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donathos on 11 April 2009
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Sqrl said:
donathos said:

I can only observe that our interest here isn't in saying anything, one way or another, about god--our interest is in whether there can never be an anti-theist who could prove that god cannot exist.  What if there was an anti-theist who was as powerful as the god we're supposing?

I mean, as long as we're supposing an omnipotent god, why can't we suppose an uber anti-theist with the power to construct airtight proofs for all that is (and against all that isn't)?

Now... I imagine that a person could say either that the powers of the omnipotent god and the uber anti-theist somehow would cancel each other out, or that the supposition of an omnipotent god renders the uber anti-theist impossible, as the uber anti-theist's existence would be a limit on the god's power to remain aloof from proof.  But, by that same rationale, supposing the uber anti-theist would render the omnipotent god impossible, as its existence would be a limit on the anti-theist's ability to construct proofs.  And I see no compelling reason to give priority to an omnipotent god over an uber anti-theist.

Actually there is compelling reason to give the preference to God.  Because if it/he wasn't the more powerful one you've then begged the question (sort of).  Your scenario assumes that god is not omnipotent to prove that he doesn't exist. If the contention is a god that is omnipotent and you disprove him by assuming he is not omnipotent the proof is invalid.

I don't think that I am begging the question.  Instead, I think that we are changing the question: we started off by saying that, for an anti-theist to avoid having "faith-based" beliefs, he would have to be able to prove them (according to the means already discussed).  And I suggested that, while this is true, we haven't established that proving anti-theism is impossible, which we would have to do in order to make the general case that anti-theism is faith-based.

So, to prove that proving anti-theism is impossible, you posited an god who doesn't want to be proven.  To counter, I posited an uber anti-theist with the power of perfect proving/disproving ability (or, actually, it doesn't have to be an "uber anti-theist"; it could be any non-god entity with that power); such a being would theoretically be able to construct an airtight argument against any possible god, assuming that god doesn't actually exist (because, if god did exist, then my uber anti-theist would quickly become an uber theist).

Assuming that god doesn't actually exist for my uber anti-theist is a hefty qualifier, and yet absent being able to metaphysically determine whether or not a god actually exists--apparently beyond both of us, for obvious reasons :)--we cannot say for certain that such an uber anti-theist could not exist.  It is not begging the question to dismiss god in this scenario, because the proposition at issue was not, "could an omnipotent god exist," but "could there exist an airtight argument that god does not exist"?  And it is theoretically possible, if we happen to to live in a universe in which there is no god, which is not something that either you or I claim to know for sure.

To say "an omnipotent god is possible, therefore such an argument is impossible" isn't quite correct... rather, an omnipotent god is possible, therefore a logical argument proving no god exists is possibly impossible; it doesn't discount that such an argument is also possibly possible--in a universe where an omnipotent god doesn't, in fact, exist, opening the door for the possibility of an uber anti-theist.

Yeesh, the third.

To look at it another way, if I'm guilty of begging the question here, we both are: we cannot rule out an airtight argument against god.  The only universe in which such an argument could not exist would be one that has the omnipotent god you'd suggested; we can only disprove the possibility of such an argument by proving that god does, in fact, exist.  And so... if we can't do that, then we can't disprove the possibility of such an argument.

So, I would say that neither an omnipotent god nor an uber anti-theist can be proven against... or, at least, not by me, and I suspect not by you, either.  And if we can't prove against either, then maybe the real conclusion is:

Neither theism nor anti-theism are necessarily faith-based.