An argument in favor of the existence of God [closed]

Question

1. Something whose existence is impossible cannot be conceived in the mind.
2. Let's make an assumption that there is no God. Since it will be eternal by definition, it did not exist in the past or in the future, and cannot exist. That is, its existence becomes impossible. Since it is impossible, it should not be conceived in the mind.
3. The Presence of God can be conceived in the mind. There is nothing contrary to logic.
4. But according to premisses 1 and 2, God must have been something unimaginable and illogical in his extinction.
5. So the assumption in premise 2 was wrong. So the non-existence of God was a false assumption.
6. Then there is God.

What do you think of this argument?

Answer 1

Your point 2 is a poorly constructed argument that if God does not exist, it is impossible for God to exist.

This borders on the silly. All sorts of things are possible that do not in fact exist. For example, there has never been any beer in my refrigerator. Yet such cold beer is clearly a possibility.

"God is impossible ==> God does not exist" is a valid implication, but its converse, "God does not exist ==> God is impossible" does not logically follow.

St. Anselm and Descartes both advanced similar arguments, concluding that if God exists, then God exists necessarily. From this you could reasonably conclude that if God does not exist, then God cannot possibly exist. However, both their arguments have been heavily criticized and are not universally accepted.

Also, neither of those worthies ever attempted to confuse the issue by claiming that "eternal existence" is a special case of "existence" that needs to be argued separately.

Answer 2

Let us consider the being named Hpf. Like God, Hpf is eternal by definition. Hpf created the universe and will destroy it on Monday, August 9, 2021.

1. Something whose existence is impossible cannot be conceived in the mind.
2. Let's make an assumption that there is no Hpf. Since it will be eternal by definition, it did not exist in the past or in the future, and cannot exist. That is, its existence becomes impossible. Since it is impossible, it should not be conceived in the mind.
3. The Presence of Hpf can be conceived in the mind. There is nothing contrary to logic.
4. But according to premises 1 and 2, Hpf must have been something unimaginable and illogical in his extinction.
5. So the assumption in premise 2 was wrong. So the non-existence of Hpf was a false assumption.
6. Then there is Hpf.

Too bad for the universe! Better cancel your plans for next Tuesday.

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So, now we've moved on from "Is this argument correct?" If it was correct, it would prove the existence of both God and Hpf. The question is now, "We know the argument is flawed, so where is the flaw?"

One flaw is in premise 1, in the concept of "impossible" or "possible." You haven't rigorously described what this concept means. We often use the word "impossible" to describe propositions that we've ruled out by certain methods. But which methods are you referring to in this case?

If something is "impossible" does that mean

• It's something we can't imagine, as in premise 1?

Or does it mean

• It's something that did not exist in the past or future, as in premise 2?

So to sum up, it's an equivocation fallacy over the word "possible" or "impossible."

Answer 3

People in the answers seem to focus on premise 2 but I'm having an even bigger problem with premise 1:

Something whose existence is impossible cannot be conceived in the mind.

We can definitely conceive impossible things in our mind. People have been able to imagine a 4 dimensional cube even though it's "impossible" according to our eyes.

You could say hypercubes are still possible in the real world even though we can't perceive them so take the Ether theory for example: at some point in the past, we though space wasn't empty at all, to the greatest scientist of the time it was completely filled with some weird material called Ether. Tens if not hundreds of brilliant minds created this theory we now know is completely impossible; ergo, we can definitely imagine impossible things.

Answer 4

"... Since it will be eternal by definition, it did not exist in the past or in the future, and cannot exist."

As you say, since it exists outside of human cognition it cannot be said to exist - according to human cognition. It is effectively nothing - like the noumenal - adding to the mystery of the concept of nothing.

Unless you can intuitively connect to the eternal, you are stuck.

Nevertheless, your settling of the definition of God is another matter. For example, do you define God as noumenal or extra-noumenal (purely conceptual)? Or perhaps they are they indistinguishable.

Answer 5

What do you think of this argument?

I think it is pretty easily dismantled by simple logic, not theology. Since logic is in the purview of philosophy, you're quite on-topic here.

The fallacy of your argument is that you have not only one assumption, but that you have two:

• Assumption A: "God does not exist."
• Assumption B: "Something that is impossible cannot be conceived of."

From these two assumptions, you have deduced a contradiction. This allows you to say that (A and B) is false, or equivalently, that (A is false) or (B is false) or (both A as well as B are false) to spell it out as verbatim as possible.

Specifically, from (A and B) is false you can not deduce that A is false; but this is what your argument is erroneously doing.

