I'm sure there are many for and many against. But my question is: does the existence of God even depend on philosophy? He either exists or he doesn't. We cannot 'determine' his non-existence using philosophy any nore than we can determine the non-existence of, say, a spider in the bathtub. It's either there or it isn't. Its being there might be very, very, very implausible. It might be shockingly so. But if the spider is there, it is there, and there's nothing that we or our philosophy can do to make that not so (except wash it down the plughole). And if God is there, it's the same. Philosophy can't determine his existence - it can't even determine what his attributes are - although what's certain is that unlike the spider he is not usually visible to the naked eye for most people at this point in time - and people who know more about the attributes of Christian God will know what I mean by 'usually', 'most people' and 'this point in time'! We cannot determine that a spider has 10 legs by philosophizing it, even though our analogies and theories should be so internally coherent that it would be impossible to imagine how anyone could rationally think any differently. When you have the 8-legged spider in front of you, it's game over.
Phenomena are what they are, and we can describe them using philosophy, but we can't philosophize them in or out of existence, or invent attributes for them. Our conception of a spider having 10 legs is probably nearer relaity than any conception a person might have about the attributes of a God that doesn't exist. Because if a God with *those* attributes doesn't exist, well, then a God with other attributes might do. If Epicurus' classical idea of God from the famous paradox is impossible, then what about that of, say, Western Christianity? Epicurus' God doesn't have a history of interacting intimately with human beings as the Christian one does, and didn't take on flesh and suffer and die and resurrect to expiate the evil of the world. These differences aren't exhaustive but my point is that the tallies are different between the two kinds of gods - so the Christian God wouldn't necessarily fail Epicurus' test. Any theory you make, even if it's internally airtight, is only as accurate as its parameters. Do even Christians know all the parameters of their God, in theory? Why, absolutely not! But we know at least that a lot of arguments out there set up gods that are not ours - and so it is no surprise about the conclusion that they don't exist.
If you want a really, really airtight theory of the nonexistence of God, decide which God you want to disprove, and study the holy book associated with him diligently, and speak to members of the communities who believe in him to find out how they experience their God in their own lives, and how they interpret their holy book. Then when you have gathered as much information as you can about who he is and what he does, you can start trying to disprove 'the God of denomination x of religion x'.
This is a good answer until the end. You cannot, ever, try to disprove the existence of something. That's not how it works. This isn't exclusive to whatever god somebody wants to believe in, this is a universal fact of life. Anything, anywhere, ever, can only be proven to exist. Nonexistence cannot be proven.
Take, for example, the spider in the bathtub. If it's there, you can prove it's there by looking at it. But if it's not, how can you prove that? You could be overlooking it, it could be blending in with a mildew stain, it could be moving around as you're looking in different spots.
Of course, gods are a bit different, as there is no proof of their existence. It is simply a personal belief.
Thank you. It's infuriating trying to explain to an atheist, who clings to science as their soul point, how empirical science works. The idea that nothing can exist until it's proven to exist means, simply, nothing can exist. Empirical science proves the validity of a hypothesis through perceived evidence.
Thanks for the heads up. But I actually do think the Christian God is rather falsifiable as gods go. Forgive me for standing on my soapbox. This has to do with he very 'involved' nature of this God with human beings, and the way it's documented across more than thousand years in history through multiple different civilizations, with the places, times, year and witnesses present and authors often mentioned in those parts of the Bible that are expressly written as historical accounts. Coming from the Greco-Roman world in the case of the New Testament, parts of the Bible are not really that old relatively speaking, and there is a fair amount of other literature from the period with which to corroborate it. In this respect it's empirical enough to be subject to historical scrutiny, in a way that is perhaps harder with the Qur'an, or the Bhagavad Gita, which don't document their narratives in the same way.
The documentation spreads outside the 'sacred' Christian writing to people of other religions who witnessed or heard of it. I think someone could actually go so far as to try to intellectually prove or disprove the Christian God if they managed to disprove or defend the documentation surrounding his actions among human beings. To a certain extent anyway - I knew a Christian historian very well. When the evidence for both sides is out on the table, at the end of the day it boils down to what you decide is most plausible. What you decide to trust always ultimately comes down to a personal commitment - but I'd like to make the point that it doesn't need to be completely blind.
