Terrible Atheist Argument #1

[MindForgedManacle]

I can't speak for Plantinga's personal religious beliefs, but as far as the argument, your claim that the initial premise is unacceptable doesn't seem true.

To you it might be unacceptable (given your epistemology), but you're making a stronger claim, namely, "Nobody is justified in believing P1 is true." Can you defend such a claim successfully?

When I say that the initial premise is unacceptable, I mean it hasn't been established as being the case that it is anything more than epistemic possibility, which Plantinga himself noted at the end of his paper on this argument. That's why it doesn't establish its conclusion as true, because it's epistemically acceptable to deny the first premise, and as Plantinga says "...this is what the canny atheist will indeed do..." Acknowledging that P1 hasn't been established as a metaphysical possibility would seem justifiable, and certainly from the basis of that argument alone. And given other arguments against the coherency of God's attributes (omnipotence especially), it would seem a better inference not to accept the first premise, at least not yet.

But if you're not looking to climb this mountain, you must be willing to concede that it's possible that some people might justifiably believe (P1) is true, and to them, this argument is good.

But I don't. I don't think the attributes are coherent, which is why I reject that premise.

" In a vacuum, both the positive (Metaphysical Naturalism is coherent) AND the negative assertion (Metaphysical Naturalism is incoherent) alone are only an epistemic possibility. Without a deductive argument or some means to abduce either either way, the initial premise (A claim that metaphysical naturalism is coherent) is unacceptable."

By your own principle, you're not allowed to be a metaphysical naturalist until you can overcome your burden. Should we thus declare that metaphysical naturalism is unacceptable? Surely you think we need to be more charitable.

Until such a time as metaphysical naturalism has been shown to be incoherent (or likely to be), the proposition that it could be true is defensible. But yes, you're right. Those are ONLY epistemic possibilities. That was the whole point of the argument.

Now you say you do have problems with omnipotence and omniscience, and that's something I think is intellectually respectable as a way to denying the argument, as opposed to

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"Plantinga is an idiot."

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Kudos.

Lol.

On your MOA:

I get that possibly true means it's true in one possible world. Absolutely right. But with a MEB or a MGB, the jump can be made to all possible worlds.

Which isn't something my argument tries to do or even needs, as I'll show in a moment.

After all, if a MGB exists only in some possible worlds but not others, doesn't that make the MGB's existence contingent on something?

An MGB cannot be contingent, it would be necessary, and thus if the MGB exists in one possible world, it must in all possible worlds.

At least that's how I understand the jump. I could be wrong here.

Now one area in which I was puzzled and I had to step back and think was over the idea that metaphysical naturalism and whether it is impossible if God exists.

You are perfectly right in saying if MN is true in one possible world, it disproves God's existence. But what if there's a way out?

The MGB definition does not declare that God is natural or supernatural. If a MGB can be natural (big IF), then metaphysical naturalism can be true simultaneously with an MGB.

I think suffice to say, if MN is true in some possible world, a supernatural being is impossible, and a supernatural being exists in some possible world, then MN is impossible.

I think where this takes us is simply having to be very careful in what we presuppose, which is the antithesis of my "Philosophy by the seat of your pants" philosophy.

What about your revised MOA?

I think a theist could question P2. But if you are justified in accepting P2, then your argument is good. In the end what matters is the justification for P2.

PS- this is one of the most gratifying discussions I've had on this forum. Thanks for being one of the most interesting posters here.

I don't think it's metaphysically controversial to say that if metaphysical naturalism is true, God does not exist. It would be a very strange form of Christianity or Islam that says God is not supernatural; they often say he exists 'beyond the natural world', after all. So unless the Abrahamic in question decides to just screw with their own metaphysical views in a way I cannot really understand, they have to accept premise one.

But the fact that (until demonstrated to be incoherent or at least plausibly so) metaphysical naturalism is possible, that means there's a possible world God does not exist in. This makes it impossible for the MGB to be there, since it's more or less always tacitly assumed to be supernatural. But if there's a world in which the MGB cannot exist, by it's own definition the MGB cannot exist at all since it must exist in all of them to exist. It's not that it makes the MGB contingent per se, it's just that the MGB's own attributes entail it can only be necessarily existent if it does in fact exist.

But the problem for theists using this argument is that it stalemates the one for naturalism (among others). The only sure-fire way out is to deny this is to appeal to a hidden contradiction that they're unaware of and say the metaphysical naturalism isn't possible. But then they're doing the same as an atheist who denies the first premise of Plantinga's argument by appealing to hidden contradictions they're unaware of (although I do so for demonstrable potential contradictions).

I suppose so (with regards to P2). The only example I can think of contrary to P2 is Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, but I think that's been refuted (to my satisfaction anyway) by users like Genkaus and this YouTube video (which indirectly refutes it) made by the YT user 'KnownNoMore':

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"Response to OnceForgivenNowFree: Is My Brain Designed"

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No problem. Every once in a while I manage to be something like useful here.