A post originally published on JUNE 2, 2022
🔗 An Indispensability Argument for God’s Existence by Daniel Vecchio
- Whatever is indispensable in generating some theoretically insightful thought experiments must be admitted into our ontology
- A perfect being, or God, is indispensable in the generation of many theoretically insightful thought experiments across multiple disciplines
- Therefore, a perfect being must be admitted into our ontology
I don’t think this argument works because (1) is too strong a claim. There are indispensable entities in many thought experiments, which we don’t admit into our ontologies, like frictionless planes and ideal gases. Nonetheless, those ideas are useful in many thought experiments. But why should they be so useful? I think it is because they substantively entail certain facts were they to actually obtain.
A Modest Indispensability Argument for God’s Existence
- Whatever is indispensable in generating some theoretically insightful thought experiments is logically possible (premise)
- A perfect being, or God, is indispensable in generating some theoretically insightful thought experiments (premise)
- Therefore, a perfect being is logically possible (From 1,2)
- If a perfect being is logically possible, then a perfect being exists (by S5, given that a perfect being has necessary existence)
- Therefore, a perfect being exists (From 3,4)
It seems to me that this argument is sound. An atheist might reject (1), but if something is logically impossible, it is hard to see why it would be theoretically indispensable, since it would entail anything. Impossible entities are, therefore, dispensable, since they function trivially in the thought experiment, and any impossible entity would function in the same way. So one impossible entity is no more indispensable than any other. What’s more, while impossibilities entail anything, we would find ourselves like Buridan’s ass, not directed by the concept itself in any particular way when thinking through the thought experiment. Rather, the direction would be determined by some sort of misapprehension of what a perfect being is—a misapprehension that oddly happens to be shared by every person who grasps the thought experiment. But then it is the “misapprehension” of a perfect being that is functioning indispensably, and we would have to see why it is the case that we are dealing with a misapprehension rather than the concept of a perfect being.
I think the atheist might be more successful in denying (2), by arguing that the idea of a perfect being is not actually integral to many thought experiments. Of course, this places a huge burden on the atheist of wading through thought experiments that make use of a perfect being, so as to demonstrate dispensability. Absent such a demonstration, it seems to me that thought experiments that make use of God do so in a substantive and indispensable manner. For as Voltaire says, “Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer” (Epistle to the author of the book, The Three Impostors, 1768). Except, if it is necessary to invent God, then according to my reasoning, God is logically possible, and so actual.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but (4) seems false to me. Surely mere logical possibility won’t suffice here; rather, we would need to establish that God’s existence is metaphysically possible. It seems to me that both theism and naturalism are logically possible (I don’t think that either view entails a contradiction), though of course they aren’t both metaphysically possible. Still, it’s an interesting argument; I wonder whether (1) might be modified to involve metaphysical rather than logical possibility.
Hey James, thanks for the comment. In another forum, I raised the same concerns. Firstly, the existence of God could be metaphysically impossible without the concept of ‘God’ being logically impossible; and, second, the characteristic axioms of S4 and S5 are only necessarily true when interpreted as guiding our notions of metaphysical modality. So the inference from (3) and (4) to (5) would be invalid.
However, suppose we were to revise (1) to involve metaphysical rather than logical possibility. It still appears to be false. Consider the problem of the infinite divisibility of space. A popular solution to the problem is to say that space is (metaphysically) necessarily gunky. Thus, it is impossible for there to be a part of space with a measure of zero. So, not only are points impossible, but lines and planes are impossible. But then it follows that space is necessarily (at least) three-dimensional. Since, for example, a plane (metaphysically) cannot exist, it is metaphysically impossible that all of space should consist of a plane. Similarly, space could not have consisted of a single line.
But what are we to make of contemporary physical theories which postulate many dimensions? Should we discard them overnight? Are they no longer indispensable “in generating some theoretically insightful thought experiments”?
No, because we can formulate logically consistent descriptions of many-dimensional spaces even when we cannot conceive of these spaces. We simply know how to describe them without contradicting ourselves. But mere formal consistency is no evidence of metaphysical possibility.
Yeah, it seems like if we take the argument in terms of logical possibility, then (4) will be false, and if we modify it to be in terms of metaphysical possibility, then (1) will be false.