Best philosophical arguments against god
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I'm sure there are many for and many against. But my question is: does the existence of God even depend on philosophy? He either exists or he doesn't. We cannot 'determine' his non-existence using philosophy any nore than we can determine the non-existence of, say, a spider in the bathtub. It's either there or it isn't. Its being there might be very, very, very implausible. It might be shockingly so. But if the spider is there, it is there, and there's nothing that we or our philosophy can do to make that not so (except wash it down the plughole). And if God is there, it's the same. Philosophy can't determine his existence - it can't even determine what his attributes are - although what's certain is that unlike the spider he is not usually visible to the naked eye for most people at this point in time - and people who know more about the attributes of Christian God will know what I mean by 'usually', 'most people' and 'this point in time'! We cannot determine that a spider has 10 legs by philosophizing it, even though our analogies and theories should be so internally coherent that it would be impossible to imagine how anyone could rationally think any differently. When you have the 8-legged spider in front of you, it's game over.
Phenomena are what they are, and we can describe them using philosophy, but we can't philosophize them in or out of existence, or invent attributes for them. Our conception of a spider having 10 legs is probably nearer relaity than any conception a person might have about the attributes of a God that doesn't exist. Because if a God with *those* attributes doesn't exist, well, then a God with other attributes might do. If Epicurus' classical idea of God from the famous paradox is impossible, then what about that of, say, Western Christianity? Epicurus' God doesn't have a history of interacting intimately with human beings as the Christian one does, and didn't take on flesh and suffer and die and resurrect to expiate the evil of the world. These differences aren't exhaustive but my point is that the tallies are different between the two kinds of gods - so the Christian God wouldn't necessarily fail Epicurus' test. Any theory you make, even if it's internally airtight, is only as accurate as its parameters. Do even Christians know all the parameters of their God, in theory? Why, absolutely not! But we know at least that a lot of arguments out there set up gods that are not ours - and so it is no surprise about the conclusion that they don't exist.
If you want a really, really airtight theory of the nonexistence of God, decide which God you want to disprove, and study the holy book associated with him diligently, and speak to members of the communities who believe in him to find out how they experience their God in their own lives, and how they interpret their holy book. Then when you have gathered as much information as you can about who he is and what he does, you can start trying to disprove 'the God of denomination x of religion x'.
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This is a good answer until the end. You cannot, ever, try to disprove the existence of something. That's not how it works. This isn't exclusive to whatever god somebody wants to believe in, this is a universal fact of life. Anything, anywhere, ever, can only be proven to exist. Nonexistence cannot be proven.
Take, for example, the spider in the bathtub. If it's there, you can prove it's there by looking at it. But if it's not, how can you prove that? You could be overlooking it, it could be blending in with a mildew stain, it could be moving around as you're looking in different spots.
Of course, gods are a bit different, as there is no proof of their existence. It is simply a personal belief.
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Thank you. It's infuriating trying to explain to an atheist, who clings to science as their soul point, how empirical science works. The idea that nothing can exist until it's proven to exist means, simply, nothing can exist. Empirical science proves the validity of a hypothesis through perceived evidence.
Thanks for the heads up. But I actually do think the Christian God is rather falsifiable as gods go. Forgive me for standing on my soapbox. This has to do with he very 'involved' nature of this God with human beings, and the way it's documented across more than thousand years in history through multiple different civilizations, with the places, times, year and witnesses present and authors often mentioned in those parts of the Bible that are expressly written as historical accounts. Coming from the Greco-Roman world in the case of the New Testament, parts of the Bible are not really that old relatively speaking, and there is a fair amount of other literature from the period with which to corroborate it. In this respect it's empirical enough to be subject to historical scrutiny, in a way that is perhaps harder with the Qur'an, or the Bhagavad Gita, which don't document their narratives in the same way.
The documentation spreads outside the 'sacred' Christian writing to people of other religions who witnessed or heard of it. I think someone could actually go so far as to try to intellectually prove or disprove the Christian God if they managed to disprove or defend the documentation surrounding his actions among human beings. To a certain extent anyway - I knew a Christian historian very well. When the evidence for both sides is out on the table, at the end of the day it boils down to what you decide is most plausible. What you decide to trust always ultimately comes down to a personal commitment - but I'd like to make the point that it doesn't need to be completely blind.
awesome answer