ARGUMENT FOR THE NON-EXISTENCE OF GOD

Writing for the NY Times, professor of philosophy, Peter Atterton, claims that the Biblical revelation of God doesn’t make logical sense:

·       As a philosopher myself, I’d like to focus on a specific question: Does the idea of a morally perfect, all-powerful, all-knowing God make sense? Does it hold together when we examine it logically? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/opinion/-philosophy-god-omniscience.html

Atterton first examines the attribute of God’s omnipotence:

·       You’ve probably heard the paradox of the stone before: Can God create a stone that cannot be lifted? If God can create such a stone, then He is not all powerful, since He Himself cannot lift it. On the other hand, if He cannot create a stone that cannot be lifted, then He is not all powerful, since He cannot create the unliftable stone. Either way, God is not all powerful.

In other words, God is not all-powerful because He cannot do the illogical, like making a stone which is both liftable and unliftable. Nor can he exist and not exist at the same time.

This points to the fact that Atterton fails to understand the Biblical revelation of God’s omnipotence. While God can do everything He wants to do, we can’t do it in any manner. He cannot sin; He cannot violate His nature, and it seems like logic might even be part of His un-violable nature.

Even if his liftable-unliftable rock fails to prove his point, Atterton has another stone to throw:

·       …can God create a world in which evil does not exist? This does appear to be logically possible. Presumably God could have created such a world without contradiction. It evidently would be a world very different from the one we currently inhabit, but a possible world all the same. Indeed, if God is morally perfect, it is difficult to see why he wouldn’t have created such a world. So why didn’t He?

He did create such a world, but we screwed it up, and this resulted in the Fall. Yes, God could have created us without the freewill to do evil, but perhaps He had a good reason for not making us robotic.

In his defense, Atterton quotes Charles Darwin:

·       “…for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time?”

Certainly, a good and omnipotent Being would not have allowed our sinful choices to bring suffering upon the animal kingdom (and even upon our own children!), right? In other words, Atterton and Darwin claim that “since I don’t see the point in this, therefore, any good and omnipotent God wouldn’t have done things this way.”

Job had also believed that God couldn’t possibly be just and righteous, since He had caused Job such great suffering, and Job actually accused God of being unjust. He had been convinced that He understood enough about God to bring such a charge against Him. However, at the end of the Book of Job (chapters 38-41), God asked Job a series of questions, none of which could Job answer. He got the point – If he couldn’t even answer the basics, how could he impugn God’s justice! Job, therefore repented in dust and ashes.

Job had demanded his “day in court,” and he got it. Atterton has no intention of making such a demand or even a request of God, and he probably won’t receive it. Instead, he is confident that God cannot possibly be the source of all existence, truth, love, the fine-tuning of the universe, consciousness, objective more truths, and even reason and reason and logic.

Atterton makes one last desperate “Hail-Mary”:

·       A morally perfect being would never get enjoyment from causing pain to others. Therefore, God doesn’t know what it is like to be human. In that case He doesn’t know what we know. But if God doesn’t know what we know, God is not all knowing, and the concept of God is contradictory. God cannot be both omniscient and morally perfect. Hence, God could not exist.

This leaves us with the conclusion that Atterton doesn’t even want to consider the Biblical God and His Son Jesus who died for our sins.

This article says more about Atterton and even the NY Times. Why does The Times consistently malign the Christian faith and not Islam? Perhaps they know that Christians will not fire-bomb their offices but Muslims will? Actually, this is what bullies do – they bully when they think they can get away with their bullying.