Mitchell LeBlanc, owner of UrbanPhilosophy.net and Philosophy of Religion student at University of Toronto, has recently proposed “A Possible Disproof of God’s Existence,” which is basically a slight reformulation of an argument presented by Michael Martin about twenty years ago, [1] wherein LeBlanc simply replaces all instances of “omniscient” with “triune” instead. In this argument he attempts to prove that God does not exist—indeed cannot exist—by reason of a logical contradiction. Whether or not his argument achieves its aim shall be the subject of this brief article.

Although I will not be analyzing Martin’s argument directly here, I will be doing so indirectly since LeBlanc’s argument is essentially identical to it; therefore, any criticism that applies to one will apply to the other. The argument LeBlanc constructs is as follows:

(1) If God exists, then God is necessarily omnipotent and necessarily triune.

(2) If God is necessarily omnipotent, then God necessarily can bring about any logically possible state of affairs.

(3) If God necessarily can bring about any logically possible state of affairs, then God necessarily can bring about a state of affairs that is brought about by a being that is not necessarily triune.

(4) If God necessarily can bring about a state of affairs that is brought about by a being that is not necessarily triune, then God is not necessarily triune.

(5) Therefore, God does not and cannot exist

What LeBlanc is attempting to argue for here is that God possesses attributes which logically contradict each other. To fashion an argument which proves that God cannot exist is something of a Holy Grail to many atheists, and continues to be every bit as elusive as that mysterious chalice. In this argument LeBlanc reaches out to grasp it but finds only air, for his argument commits a substantial error in reasoning.

Given the first two premises (which must be given, as we are confronting orthodox Christian theism), his third premise ought never obtain; i.e., in order to obtain (3) LeBlanc is forced to contradict (1) and (2)!

How so? Consider what it is that (3) asserts: that God necessarily can bring about some X such that it was brought about by a being that is not necessarily triune. But given (2) which defines omnipotence as being able to “bring about any logically possible state of affairs,” and given (1) which defines God as “necessarily triune” (it is not logically possible for God to not be triune), we therefore observe that (3) contradicts these very premises—so that it is not God who vanishes in a puff of contradiction but rather LeBlanc’s argument.

[1] Martin, Michael. Atheism: A philosophical justification (1990), pg. 310, as cited by LeBlanc.

Over at UrbanPhilosophy.net is a Philosophy of Religion student from the University of Toronto, Mitchell LeBlanc, who has been endeavouring to make a case against presuppositional apologetics. Coursing a new direction from his original first three drafts, [1] perhaps due to the daunting scope of such a task or perhaps due to the criticisms from Chris Bolt and others at ChoosingHats.com, [2] the final draft version of the article [3] targets the Transcendental Argument for God (TAG) as argued for by the late philosopher Greg L. Bahnsen from Covenant Media Foundation.

As did his mentor Cornelius Van Til, Bahnsen defended the transcendental argument as singularly the only cogent and self-consistent Christian apologetic method by virtue of being uniquely grounded upon the distinctive presuppositions of revelational epistemology. [4] Van Til’s extensive work is considered by some to be a contribution to Christian philosophy of Copernican dimensions, [5] wherein he demonstrated by indirect proof the existence of God as the necessary precondition for the intelligibility of reality and the human experience thereof, such that God, as affirmed by Christian orthodoxy, is not a conclusion drawn from rational argument (evidentialism) but is logically prior to any reasoning at all (presuppositionalism). [6] As Van Til framed the matter in his An Introduction to Systematic Theology, “Unless God exists as ultimate [and] self-subsistent, we could not even know anything; we could not even reason that God must exist, nor could we even ask a question about God.” [7]

LeBlanc at this point holds a considered view that the TAG is not merely debatable but in fact false, taking as his point of evaluation the fundamental laws of logic, concluding that they “cannot depend on the Christian God” and therefore the TAG “is not sound”—and must remain so “pending further defense” thereof. His bold conclusion notwithstanding, we may inquire with skepticism whether or not LeBlanc really has successfully defeated the TAG as it already stands, never mind its further defense.

