Four arguments against the existence of God

[Neo-Scholastic]

...the unmoved mover has never been demonstrated to exist, and thus lacks any form of justification,...

Summa Theologica, First Part, Question 2, Article 3 demonstrates the necessity of an unmoved mover, as part of the "1st way."

... it in itself could not ever show that belief in any form of god, generic or otherwise, to be rational, because it doesn't speak to any form of god.

The last sentence of Article 3 states, "And this everyone understands to be God." Apparently you do not include yourself as part of that group.

[Simon Moon]

...the unmoved mover has never been demonstrated to exist, and thus lacks any form of justification,...

Summa Theologica, First Part, Question 2, Article 3 demonstrates the necessity of an unmoved mover, as part of the "1st way."

Do you mean:

1. Our senses prove that some things are in motion.
2. Things move when potential motion becomes actual motion.
3. Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion.
4. Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect (i.e., if both actual and potential, it is actual in one respect and potential in another).
5. Therefore nothing can move itself.
6. Therefore each thing in motion is moved by something else.
7. The sequence of motion cannot extend ad infinitum.
8. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

Isn't this just the first cause argument with word 'motion' being substituted for 'cause'?

Seems to me that it has the same flaws as every first cause argument.

Why can't something be in motion on its own?

It also assumes, without justification, that there can only be one unmoved thing. Other than to fit the presupposed definition of his god, what is his justification?

He also seems to be guilty of affirming the consequent. In other words, he is saying that there are 2 sets: one that contains moved things, and one that contains unmoved things.

To be meaningful, a set can't be empty, but more importantly, it has to have more than one object, or it is nothing more than a synonym for whatever is being argued for.

So, unless he allows for more than one unmoved mover to be in the set, he is just smuggling his god in the premises.

[Esquilax]

...the unmoved mover has never been demonstrated to exist, and thus lacks any form of justification,...

Summa Theologica, First Part, Question 2, Article 3 demonstrates the necessity of an unmoved mover, as part of the "1st way."

Sure, I went and read it. It's just the first cause argument, couched in language of "motion" rather than causes. It's also spectacularly flawed for exactly the same reasons that the first cause argument is; it creates arbitrary rules it doesn't bother to demonstrate, promptly posits something that breaks them in order to resolve a problem that it merely asserts to exist, and functions on simple intuition rather than anything based in reality.

It doesn't bother demonstrating that motion is the basis for reality, it doesn't detail how previously existing motion is the only cause of motion in other things, it doesn't establish why an infinite regress of movers is impossible, and the unmoved mover it posits to resolve these problems of its own making breaks the rules of the first premise, making the entire thing a circular mess. It's nothing more than a pack of assertions, little better than a William Lane Craig apologetic, and you find this convincing evidence of the necessity of an unmoved mover?

The last sentence of Article 3 states, "And this everyone understands to be God." Apparently you do not include yourself as part of that group.

To be blunt: so what? I can understand a bowl of noodles to be god, doesn't mean that it's so. Not to mention that the simple assertion that everyone understands that this cause is god is nothing more than passive aggression, and patently wrong: I'm sitting here telling you that the premises of the argument don't come with an understanding that god is the unmoved mover. Are you now telling me that I'm lying?

Be honest: are you just trolling, here? Or have you just never come across a debunking of the first cause argument before? Honestly, I think you're smart enough to see the problems with this argument even without having someone else point them out to you, so this must just be your god-blinders talking, if indeed you're being serious here.

[Mudhammam]

All subjective experience is non-physical.

Of course, that's simply absurd, as the processes which allow for subjective experience are only understood in terms of physical relations between external stimuli that are transmitted and interpreted by the brain. Furthermore, you haven't even attempted to define non-physical, so it's a moot point. To merely declare something as "non-physical" without any working definition or understanding of its internal structure or functionality is pretty much to utter nothing meaningful in any sense. If you mean "abstract," then you're talking about a quality of existence that is inextricable, and moreover, only intelligible, as it stands to and from a physical object. To say God is abstract is only to declare that God is an idea, and I would readily agree.

First, I object to your term ‘only’. Observed physical properties are observed physical properties, nothing more. These properties should not to be confused with the meaning or intentions we ascribe to them. In semiotic terms, the signs are physical; their significance is not.

