Automaton

This has been done before, but not in any sort of ordered collection, which is what is intended by this thread.

1. Atheistic Contingency Argument<ol type="1">[*] The universe could have failed to be.[*] God is defined as the cause of the universe, and thus the cause of that which could have failed to be.[*] God must then contain essential contingency.[*] That which contains essential contingency is not essentially necessary.[*] Hence, God cannot be essentially necessary, but this is what he is by definition.[*] Therefore God does not exist.[/list=a]

2. Atheistic Ontological Argument<ol type="1">[*]If God exists, he exists necessarily.[*]There is a possible being that knows (knowledge implies the truth of the known proposition) that there is no God.[*] This being is logically consistent, and thus would exist in some possible world W.[*] There is some possible world W in which it is true that there is no God.[*] If God exists necessarily, he must exist in every possible world, including W.[*] Hence, God does not exist necessarily.[*] Therefore, God does not exist.[/list=a]

Atheistic Cosmological Argument<ol type="1">[*] God is defined as the cause of the universe.[*] To be the cause of something, there must be a prior epoch to the effect that the cause alters, otherwise nothing distinguishes cause from non-cause.[*] Time, and the universe, began with the big bang.[*] If time began with the big bang, there is logically no prior epoch to the big bang.[*] God could not cause the universe.[*] Therefore, God does not exist.[/list=a]

4. Atheistic Design Argument<ol type="1">[*] If God existed, and was the perfectly moral creator of the universe, this would be the possible world with the least possible evil, suffering, pain, or other negative characteristics.[*] There is a logically possible world with less negative characteristics than this actual one.[*] Therefore, God does not exist.[/list=a]

Tercel

Interesting...

The Contingency Argument seems rather silly. By that logic there can be no necessity existent since you think a necessity can never cause a contigency. This seems rather absurd.
Actually I think your argument demonstrates the existence of God's free will: Though his existence is necessary, he is capable of causing contingincies.
That is all to say: Premise 4 assumes the non-existence of free will.

Like Hartsorne's and Plantinga's, your Ontological Argument manages to question beg in one of its premises. -Though the way you've worded it makes me unsure whether it's happening in 2 or 3 or both. In premise 2 the being is declared "possible", in premise 3, the being is declared "logically consistent". Is there a real difference given the structure of the argument?

Your Atheistic Cosmological Argument seems not to bad though you could format it better. You've packed an entire argument inside premise 2. As stated premise 2 is complex and not an obvious truth. (indeed I believe it false) Try unpacking the argument and convincing me otherwise.

Your "Design" argument looks to me like the problem of suffering under a different name.
I would point out that a world containing only inanimate matter would have less evil, suffering, pain and other negative characteristics: Should a perfectly moral creator create a universe containing one rock?

Theli

Yes, arguments have a way of getting twisted when questioned.

I haven't heard of that Design Twist (4) before.
Maybe I just missed it.
I see a different problem with the design argument, but I guess it just comes down to wich path you take.

The cosmoligical argument approach is new to me to.

Automaton

Well, actually, that was the point. I think "a necessity causing a contingency" is a flawed notion, because no aspect of a necessary being can be contingent, including causal actions. If a causal action cannot fail to be, then that which is caused is necessary as well.
The ability to cognitively choose between the contingent possible creations does not make it any less of pushing essential contingency into essential necessity.
Again, I don't see how free will changes anything.
I don't understand your objection. Of course it begs the question, it's trying to analytically show existence, which is a big Humean no no. The point is to show exactly how their argument begs the question, to those who believe it constitutes a sound proof. If they accept their OA, then they should accept mine.
Indeed. Thanks for the criticism. Again, I don't believe it constitutes a sound argument - I believe that time reaches back infinitely, but it is useful to show that the claim of Bill Craig and friends, that time could not reach infinitely back, is really no help to theism.
It is, but I think this is a particularly strong formulation.
Good point, but I meant a universe like ours, but with the variable of evil tweaked just a little. I mean, did all those people with the black plague have to suffer so much? What greater purpose could it serve for an anonymous orphan to die a painful death? Etc. I think if a theist wants to posit a world like ours with just a little less pain and suffering is actually impossible, the burden of proof would be on them to demonstrate it. I couldn't just go around saying "God is impossible" without any justification for that claim, now could I?

Automaton

Just to make things clear, I only think arguments 1 and 4 are sound, 2 and 3 are meant only for illustrative purposes.

Taffy Lewis

Automaton,

It might interest you that a discussion of atheistic teleological arguments can be found in Chapter 13 of Michael Martin's Atheism:a philosophical justification and a version of an atheistic cosmological argument can be found in Quentin Smith's and William Lane Craig's Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology. Also, an ontological argument for God's nonexistence by J. N. Findlay can be found in Louis Pojman's Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 3rd edition.

Also, the Secular Web library has this essay by Quentin Smith:

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/bigbang.html" target="_blank">A Big Bang Cosmological Argument For God's Nonexistence</a>

Philip Osborne

1. Atheistic Contingency Argument:

You argue that for God to create the universe in a contingent action, God would have to contain essential contingency. This inference does not seem correct. You attempted to bolster this argument by saying that there can be absolutely nothing contingent about a necessary being. That depends upon how we construe "necessary existence." One could argue that x exists necessarily with respect to property H iff the proposition "H is instantiated in x" is true in every possible world. This does not rule out the possibility that x has F in w, but doesn't have F in w'. This seems logically consistent, as long as F is not considered an essential property.