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On Tuesday of last week I had posted on Twitter the following introspection:

“Atheism is conceit in ignorance. Christianity is humility in knowledge.”

Now it seems that an atheist named Roger Sinasohn, who I do not know, discovered my post and decided it deserved a critical response, and soon we were engaged in what can be called my first Twitter debate. (Let me tell you, nothing can force you to articulate and defend your position with succinct clarity like a 140-characters restriction!) The following is the material content of that debate. I hope you enjoy it. It will be updated until completed.

8 December 2009 — Present (updated 16/Dec/09)

Sinasohn: Thinking that the entire universe was created just for you is humility? Wow. I’m sure glad you’re not conceited.

davidinbc: God did not create the universe for the universe (‘we’ are part of it). He created it for himself.

Sinasohn: I see. You’re saying god is the conceited one. All this is just his playground & we’re one of his toys. Makes sense.

davidinbc: Given the word’s definition, God can’t be conceited. Still waiting for a reply that can stand rationally.

Sinasohn: You believe in an all-powerful god. You think he likes you (humans/christians) best. You think that makes you humble.

Sinasohn: I don’t believe in god. I think the universe is huge and that I am not even as important (in the grand scheme of things)…

Sinasohn: …not even as important as bellybutton lint. And you say that atheism is conceited. See No. 1: http://bit.ly/8gXjPr

davidinbc: Christianity confesses that mankind are sinners deserving of God’s wrath, the antithesis of that definition you cited. Next?

davidinbc: (P.S., That you don’t believe in God proves the conceit, not refutes it.)

Sinasohn: I am no sinner; I’ve done nothing wrong. What did you do? And why do you think god cares?

Sinasohn: There are billions of people on this planet alone — what makes you so special that god gives a rat’s ass about you?

Sinasohn: Do you believe in Thor? Zeus? Ra? Ganesh? No? Does that make you conceited?

davidinbc: The definition of ‘sinner’ is one who disobeys God’s commands; ergo, you are a sinner by definition. We all are, including me.

davidinbc: And there is nothing special about me. God’s love is in the context of Christ alone, about whom much is special.

davidinbc: And my disbelief in idols has nothing to do with my self-estimation. A brutal non-sequitur, there.

Sinasohn: But you are claiming it is my disbelief in idols that makes me conceited. How is your god any different from anyone else’s god?

Sinasohn: So you’re are saying that god knows nothing of you, cares nothing about you, doesn’t even notice you, tiny speck in the universe?

Sinasohn: If that’s the case, why notice him? Why care about, let alone worship god? Or are you saying that god does pay attention to you?

Sinasohn: If you think god cares about you, then you are conceited, like an obsessed fan thinking a rockstar notices them in the crowd.

davidinbc: God cares about me because of who Christ is and what he did, not because of who I am or anything I’ve done (not conceited).

davidinbc: Either God is the authority over human reason (not conceited), or human reason is the authority over God (conceited). So, next?

Sinasohn: You’re saying that god (or his kid) cares about you personally out of the billions on this planet, not to mention elsewhere?

Sinasohn: Again, that’s like being in the crowd as the president drives by and thinking he’s smiling at you specifically. That’s conceit.

Sinasohn: And if you’re going to say god (all-powerful, ‘member?) can care about everyone, then I’ll ask why doesn’t he?

Sinasohn: god is auth over humans or humans over god… or god don’t exist. I’ll take door no. 3.

davidinbc: It’s conceit only if God’s caring has to do with who I am or what I’ve done, which it doesn’t. Look at the definition again.

davidinbc: And he sent his only Son to justify the ungodly, even though we deserved condemnation. How much more caring do you need?

davidinbc: Door 3: human reason is the authority over God, by assuming him out of every category.

