Many theists argue that God is the most reasonable explanation for the universe because it doesn't make sense otherwise. If there is no God, then how can something physical like the universe come to be? According to them, there has to be some unphysical "power", unbounded by the laws of nature, that led to the existence of the physical. And they are convinced no other explanation is good enough to match the apparent plausibility of their own position.
Why they think in such a way is, I think, similar to why I used to be "convinced" of God's existence back when I was a Christian (and then later on, a deist). It's not that I was able to logically rule out all other alternative explanations. Rather, my case for God was generally bolstered by my "infallible" human intuition that couldn't imagine a mindful all-powerful creator being not existing. As far as I was concerned, God had to exist because it made too much sense to me. While I appealed to intuition even when unwarranted, I made no effort to logically rule out all opposing alternatives. For me, God was the default explanation for everything, and there was no way I was going to acknowledge that other explanations made sense.
That was me back as a believer. Now, as an atheist, I realize the folly of my complete reliance on human intuition, that thingy which has been scientifically shown to be unreliable at times (and dangerously so). It's rather absurd to want to make sense out of something VERY grand like the universe (and beyond) by resorting to intuition. I'm a fucking limited human being, after all. It would be a massive shocker if any limited human being had the perfect intuition regarding existence and such. But we have quantum mechanics and relativity, both strongly backed by science, and both defying common human intuition. So how can we trust our intuition? It takes a rewiring of our brain, through proper education and such, to intuit that the same particles can appear simultaneously in multiple places, and that the speed of time is relative to the observer rather than fixed. But without education and such, we are naturally inclined to disbelieve such ideas [partly] because it hurts our brains thinking about them and [partly] because we want to cling to ideas that provide some sense of order just believing in them. We are mostly uncomfortable with lack of order. We need things to make sense all out for us to be satisfied.
The irony is that theists tend to be ok with characteristics of God himself being unintuitive (or counterintuitive). They may see the existence of God as intuitive, but will concede that his characteristics may be counterintuitive (for example, him being timeless and spaceless and all that). They have no problem with this, because God being God is expected to be counterintuitive in several ways. On the other hand (they argue), the universe is not God, so it has no reason to have the counterintuitive characteristics that God is allowed to have. And yet, I would argue that the universe is so grand that we should expect it to be beyond the grasp of our limited human intuition and thereby expect it to be counterintuitive in many ways. It would be arrogantly presumptuous to demand the universe (and beyond) adhere to our comfort-inducing "sense of order". The universe owes us nothing, so the expectation that it should be the way theists intuit it is baseless and without reason.
And yet, what many theists don't realize is that the God they worship may even defy logic and thereby be completely unreasonable to believe in. The theist will take issue with a God that can create square circles, and a God that can cease to exist, because (they argue) that this defies logic. Yet, if this is what they believe, and they also believe that logical arguments lend support and credibility to the existence of God, then we should expect those theists to be consistent with their reliance on logic. They can't just pick and choose when to use logic and when to dismiss it in favor of God.
So if logic is the route that theists want to take when it comes to God and existence, then they really should pay attention to whether or not God's existence and nature is illogical in some way. Because if there is something about God that defies logic, and they realize this, then intellectual honesty demands that they discard their belief in their God in favor of logic.
Of course, we all know that most theists really believe in God for reasons that have nothing to do with logic. Logical arguments are really post hoc rationalizations of their beliefs, and so are not the cause of their beliefs. They may believe in God because it's their intuition that God exists, or because they need God to exist (even if those who do won't admit to this), or because it's the socially appropriate thing to do (in this case, the belief is fake), or because of some remarkable experience they may have had which they have a hard time explaining without some powerful being like God (even though there was no evidence whatsoever that this was God and not something else, and even when it sounds absurd that God would play mind games with his creatures). Multiple reasons to believe in God, but rarely ever to do with logic itself.
Nevertheless, I feel compelled to elaborate on what is it about the classical kind of God that defies logic. Back when I was a believer, I was never given a reason to consider this, because the atheists I conversed with almost always went along with my assumptions or argued agnostically, rarely providing me with logical alternatives and almost NEVER attempting to refute the logical existence of the God I believed in. And because of this, it took me quite a while to become an atheist, even long after I quit the Christian faith and became a deist. Unlike many doctrines and tenets of the Christian faith (with which I was already disillusioned once I passed the "honeymoon phase" of my Christian "marriage"), I was a convicted believer in deism for a number of years. While it was relatively easy for Christianity to quickly come off as absurd to me, deism made too much sense. Now, having put a lot of thought into this, it no longer is intuitive to me as it once was.