2. Atheistic Ontological Argument:

Your argument is of course question-begging, though it doesn't suffer from any difficulties that the standard theistic version of the ontological argument does not. It does show how the principle "We should assume something logically possible if it is not self-contradictory" will not win the argument for the theist.

3. Cosmological Argument:

The premiss that if fact x causes fact y, x exists temporally prior to y is not obviously true. It seems to me that there are consistent models of asymmetric simultaneous causation that we can adopt; for instance, asymmetric necessitation. We can say that an effect necessitates its cause (at the level of tokens, not types), but a cause does not necessitate its effect. This allows us to differentiate between cause and effect without any reference to time or temporality.

Atheistic Design Argument:

A possible theistic response to this may be that there is no "best of all possible worlds." Perhaps for any possible world, there is a world better than it in some respect; that is, the qualities that make a possible world better than others do not admit of an intrinsic maximum. So for any world God creates, there is a world better than it. Nonetheless, it seems absurd to suppose that God would be flustered into inaction by this phenomenon. So even though there are worlds that are greater than the actual world in some respect, there is no inconsistency in affirming that God chose to create this one.

Interesting ideas, though they do not seem successful.

Sincerely,

Philip Osborne

HRG

This argument of yours illustrate what is wrong with the concept of "necessary being".

How do you identify objects/entities across universes; i.e. how can you tell that the x in universe U is actually the "same" as the y in universe V ? Objects or entities do not come with name tags around their necks.
It is true by definition. In a cause-effect relation, the cause is that which comes earlier.
What test can tell us that X necessitates Y ?

Regards,
HRG.

Automaton

An essential relationship (in this case, causation) is exemplified in possible world W but not in possible world W1. This is the very definition of contingency.
This appears true, what is a necessary dog with a contingent leg?
Yes, but this proposition still presupposes the necessary existence of x. Existence has primacy over attributes, otherwise you have absurd concepts such as nonexistent beings willing themselves into existence because they are rational thinkers, and no rational thinker doubts their own existence.
F is not necessary. F is an attribute of x. Possible worlds are divided into classes (by excluded middle), the first being those of "x containing F" and the second being "x not containing F". Both the former and the latter do not exist in every possible world, so neither is necessary.
Thanks. It turns a negative existial formulation of the ontological argument "it is possible that God doesn't exist", which defenders often scoff at, into a positive (albeit, still necessitating a negative) one, which makes them think a little more about the key issue at hand, the ontological argument's inherent circularity.
x causes y. x is in the future, and y is in the past. Given that the future is contingent, it is possible that y is exemplified and yet something that y itself (front-wise causation) causes, eliminates x, thus eliminating y, thus causing x to still exist, thus causing y to still exist, and so on ad infinitum. Effects cannot preceed their causes. Thus, causes must preceed their effects.
This "model", without any more description, would be useless in describing cause and effect. It could describe anything. Take modal axiom M, []p -&gt; p. This is tautologically true "necessary p necessitates actual p", but denying the antecedent, it becomes p -&gt; []p, "actual p necessitates necessary p" which is definitely not true. Thus can we call []p an effect and p a cause? I should hope not.
This is a somewhat odd response, the first time I have heard it. If there can be no instinsic maximum of "goodness", how then, can we call God omnibenevolent? And couldn't God hypothetically simply create infinite times to acheive the infinitely best world, or somesuch?
"I cannot create the greatest state of affairs, so I will just settle for less?" I doubt it. Unless it was logically possible for God to create the greatest state of affairs, I doubt he would have created at all, as a factor of omnibenevolence.
Thanks for the spirited criticism Philip!

SRB

PO
3. Cosmological Argument:
It seems to me that there are consistent models of asymmetric simultaneous causation that we can adopt; for instance, asymmetric necessitation. We can say that an effect necessitates its cause (at the level of tokens, not types), but a cause does not necessitate its effect. This allows us to differentiate between cause and effect without any reference to time or temporality.

SRB
You are right that causes do not (logically) necessitate their effects. However, God intending that some event token e occurs *does* logically necessitate that e occurs, since God is omnipotent. From this, of course, it follows that God's intentions cannot cause anything to happen (such as the origin of the universe). Events that God intends to happen and the events themselves stand in some relation other than one of cause and effect. As Quentin Smith has noted, this undercuts theistic cosmological arguments based on the premise that every event has a cause (Philosophical Topics, Volume 21, Number 1, Spring 1996).

In any case, I do not find the theory of causation you describe to be clear. An adequate theory provides a clear test or criterion for determining if two events are causally related and for distinguishing the cause from the effect, if the causal relation is asymmetric. For example, if particles P1 and P2 come into existence at time t, then what is the test or criterion for determining if the two events ("P1 coming into existence" and "P2 coming into existence") are causally related, and how does one establish which is the cause and which is the effect? We need more help than you have thus far supplied.

SRB