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Many people in the world think that Satan is the one ruling in Hell and he's the one dishing out the punishments there. Therefore some think that they'll hopefully get on Satan's 'good' side to escape punishment from him.
But in this helpful 2 minute clip, John MacArthur explains that the Scripture speaks otherwise about who is ruling Hell.
It is likely that you have heard atheists say to Christians, "But who created God?" They ask this usually when the Christian has shown that the universe had a beginning, and so in the atheist's mind it's a little like, "If I can't have an eternal universe, then you can't have an eternal God." But does this question really present a problem for Christianity? In this video, Randall Niles explains the impossibility of infinite regression, showing there must be an uncaused God.
There are arguments that can be given which show that the uncaused cause of the universe must be personal, meaning that it must refer to God and not simply to a singularity. Check out the Kalam Cosmological argument article for more information.
How does divine justice compare in Christianity compared to Islam? Does Allah always act in a way that is just. Or does he sometimes act deceptively? This is what the following video will discuss. It is a snippet from the Operation 513 Gold Coast outreach held on the 23rd July 2010, where Ryan Hemelaar responds to Muslim hecklers.
On 23rd July 2010, as part of the Gold Coast Operation 513 outreach, there were a few Muslims heckling the preacher, Ryan Hemelaar. One of the questions they asked was: "Why God can't simply forgive sin if someone repents? For that way, Jesus didn't have to die." Watch the follow video to hear how Ryan responds.
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This is a very common objection that people bring up when discussing the Cosmological Argument. In this 1-minute video, Dr. William Lane Craig refutes the idea that God would did a creator for Himself.
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In 2007, Professors William Lane Craig and Lewis Wolpert undertook to debate each other on the topic of the existence of God. Below is a series of 4 reasonably short videos of the pretty humorous discussion that took place after the debate, moderated by BBC's John Humphrys.
Do you want a 4-minute crash course in what the Jehovah's Witnesses believe?
Then watch this video by Matt Slick of CARM.org.
The concept of God is remarkably different between the two biggest religions of the world, Islam and Christianity. However, the question must be asked: Which one is true, as both religions claim there is only one God?
This debate was held at McGill University, in Quebec, Canada in February 2009.
Download Audio (Thanks to Apologetics 315)
Note: Not all the views expressed in this debate by Dr. Craig are shared by Operation 513.
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Why is it wrong to steal or murder? Is it just because that is the cultural norm? Or is there actually an objective moral standard? Matt Slick from CARM.org in this 5-minute video will address this topic and provide a convincing case for the existence of God from morality.
By Ryan Hemelaar
"Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood." - Acts 20:28 (ESV)
Here Paul equates Jesus' death as being God's death. Therefore, it is clear that Jesus is God.
The New World Translation (the Bible of the Jehovah's Witnesses) has once again erroneously translated this verse, by rendering the last phrase of it as: "...which he purchased with the blood of his own [Son]." For the Greek is: τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου. Since there is a definite article (τοῦ) before both the word that means 'blood' (αἵματος) and the word that means 'own' (ἰδίου), the construction clearly shows that ἰδίου ('own') is an attributive adjective. What this means, as the name implies, is that a quality is attributed to the noun (eg: "the good man"), unlike a predicate adjective (eg: "the man is good"), and a substantive (eg: "only the good die young"), where an adjective stands in the place of a noun. This last category is what the translators of the New World Translation think this adjective is, that is, a substantive. However, it is clear that there is a noun with an article preceding the adjective and its article, so therefore it simply cannot stand there as a substantive. Instead the last phrase of Acts 20:28 should be translated: "...which he obtained with/through his own blood", which the ESV has nicely done.
Moreover, to expose the New World Translation's double standard, it translates John 10:11a as "I am the fine shepherd" even though it's in the exact same restrictive attributive position (ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός) as Acts 20:28! That is clearly a double standard; translating one as a substantive, and the other as an attributive.
