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    There is no contradiction involved in denying that God ex... — Carmelics
    Home/Natural Theology
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    There is no contradiction involved in denying that God exists.

    Against an attribute of GodNatural Theology
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Kant demonstrated in the Critique of Pure Reason that existence is not a real predicate that adds to the concept of a thing.
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    • 2.If existence adds nothing to a concept, then the concept of God as necessarily existing is incoherent, since necessity would be a modal status, not a conceptual feature.
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    • 3.Therefore, denying God's existence removes nothing from the concept of God, entailing no logical contradiction.
      ?

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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Hume argued in the Enquiry that whatever is distinctly conceivable is possible, and we can clearly conceive of a world without God.
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    • 2.A genuine logical contradiction requires that affirming and denying the same proposition simultaneously be unintelligible, but atheism is historically intelligible and coherently statable.
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    • 3.Necessary existence, as Findlay and later Mackie argued, is a category mistake applied to existential claims, which are always contingent synthetic propositions.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Whatever idea of God we are able to frame is an idea of something we can conceive of as either existing or not existing.
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    • 2.Existence is not a further quality or perfection which a being possesses along with its other attributes.
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    Topics

    Natural TheologyAgainst an attribute of God

    Connections

    2 topics

    Modality & Possibility1 linkedDivine Attributes1 linked

    Related

    A genuine logical contradiction requires that affirming and denying the same pro...Existence is not a further quality or perfection which a being possesses along w...Hume argued in the Enquiry that whatever is distinctly conceivable is possible, ...If existence adds nothing to a concept, then the concept of God as necessarily e...
    +4 moreShow less
    Kant demonstrated in the Critique of Pure Reason that existence is not a real pr...Necessary existence, as Findlay and later Mackie argued, is a category mistake a...Therefore, denying God's existence removes nothing from the concept of God, enta...

    Similar

    There is no contradiction in denying that such a being exists.93%God is really possible (i.e., God's existence involves no contradictio...87%Therefore, establishing that God's existence is not impossible is suff...87%There is no basis for claiming that the idea of God implies God's actu...85%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: hume-religion
    View source passageHide passage
    Finally, Hume’s against the notion of necessary existence have obvious relevance also for Descartes’s effort, in Meditations III, to prove that God necessarily exists by way of reasoning from our (innate) idea of God. Since a priori any thing may cause any thing, it follows that even if we had an idea of a perfect being there would be no basis for the claim that God must be the source of this idea. Similarly, since we have no (abstract) idea of existence, distinct from the conception of particul
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Whatever idea of God we are able to frame is an idea of something we can conceiv...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit