The Ontological Argument for God's Existence

"Their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up."

-Hosea 13:16

The common ontological argument is absolutely absurd, yet numerous Christian apologetics and evangelicals utilize this pathetic argument in an attempt at debating. It proceeds as follows:

P1: God is a perfect being
P2: Existence is an attribute of perfection
C1: Therefore, God exists

Anyone with a brain should be able to see that this in no way justifies the existence of a god. First of all, it is filled with circular logic. By saying God is a perfect being, you are defining God as a being that exists. Simply saying, "I define God as a being who exists," is not enough to prove his actual existence, as there is no guarantee that there are any beings which satisfy this definition. Additionally, see Gasking's Ontological Proof for the Non-Existence of God, following the logic of the Ontological Argument:

P1: God is the greatest being that can be possible.
P2: The creation of the universe is the greatest achievement imaginable.
P3: The merit of an achievement consists of its intrinsic greatness and the ability of its creator.
P4: The greater the handicap to the creator, the greater the achievement (would you be more impressed by Turner painting a beautiful landscape or a blind one-armed dwarf?).
P5: The biggest handicap to a creator would be non-existence
C1: Therefore if we suppose that the universe is the creation of an existing creator, we can conceive a greater being — namely, one who created everything while not existing (from P5).
C2: Therefore, God does not exist (from P1 and P5).

Hopefully I have been able to outline the terrible logical errors intrinsic in this argument.

karmakorn.com

Fallacies: Pascal's Wager and Special Pleading

"Their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up."
-Hosea 13:16

This entire fallacy can be summed up in the question, "What if you're wrong?" The argument is then made as follows. If there is no god, you've lost nothing. If there is a God, then the believers get and infinite payoff and the nonbelievers get and infinite punishment or negative payoff, as shown in the following table:

Table of Payoffs	Believe in God	Don't believe in God
God doesn't exist	0	0
God exists	+∞ (Heaven)	−∞ (Hell)

Theists claim that, even if the probability of God existing is unknown, believing has an infinitely better outcome than not believing, therefore you should believe in God just in case he exists, because it is a safe bet. There are innumerable things wrong with this wager. This will be a long post.

Begging the Question

This wager commits the fallacy of begging the question by assuming the conclusion in the premise. What if the god that exists is not the Judeo-Christian god, but is instead a god who rewards only those who have demonstrated logical prowess and skeptical thinking? Then only those who do not believe in god would go to heaven. The probabilities for either god's existence is unknown, making the expected outcomes for belief and non-belief undefined. This situation can be demonstrated as follows:

Table of Payoffs	Believe in God	Don't believe in God
God doesn't exist	0	0
Conventional god exists	+∞ (Heaven)	−∞ (Hell)
Anti-conventional god exists	−∞ (Hell)	+∞ (Heaven)

Special Pleading

Special pleading is when you claim that a particular chain of logic applies to all things except whatever fits your argument. By making this argument, you invoke special pleading by ignoring the fact that this argument could be used by anyone from any religion. It is equally valid to suppose that you believe in your god for your entire life, then when you die, it turns out you were wrong, and the real god is one of a different religion. Now you're in the same boat I am. There are obscenely many different religions in the world, most of which claiming that you must believe to be rewarded in the afterlife. Every single one of those religions could make this claim, and, if you accept Pascal's Wager, you would be forced to accept all of these claims. What if I told you that you have to give me ten dollars every Saturday for the rest of your life. If you do, then when you die you get to live in a palace and experience pure pleasure forever. If you don't give me this money, then after you die 36 dogs will pee on you forever in the afterlife. You can't be sure, but compared to an eternity, its worth paying me right? This demonstrates just how flawed Pascal's Wager is.

More Than Nothing to Lose

Pascal's wager tends to assert that by believing in a god, you lose nothing. For one thing, you go through life believing a lie, which is a bad thing in itself. Most believers spend time in a church or synagogue or mosque and contribute a lot of money as well. Those massive churches and cathedrals you see around town are funded by those donations, and all of that is a waste if the god does not exist. Religious organizations are tax exempt, so all of that money could instead be going to schools and healthcare. Additionally, when you accept the mindset where you can just answer a question with 'God did it' you have little incentive to continue exploring the question. This limits us in both scientific inquiry, science education, and morality. Rather than actually thinking about what you do, you accept an arbitrary code of conduct, which may be fundamentally flawed. For anyone who says there is no downside to people believing, I encourage them to read up on the details of the story of Andrea Yates. She had five children, and their ages were approaching the teens. She was worried they would stop believing in God and did not want them to go to Hell. She murdered her five children because she reasoned that she would endure the fires of Hell if it meant that her children could be saved. Religion is not benign.

IV. Apostasy as the One Unforgivable Sin

According to this argument, the only way to go to Heaven is to believe, and if you do not then you go to Hell. This implies that if I spend my entire life doing only good deeds, and then I die because I jumped in front of a bus to save an orphan, I am sent to Hell where I will suffer an eternity of torture. On the other side, I can be a serial rapist who has killed 35 women, but as I'm getting shot down by the police, in the last three seconds of my life, if I say and mean, "Oh my god, I realized I was wrong, I believe now," then I go to an eternity of bliss. This is fundamentally flawed and immoral.

Hopefully this post has demonstrated just how flawed Pascal's Wager is. You admit not to know God's will, you have no idea which god, if any, exists, you do have something to lose by spending your life believing in a god, and your claim posits a completely immoral system of solifidarianism or salvation by faith alone. The argument is in many ways flawed.

cectic.com