Here are some of my arguments against God (generally based on some supposed function of his). Note by "God", I mean the kind of God that mainstream Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe in. Many deists also believe in this kind of God. This God (according to them) has always existed and is the [mindful] Creator of everything else in existence. He is separate from everything else in existence, including time and space and all that. He is (of course) omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. And omnibenevolent. And he certainly has a mind, but no physical body (in fact, the Creator God is considered to be an unembodied mind). So my arguments here are generally not against some pantheist God or some other type of God. My arguments are against the traditional theist God, the Creator God.
The Impossibility of "Nothingness"
The Impossibility of "Something from Nothing"
The Impossibility of Timeless Creation
The Impossibility of Mindful Creation
And there are more arguments against the Creator God, but these should suffice. Note that the last two arguments can be applied to both the A-theory and the B-theory of time.
Now, to be clear, the arguments stated above do NOT logically refute the existence of some God. Only that if there is a God, that God cannot be the Creator God because of the logical impossibilities argued above. This basically debunks a lot of stuff that mainstream Abrahamic religions preach about God, morality, Jesus (in the case of Christianity), and other relevant topics. The arguments also show that traditional deism is not as reasonable as deists make it out to be.
The arguments also demonstrate that something (aside from the Creator God) has always existed. And so we have every reason, rooted in logic, to accept that the Cosmos (which is everything in existence aside from the divine and the supernatural) has always been, in one form or another.
Why they think in such a way is, I think, similar to why I used to be "convinced" of God's existence back when I was a Christian (and then later on, a deist). It's not that I was able to logically rule out all other alternative explanations. Rather, my case for God was generally bolstered by my "infallible" human intuition that couldn't imagine a mindful all-powerful creator being not existing. As far as I was concerned, God had to exist because it made too much sense to me. While I appealed to intuition even when unwarranted, I made no effort to logically rule out all opposing alternatives. For me, God was the default explanation for everything, and there was no way I was going to acknowledge that other explanations made sense.
That was me back as a believer. Now, as an atheist, I realize the folly of my complete reliance on human intuition, that thingy which has been scientifically shown to be unreliable at times (and dangerously so). It's rather absurd to want to make sense out of something VERY grand like the universe (and beyond) by resorting to intuition. I'm a fucking limited human being, after all. It would be a massive shocker if any limited human being had the perfect intuition regarding existence and such. But we have quantum mechanics and relativity, both strongly backed by science, and both defying common human intuition. So how can we trust our intuition? It takes a rewiring of our brain, through proper education and such, to intuit that the same particles can appear simultaneously in multiple places, and that the speed of time is relative to the observer rather than fixed. But without education and such, we are naturally inclined to disbelieve such ideas [partly] because it hurts our brains thinking about them and [partly] because we want to cling to ideas that provide some sense of order just believing in them. We are mostly uncomfortable with lack of order. We need things to make sense all out for us to be satisfied.
The irony is that theists tend to be ok with characteristics of God himself being unintuitive (or counterintuitive). They may see the existence of God as intuitive, but will concede that his characteristics may be counterintuitive (for example, him being timeless and spaceless and all that). They have no problem with this, because God being God is expected to be counterintuitive in several ways. On the other hand (they argue), the universe is not God, so it has no reason to have the counterintuitive characteristics that God is allowed to have. And yet, I would argue that the universe is so grand that we should expect it to be beyond the grasp of our limited human intuition and thereby expect it to be counterintuitive in many ways. It would be arrogantly presumptuous to demand the universe (and beyond) adhere to our comfort-inducing "sense of order". The universe owes us nothing, so the expectation that it should be the way theists intuit it is baseless and without reason.
And yet, what many theists don't realize is that the God they worship may even defy logic and thereby be completely unreasonable to believe in. The theist will take issue with a God that can create square circles, and a God that can cease to exist, because (they argue) that this defies logic. Yet, if this is what they believe, and they also believe that logical arguments lend support and credibility to the existence of God, then we should expect those theists to be consistent with their reliance on logic. They can't just pick and choose when to use logic and when to dismiss it in favor of God.
So if logic is the route that theists want to take when it comes to God and existence, then they really should pay attention to whether or not God's existence and nature is illogical in some way. Because if there is something about God that defies logic, and they realize this, then intellectual honesty demands that they discard their belief in their God in favor of logic.
Of course, we all know that most theists really believe in God for reasons that have nothing to do with logic. Logical arguments are really post hoc rationalizations of their beliefs, and so are not the cause of their beliefs. They may believe in God because it's their intuition that God exists, or because they need God to exist (even if those who do won't admit to this), or because it's the socially appropriate thing to do (in this case, the belief is fake), or because of some remarkable experience they may have had which they have a hard time explaining without some powerful being like God (even though there was no evidence whatsoever that this was God and not something else, and even when it sounds absurd that God would play mind games with his creatures). Multiple reasons to believe in God, but rarely ever to do with logic itself.
