Berg's sixth argument and concluding thoughts

I am almost in awe of Berg's sixth argument.  In a sense, I don't really understand it - to the extent that there is something to understand. Either I am missing something important or the argument has literally no substantive support. If the former is true, I trust that Berg will debug my case of any presumptuous errors it contains..  His argument:

Argument 6: The ‘Some Of God’s Defining Qualities Cannot Exist’ Argument

1. God must have certain characteristic qualities (such as providing purpose to life), otherwise he would not be God.
2. But it is impossible for any entity to possess some of these qualities (such as providing purpose to life since we can find no real purpose and therefore we in practice have no ultimate purpose to our lives) that are essential to God.
3. Therefore since some of God’s essential qualities (such as being the purpose provider to life) cannot possibly exist in any entity, God cannot exist.

Berg obviously doesn't know what Deism is, since he cannot imagine a God existing without imbuing a purpose to life.  But that is neither here nor there for the majority of atheists who just don't want a God giving them a purpose and thus being held accountable for not living up to that purpose.

To the point: Berg fails to understand a central component of teleology; endowing purpose is not an impossible task, but rather an intrinsic part in the act of creation.  Regardless of whether the universe was created for fun and amusement, or was designed for agents of free-will to obey their Creator, it is nonetheless imbedded with a purpose.  All acts of creation involve purpose-giving. Automobile engineers design vehicle engines with the purpose of propelling a car.  Authors write books with the purpose of informing, persuading, or [insert motivation here].  When I play Starcraft, I manufacture marines and siege tanks with the purpose of destroying my opponent. There is simply no room for dispute here.

In refuting Berg's Six Ways of Atheism, I have developed great sympathy for Bertrand Russel when he said that the ontological argument was intuitively false but difficult to identify how it was false. Without exception, Berg's arguments are mere exercises in philosophical sophistry, propped up by logical errors and neglect for basic observations. Its poor performances like these that cause most folks to dismiss philosophy with scorn.  But hey, philosophers have got to do something. Even if that something is completely ridiculous, right?

Berg's fifth argument: The Universal Uncertainty Argument

Weeding through Geoffrey Berg's Universal Uncertainty Argument, I asked myself whether any atheist, much less an agnostic, would believe such nonsense. But then I remembered: atheists, at least the internet, asperger atheists, will seize any argument, however dissonant to the intellect, to rationalize what is ultimately an emotional plea. However, it must be recognized that all I'm am doing here is systematically pointing out the errors that any individual with a 90 I.Q or over would intuitively know were there, but may not be able to articulate them.

Berg's argument:

Argument 5: The Universal Uncertainty Argument

1. An uncertain God is a contradiction in terms.
2. Everything in the Universe must be fundamentally uncertain about its own relationship to the Universe as a whole because there is no way of attaining such certainty.
3. Therefore even an entity with all God’s other qualities cannot have the final quality of certain knowledge concerning its own relationship to the Universe as a whole.
4. Therefore God cannot exist because even any potential God cannot know for sure that it is God.

Note: Stated as a logical paradox this argument is ‘God cannot exist because God cannot know for sure that it is God’.

 The fundamental problem with the argument is that, contrary to the second and third premises, an omnipotent God who is the ultimate Creator CAN know His his relationship with reality, for the very reason that all manifestations of reality are ultimately derived from Him. Absolutely no evidence is adduced when Berg asserts that "there is no way of obtaining such certainty." I'm pretty sure that I cannot ascertain my holistic relationship with reality, but it is a far cry to assert that God, who Berg defines as omnipotent, omniscience, and the ultimate reality, among other things, cannot do so.  

To make matters worse for Berg, his argument would prove nothing even if it were true.  Perhaps God couldn't ascertain His comprehensive relationship with reality - again, a stupid point, but lets assume it for the sake of the argument - but he could no doubt acquire part or even most of it.  It wouldn't take ten seconds for an omnipotent God to realize that He is extremely powerful and can rule over anything. If mere mortals in the past (and present) have believed they are god because of their power, then it is not hard to imagine that an infinitely more powerful being than Alexander the Great would arrive at a similar conclusion, with the added benefit that it would be a correct conclusion.

Berg trying to argue that knowing with 100% certainty is an essential but impossible attribute of God is tantamount to arguing that 100% certainty is a logical contradiction.  But most theists would admit that God cannot perform logical contradictions.  His argument is no more sound and applicable than the argument that God cannot be God because He can't create a circular triangle or a married bachelor.

It's bad enough that Berg's argument is incorrect, but to advance something that proves absolutely nothing makes Berg able to live up to the lofty standard of nonsense he set with his other arguments. It'll be difficult for him to outdo his poor performance with the next one.

Berg's third argument: Occam's razor and God's lack of eplanatory power

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.”

Berg's second argument: the comprehension gulf of man and God

In continuing the tradition of driving logical trainwrecks, Berg even manages to surpass himself in logical incompetence with the second of the six arguments:

Argument 2: The Man And God Comprehension Gulf Argument

1.Man is finite (in time, space and power etc).
2. God if he exists is infinite (in time, space and power etc).
3. Therefore mankind cannot possibly recognise God or even know that God exists.