Continued from Part 1
4. Some Examples: Tooth Fairies, Leprechauns, Santa Claus, Teapots, and Invisible Objects
Let me see if I can put all this together to answer your question with some examples which are thought to pose a problem for the line of thought defended thus far. Your question basically was when absence of evidence counts as evidence of absence. Answering this will depend upon whether our epistemic situation satisfies the Evidence Expectation and Knowledge Expectation Criteria for the object in question: Should one expect to possess evidence sufficient to know that object O exists? If a rhino were in the room, then the answer is “Yes.” Thus, looking about and seeing no rhino, that itself is evidence there is none present.
But what about things like the Tooth Fairy, leprechauns, and Santa Claus? Atheists claim they don’t need to disprove God for the same reason they don’t need to disprove the existence of Tooth Fairies, leprechauns, and Santa Claus. The problem with the comparison with the last two items is that, while our epistemic situation regarding God doesn’t always satisfy the Evidence Expectation and Knowledge Expectation Criteria, our epistemic situation regarding leprechauns and Santa Claus does — we can, and do, disprove them all the time; it’s just that there are few, if any, people arguing for their existence so we’re never called upon to give those reasons. If Santa existed we should expect to see, but don’t, lots of evidence of that fact, including warehouses at the North Pole, a large sleigh, and so forth; similarly, were there biologically tiny human beings on this planet we should expect to see, but don’t, their evidence: miniature villages, waste products, the bones of their deceased — evidence similar to what we have for mice, hamsters and other small critters. If there were more people today who made a case for leprechauns and Santa Claus then it would be entirely appropriate for us to enter into dialogue with them, giving reasons for their non-existence.
At this point an atheist might object that the Tooth Fairy is different from leprechauns and Santa Claus because she’s invisible. (Is she invisible in the story?) Suppose she is invisible. According to the tale she collects teeth left under children’s pillows leaving behind a reward (usually money). Evidence we should expect to see if she existed then would be money left behind, stolen teeth, etc. Do we find such evidence? Well, no we don’t, but we would expect to if she existed. So, even the Tooth Fairy satisfies the Evidence Expectation and Knowledge Expectation Criteria. So because we lack evidence of her, we say she doesn’t exist (sorry kids!).
Suppose the atheist agrees that the reason why we deny Tooth Fairies, leprechauns and Santa Claus is because we do have evidence for their absence. He might nonetheless insist that the situation is significantly different for other objects which are causally isolated from us. A case in point is Russell’s famous teapot which circles about the sun, an object which is (for the most part) causally isolated from us. Do we need to be agnostic about it? Can we say it doesn’t exist? I think we know it doesn’t exist because it wasn’t put there by the Russian or American astronauts; and we know that matter in the universe does not self-organize into teapot shapes. So really, we have a great deal of evidence that Russell’s teacup doesn’t exist; and since our discussion is confined to cases where we infer the non-existence of something simply on the basis of absence of evidence for it, the example is irrelevant.
Another Objection and a Reply
But now imagine the atheist objecting:
OK, very well, I grant everything you say thus far about Santa Claus, and all the rest; but we don’t have to abide by your Criteria when it comes to objects which are both invisible (like the Tooth Fairy) and causally undetectable (like the teapot). For example, an invisible floating, pink elephant over my head. There’s no such thing.
The theist could reply:
Your example is charming and rhetorically clever but incoherent. Can something that is invisible even be an elephant? If so, then it surely isn't very much like a normal elephant— a massive, material object which exhibits all sorts of physical properties. Your “invisible elephant” question is really just a rhetorically clever sleight of hand; the question doesn’t make much sense in the first place and perhaps should be rephrased as something like: "Do we know there are not immaterial things around us?" to which the answer should be "No" in either of two senses: (i) No, because we have no evidence that there are not immaterial things, or (ii) No, because there are immaterial things around us, e.g. God, angels, immaterial minds, qualia, abstract objects like numbers or propositions, etc.9
Source: ReasonableFaith.org
By Shaun
1. Introduction
The famous British philosopher Bertrand Russell was asked what he would say if he found himself before God on Judgment Day and God said to him, “Why didn’t you believe in Me?” Russell shot right back: “Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence!”