Nevertheless, I feel compelled to elaborate on what is it about the classical kind of God that defies logic. Back when I was a believer, I was never given a reason to consider this, because the atheists I conversed with almost always went along with my assumptions or argued agnostically, rarely providing me with logical alternatives and almost NEVER attempting to refute the logical existence of the God I believed in. And because of this, it took me quite a while to become an atheist, even long after I quit the Christian faith and became a deist. Unlike many doctrines and tenets of the Christian faith (with which I was already disillusioned once I passed the "honeymoon phase" of my Christian "marriage"), I was a convicted believer in deism for a number of years. While it was relatively easy for Christianity to quickly come off as absurd to me, deism made too much sense. Now, having put a lot of thought into this, it no longer is intuitive to me as it once was.
Here are some of my arguments against God (generally based on some supposed function of his). Note by "God", I mean the kind of God that mainstream Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe in. Many deists also believe in this kind of God. This God (according to them) has always existed and is the [mindful] Creator of everything else in existence. He is separate from everything else in existence, including time and space and all that. He is (of course) omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. And omnibenevolent. And he certainly has a mind, but no physical body (in fact, the Creator God is considered to be an unembodied mind). So my arguments here are generally not against some pantheist God or some other type of God. My arguments are against the traditional theist God, the Creator God.
The Impossibility of "Nothingness"
Quote:If the Creator God exists, then the Creator God supposedly created everything else in existence. This means that, when nothing other than God existed, there was only God, with "nothing" initially in place of everything else that existed (remember: the Creator God is supposed to be separate from everything else in existence). But for this "nothing" to exist, it has to be something. For to exist is to be. Yet, how can something that is not and yet is (simultaneously) be logical? It is not logical. Therefore, logically speaking, there has always been something alongside the Creator God. Therefore, the Creator God did not create everything else in existence. Therefore, the Creator God does not exist.
The Impossibility of "Something from Nothing"
Quote:If the Creator God exists, then the Creator God supposedly created everything else in existence out of nothing. But to create anything out of nothing (or for anything to pop up out of nothing, for that matter), there has to be a "nothing" out of which the thing being created (or popping out) arises. But even if we grant that "nothing" can exist (though I argued in the previous argument that it cannot), it possesses no material whatsoever from which anything can arise, for it is supposed to be nothing. Therefore, because things exist, they have at least originated in something that has always existed. The Creator God, being separate from everything else in existence, cannot be that material origin. Therefore, the Creator God cannot logically create anything out of nothing. Therefore, the Creator God did not create anything. Therefore, the Creator God does not exist.
The Impossibility of Timeless Creation
Quote:If the Creator God exists, then the Creator God supposedly created time itself. But the act of creating, or doing anything for that matter, already implies a passage of time occurring. To create time is to create time within time. Therefore, time has always been and could not have been created. Therefore, the Creator God did not create time. Therefore, negating the classical definition of the Creator God, the Creator God does not exist (if the Creator God is supposed to create everything else in existence, including time).
The Impossibility of Mindful Creation
Quote:If the Creator God exists, then the Creator God supposedly exercised the divine mind to "think" everything else into existence. To exercise the mind is to imply a passage of time. Otherwise, it would be a spontaneous mindless act. Yet, if we grant the possibility of timeless creation (and I have argued otherwise in the previous argument), then there was no time to exercise the mind before creation. Rather, the creation would be the outcome of something akin to some hypothetical "super computer software" that contains infinite information and acts spontaneously upon them. It is a mindless act, and not a mindful one. Therefore, the Creator God did not mindfully create anything into existence outside of time. Therefore, the mind is not a possible requirement for creating everything in existence aside from itself. Some things, at least, were mindlessly created. Therefore, the Creator God does not exist (as per the definition of the Creator God).
And there are more arguments against the Creator God, but these should suffice. Note that the last two arguments can be applied to both the A-theory and the B-theory of time.
Now, to be clear, the arguments stated above do NOT logically refute the existence of some God. Only that if there is a God, that God cannot be the Creator God because of the logical impossibilities argued above. This basically debunks a lot of stuff that mainstream Abrahamic religions preach about God, morality, Jesus (in the case of Christianity), and other relevant topics. The arguments also show that traditional deism is not as reasonable as deists make it out to be.
The arguments also demonstrate that something (aside from the Creator God) has always existed. And so we have every reason, rooted in logic, to accept that the Cosmos (which is everything in existence aside from the divine and the supernatural) has always been, in one form or another.
