The Atheist Reformation: Arguments 11 & 12

Today we have the Arguments from Truth and the Origin of the Idea of God, both of which stem from how we view knowledge and the self, and how we analyze how ideas form from a philosophical standpoint. While these arguments may not be valid for proving that a deity exists, they do raise some important questions on these topics outside of spirituality.

THE ARGUMENT FROM TRUTH

"This argument is closely related to the argument from consciousness. It comes mainly from Augustine.

1. Our limited minds can discover eternal truths about being.

2. Truth properly resides in a mind.

3. But the human mind is not eternal.

4. Therefore there must exist an eternal mind in which these truths reside.

This proof might appeal to someone who shares a Platonic view of knowledge - who, for example, believes that there are Eternal Intelligible Forms which are present to the mind in every act of knowledge. Given that view, it is a very short step to see these Eternal Forms as properly existing within an Eternal Mind. And there is a good deal to be said for this. But that is just the problem. There is too much about the theory of knowledge that needs to be said before this could work as a persuasive demonstration."

REBUTTAL

The biggest issues with this is a lack of defined terms. What is "truth" as defined in this sense? As far as the Platonic view of knowledge, this is something taught in philosophy classes as a primer for classical philosophy, which has since changed quite a lot since then. Either way, this is a light appeal to authority, as far as the Plato references, considering he was a great author, but his philosophies, as with the other great classical philosophers, were limited within the scope of their existence and the available technologies and methods of study. However, that is not to detract from their contribution to philosophy as a whole, but at some point, an objective look must be taken to their work to come to a conclusion as to what works, what is no longer viable, and what may warrant further investigation.

THE ARGUMENT FROM THE ORIGIN OF THE IDEA OF GOD

"This argument, made famous by Rene Descartes, has a kinship to the ontological argument (13). It starts from the idea of God. But it does not claim that real being is part of the content of that idea, as the ontological argument does. Rather it seeks to show that only God himself could have caused this idea to arise in our minds.

It would be impossible for us to reproduce the whole context Descartes gives for this proof (see his third Meditation), and fruitless to follow his scholastic vocabulary. We give below the briefest summary and discussion.

1. We have ideas of many things.

2. These ideas must arise either from ourselves or from things outside us.

3. One of the ideas we have is the idea of God - an infinite, all-perfect being.

4. This idea could not have been caused by ourselves, because we know ourselves to be limited and imperfect, and no effect can be greater than its cause.

5. Therefore, the idea must have been caused by something outside us which has nothing less than the qualities contained in the idea of God.

6. But only God himself has those qualities.

7. Therefore God himself must be the cause of the idea we have of him.

8. Therefore God exists.

Consider the following common objection. The idea of God can easily arise like this: we notice degrees of perfection among finite beings - some are more perfect (or less imperfect) than others. And to reach the idea of God, we just project the scale upward and outward to infinity. Thus there seems to be no need for an actually existing God to account for the existence of the idea. All we need is the experience of things varying in degrees of perfection, and a mind capable of thinking away perceived limitations.

But is that really enough? How can we think away limitation or imperfection unless we first recognize it as such? And how can we recognize it as such unless we already have some notion of infinite perfection? To recognize things as imperfect or finite involves the possession of a standard in thought that makes the recognition possible.

Does that seem farfetched? It does not mean that toddlers spend their time thinking about God. But it does mean that, however late in life you use the standard, however long before it comes explicitly into consciousness, still, the standard must be there in order for you to use it. But where did it come from? Not from your experience of yourself or of the world that exists outside you. For the idea of infinite perfection is already presupposed in our thinking about all these things and judging them imperfect. Therefor none of them can be the origin of the idea of God; only God himself can be that."

REBUTTAL

Everything humans do, we do in gradations. For instance, if we try to lift a series of objects, each increasing in size from the last, eventually we reach the current limit of our strength. At which point, we see that we have a physical limitation. It is not unreasonable to imagine being able to be stronger than that limitation, of exceeding it or breaking it. It is then not unreasonable to imagine being able to be far stronger than even that, ad infinitum. Our only concept of infinite is that something that is infinite is never-ending and never-beginning. It is something that just is. We've never seen or experienced anything anywhere close to that, but through exploration of the universe we live in we have discovered some hard limitations within it, such as the speed of light. So yes, there is an empirical method by which we discover limitations, and then possess the ability to imagine ourselves to be able to go beyond that. Decades of Star Wars and Star Trek and other science fiction intellectual properties are consistent reminders of this. The same goes for fantasy writings as well, such as the Tolkien literary universe. All of these things are imaginings beyond our current limitations within our own existence, and religion and religious texts are no different than these. They just happen to be older and widely accepted as factual despite evidence to the contrary.

Also, there is no such thing as "infinite perfection," when it comes to any deity, including the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is not infinite, as there is no reference of him as an idea before the writing of the Old Testament, despite there being a great many religious texts written long before. So why would there be no mention of his existence in any predating documents, despite the Genesis account stating that there is no other God but the one they mention? To address "perfection," the God of the Bible is anything but. He is consistently wreaking vengeance upon humanity, losing his patience with them, even telling them through Moses's chisel (supposedly) that he is a jealous god. None of these indicate perfection of any sort whatsoever. Perfect means without flaw, yet the character of God as depicted in the Bible is anything but. So at the very least, if this syllogism were to be considered viable, the deity mentioned within it could not be the God of the Bible, as he would be disqualified by his very nature alone.

Well, I hope everyone enjoys this latest installment of rebuttals! I'm signing off for the night, but will try to have the last 8 arguments up before Saturday to round out this series. I've got several ideas for what to go with next, so I may create a Facebook poll to see what everyone would be interested in seeing next! Stay cool and be excellent to each other!