menj

Greetings, I was wondering whether anyone would like to see Moiz Amjad's argument for the existence of God:

http://www.understanding-islam.com/r...uestion&qid=16

Well?

- MENJ

Dr. Retard

To cut to the chase, I see no reason to think that "there's some all-powerful, all-knowing, morally perfect disembodied mind subsisting outside of space and time, somehow possessed of the ability to just will universes into existence" is a good explanation of Amjad's observations of an ordered universe. He's also strawmanning with "by pure chance", "mere improbable accident", and the like.

Wyz_sub10

"Accident", as I have said before, only applies to intended events, or events with purpose. No intension, no purpose? No accident.

SRB

His argument seems to be this:

(1) There must be some explanation for why we exist.
(2) There are only two possible explanations for why we exist: (i) we just do; (ii) a wise, merciful, provident being created us.
(3) The explanation "We just do" has many defects.
(4) The explanation "A wise, merciful, provident being created us" has few or no defects.
(5) Therefore, the best explanation for why we exist is that a wise, merciful, provident being created us [from (1)-(4)].
(6) But that being would be what we call "God."
(7) Therefore, God probably exists [from (6)].

REFUTATION

1st objection
Clearly premise (2) is false. Here are just a few more explanations for why we exist, ones not mentioned above:

(iii) We exist because of the process of evolution by natural selection, as detailed by the sciences.
(iv) We exist because a wise, non-merciful, provident being created us.
(v) We exist because we were caused to exist by an impersonal and creative force.
(vi) We exist because two or more beings created us.

2nd objection
Premise (4) is false since the hypothesis mentioned is problematic. It creates the mystery of why there exists a "wise, merciful, provident being." What is the explanation for that being's existence? If the explanation is "the being just exists" then that seems to involve exchanging one mystery for another (maybe bigger) one. Reasonable explanations do not do that. There are other problematic consequences of hypothesis (ii), but I will limit myself here to mentioning this one.

3rd objection
Premise (6) is false. God has numerous essential properties beyond the ones mentioned. For example, God is supposed to be disembodied, transcendent, just, and very (or even infinitely) powerful. God is also someone who maintains an afterlife. I suspect the author also takes God to be one and the same thing as Allah. But even if the being mentioned in (5) exists, it does not follow that Allah exists.

For all these reasons, I consider the argument above to be a complete failure.

SRB

menj

Greetings,

I will address SRB since he summarily covers the other two posters' arguments. It needs to be mentioned that I am a Muslim, someone who submits in total obedience to Allah, the Arabic for God.

SKB argues:

I presume that (iv) - (vi) is more or less related to (ii) and that (iii) is more or less related to (i). Semantics differ, but it is still the same. Hence I don't believe that Premise (2) is simply "invalidated" just because we can break up (i) and (ii) into several related explanations.

SKB:

Well, I believe that Bro. Moiz Amjad had explained elsewhere in another link that to entertain the idea of "who created the Creator" is absurd since the Creator is certainly not observable in that matter. But personally, I am in favour of the Kalaam Cosmological Argument, which, as I understand it, states that the Creator is transcedent and out of the space of time, and hence is not imposed by its limitations, which what only creation posses.

I know that this argument may seem problematic for a non-Muslim, but in reality Muslims believe that God have sent His message to all tribes/peoples in the past, through divinely-elected prophets. The reason why there are many, differing descriptions of the Creator is because of (a) the message was only meant for that particular tribe/people and therefore incomplete, or (b) the notion that God is One was corrupted by later generations of that people/tribe with association of deities, etc. Hence there is certainly no "problem" at all, if it were seen from the Muslim side.

Kind regards.

- MENJ

SRB

In my original post I suggested this as a best guess at Moiz Amjad's argument for the existence of God:

(1) There must be some explanation for why we exist.
(2) There are only two possible explanations for why we exist: (i) we just do; (ii) a wise, merciful, provident being created us.
(3) The explanation "We just do" has many defects.
(4) The explanation "A wise, merciful, provident being created us" has few or no defects.
(5) Therefore, the best explanation for why we exist is that a wise, merciful, provident being created us [from (1)-(4)].
(6) But that being would be what we call "God."
(7) Therefore, God probably exists [from (6)].

Menj did not explicitly agree that this is a fair summary of what Amjad is getting at, but he offers no substitute and he tries to defend this argument. As a result, I will take this as confirmation that the argument above is indeed the argument Amjad is defending.

I raised three objections to this argument.

Objection 1
I noted that there are numerous alternative explanations for why human beings exist, beyond the ones mentioned in (2). I must admit being puzzled about what Menj's response is here. He seems to think that (2) is true because the alternative explanations (iii)-(vi) I mentioned above are actually the same as the explanation (ii), "a wise, merciful, provident being created us." But they are certainly not the same! See above. They are different explanations and are actually incompatible with explanation (ii). If any of the explanations (iii)-(vi) is the right one, then explanation (ii) is incorrect. Since there are other explanations for why humans exist, beyond (i) and (ii), it follows that premise (2) is false and the argument above is unsound.

Objection 2
I noted that premise (4) is false since the hypothesis that there is a creator raises the bigger mystery of why that creator exists. Menj says that the Kalam argument is sound, and that the creator is transcendent. Even if he were right about all that, we would still have the mystery of why the creator exists rather than not. We can certainly conceive of the nonexistence of a creator, even one who is transcendent. So what is the explanation for why he happens to exist rather than not? If he wasn't created himself, then presumably his existence is an inexplicable brute fact. As a result, Objection 2 is unrefuted.

Objection 3
I pointed out that God, and certainly Allah, has many more essential properties beyond the properties of being wise, merciful and provident. We don't call all wise, merciful and provident beings "God" (indeed, some humans have those properties!). The upshot of this is that premise (6) is false. As an analogy, if I am told that you are thinking of an even number less than ten, it would be ridiculous for me to say, "An even number less than ten is what we call the number six." The number six has many more essential properties other than being even and less than ten! Maybe the number you are thinking of is the number four, for example. I would need to know more about the properties of the number you have in mind to know that it is the number six. Analogously, for the argument above to establish that God exists we would need to establish a lot more about any creator, beyond that it is wise, merciful and provident.

Menj says in response "...the argument may seem problematic for a non-Muslim." I should think that in Objection 3 I have shown the argument is problematic for any rational person, Muslim or non-Muslim. Muslims agree that not every wise, merciful and provident being is what we call "God," and so should also agree that premise (6) is problematic and that the argument above fails to establish that God exists.

SRB

Spenser

Um, no...

NonHomogenized

Although I thought your objections were well thought out, I have to add another objection. Premises (1) and (2) are not related. Premise (1) is that there is a "why". Premise (2) is about "how". Furthermore, premise (1) assumes the conclusion that our existence is the result of a conscious act. Purpose is an act of consciousness, and so to posit that there is a "why" for our existence is to posit that our creation *was* an act of intelligence. This is the logical fallacy known as "assuming the conclusion", and, in this case, invalidates the entire argument.