Many have taken what they consider to be an apparent lack of evidence for God as evidence that God doesn’t exist; that is, they look around, don’t see “enough” evidence and conclude that atheism is true.
But Russell realized that the inference from apparent lack of evidence for God to atheism is fallacious. That’s why in his famous debate in 1948 with Frederick Copleston he preferred the label “agnostic” instead of “atheist.” Yet today, many call themselves “atheists” when really they are agnostics.
Let’s first define some terms around the question “Does God exist?”
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"Does God exist?" |
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Theism: "God exists" |
Non-theism: "I don't believe in God" |
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Agnosticism: “I don’t know if God exists” |
Atheism: “God does not exist” |
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Hard Agnosticism: "I don't know |
Soft Agnosticism: "I don't know |
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Notice a few things about these definitions. First, non-theism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive because you could be a non-theist and so fail to believe in God (i.e., you could lack belief in God) but you might also be an agnostic saying, “For all I know, God exists. I just don’t know.” Notice also how extreme hard agnosticism is, since it claims even more than atheists do; the hard agnostic says that everyone is wrong, both atheists and theists, and that they cannot know what they claim, even if they have apparently sound arguments! Little wonder, then, that hard agnosticism is sometimes called “ostrich agnosticism!”
There are sound arguments for God’s existence. Some of them are very good. But suppose it were not so; suppose all the arguments for God fail and there are no further good reasons to believe in God. What follows?—Atheism? It’s very important to realize that the answer to this question is NO. What follows is, at most, soft agnosticism.
2. When Does Absence of Evidence = Evidence of Absence? (Or, when is the inference from “I see none” to “there is none” valid?)
What I have said so far raises the question, When does the absence of evidence become evidence of absence? This is a good question because sometimes (but not always) the former implies the latter. Let’s start with some examples to work with.
Example 1. Elephants in the Room (Absence of Evidence = Evidence of Absence)
Someone asks, “Are there any elephants in the room?” After looking about and seeing none, I say, “No, I see none. There are no elephants in the room.”
The inference from “I see none” to “There are none” in this example is justified. With respect to elephants in this room, I’m not agnostic; rather, I positively affirm: There are no elephants in the room. In this case, absence of elephants in the room is evidence of their absence. But this inference doesn’t hold for Example 2.
Example 2. The Grand Canyon Fly (Absence of Evidence ≠ Evidence of Absence)
We’re standing atop the Grand Canyon and someone asks, “Is there a fly way down there?” After a quick glance I say, “No, I see none. There is no fly down there.”
As in the last example we move from “I see none” to “There is none”—but unlike the last example the conclusion is unjustified. Agnosticism regarding the fly is the appropriate response here. So in the Elephant Example we don’t have to be agnostics, but in the Grand Canyon Fly Example we do. Why? Notice that it is not the relative size of the object which creates the difference (The zookeeper might have asked you on your zoo trip, “Do you think an elephant is in the cage in the next room?” to which your reply might be agnosticism: “I have no idea. Maybe.”)
The salient difference between these two examples has entirely to do with your epistemic situation — which is, roughly, the extent and limits of your ability to know something through your primary sources of knowing (i.e. perception, memory, introspection, testimony, etc.) — and the fact that only in one situation (Elephants in the Room) do we expect to have knowledge which we lack. My epistemic situation regarding knowing whether an elephant is in the room is quite good, while my epistemic situation regarding knowing whether a fly resides at the bottom of the Grand Canyon is quite poor. Why? When are we in an epistemically good situation in order to say, “There is no X”? What conditions have to be met? At least two. In the absence of evidence of an object O you may deny that O exists only if these Criteria are met:
Evidence Expectation Criterion. If an object O existed, then we would expect there to be evidence for it.
