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Does God exist?: Difference between revisions

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**{{Objection}} God is outside of the confines of our physical world, and whether or not God is actively involved in this world is not being debated. Therefore, saying that God exists is not an empirical statement, it's a metaphysical statement, and empirical proof for metaphysical statements is not necessary or even possible.
*{{Argument}} God is conceived as all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful. So, if God exists, then under any ordinary definition of evil, evil shouldn't exist. But evil clearly exists. Therefore, God does not exist.
**{{Objection}} God could have given humans the power to do evil. If humans can do evil, then evil can exist despite there being an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good God.
*****{{Objection}} Moral responsibility is partially hereditary. If I knowingly raise my child in a way that makes it highly likely they will commit a crime when grown up that makes me responsible for that crime and subject to blame.▼
***{{Objection}} This would still make God responsible for evil, albeit indirectly.
****{{Objection}} Moral responsibility is not hereditary. If my (grownup) child commits a crime, no society will (or should) blame me for it. Similarly, if a human does evil, we shouldn't blame God for it. Giving the power to do evil is not the same as doing it. God may even be the (metaphysical) cause of evil, while not being morally responsible for it.
▲*****{{Objection}} Moral responsibility is partially hereditary. If I knowingly raise my child in a way that makes it highly likely they will commit a crime when grown up that makes me responsible for that crime and subject to blame.
******{{Objection}} But no one contends that God raised us that way--he merely gave us the freedom to choose. In fact, because we turned away from his omnibenevolence, evil arose, according to theists.
*******{{Objection}} An omniscient God should have known that if he gave humans the freedom to choose, we would do evil. Therefore, he allowed evil to exist, which contradicts the benevolent nature of God.
***{{Objection}} Even if God gave humans free will and the power to do evil, this doesn't imply that there should be evil. A world where free will exists but evil does not is logically possible. God can create any world that is logically possible, so God chose a world where there is unnecessary evil. This contradicts the all-powerful and all-good nature of God.
****{{Objection}} Should we not live with the consequences of our actions and disobedience, then?
*****{{Objection}} Is cancer then the consequence of human disobedience? We haven't dealt with the problem of natural evil.
*{{Argument}} In order to exist, an entity must exist as something. To exist as something, the entity must have positive primary attributes (ex. I'm a material entity, made up of atoms). All of God's attributes are either negatively defined (ex. omniscience can be reduced to 'without limits of knowledge'), secondary (ex. good) or relational (ex. creator). If a god is Creator, then it must be immaterial, as nothing can cause itself. But “immaterial” is a negatively defined term. Therefore a god’s substance is undefined. All of this is to say that the god concept is incoherent. If this indeed turns out to be the case, then positive belief in such a concept is not possible.
**{{Objection}} Positive and negative properties are vague notions, often interchangeable. 'Closed' can be reduced to 'not open', just as 'open' can be reduced to 'not closed'. Similarly, 'omniscience' can be reduced to positive terms, like 'with total knowledge' just as it can be reduced to negative ones, like 'without limits of knowledge' or 'without ignorance'. Other properties of God, such as 'all-powerful', can also be thought as either positive or negative: 'with complete power' or 'without limits to its power'.
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