Sinasohn: god sent his son to be killed just to absolve you? Wow. He likes you more than his own kid. You both sure think a lot of you.

davidinbc: God’s love for anyone is BECAUSE of Christ. He thinks highly of the Son, in whom sinners are saved because of it.

There is a writer at Examiner.com who is also a member of the AtheistForums.org web site, Jacqueline Lavache (Eilonnwy), who frequently draws attention to the articles she writes as the Boston Atheism Examiner. (Since the web site compensates its writers in a fashion similar to that of Helium and Associated Content, I certainly do not begrudge her frequent solicitations.) There is a particular article she wrote about three months ago that she has made some references to in recent conversations, so I decided to give it a look and review what she had to say. The article is entitled “Standards of Evidence: Why the Bible is not proof of God.” Click on the link and give it a read, helping her earn a buck, and then switch back to here for my review.

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In the “Merciful vs. Just” article, I addressed a question from an atheist named Fluke about possible conditions under which God may be deemed more virtuous. Specifically, he wanted to know if God would be more virtuous if he were more merciful. Given that virtuous means conforming to moral and ethical principles or morally excellent, this calls for a theory of ethics (values and morals); and given that the question was framed as a critique of God, it had to be uniquely Christian.

But since a Christian theory of ethics would hold that something is virtuous or morally excellent by the degree to which it conforms to the nature and will of God—as moral order is grounded in the very nature of God and expressed prescriptively by his commands—it seemed unclear to me how the nature and will of God could conform to any greater degree to the nature and will of God. It seemed nonsensical to ask how God could greater than himself.

This, however, struck Fluke as prima facie unsatisfactory because to him that seemed to create a dissonance. If moral order is grounded in the very nature of God, then how is it possible for Fluke to have a moral opinion contrary to God? So he asked me (a) if I believed that “God imbued man with a sense of morality,” and if so, (b) “then how could it be that our own God-given sense of morality is so very ‘out of alignment’ with God’s morality?” The answer is at once both simple and historically known.

If moral order is grounded in the very nature of God and mankind was created in the image of God, then we have an intelligible account for man’s innate intuition of an objective morality. But how is it possible for this God-given moral compass be so very ‘out of alignment’ with God’s morality? The answer is simple and historic: mankind exists in a fallen sinful state. That free agency which manifests the human imago Dei also manifests itself in estrangement from God, as told in the myth* of the Fall in the book of Genesis. According to this myth, mankind in his freedom can choose to deny or repress their spiritual and moral likeness to God—“the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom. 1:18-32).

Which is the very reason how and why Fluke can have a moral opinion contrary to God. Although mankind as imago Dei possesses that innate intuition of an objective moral order, by his sinful condition and rebellion against God that moral compass is broken. It is a compass that is wilfully uncalibrated against true morality, which is found nowhere else but the sovereign and holy God revealed in the sacred Scriptures. The varied attempts to ground moral order anywhere but in God also explains the disparate moralities found throughout the world—although at the most basic moral level there is no real disparity which, once again, makes sense under a human imago Dei created by a God in whom moral order is ultimately grounded.

____________________

* I do not mean “myth” in the pejorative sense common in anti-theist sentiment, viz. an invented or imaginary story. I mean it in the real and classic sense of “a traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society” (as found in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004).

Over at the AtheistForums.org web site there is one particular member who has been claiming rather consistently that God (as described by Christian theism) exhibits several fundamental contradictions. Given the ubiquitous popularity of such a view among the lowing Dawkinsian herd, I thought it might be a worthwhile investment of my time and energies to engage that claim in a formal debate. So I challenged her.

And she accepted.

The debate will take place over the course of the next few weeks (perhaps five or six when allowing for responses to audience questions) but once it is completed I will make an announcement here—and quite probably will make it available as a PDF document from this web site, in the interest of those who might want to print it and read it offline at their leisure. That is subject to my debate partner’s agreement, of course, but since the debate will already be in public domain at AtheistForums.org I cannot foresee why she would refuse.

So, I will announce when the debate is completed.