Knowledge Expectation Criterion. If there were evidence of object O, then we would expect to have knowledge of the evidence.
In short, in the absence of evidence, we can deny the existence of something O only if we should expect to possess evidence sufficient to know that O exists but in fact lack it.
To prove his position the atheist has his task cut out for himself: What he must do is show that (a) the epistemic situation in which we find ourselves with respect to belief in God’s existence satisfies the above Criteria; and (b) demonstrate that we lack sufficient evidence for knowing that God exists. Equivalently, he must show that all the arguments for God are unsound and then argue that if God existed then we would expect to be in a position to know whether God exists. But as we’ll see, there is good reason to think (a) is false because our epistemic situation in which we find ourselves with respect to belief in God’s existence does not satisfy the above Criteria.
Source: ReasonableFaith.org
By Ryan Hemelaar
The Kalam Cosmological Argument is a very strong argument for God's existence. However, the leader of the Brisbane Atheists thinks that he has found a way to refute it. To summarise his argument:
1. There is an equal amount of matter and anti-matter in the universe.
2. Negative one plus one equals zero.
3. Therefore, the sum of the total matter of the universe is equal to zero.
4. Therefore the universe does not exist.
5. Therefore the universe never had a beginning.
6. Therefore there was no cause to the universe
As you can probably already see, there are many problems with this argument.
Firstly, there is no evidence to think that there is an equal amount of matter and anti-matter in the universe. Some Big Bang theorists speculate that there should have been equal amounts of matter and anti-matter made at the Big Bang. However, no anti-matter domains have been detected in space within 20 megaparsecs (6.17*10^20 km) of the Earth.
Even one of the leading advocates in the search for antimatter in space, Samuel Ting, laments:
"At the beginning, equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created [in the “big bang”]. Now there seems to be only matter. There have been theoretical speculations about the disappearance of antimatter, but no experimental support." [1]
Secondly, it is a total misunderstanding to think that even if there was an equal amount of matter and anti-matter in the universe that therefore nothing exists. That is as illogical as saying that if I have a certain amount of debts and a certain amount of money, therefore I have zero money. Even if on balance it does equal out as nothing, the debts still exist and the money still exists, they're not nothing. Similarily, even if the matter and anti-matter were on balance, equal, the anti-matter still exists and the matter still exists!
Thirdly, his conclusion that the universe does not exist I think is absurd. As Descartes said, I at least exist. Even when I doubt that I exist, who is there to do the doubting? I doubt, therefore I am. There simply must be something that exists.
So in conclusion, this Atheist's attempt at refuting the Kalam Cosmological Argument falls down at numerous points. Therefore, if one cannot refute the Kalam argument, a rational person is still obligated to believe that God exists.
Notes
[1] Antia, M., Ready to takeoff, antimatter experiment takes some flak, Science, 280:1339, 1998.
Held on May 10th, 2009 at Jackson Memorial Baptist Church, Chesapeake VA.
By Ryan Hemelaar
Ray Comfort, founder of the ministry Way of the Master and who was also featured on a 2007 ABC Nightline debate on the existence of God, has one main argument he uses to prove the existence of God. It goes something like this:
"When you see a building, how do you know there was a builder? The building is proof of the builder. When you see a painting, how do you know there was a painter? The painting is proof of a painter. In the same way, if you look at the trees, the birds and the rest of creation, creation proves there was a creator."
Now this argument sounds pretty reasonable. It is based on the Thomistic Cosmological Argument for the existence of God put in analogous form. However, this argument has one major flaw, and so I would like to point it out and suggest a modification to Ray's argument in order to correct it.
The Problem
In Ray Comfort's argument, the reason why a building must have a builder is because the building exists. Similarly, for the painting and then for the creation. So to put Ray's argument in a formal form, it would go something like this:
If you are any bit familiar with Thomas Aquinas' arguments, you'll realise that this is pretty much exactly one of his proofs for God. The only problem with it however is that we as Christians affirm that God exists, therefore according to the first premise, God would also need a creator.
