An argument that disproves God possibly existing?

[Angrboda]

I don't feel like wading through this entire thread, so I'm just going to put something out here and if it's useful, so be it.

One of the first essays in The Impossibility of God argues that God cannot be virtuous, under ordinary conceptions of virtue. Yet ordinary conceptions of God require him to be virtuous. Ergo, God qua God cannot exist.

I'd have to get up out of my comfy chair, but I'll give one example in lieu of such measures as that. Take courage. To be courageous is certainly a virtue, particularly in the face of evil. But if we accept that God is omnipotent, he cannot fail in such contests. How much courage does it take to approach a task which you cannot fail to accomplish? None, right? It doesn't take any courage. Courage implies the risk of failure, and since there is no risk for God, he cannot be (classically) courageous. Can a god be God without this and other virtues which require limited capacity and risk? The author says no, and I tend to agree that fully virtuous, fully omnipotent, and fully omniscient are incompatible qualities under this argument. Perhaps having done so without the possibility of failure is your notion of unearned risk. However, under this analysis, it isn't the property of being meritorious which robs God of its fruits, but rather that virtue does not blossom without the possibility of failure or risk. Since God cannot fail, the flowers of virtue simply possess no soil within Him in which to take root. It's not that meritorious conduct is superior to non-meritorious conduct so much as it is meritorious because it requires virtue, and virtue requires risk, and risk is something of which God and other perfect beings cannot avail themselves.

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@apophenia

Your overly large signature has pushed the 'Kudo' button and 'Reply' button off my screen in Chrome and FireFox. No scroll either.

You seem to imply that this was unintentional. (For what it's worth, I use firefox and have no such issue; however if you feel it a likely recurrent problem, I suggest you start a thread to take it up with Tibbs, et al.) As noted elsewhere, this sig is solely for the Halloween season and may see changes at the beginning of November. Did it perchance also push the PM button off your screen as well? I have one hell of a sig if it can do that. Maybe I'll keep her.

ETA: Prior to such events, other standard elements of AFO's presentation start getting chopped as well when the width of the browser is reduced to those minimums (far right profile information, e.g.). I also note that in palemoon (a build of firefox), the problem is readily cured by adjusting the zoom level under View. Assessment? Your equipment sucks and you don't know how to use the standard features of a modern browser to compensate. Alas, I can't confirm this conjecture as I know of no one else with such an awesome signature.