however, been used to mean two rather different things. In the simpler version, eternal means everlasting, or existing without beginning or end for an infinite duration. There are grave objections to such an idea of God, however. A God who is in time is subject to change. But what causes that change? If God is the cause of all existing things (as the cosmological argument of Chapter 3 suggests), then does it make sense to talk about that ultimate cause itself changing?
In the earlier chapters we have seen how time is not simply there, but is itself part of the physical universe. It is ‘elastic’ and can stretch or shrink according to well-defined mathematical laws which depend on the behaviour of matter. Also, time is closely linked to space, and space and time together express the operation of the gravitational field. In short, time is involved in all the grubby details of physical processes just as much as matter. Time is not a divine quality, but can be altered, physically, even by human manipulation. A God who is in time is, therefore, in some sense caught up in the operation of the physical universe. Indeed, it is quite likely that time will cease to exist at some stage in the future (as we shall see in Chapter 15). In that case God's own position is obviously insecure. Clearly, God cannot be omnipotent if he is subject to the physics of time, nor can he be considered the creator of the universe if he did not create time. In fact, because time and space are inseparable, a God who did not create time, created space neither. But as we have seen, once spacetime existed, the appearance of matter and order in the universe could have occurred automatically as the result of perfectly natural activity. Thus, many would argue that God is not really needed as a creator at all except to create time (strictly, spacetime).
So we are led to the other meaning of the word eternal — ‘timeless’....
A timeless God is free of the problems mentioned above, but suffers from the shortcomings already discussed on page 38. He cannot be a personal God who thinks, converses, feels, plans, and so on for these are all temporal activities. It is hard to see how a timeless God can act at all in time (although it has been claimed that this is not impossible). We have also seen how the sense of the existence of the self is intimately associated with the experience of a time-flow. A timeless God could not be considered a ‘person’ or individual in any sense that we know. Misgivings of this score have led a number of modern theologians to reject this view of an eternal God. Paul Tillich writes: ‘If we call God a living God, we affirm that he includes temporality and with this a relation to the modes of time.’ 3 The same sentiment is echoed by Karl Barth: ‘Without God's complete temporality the content of the Christian message has no shape.’
There is thus a grave and fundamental difficulty in reconciling all the traditional attributes of God. Modern physics, with its discovery of the mutability of time, drives a wedge between God's omnipotence and the existence of his personality. It is difficult to argue that God can have both these qualities.[1]
I just finished reading a surprisingly persuasive disproof of God's existence.
Version #1
Version #2
To avoid any misunderstandings, I am merely sketching an argument, not defending it. I claim only that it is valid, not that it is sound.
Earlier today, the "Thinking Atheist" tweeted a meme with a quotation attributed to the late Isaac Asimov:
Agree or disagree? pic.twitter.com/gkVf3fuLDo
— The Thinking Atheist (@ThinkingAtheist) January 6, 2023
Asimov's statement can be read in two ways. First, it could be an empirical claim: people who properly read the Bible tend to become atheists. Second, it could be a normative claim: people who "properly" read the Bible ought to become atheists. In my opinion, the word "properly" is doing a lot of work here; properly read, Asimov is making the normative claim.
But why believe the claim?
On Twitter, one person replied to me and suggested that Asimov said "atheism" but really meant "the falsity of Judaism and Christianity." Maybe , but if so that's pretty embarrassing for Asimov. The distinction between "atheism" and "the falsity of Judaism and Christianity" is pretty basic. Even middle schoolers can understand it.
(Note: I am clearing out my backlog of draft blog posts but I am officially on a hiatus from blogging. What this means is that while you are free to comment on this post, readers should not expect engagement from me anytime soon.)
Updated 7-January-2022
John Jung Park's 2017 paper revives an old argument for atheism: errors in human moral judgment due to various psychological biases provides a reason to think God does not exist. Park's argument refers to "framing effects." Following another one of Park's papers, we may say that moral framing effects occur when
morally irrelevant differences in the way a scenario is presented affect people’s moral judgments regarding that scenario.
Here's an example (taken from Park's 2021 paper):
Save vs. Kill: Petrinovich and O’Neill (1996, Exp. 1) reported that some participants indicated that they would do one act when the act was described in terms of how many people it would save (Save condition) but would not do that act when the act was described in terms of how many people it would kill (Kill condition), even though they had been told that the act would have both effects.
[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 26, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link was also updated to its current location.]
The late James Rachels wrotes an essay, "God and Moral Autonomy," in which he defends an argument for the nonexistence of God based on the impossibility of a being worthy of worship. Peter Lupu and Bill Vallicella have an interesting exchange about the argument on the latter's Maverick Philosopher blog (see here).
[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on January 1, 2009. It was republished here on November 7, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date.]
Philosopher Steven Hales has written an article disproving the myth, "You Can't Prove a Negative."
Abstract: It is widely believed that you can’t prove a negative. Some people even think that it is a law of logic—you can’t prove that Santa Claus, unicorns, the Loch Ness Monster, God, pink elephants, WMD in Iraq and Bigfoot don’t exist. This widespread belief is flatly, 100% wrong. In this little essay, I show precisely how one can prove a negative, to the same extent that one can prove anything at all.