When Ray Comfort has been presented with this objection, he responds that God had no creator, sometimes making reference to the impossibility of infinite regression. While it is true that infinite regression is impossible, by Ray's own words, he has denied his own first premise. For it's no longer, "Everything that exists had a creator" as God does not conform to it and thus Ray can no longer point to something and say that it obviously must have had a creator.
The Solution
There is a solution to this problem. Just like the Thomistic Cosmological Argument for the existence of God as been largely abandoned in favour of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, I hope it can be the same with Ray Comfort's argument. Put formally the Kalam Cosmological Argument reads as follows:
This argument does not succumb to the same problem as Aquinas and Ray Comfort's argument. As God's eternal existence does not refute the first premise, since God had no beginning and thus requires no cause. So no longer can an unbeliever defeat the argument on that basis, although you might want to explain to them if they ask why God couldn't have had a beginning (please see this article for some reasons why).
However, some may say this argument is too advanced for a few people, so it would be useful for me to explain how you could use this argument with the same simplicity as Ray's. Try this:
"Just say you came to this very spot a number of years ago when this building right here was not yet built. Then you come back to this very spot today and notice that the building exists. How do we know there was a builder for it? Well because it exists today and didn't exist a number of years ago. In the same way, since science says that the universe had a beginning, if we look at the trees, the birds, and the rest of the universe/creation, the fact the universe/creation exists today and didn't at one stage in the past, proves that there must have been a creator to it."
There are obviously many different ways you can use this argument with different examples (maybe you can suggest some in the comments below?). I just hope that this will prevent the objection coming up in the unbeliever's mind that a logical fallacy has been committed in saying that God does not conform to the very argument that you're presenting (if you're using Ray Comfort's argument).
Question:
Richard Dawkins, in his book "The God Delusion," references Douglas Gasking's 'Proof' that God does not exist. It goes like this:
How would you respond, Dr. Craig?
Dr. William Lane Craig responds:
I have to confess that I had never come across this argument until I read it in The God Delusion. The reason for its obscurity isn't hard to divine: it's so wrong-headed that even detractors of the ontological argument who understand that argument would agree that this objection is no good. To see why, let's review the ontological argument.
The version below comes from Alvin Plantinga, one of America's premier philosophers. It's formulated in terms of possible worlds semantics. For those who are unfamiliar with the terminology of possible worlds, let me explain that by "a possible world" one doesn't mean a planet or even a universe, but rather a complete description of reality, or a way reality might be. To say that God exists in some possible world is just to say that there is a possible description of reality which includes the statement "God exists" as part of that description.
Now in his version of the argument, Plantinga conceives of God as a being which is "maximally excellent" in every possible world. Plantinga takes maximal excellence to include such properties as omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection. A being which has maximal excellence in every possible world would have what Plantinga calls "maximal greatness." So Plantinga argues:
Premises (2)-(5) of this argument are relatively uncontroversial. Most philosophers would agree that if God's existence is even possible, then He must exist. The principal issue to be settled with respect to Plantinga's ontological argument is what warrant exists for thinking the key premiss "It's possible that a maximally great being exists" to be true.
The idea of a maximally great being is intuitively a coherent idea, and so it seems plausible that such a being could exist. In order for the ontological argument to fail, the concept of a maximally great being must be incoherent, like the concept of a married bachelor. But the concept of a maximally great being doesn't seem even remotely incoherent. This provides some prima facie warrant for thinking that it is possible that a maximally great being exists.
In his book Dawkins devotes six full pages, brimming with ridicule and invective, to the ontological argument, without raising any serious objection to this argument. (He notes in passing Immanuel Kant's objection that existence is not a perfection; but since Plantinga's argument doesn't presuppose that it is, we can leave that irrelevance aside.) He then cites the parody of the argument you mention above, which is designed to show that God does not exist because a God "who created everything while not existing" is greater than one who exists and created everything.
