[QUOTE="xaos"][QUOTE="domatron23"] I thought maybe the inverted commas and atheism union link might have tipped most people off. Too bad I suppose, it's interesting to see what being an evangelical Christian is like though. People can get kind of upset.domatron23
I noticed the Atheism union, but took your post at face value, assuming good faith. Aren't I just a bastard? What do you make of the argument xaos? (apart from the blatant sophistry). Where does it go wrong?The following premise: '.... there is no possible explanation which accounts for its non-existence' can only work if an 'unsurpassably great being' exists. The fourth claim of the argument (P4) dismisses the secondary premise, as it starts to draw its conclusion with 'If an unsurpassably great being does not exist'. The fourth claim only assumes the responsibility of one part of P2's argument to come to a conclusion ('there is no possible explanation..') God's inexistence can't be explained only if God does exist. If I misunderstood, and P2 doesn't have to assume the existence of God, then the reasoning is circular (God must exist because He is defined as such).
The third claim (P4) is untrue, as only contradictory concepts can be demonstrated not to exist (and thus 'explained' redundantly - 'because they are contradictory') If the concepts are not contradictory, 'a possible explanation' cannot be verified of the value of its possibility if the concept does not exist, as a concept that does not exist cannot have any self-reliant evidence for its inexistence and cannot be explained.
These factors notwithstanding, the inexistence of 'an unsurpassably great being' wouldn't be paradoxal if only one of the two claims which contribute to a paradox were true (God's inexistence is unexplainable; God's existence must be explainable). As the single paradox lies within the inexplicability of God's existence, the veracity of God's inexistence wouldn't be directly contradictory. The paradox affirms that God's inexistence cannot be mutually inexplicable and explicable; by exstension, God's inexistence would be a paradox only if both statements were mutually applicable, and conclusively, one of the premises must have been untrue. Two contradictory affirmations do not invalidate both independently, but show that both of them cannot be collective values and that one of them must be incorrect, given the context. In other words, the paradox does not compromise God's inexistence as the paradox is in conflict with the premises and cannot be valid.
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