Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Atheism: No God is Real, No God Actually Exists

In his book A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test, Ken Samples recalls a conversation he had with an atheist who claimed that God did not exist.(1) The conversation went something like this:

Ken: "Is it correct to define atheism as the claim that 'no god or gods are real' or that 'no god or gods actually exist'?"

The atheist eventually agreed.

Ken: "If atheism asserts that 'no god is real' or that 'no god actually exists,' then isn't it making a universal claim about 'all reality' and 'all existence'?"

Ken sums up the purpose of his poignant questions this way:

In other words, as a point of logic, doesn't the atheist, for his claim to be valid, have to know all about reality and existence to rightly exclude any and every god? For example, to claim with any validity that there are no entities of a particular type (gods) in a given circle ore set (reality), doesn't a person need a complete or comprehensive knowledge of that circle or set (reality)? I concluded my remarks by asserting that the atheist position could be valid only if atheists could justify their implicit claim to have a comprehensive knowledge of all reality and/or all existence. This position of seeming omniscience is, of course, beyond the capacity of any human being.

Atheist: "An incoherent god could not exist regardless of humanity's limited knowledge."

Ken: "That may well be true, but then in order to maintain one's atheism, a person must bear the burden of showing that every conceivable concept of God is actually incoherent. This feat seems beyond the atheist's capacity."

Though there are some who dispute this reasoning and particular critique of atheism, Ken breaks down the sound logic of his position as follows:

However, according to the logical rules relating to categorical propositions, to say "no god are real" by necessity makes reference to all members of the predicate class, namely, all that is "real." In other words, the statement "no gods are real" means "no gods are among the class of all real things." In the universal negative proposition (form E: No S are P ["No God or gods are real"]) the predicate term is distributed. An assertion is being made about every member of the class denoted by the predicate term.(2)

For a skeptical response to Ken's argument, see Jeffrey Jay Lowder's paper "Is a Sound Argument for the Nonexistence of a God Even Possible?"

Make sure and check out Ken's book A World of Difference for solid Christian worldview-thinking.
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(1) Kenneth Samples, A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007), 39-40.


(2) Ibid., 281-282.

2 comments:

David B. Ellis said...


In other words, as a point of logic, doesn't the atheist, for his claim to be valid, have to know all about reality and existence to rightly exclude any and every god....I concluded my remarks by asserting that the atheist position could be valid only if atheists could justify their implicit claim to have a comprehensive knowledge of all reality and/or all existence. This position of seeming omniscience is, of course, beyond the capacity of any human being.


There's a pretty obvious problem with this line of reasoning. If we follow it consistently we also must conclude that we cannot rationally say "vampires do not exist" or "fairies do not exist" for, after all, we are not omniscient and have not surveyed all of reality. But, of course, practically no one thinks it unreasonable to say "fairies don't exist" or that it would be more reasonable to say "I'm agnostic on the fairy question".

So how does one propose to resolve this rather substantial inconsistency (if, that is, you agree with Ken's reasoning---which, I note, you did not specifically say)?

Lee said...

I'm happy to agree with this philosophical breakdown of atheism, as long as Ken and his coreligionists are willing to accept the burden of not only proving every other god as non-existant, but also of proving that their god actually does exist.

It's quite a long list, and atheists and christians have quite a few hurdles in common. Perhaps we could work together?