Ironically, this parody, far from undermining the ontological argument, actually reinforces it! For a being who creates everything while not existing is a logical incoherence and is therefore impossible: there is no possible world which includes a non-existent being which creates the world. If the atheist is to maintain—as he must—that God's existence is impossible, the concept of God would have to be similarly incoherent. But to all appearances it's not. That supports the plausibility of premiss (1) of Plantinga's argument.
I think you can see that Dawkins doesn't even understand the logic of the ontological argument, which moves from the logical possibility of God's existence to its actuality. A parody of the argument that moves from a logical impossibility to actuality is not parallel to the argument.
Dawkins chortles, "I've forgotten the details, but I once piqued a gathering of theologians and philosophers by adapting the ontological argument to prove that pigs can fly. They felt the need to resort to Modal Logic to prove that I was wrong" (God Delusion, p. 84). This is just embarrassing. The ontological argument is an exercise in modal logic—the logic of the possible and the necessary. I can just imagine Dawkins making a nuisance of himself at this professional conference with his spurious parody, just as he similarly embarrassed himself at the Templeton Foundation conference in Cambridge where he describes his confronting sophisticated philosophers and theologians with his flyweight objection to the teleological argument!
If you're interested in further responses to Dawkins' critique of theistic arguments, have a look at Chad Meister and my new book God Is Great, God Is Good, forthcoming this year with Inter-Varsity Press.
Source: ReasonableFaith.org
Below is an interactive flash presentation from the Apologetics Study Bible on the Cosmological argument for God's Existence. To go onto the next slide, click the arrow on the bottom right hand side of the screen.
Click the play button to begin the presentation.
Below is an interactive flash presentation from the Apologetics Study Bible on the Moral argument for God's Existence. To go onto the next slide, click the arrow on the bottom right hand side of the screen.
It may take a few moments for the presentation to load (743KB file).
The moral argument not only proves God's existence, but it also proves that God is good.
By Dr. William Lane Craig
On pages 157-8 (pages 188-9 of the 2008 edition) of his book, Dawkins summarizes what he calls "the central argument of my book." It goes as follows:
- One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.
- The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.
- The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer.
- The most ingenious and powerful explanation is Darwinian evolution by natural selection.
- We don't have an equivalent explanation for physics.
- We should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.
- Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist.
This argument is jarring because the atheistic conclusion that "Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist" seems to come suddenly out of left field. You don't need to be a philosopher to realize that that conclusion doesn't follow from the six previous statements.
Indeed, if we take these six statements as premises of an argument implying the conclusion "Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist," then the argument is patently invalid. No logical rules of inference would permit you to draw this conclusion from the six premises.
A more charitable interpretation would be to take these six statements, not as premises, but as summary statements of six steps in Dawkins' cumulative argument for his conclusion that God does not exist. But even on this charitable construal, the conclusion "Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist" does not follow from these six steps, even if we concede that each of them is true and justified.
What does follow from the six steps of Dawkins' argument? At most, all that follows is that we should not infer God's existence on the basis of the appearance of design in the universe. But that conclusion is quite compatible with God's existence and even with our justifiably believing in God's existence. Maybe we should believe in God on the basis of the cosmological argument or the ontological argument or the moral argument. Maybe our belief in God isn't based on arguments at all but is grounded in religious experience or in divine revelation. Maybe God wants us to believe in Him simply by faith. The point is that rejecting design arguments for God's existence does nothing to prove that God does not exist or even that belief in God is unjustified. Indeed, many Christian theologians have rejected arguments for the existence of God without thereby committing themselves to atheism.
So Dawkins' argument for atheism is a failure even if we concede, for the sake of argument, all its steps. But, in fact, several of these steps are plausibly false. Take just step (3), for example. Dawkins' claim here is that one is not justified in inferring design as the best explanation of the complex order of the universe because then a new problem arises: who designed the designer?
