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http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ryan_stringer/modal-atheism.html
possibly true. But like the second kind of logical argument, modal
arguments conclude with the necessary truth of atheism. Thus modal
arguments appear to be very strong, for they deliver the necessary
truth of atheism on the basis of a mere possibility claim.
In order to show how they contribute to the philosophical defense of
atheism, in this paper I formulate modal arguments for atheism and
then examine the ways a critic might respond to them. Specifically, I
aim to show that modal arguments for atheism either (a) positively
support atheism or (b) at least undermine modal arguments for theism.
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Plugging this proposition in for p instead of (3) would give us what I will
call the modal argument from depravity.
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There are at least two other bases for generating good modal
arguments for atheism. Let's say that something is a maltheistic deity if
and only if it has the properties of being omniscient, omnipotent, and
perfectly evil. Any being that qualifies as a maltheistic deity cannot
possibly coexist with God.[6] For suppose that God and such a
maltheistic deity coexist. Since both are omniscient, omnipotent beings,
it is impossible for either to thwart the will of the other, for it is logically
impossible to thwart the will of a being that is omniscient and
omnipotent. Moreover, their wills will be in complete conflict with each
other since God is perfectly good and a maltheistic deity is perfectly
evil. Now let's say that God wills something. Since he is omniscient and
omnipotent, it is impossible for his will to be thwarted; so God will
succeed in his willing. However, since the maltheistic deity is also
omniscient and omnipotent, it is impossible for its will to be thwarted;
so it will succeed in thwarting God's will. Therefore, God will also not
succeed in his willing, which obviously contradicts that God will
succeed in his willing. The same kind of contradiction can be generated
by supposing first that the maltheistic deity wills something. Since the
supposition that both God and a maltheistic deity exist leads to logical
contradictions, these beings cannot possibly coexist. We thus have a
fourth instance of p with:
4. A maltheistic deity exists.
Plugging this in for p would give us the modal argument from a
maltheistic deity. In fact, this argument could actually be a template for
several such arguments since there appears to be more than one
possible being that qualifies as a maltheistic deity. An easy way to
generate multiple possible maltheistic deities is by adding a single
property at a time. For instance, we can get a unique maltheistic deity
by adding the property of necessary existence to omniscience,
omnipotence, and perfect evilness; and a different one by adding the
property of contingent existence instead.
Finally, there is another basis for modal arguments for atheism that is
more like a template for several such argumentsperhaps even an
infinite number of them. First of all, it is necessarily true that if God
exists, then he is the creator of the universe. In other words, God's
existence necessarily precludes any other being from creating the
universe. So we have a fifth instance of p with:
5. Some other being besides God created the universe.
Plugging this in for p would then give us the modal argument from a
different creator. Of course, there are numerous possible beings
besides Godperhaps an infinite number of themthat could have
created the universe. So for each proposition asserting that one
particular non-God being created the universeor that several
particular non-God beings did sowe could generate a good modal
argument for atheism. Thus there are several (if not infinitely many)
modal arguments from a different creator.
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Since the truth of this proposition only requires that one of its disjuncts
be true, and since each one is just as plausible as P, it has a much
higher probability of being true than Pespecially if DA has an infinite
number of disjuncts. So DA is more plausible than P. Consequently, it
is more plausible that at least one of the modal arguments for atheism
is sound and that the modal ontological argument is unsound than that
the modal ontological argument is sound while the modal arguments
for atheism are unsound. Thus the modal ontological argument does
not undermine the entire set of modal arguments for atheism.
Suppose that P is somehow more plausible than any given A-premise.
While this would defeat the claim that P and any given A-premise are
equally plausible, it would not necessarily undermine the higher
probability of DA. For suppose that DA does have an infinite number of
disjuncts, and that each one has some chance of being true. If so, then
the probability of DA, regardless of the probability of each individual
disjunct, approaches 1. So no matter how much more plausible P is
than any of DA's disjuncts, DA is still more plausible than P.
Furthermore, even if DA has only a finite number of disjuncts, it is still
more likely to be true than P. For given the conservative assumptions
that (a) either DA or P must be true, (b) each disjunct again has some
chance of being true, and (c) there are only 5 disjuncts, each disjunct
only needs to have a probability of at least .14 in order for DA to have a
higher probability than P.[14] However, an estimated probability of .14
for each A-premise is not only absurdly low in its own right, but results
in P having a probability of .47almost 3.5 times as likely as each
A-premise! This is absurdly generous. We should therefore estimate
the probability of each A-premise to be higher than .14, which means
that we should estimate DA to be more probable than P. So once
again, DA is more plausible than P.
