When going over Berg’s six arguments for atheism – no, sorry, proofs for atheism – I just shaked my head in amazement over the obvious wishful thinking needed to furnish such idiotic (non)arguments. Dawkin’s arguments look like flawless argumentation in comparison. Anyway, on to the third and so far most inept argument:
Argument 3: The ‘God Has No Explanatory Value’ Argument
1.God if he exists must be the ultimate being and provide the answer to all our ultimate questions - otherwise he is not really God.
2. Yet even supposing as a hypothesis that God exists the questions that God was supposed to finally answer still remain (though in some cases God is substituted in the question for the Universe).
3. Therefore hypothesising God’s existence is only unnecessarily adding an extra stage to such problems and has no real explanatory value.
4. Therefore according to Logic (Occam’s Razor Law - ‘that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity’) we should not postulate God’s existence and there is no adequate reason to suppose that God exists.5. Therefore we should suppose that God does not exist.
Let’s take a look at one premise at a time.
1.God if he exists must be the ultimate being and provide the answer to all our ultimate questions - otherwise he is not really God.
As I hinted at in the first post of this series, God need not be the ultimate being, nor does He have to provide all our ultimate questions. This is not to say that most theists don’t believe God is the ultimate being, merely that Berg is only attacking a single notion of God and his continual inability to recognize such indicates logical incompetence and a lack of imagination.
2. Yet even supposing as a hypothesis that God exists the questions that God was supposed to finally answer still remain (though in some cases God is substituted in the question for the Universe).
The answers to the questions that God is supposed to answer may be presently outside of Man’s ability to ascertain; that doesn’t mean they don’t exist in an absolute sense. And if there is anything that can finally answer the questions that still remain, it is God. Berg’s anti-God bias is evident here.
3. Therefore hypothesising God’s existence is only unnecessarily adding an extra stage to such problems and has no real explanatory value.
Take the issue of creation. The universe could have been spawned by another universe, or it could have been created by a God. Postulating God as the creator would not add any extra stages and would absolutely provide explanatory value. Moreover, if God is a single being that provides an explanation for everything like many theists assume and Berg even admits in order to make his case, then God would be the most ontologically economical and thus, by Berg’s chosen measure of Ockham’s razor, the best explanation.
But then again, positing the universe resulting from literally nothing would involve the least stages to such problems. So Berg obviously believes things can come from nothing, which certainly explains his habitual use of jumping to logical conclusions ex-nihilo.
4. Therefore according to Logic (Occam’s Razor Law - ‘that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity’) we should not postulate God’s existence and there is no adequate reason to suppose that God exists.
Occam's razor is not logic. And it is definitely not a law. For being a thoughtless cheerleader for William of Occam, Berg sure does multiply beyond necessity the amount of logical laws required to make his case.
5. Therefore we should suppose that God does not exist.
The previous four points have been sufficiently manhandled to render this conclusion naked and absurd. Far from being the lifeblood of his case, Occam’s Razor turned out to be its Achilles tendon. Berg’s attempt to demonstrate God as an entity with no explanatory power is not only wrong, but tautologically wrong.
Critically examining Berg’s has been a short and easy task, devoid of any intellectual stimulation. It is only in the knowledge that some poor soul may be deceived that I continue this foray into the six “New logical disproofs of the existence of God.”
I say to you what I said to Proph:
ReplyDeleteYou are a more patient man than I to refute these so carefully. But not to say that it's wasted effort. I am glad you are spelling this out and I only hope that he ends up reading them when he sees the pingback to his site. I look forward to your further demolitions.
The complete philosophical illiteracy Berg displays would be comical if it weren't so depressing. Keep up the good work.