This rejoinder is flawed on at least two counts. First, in order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't have an explanation of the explanation. This is an elementary point concerning inference to the best explanation as practiced in the philosophy of science. If archaeologists digging in the earth were to discover things looking like arrowheads and hatchet heads and pottery shards, they would be justified in inferring that these artifacts are not the chance result of sedimentation and metamorphosis, but products of some unknown group of people, even though they had no explanation of who these people were or where they came from. Similarly, if astronauts were to come upon a pile of machinery on the back side of the moon, they would be justified in inferring that it was the product of intelligent, extra-terrestrial agents, even if they had no idea whatsoever who these extra-terrestrial agents were or how they got there. In order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't be able to explain the explanation. In fact, so requiring would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed. So in the case at hand, in order to recognize that intelligent design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe, one needn't be able to explain the designer.
Secondly, Dawkins thinks that in the case of a divine designer of the universe, the designer is just as complex as the thing to be explained, so that no explanatory advance is made. This objection raises all sorts of questions about the role played by simplicity in assessing competing explanations; for example, how simplicity is to be weighted in comparison with other criteria like explanatory power, explanatory scope, and so forth. But leave those questions aside. Dawkins' fundamental mistake lies in his assumption that a divine designer is an entity comparable in complexity to the universe. As an unembodied mind, God is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable quantities and constants, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas—it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—, but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity. Dawkins has evidently confused a mind's ideas, which may, indeed, be complex, with a mind itself, which is an incredibly simple entity. Therefore, postulating a divine mind behind the universe most definitely does represent an advance in simplicity, for whatever that is worth.
Other steps in Dawkins' argument are also problematic; but I think enough has been said to show that his argument does nothing to undermine a design inference based on the universe's complexity, not to speak of its serving as a justification of atheism.
Source: ReasonableFaith.org
By Ryan Hemelaar
Where would an archive of the 'Proofs for God' be without the good old ontological argument? St Anselm developed the argument in 1074 and it can be summarised as follows:
Soon after developing his argument, Gaunilo objected to it because he said if someone thinks of the greatest conceivable island, that too must exist. However, Gaunilo's example of the greatest conceivable island is not equivalent, as Alvin Platinga points out:
No matter how great an island is, no matter how many Nubian maidens and dancing girls adorn it, there could always be a greater — one with twice as many, for instance. The qualities that make for greatness in islands — number of palm trees, amount and quality of coconuts, for example — most of these qualities have no intrinsic maximum. That is, there is no degree of productivity or number of palm trees (or of dancing girls) such that it is impossible that an island display more of that quality. So the idea of the greatest possible island is an inconsistent or incoherent idea; it's not possible that there be such a thing.[1]
Over the centuries there has been many objections to Anselm's argument, yet no conclusive defeater has been found. That is why Anselm's argument lives on even to this very day.
But there have been other ontological arguments developed throughout the centuries, one of which bases itself on modal logic, such as below:
1. It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
3. To have necessary existence is greater than to have contingent existence.
4. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
4a. If a maximally great being exists only in some possible worlds and not all possible worlds, then the maximally great being's existence is contingent.
4b. A maximally great being however cannot be both necessary and contingent in their existence (law of non-contradiction).
5. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
A possible world does not refer to a planet or even a universe, but rather to a way reality might be.
It might surprise you to learn that premises 2-6 of this argument are relatively uncontroversial[2]. Most philosophers would agree that if God's existence is even possible, then he must exist. So the whole question is: Is God's existence possible? The atheist has to maintain that it's impossible that God exists. He has to say that the concept of God is incoherent, like the concept of a married bachelor or a round square. But the problem is that the concept of God just doesn't appear to be incoherent in that way. The idea of a being which is all-powerful, allknowing, and all-good in every possible world seems perfectly coherent. And so long as God's existence is even possible, it follows that God must exist.
[1] Platinga, A. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974) God, Freedom and Evil, p. 90 – 91.
[2] Craig, W. (Illinois: Crossway, 2008) Reasonable Faith, p. 185.