Their significance doesn't arise from a vacuum. They arise from physical systems (humans). I'm not confusing the two, I'm just attempting to avoid obfuscation as you would have it.

Secondly, the process of abstraction requires there to be some abstractable feature distinct from the material of a sensible body or its uniquely manifest formal quality.

No, it does not. The abstraction is the ability to respond to external stimuli and through memorization separate it as well as change it through the formulation of intelligible definitions, obviously not something one who immediately declares "God" would be too concerned about.

Finally, to say that subjective experience is just the first-person vantage of physical events from inside, you beg the question. The first-person experience is the feature that we are trying to explain; you cannot invoke it as the solution.

And in seeking an explanation for something, it's best not to charge in backwards. More importantly, positing an unexplained phenomenon as your explanation is circular, but worse, your unexplained phenomenon as "non-physical" also declares itself immune from investigation... not exactly the way you'd want to start.

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I feel that my posts on that thread successfully addressed with the issue. You do not. We do not need repeat the discussion here.

Do you mean when you declared, because an eighteenth-century mystic claimed to receive revelation from God, that "Children that die at birth are raised by angels in the spiritual world and prepared to take their place in heaven"? Sorry, not buying it. But at least you were honest in your "successfully addressing" the issue when you stated:

"I cannot answer as to why those of us here on earth were not afforded the same opportunity."

[Michael Schubert]

(1) God is ill-defined; a problem anyone with a casual interest in theology almost immediately observes is the abundance of mutually exclusive claims made about God or gods. Even within very specific religious texts or revelatory claims multiple contradictions abound. Far worse in my view, the character traits of any given deity that are agreed upon--albeit arrived at for reasons that are necessarily arbitrary, wanting, or both--do not and cannot arise from original discovery but always resemble the fanciful projections of (a) interpersonal human relationships and (b) the gradually evolving ideals, insecurities, and fears of our species, abstracted and projected in the extreme. If the concept of God as imagined in most theistic traditions is valid, God cannot be ill-defined or misunderstood as it/he/she is, and as this is indeed the case, it is reasonable to hold such conceptions to be invalid. The reason for the difficulties posed by (1) is a direct result of

If anyone asks me why I don't believe in God, I say "Well, how could I?" God to most religions is an anthropomorphic genie that sits up in the clouds, has magical powers and creates life using magic. Science can't possibly prove something like that exists, yet people still assert that God is a part of material reality. So they accept God's existence on faith. Well....faith is dishonest because it's something you hold independent of evidence and science and faith are antipodal.

[Simon Moon]

Be honest: are you just trolling, here? Or have you just never come across a debunking of the first cause argument before? Honestly, I think you're smart enough to see the problems with this argument even without having someone else point them out to you, so this must just be your god-blinders talking, if indeed you're being serious here.

There are only a few philosophical arguments for the existence of a god available.

They have all been refuted with stronger philosophical arguments.

They will fall out of favor for a couple of decades, then they will be resurrected (so to speak) with new bits added on. Craig's version of the Cosmological argument and Plantinga's Modal Ontological argument are examples.

They get shot down (because you can't polish a turd), then fall out of favor for a while.

[genkaus]

The Problem of Evil, Christians, and Inconsistency

I feel that my posts on that thread successfully addressed with the issue. You do not. We do not need repeat the discussion here.

Your answer in that thread proves that a perfect world is possible while still maintaining human free agency.

My view allows for the possibility that the physical universe could indeed be eternal. However, anyone can see that the physical universe sits within a larger reality that also includes non-physical features like subjective experience and meaning.

You're either claiming that all subjective experience is non-physical, which is of course, plainly silly and buys you nothing,…

All subjective experience is non-physical.

Don't equivocate functional with non-physical. Functional attributes, like experience, are already a part of the physical universe - not apart form it. So, your argument that there is a larger reality has no basis.

[Mister Agenda]

....because "unmoved mover" doesn't get you to "god." It doesn't even get you to "being," ...

Fascinating how easy it is to dismiss something you do not understand.

Sigh. That which can be asserted without evidence....

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I guess turnabout is fair play. But it is a fact that many opponents of the "unmoved mover" think that it is only about efficient cause, as opposed to that One universal principle that does not change despite the changes within and among the plurality of things. This, as opposed to the case of Esquilax that its utility depends on finding some thing among other things, like the Great Pumpkin. Instead what it does do which is confirm the One. From that starting point, one can proceed.

