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Why I Don’t Think God Exists

Holocaust

NOTE: Today we feature a guest post from Steven Dillon, one of our regular atheist commenters. Be sure to read Brandon Vogt's response, "Why Evil and Suffering Don't Disprove God".


 

I wish that God existed, I genuinely do. His presence would be an invaluable source of hope and strength as well as peace and happiness.1 But, I don’t think he does and that realization is perhaps the greatest of disappointments. Be that as it may, reality is still beautiful and I think we should honor the truth.

So, in hopes of some provocative discussion, I’m going to share what strikes me as a fairly compelling reason to think that God does not exist.

Now, as Richard Swinburne notes, “One unfortunate feature of recent philosophy of religion has been a tendency to treat arguments for the existence of God in isolation from each other. There can, of course, be no objection to considering each argument initially, for the sake of simplicity of exposition, in isolation from others. But clearly the arguments may back each other up or alternatively weaken each other, and we need to consider whether or not they do.”2

I propose this argument then as another piece to the puzzle, one which needs to be weighed in conjunction with the arguments for God’s existence.

My core thesis is this:

P: If God exists, then he will have had to have done things that he would not do.

If (P) is true, it affords what seems to be a powerful argument against God’s existence, because it’s absurd that God has done what he would not do. (P) is essentially composed of two claims:

P1: If God exists, there are things that he will have had to have done.

P2: God would not do at least one of these things.

Since (P) is true if and only if both P1 and P2 are true, I’ll focus on them. Let’s take each in turn.

P1If God exists, there are things that he will have had to have done.

God is traditionally conceived of as being perfectly good and the ultimate source, ground, or originating cause of everything that can have an ultimate source, ground or originating cause.

As such, if God exists, he will have had to have brought the natural world into existence along with most if not all of its significant features. Moreover, nothing that has happened will have happened without his permission. Each of us would be under his care as he chose to sustain us in existence from moment to moment.

P2God would not do at least one of these things.

If God exists, then due to his role as the ultimate cause, he will have had to have given his permission for every single thing that has ever occurred, including the most awful and horrific of events.

Take for example the Holocaust. God will have had to have deliberately allowed the systematic execution of millions, despite their unnervingly helpless pleas for him to spare their children as they were marched at gunpoint into gas chambers.

He will have had to have given his permission for every heinous count of abuse that children have been subjected to.3

But, this seems beneath God and more like the track record of a morally impoverished deity.

Typically, you should not allow children under your care to get beaten and molested. Perhaps there could be an exception to this rule, probably in what I’m guessing is a farfetched scenario. But, it is still a rule, and it thus expresses what is normally the case. To argue against this is to adopt the disturbing position that it is usually not wrong to allow children under your care to get beaten and molested.

Now, because it’s rational to assume that things are as they normally tend to be until given good reason to think otherwise, we’re putatively entitled to assume that someone who has allowed children under their care to get beaten and molested has done something wrong. We very well might go on to learn of extenuating circumstances that mitigate culpability or some such. But, the default position is that this sort of behavior is morally unacceptable, and just as well, right?

Well, in so far as we have prima facie reason to think that allowing kids under your care to get beaten and molested is wrong, we have prima facie reason to think that God would not do this. Because God will have had to have done this if he existed, we have prima facie reason to think that God does not exist.

There are many other moral rules that seem to yield this same conclusion, but they’d needlessly complicate a simple deduction

Conclusion

So, I believe there are some significant reasons for thinking that if God exists, he will have had to have done things that he would not do. For all its beauty, our world just seems too ugly to include God in it. I certainly won’t pretend like this is a rationally undefeatable argument, but I also don’t think it’s anything like a pushover.

How shall a theist respond to this argument? Is it not normally wrong to allow children under your care to be abused? Are we not under God's care? Or perhaps she will simply say the arguments for God’s existence are just too strong.

However we might respond to it, keep in mind that it won’t do to argue that God might allow things like the Holocaust, or human trafficking, or that God could have good reason for doing so. No has said that he couldn’t, that’s not the issue at hand. What needs to be shown is that God would allow these things. Theists will need to take the risk of identifying the reason why God would allow the Holocaust, or human trafficking, and seeing whether that identification can stand to reason.

What do you guys think?

(Image credit: Blog CDN)

Notes:

  1. Cf. http://www.ryerson.ca/~kraay/Documents/2013CJP.pdf for an interesting discussion on whether God’s existence would be a good thing.
  2. Swinburne, Richard. The Existence of God. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004. p. 19
  3. In case it seems to some that I am appealing to emotions with these examples, allow me to say that I am not. Any emotions elicited will be incidental to the reason I’ve chosen these examples: moral reasoning is uncharacteristically clear when it comes to children, and we ought to make use of this valuable clarity when we can.
Steven Dillon

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Steven Dillon is a nature loving hippy who enthusiastically supports the Philosophy of Religion, and the importance of good-willed dialogue between theists and atheists.

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