So to make your argument hold tight, you have to prove that your assumption "Something that is impossible cannot be conceived of by the mind." is in fact true. It is not enough to say that your mind cannot do it, you must prove that every mind cannot do it.

(Note that there may be further errors, even if you manage to solve this first one.)

N.B.: As mentioned in the comments, part of the problem with the assumption is that it is unclear what "impossible" means. If OP wants to make the argument watertight, then this needs to be defined (and then the assumption may or may not be self-evident; and the rest of the argument will need to be checked again to verify that the logical conclusions follow from it, and so on). The TLDR of this answer is that it's too complicated/complex to simply say "it's true".

Answer 6

By this logic, all other gods are real too. The Monotheistic gods say there can be no other gods and there is only one true god. You're still left with the dilemma of making a choice: believing it or not.

Answer 7

The problem is you've changed the definition of "impossible" between points 1 and 2, making your second claim in point 2 wrong.

1. Something whose existence is impossible cannot be conceived in the mind.

   Here, you're talking about something that's logically impossible.

   The converse way of looking at it, is if I can conceive of something, like faster than light spaceships, it's "possible" in the sense that I could, in principle, make a simulation with it, given a sufficiently advanced computer. If it's possible in a simulation, there could always be some naturally-occurring universe, perhaps even our own, in which it's possible.

   Here, "conceiving" of something must mean conceiving a solution, not just a problem. Like creating a pattern of events in my mind where A leads to B, C to D, etc. As long as it's self-consistent, it doesn't matter how bizarre it might be in the real world.

   It is not true that any problem that's conceived automatically has a logically-possible solution. So even though we can "conceive of" an omnipotent being who can create a rock that the being cannot itself pick up, it doesn't make that being logically possible.

2. (a) Let's make an assumption that there is no God. Since it will be eternal by definition, it did not exist in the past or in the future, and cannot exist. That is, its existence becomes impossible.

   Here, you're talking about something that's "not possible" because it happens to not exist in our universe. It's not "impossible" in the sense that it couldn't possibly be true in any universe.

   Going with the simulation idea, in the video game World of Warcraft, there are no Mandalorian bounty hunters (from the Star Wars franchise). So it's impossible to find one in that game. But the developers could do it if they chose (and, ideally, had copyright permission), so it's not logically impossible, just impossible in practice.

3. (2b) Since it is impossible, it should not be conceived in the mind. (This should probably be a separate point, not mashed into point 2.)

   This claim is invalid, because the "impossible" definition in point 1 is different from the "impossible" definition in point 2.

Side problem: in your point 3, you say that God is logically consistent. This is only true for some definitions of God. So you have to be careful to not presume that the logical possibility of one definition of God automatically means any other definition of God is also possible.

Likewise, even if we can conclusively prove a particular definition of God is impossible, it doesn't automatically invalidate all other definitions of God.

So even if your argument was valid, it would only be valid for definitions of God that are logically consistent.

Answer 8

Let's make an assumption that there is no God. Since it will be eternal by definition, it did not exist in the past or in the future, and cannot exist.

This is a wrong: suppose there is no God, there has never been a God, and there will never be a God, that does still not mean that a God can not exist. Maybe it is perfectly possible that a God exists, but we just happen to live in a universe where there is no God.

Example: there has never been a Roman Emperor named "Cicerus", and there will never be one. Does this mean that it is impossible? No, it just did not happen.

Answer 9

The Penrose staircase is a compelling counterexample to your claim that something that's impossible can't be conceived of - it's impossible, but it can be drawn and even filmed (it appeared multiple times in the movie Inception).

Your basic argument conflates "impossible" and "does not exist." The assumption that God doesn't exist does not imply that His existence is impossible. The fact that there will never be a configuration of the universe in which something is the case does not mean that there is no possible configuration of the universe in which that happened.

Logical possibility is a fairly low bar that specifically cannot be derived from any actual state of the universe (past, present, or future). Dumb example: I work as an engineer, but at one point I had planned to become a medical doctor. It's completely logically possible that I would have become a doctor instead of an engineer, even though that's not what actually happened. There is a coherent configuration of the universe in which I am currently a doctor, so it's logically possible.

Also, I don't agree that the definition of God necessarily entails Him being eternal. That being said, the fact that He doesn't exist now does not imply that He never existed or will never exist in the future. Zeus and many of the other Greek deities, for example, were immortal but not eternal (they had a definite point where they came into existence). You can also easily imagine a deity that was neither immortal nor eternal, or one that had no beginning but has an end.

Answer 10

Your Lemma 1 is wrong, which shows that it is wrong.