In other words, take all that as axiomatic? It doesn't seem very parsimonious now, does it?


On the matter of all motion requiring other motion to initiate it, leading to an infinite regression sans an initial 'unmoved mover', I point you to photons. By their nature, photons are incapable of not moving if they are free to do so, and they must move at the speed of light. Virtual photons come into existence constantly (without requiring a cause) and are important in the physics of many processes.

[RobbyPants]

Do you have any proof that a perfect world is possible while still maintaining human free agency? Without that, the objection from evil drops away.

You're the one asserting the best of all possible worlds as a counter to the PoE, thus, you're asserting that the BoaPW is true. You need to prove this is actually the case. It's entirely possible that God exists and he has chosen to not make the optimal decisions. You have asserted that he has. Please prove this assertion.

My view allows for the possibility that the physical universe could indeed be eternal. However, anyone can see that the physical universe sits within a larger reality that also includes non-physical features like subjective experience and meaning.

That is true that perhaps our observable universe is just the tip of the iceberg or some larger, unobservable, eternal universe. Note that this both solves the cosmological argument and does not invoke a god in doing so. Thus, the cosmological argument cannot be used to assert God; God is merely a single, convenient answer to it.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Summa Theologica, First Part, Question 2, Article 3 demonstrates the necessity of an unmoved mover, as part of the "1st way."

Do you mean: 1. Our senses prove that some things are in motion. 2. Things move when potential motion becomes actual motion. 3. Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion. 4. Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect (i.e., if both actual and potential, it is actual in one respect and potential in another). 5. Therefore nothing can move itself. 6. Therefore each thing in motion is moved by something else. 7. The sequence of motion cannot extend ad infinitum. 8. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
Isn't this just the first cause argument with word 'motion' being substituted for 'cause'? Seems to me that it has the same flaws as every first cause argument. Why can't something be in motion on its own?

Firstly, this is not a stand-alone argument. The philosophy of how sensible objects preserve their existence while at the same time having the capacity for change traces back to Parmenides and up through the Scholastics. It is a modern mistake to assume that somehow a previous philosophy is refuted and replaced with the next. The fact is that each philosopher in the ancient tradition. Aristotle does not really undermine Platonism; but rather modifies and completes it, just as Aquinas builds on the foundation set by Aristotle.
The substitution of ‘[efficient] cause’ for ‘motion’ is another modern mistake. ‘Motion’ refers specifically to change. The modern conception does not include the formal, material, and final causes which are necessary for an intelligible theory of change.

It also assumes, without justification, that there can only be one unmoved thing. Other than to fit the presupposed definition of his god, what is his justification?

Parmenides’ argument about being changing can only apply to reality in its fullness, which is the All or One. There cannot be another All because then there would be two alls which is a contradiction. Is this the Christian god? Yes. In the Revelation to John it says that God is All in all.

He also seems to be guilty of affirming the consequent. In other words, he is saying that there are 2 sets: one that contains moved things, and one that contains unmoved things…To be meaningful, a set can't be empty, but more importantly, it has to have more than one object, or it is nothing more than a synonym for whatever is being argued for.

Again referring back to the tradition of which the argument is a part, the original question concerns how something can persist in its being while still being capable of change. For example, an oak goes from acorn to sapling to full grown tree, yet remains the same tree throughout all the changes. Thus there must be some aspects of the tree that change, because we do indeed observe the changes, and there must be something that does not change, otherwise you could not call it the same tree from moment to moment.

…the processes which allow for subjective experience are only understood in terms of physical relations between external stimuli that are transmitted and interpreted by the brain. Furthermore, you haven't even attempted to define non-physical…

Guilty as charged. I should have been using the term immaterial.

The abstraction is the ability to respond to external stimuli and through memorization separate it as well as change it through the formulation of intelligible definitions.

You have given a reasonable explanation of how people form thoughts by interacting with sensible bodies. You have not given is an account of to what aspect of the sensible body the thought refers. What I mean is this: at some point raw sensation gets turned into perceptions, presumably via physical processes in the brain. What quality of the external stimuli allows this process to occur? I say there is some immaterial form already there even if it is not alienable from material.