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.

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