In a final attempt to contest the set of modal arguments for atheism by
contesting their A-premises, our imagined critic could argue that the
modal ontological argument is not the only counterargument to be
considered. In addition to P, there are several other possibility claims
that, when combined with B, entail Q, and thus the falsity of the
A-premises. More specifically, our imagined critic could generate a new
possibility claim, and hence a new theistic counterargument, by
removing the proposition "God exists" from P and replacing it with any
of the following:
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
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But why do people not think of God in this way? Well, if God had T in
this world and had properties that fell short of T in others, then God
would have T accidentally. But if God had T accidentally, then God
could fail to have T, which in turn implies that God is not perfecthe
would be a better being if he could not fail to have T.[19] However, God
is perfect by definition; so he could not fail to have T, or have T
accidentally. Instead, God must have T essentially, or in every possible
world in which he exists. The upshot here is that God's perfection
requires that he have T essentially and not accidentally, which means
that God's goodness is a function of his having T essentially instead of
accidentally. This can then be generalized: the goodness of any being
is a function of whether it has its properties essentially, or accidentally.
The idea that a being's goodness is a function of whether it has its
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Notes
[1] Nicholas Everitt, The Non-Existence of God (New York, NY:
Routledge, 2004), Chapter 11.
[2] Ted Drange, Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the
Nonexistence of God (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998).
[3] See the argument from physical minds page here on the Secular
Web.
[4] See Richard Gale, "Freedom Versus Unsurpassable Greatness,"
International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 23, No. 2
(1988): 65-75, and Richard Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God
(New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Chapter 6. Gale
neither uses the phrase "modal argument from gratuitous evil" nor
formulates such an argument, but "the modal problem of evil" he refers
to (p. 229) in his excellent book is another way to describe the
argument.
[5] Again, see "Freedom Versus Unsurpassable Greatness" and On the
Nature and Existence of God. Here, too, Gale does not use the phrase
"modal argument from super depravity" or formulate such an argument,
but he does provide the basis for this argument.
[6] Michael Tooley, "Plantinga's Defence of the Ontological Argument,"
Mind, Vol. 90 (1981): 422-427.
[7] Of course, the intuitive plausibility of the A-premises, as well as the
conceivability and coherence of their contents, does not guarantee their
truth. But it does provide defeasible justification for them. Perhaps the
objects or states of affairs are not really coherent, the A-premises are
defeated by competing possibility claims, or the A-premises are false
for some other reason. However, until such defeat is forthcoming, the
intuitive plausibility of the A-premises, as well as the conceivability and
coherence of their contents, provides good epistemic grounds for them.
For although intuitions can certainly be mistaken, undefeated ones
carry some epistemic weight. Moreover, a thing could be conceivable
without being possible, but its conceivability at least suggests that it is
possible, insofar as our imaginative and rational powers give us
epistemic access to modal space. Finally, incoherent things are
automatically impossible; so a thing's coherence suggests its possibility
at least in the sense that it is not automatically rendered impossible.
[8] See my "Questions of Existence and the Modal Cosmological
Argument" (2011) on the Secular Web. In that paper I argue that one
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moon or bench press his car because Jack cannot do these thingsa
necessary condition of saying that Jack ought to do something is that
he can do it. But even if the ought-implies-can principle is acceptable
with respect to action, this does not generalize to the existence of God
and other things. For as I have already shown, a thing ought to exist in
virtue of it being very good if that thing existed, and this is no guarantee
that it is possible for the thing to exist.
This argument is part of Carl Kordig's ontological argument. See Carl
Kordig, "A Deontic Argument for God's Existence," Nous, Vol. 15
(1981): 207-208.
[12] One could argue that the A-premises (or at least some of them) are
more intuitively plausible, and thus stronger, because they involve
objects or states of affairs that are simpler than God. However, it is
common among theologians and philosophers to maintain that God is a
simple object; so it may not be the case that God is more complex than
the objects or states of affairs that the A-premises assert to be possible.
Though the claim that God is simple seems absurd, considerations of
simplicity are themselves complex and turbid; so I will ignore them in
the present context.
[13] Of course, the reverse also holds: since the soundness of the
modal ontological argument is as plausible as the soundness of any
modal argument for atheism, and the soundness of the latter implies
the unsoundness of the former, the soundness of the modal ontological
argument is as plausible as its unsoundness. Thus any modal
argument for atheism taken alone undermines the modal ontological
argument. Colloquially, the arguments "cancel each other out." This is
an important result for the philosophical defense of atheism since it
shows that the modal ontological argument does not provide rational
justification for theism.
[14] The probability estimates for DA and P when the former has only 5
disjuncts and each disjunct has a probability of .14 are calculated as
follows. Since DA and P are mutually exclusive, the probability of P is
equivalent to the probability of DA's falsity, which in turn is equivalent to
the probability of the conjunction of the negations of the A-premises.
That is, the probability of P is equivalent to the probability of the
following proposition:
(CA) Not-A1 and Not-A2 and Not-A3 and Not-A4 and
Not-A5.
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