(P.S. The informal debate with William Brall for the time being is suspended. Not sure what has happened but he has not yet withdrawn, although he may as well have.)

UPDATE: 6 September 2009

First, the gender of my opponent was clarified; pronouns here were corrected. Second, she has given her consent to the completed debate being made available from this site.

Furthermore, the debate has been structured and agreed upon, including the number of rounds and the deadlines for each. We now know that the debate will be concluded the first week of October:

• Opening Statements (11/Sep/09 23:59 hrs. Pacific)
• Response to Opening Statements (18/Sep/09 23:59 hrs. Pacific)
• Rebuttal Against Responses (25/Sep/09 23:59 hrs. Pacific)
• Closing Statements (2/Oct/2009 23:59 hrs. Pacific)

UPDATE: 29 September 2009

Unfortunately, the formal debate was terminated. It was by mutual agreement, but I still say “unfortunately” because we were within one round of finishing the debate. So close. Anyhow, through private correspondence, Saerules had informed me that she wished to end the formal debate, having grown so frustrated with the environment and rules of a formal debate that she had lost nearly all interest in it. As you will likely be able to tell, it was her first experience with the format. Had she known what the constraints were in a formal debate, she probably would have chosen to have an informal one from the start.

At any rate, here is a PDF copy of the debate. Enjoy.

UPDATE: 15 October 2009

I just received official notice from Saerules that she is terminating even the informal debate. And so now with any form of the debate having been terminated by Saerules, plus William Brall likewise having abandoned a similar debate, Christianity is demonstrated as continuing to stand very firm against indefensible allegations of irrationality.

Really, I ought to keep track of my link trails. Although I don’t remember how I ended up reading this particular article, I do remember reaching the Duane’s Mind site from the blogroll at Matthew Hamilton’s web site, Thoughts Out Loud. So Matthew is generating traffic for you, Duane.

At any rate, the article I was reading was called “The ‘Innocent’ Heathen” which Duane had republished on 16 July 2008. [1] It was a fairly decent article exposing the nonsense of thinking that unbelief was somehow the grounds upon which people find themselves condemned before God. As I have likewise argued repeatedly, it is not for unbelief that a man is condemned; rather, it is his sin that condemns him, and in his unbelief (itself a sin) he remains condemned. No man is ever in a neutral state; all mankind exists in a state of condemnation on account of sin. We all come from the same pool of death and darkness, of sin and moral ruin—and through unbelief, itself a sin, man remains there. We exist in death; only in Christ do we move to life. We exist in darkness; only in Christ do we move to light. We exist under God’s wrath; only in Christ is that wrath removed. We exist in condemnation; only in Christ are we justified.

So I agree with the basic argument Duane was putting forward. And it was well written. What caught my attention, however, were the objections being raised in the comments section by an atheist named Fluke. Although he can accept that here God is exhibiting justice, what troubles him is the apparent limits of God’s mercy. “Why does God choose to be merciful to some,” he asks, “yet others receive virtually no mercy?” From the fact that God is discriminating with his mercy, Fluke believes that God is less virtuous than he otherwise could be:

My question is, Why is God not completely merciful? Why is he merciful to some and not to others? … With God we have a judge that shows mercy to some and does not show mercy to others (seemingly randomly). God’s mercy is often trumpeted as one of his great virtues by Christians, so I was wondering what your opinion was on why God’s mercy is limited, and if God would be more virtuous if he was more merciful?

There are two things which must be placed in their proper context before the answers to this question can make sense and be understood. First, when it comes to both the justice and mercy of God, the context is the redemption of mankind—practically by definition, since these concepts presuppose the existence of sin. Second, the significant difference between justice and mercy is important; justice is God delivering what we deserve, while mercy is God withholding what we deserve. With this in mind, let us have a look at the three essential questions that Fluke is asking.

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Bertrand Russell (Why I Am Not a Christian, pg. 12)

The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, you are then in this situation: Is that difference due to God’s fiat or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good.