Again, Berg doesn’t know what his logic really proves; even if the argument holds water, it would at best leave agnosticism, not atheism, as the default position.

In a sense, this argument is difficult to logically refute because no logic was used in constructing it. The leap from the second premise to the conclusion is insufficiently supported as it is merely assumed to be true.

Moreover, theists have long maintained that God cannot be fully understood. The Psalmist has stated that “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.” And the Apostle Paul famously remarked that “For now we see through a glass, darkly.” The problem with the argument is that Berg fails to distinguish the perfectly fathomable with what can be reasonably said to exist. If God is truly omnipotent, then who is to say that He cannot reveal Himself to mankind to its satisfaction? If a super-powerful, transnatural entity shows itself in front of Man by demonstrating god-like powers, then we would correctly conclude that gods do in fact exist, even if we cannot construct a holistic understanding of such an entity.

Of course, we already know that we can recognize universal truths that stretch through all of matter, space, and time in the form of proofs. Geometric proofs and universal logic could be described as “infinite” and yet we can discern those through rational thought even if we can’t comprehensively grasp what Neal Stephenson terms the Hylean theoric world.

Perhaps this is why Man – who is made is traditionally held to be made in the image of God – recognizes the existence of God when animals cannot. Man may be finite, but there is obviously a component in his nature – called it a soul or quantum fluctuations, or whatever – that can ascertain at least part of the infinite.

Berg has proven himself to be a sloppy logician that has such a myopic focus on dialectic logic that he doesn’t take into account the observable facts that directly contradict his logic. At this point, it should be clear to the fair reader the irony of common atheist dismissals of Anslem’s ontological argument or Aquinas’s five ways, while they themselves rely on pure logic. Not to mention logic that is deeply flawed and contradicted by the empirical facts

Six underwhelming arguments for the nonexistence of God

I came across Berg’s six arguments for atheism via Proph over at Collapse, who has penned three pieces addressing the first three of Berg’s arguments. Needless to say, I’m underwhelmed by the arguments presented. So, I decided that I would take a stab at his first of six. And in the event that I find the refuting process rewarding, I may continue to debunk his five other arguments.

His argument consists of six steps; the first one:

1.If God exists, God must necessarily possess all of several remarkable qualities (including supreme goodness, omnipotence, immortality, omniscience, ultimate creator, purpose giver).

This is at best an argument for a particular conception of God, not one that encompasses all definitions of the divine. Moreover, it is based upon the false premise that all of these attributes are independently derived. As Proph noted, the only attribute necessary for omniscience, immortality, and purpose giver is omnipotence. Supreme goodness can be acquired merely by being the Creator of the universe and thus having the right to define what is good. And being the ultimate creator isn’t a common attribute among all gods, but only God in an absolute sense, in which case God would serve as the ultimate existence and would thus not be probable at all. Going further, ultimate creatorship is enough to satisfy all the aforementioned attributes and would certainly make God status, as it is not inconceivable that the ultimate reality would have control over the rest of reality that is ultimately derived from it.

2. Every one of these qualities may not exist in any one entity and if any such quality does exist it exists in few entities or in some cases (e.g. omnipotence, ultimate creator) in at most one entity.

Even the most die-hard, run-of-the-mill atheist would accept omnipotence and ultimate creatorship as qualifying attributes of a God.

3. Therefore it is highly unlikely any entity would possess even one of these qualities.

This is a non-sequitor. How can the third possibly follow the second?

4. There is an infinitesimal chance that any one entity (given the almost infinite number of entities in the Universe) might possess the combination of even some two of these qualities, let alone all of them.

Why is that? Berg never postulates, let alone examines, the necessary contingents for such characteristics to exist. Therefore he cannot speak of probabilities. But the most embarrassing part of Berg’s argument is not his inept logic, but his woeful disregard for the relevant facts. There may very well be an infinitesimal chance that a god-like entity should arise, but we do know for sure that Man exists, and that he has the ability to create simulations where the designer of such electronic worlds could reasonably be considered the god of.

5. In statistical analysis a merely hypothetical infinitesimal chance can in effect be treated as the no chance to which it approximates so very closely.

According to physicists, the balance of the fundamental and derivative constants of nature is so delicate and so improbable that it should be able to support life forms. By Berg’s logic, there would be zero chance that you or I should be here. And yet, I’m typing this as you will eventually read it. When for all we know, the laws of physics could be necessary and fixed, or there could be a gazillion universes out there and we just happened to be in the right one.

Even if we accept Berg’s incorrect assessment of God’s infinitesimal probability, God may very well exist by virtue of His necessity or by trial and error. So, the probability of God’s existence has to be measured by His observable effect on the material world, not hypothetical conjecture.

6. Therefore as there is statistically such an infinitesimal chance of any entity possessing, as God would have to do, all God’s essential qualities in combination it can be said for all practical and statistical purposes that God just does not exist.

The conclusion is false because, as we have seen, the premises which it is based upon are faulty, incorrect, illogical, and irrelevant.

I always find it amusing whenever atheists respond to an argument for the general notion of gods with the appeal that it doesn’t prove a particular God. And yet, Berg finds the audacity to dismiss all conceptions of the divine by selectively attacking one notion of God. But even confined to that limited scope, he proceeds ineptly and bereft of any intellectual honor.