Monday 11 August 2014

On Proving the Nonexistence of God

Let us assume that a divine being exists. Furthermore, this divine being, in addition to being immaterial and supernatural, is also omnipotent and omniscient.

Any divine being possessing these characteristics could blind any non-divine being as to the existence of the divine being, and, if they wished, could make it appear that they never existed. Therefore, it is impossible for any non-divine being to prove the nonexistence of a divine being.

"Ah!" but the sceptic says. "If it is impossible for me to disprove a divine being, it is equally impossible for you to prove one."

Not so. The reason that a divine being can't be disproved is that the possibility of the prescence of a divine being brings any natural processes into question. If we start from the assumption that there is no divine being, then there is no supernatural to confuse the natural.

This reason doesn't prove a divine being, any more than it disproves one. All it does is disprove the disprovability of a divine being.

In summary: A divine being could hide itself, so we can't say there isn't one.


^ ^ ^ That's what I thought of while practicing violin today. It doesn't take into account why a divine being would want to hide their existence, but I didn't think it was necessary in order to make my argument clear.

Any critiques? Thoughts? Feel free to play devil's advocate :)

4 comments:

  1. Violin practice...it really gets the mind thinking doesn't it?

    But excellent points well made.

    Have you seen the movie God's Not Dead? One thing I found quite powerful was when a character (a Professor of Philosophy who had been telling his students that God's dead and never existed) burst out saying, "Yes, I hate God." Another character replies with, "How can you hate someone who doesn't exist?"

    If you haven't seen that movie, see it. Ignore everything (including the acting), but focus on the points the student makes and the happenings in the lives of the characters and that is a powerful movie.

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  2. Deep thoughts while playing the Violin... Maybe I should learn to play the Violin :)

    I agreed with what you said though, I liked how it flowed from one thing to the next. I think it's a solid base for a more complicated argument.

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  3. Good to see this again and really be able to study it. :)

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  4. Interesting thoughts.
    I tagged you with the Shelfie tag! http://dreams-dragons.blogspot.com/2014/12/shelfies-to-share.html

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