This philosophical problem is commonly referred to as The Euthyphro Dilemma, the origin of which is found in The Dialogues of Plato. In this particular work, Socrates and Euthyphro are having a discussion about the nature of holiness (Lt. pietas) and Socrates sets the matter before him thus: “The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods” (Euthyphro, 10a)—an entanglement which Euthyphro was unable to find his way out of. In a contemporary setting the question is essentially identical, framed in the context of morality and often used as an attempted indictment against the coherence of Christian theism: “Is a thing moral because God commands it, or does God command it because it is moral?”

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Perhaps you can answer why God would not be able to create a state of affairs that violates the law of non-contradiction in some way?

Sure, but perhaps in a way that you might not expect.

Let nT stand for some self-contradiction.

It is not the case that God is unable to actualize nT. Rather, it is that nT is incapable of actualization. The former is a statement about God (and incompatible with omnipotence). The latter is a statement about nT (and says nothing about God). This is why Thomas Aquinas notes, "It is more exact to say that the intrinsically impossible is incapable of production, than to say that God cannot produce it."

The distinction that Aquinas underscores here is the fact that its impossibility is not due to some extrinsic feature (that which it has in relation to some thing outside itself); in other words, the idea that no agent can produce it is not what makes nT impossible. Rather, it is due to an intrinsic feature (that which it has in and of itself); in other words, the idea that it is incapable of production in and of itself, regardless of any agent, is what makes nT impossible.

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I had a brief discussion with an atheist on the question of morality (which began with him trying to understand when, according to the Bible, killing is immoral and when it isn’t, for he thought it was a very gray issue). If anyone wants to know how I answered the "killing" question, let me know and I shall post it. Otherwise, I want to share my response to him on the morality question itself.

I do not understand how someone can say, "You cannot have morals without religion." Don’t we have a conventional morality apart from God that adequately guides our moral choices?

Conventional morality is unreliable because it is man trying to interpret and understand his moral compass without acknowledging the source thereof. We have an innate sense of right and wrong because all mankind is created in the image of God, the ground of moral order. But if we ignore his Word and try to understand morality by our own sin-laden wisdom, we wander across very shaky terrain with inherently unreliable results.

But the situation is actually more desperate, for by dismissing God from the equation we actually end up with no intelligible morality at all. In a godless framework, man is just a biochemical collection of molecules and atoms operating according to the physical laws of the universe; things like morality, consciousness, knowledge, etc., are accidental illusions, i.e., not real. The logical conclusion of a godless framework is Nihilism.

You’re staking quite a large claim, that morality outside of Christianity cannot exist.

It seems you misunderstood my position. I certainly think morality can, and does, exist outside Christian theism. Remember, I said we all have "an innate sense of right and wrong because all mankind is created in the image of God, the ground of moral order." Christians are not by any means the only people who recognize right and wrong. Non-believers do too, quite obviously.

Christians are, however, the only ones who can account for morality qua morality. Non-believers are not able to do this, because "by dismissing God from the equation [they] actually end up with no intelligible morality at all." Non-believers have the capacity to recognize right and wrong (ethics), but they are incapable of accounting for this feature (meta-ethics) because the assumptions they bring to the task prevent them from transcending the descriptive to the prescriptive. In other words, at best they can achieve only biographical or sociological ‘is’ statements (descriptive); they cannot achieve moral ‘should’ statements (prescriptive).

Therein lies the rub. Most non-believers innately believe that certain things are properly immoral and objectively so, such as murdering children. But at the same time they seem unaware that such beliefs are not produced by their worldview, a cognitive deficit brought into sharp focus when they attempt to defend their moral stance by reaching into their worldview for the necessary currency and finding none. This is why I characterized it as "no intelligible morality." The view they express on a specific immoral act (such as murdering children) is often wildly inconsistent with the moral theory described by their worldview.

Incidentally, this is one reason why every Problem of Evil argument inescapably fails.