43. arguments for the existence of god.

by Carrie H. Ryan

Discussing the arguments by Descartes, St. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, William Paley, Kant, and others, as analyzed in J.L. Mackie’s The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (1983), chapters 1-3, 5-6, 8, and 11.

Are the ontological, cosmological, and teleological (argument from design) arguments for God’s existence any good? Mackie, a very sharp analytic philosopher well hooked into recent advances in philosophy of science, says no. He’s chiefly responding to his Oxford colleague, Richard Swinburne, who takes a very rationalist approach to God, taking the concept of God to be wholly simple and intelligible and providing a superior scientific explanation for, e.g. the beginning of the universe than the brute fact of an ultimately uncaused physical universe.

•  can we conceptualize infinity if it did not actually exist? (plato with forms – i have an idea that a perfect circle exists, therefore it must be real; descartes has an idea that god exists, therefore it must be real)
• rebut: the perfect form doesn’t actually have to exist, there could be a limit; so you conceptualize a perfect circle through comparison of one less-perfect circle to a lessser-less-perfect circle
• plato responds that we wouldnt be able to tell that one circle was lesser-less perfect if we didnt have a conception of a perfect form that it was getting at
• just because you conceive of something, doesn’t mean it exists (a unicorn for example)
• descartes the clarity and distinctness of an idea, say a unicorn, is lacking something because you have never perceived it, so descartes says that the idea of a unicorn is never going to be as clear and distinct as that of your idea of a horse
• if you have an idea about an all powerful, omniscient god, then what put that in your brain? (issue of causality)
• mackey – ideas don’t have to come through perception; you can experience something through the negative, you are aware of your own limitations and therefore see perfection
• the argument goes around whether or not you can conceive of infinity – so can reason get a hold of that which is divine, infinite?
• does god exist in time? (he couldn’t if he were an object)
• god can’t know the future action of people, because he gave us freedom
• is the notion of god internally incoherent because we cannot place all the world’s complexity into one ontological being? for example, in all things shining, it suggests that we live in a polytheistic world
• if i can’t know fully about a bat, because i am not a bat, then how can i know fully about god, since i am not god?
• descartes ontological argument: i have an idea of a supremely perfect being, ie a being having all perfections, necessary existence is a perfection, therefore a supremely perfect being exists
• kant says you can’t have existence be perfect because existence is not an attribute but a doing
• mackey there exists an x, such that x is g, so x exists (for example, a martian exists is different than saying a re-martian exists, where re-martian is defined as a martian that exists, so the existence is contained in the definition, from that it is illogical to say that a remartian does not exist, it is self contradictory)
• kant says that existence cannot be a predicate, you can’t have a re-martian (can existence be a predicate?)
• rebut: no matter what concept you come up with, is it instantiated (is there some object in the world that corresponds to it or not); (for example, economics – within its system, you can say a therefore b and it will all make sense, but that does not necessarily mean that economics has any real bearing in the world as a real concept) so a remartian could have as a predicate that it does exist, but that does not mean that it is instantiated
• cartesian dualism: there is no escape from radical doubt; can you perceive reality outside of your mind?; once you doubt your experiences, it is almost impossible to get back to the reality outside of your head, however well you conceive of something, you will never get to exist inside of that
• mackey says that there is a fundamental difference between the concept of things and the existence of things; we must go outside of the concept to ascribe existence to the object, even if the object contains the idea of existence 
• if god is a being from which nothing greater can be conceived – that is the definition – but that does not exist; selms asks, if such a great god existed, wouldn’t he be greater than the concept of your mind? therefore, god exists
• the fact that the concept is not fully realized does not allow you to read back your imperfection or unknowingness into the concept itself, which is what you would need to form an incoherence
• monk: i have an idea of a perfect island, but doesn’t that mean there is an island out there better than the idea you have, therefore a perfect island exists – rebut is that god is greater than this perfect island, so this means that the perfect island does not have to exist