Atheism Incoherent

Perhaps I may share a moment of solidarity with our presuppositionalist brethren.

Cornelius Van Til once used the imagery of a child on his grandfather’s lap. This is not a good child. He is pulling at the beard of his grandfather in defiance. He is hitting and insulting. At any moment he wants, the grandfather has more than enough strength to cast the child off and put an end to this impertinent display, but, being loving and patient, he does not. The child is oblivious in the midst of his tantrum that he is carrying on like this only on the good graces of another. Now this child represents the atheist and the grandfather represents God. The atheist is borrowing from God.

The atheist, in order to make a logical case, cannot be content to show that God probably does not exist, nor even that the theist has not made his own point. For atheism to be demonstrated as true, the position has to show how God cannot exist, that it would be unintelligible for Him to exist. This has been called “logical atheology” because, like agnosticism, the “a” signifies the claim to a negation of the content in question. Here it is not knowledge (gnosis) per se, but God (theos) as a whole. Now most will take the first track that Corduan lays out, namely, that “It is virtually impossible to prove a negative.”1 If one takes an inductive approach to disproving a negative, one must possess exhaustive knowledge and establish an exhaustive search. Clearly that won’t work. On the other hand, a deductive approach will have to show that the idea itself is logically self-contradictory, as in our examples of the square-circles or married bachelors.

The Basic Problem with Logical Atheology

All arguments against God on the ground that his existence is logically impossible must have God exist in order to work. There are two basic forms. Either one or more attributes of God is pit against others (God versus God atheology) or else one divine attribute is pit against an attribute of the world, usually evil (God versus world atheology). 

Now in order to frame any such proposition, the subject of the proposition (divine attribute A) must exist, at least in theory, in order to be predicated of such and such. However, because this is not an evidential argument but a logical argument, the conclusion is not merely that it is not reasonable to believe in God or that God probably does not exist. The argument is that God necessarily does not and cannot exist because the attribute (A) has not only never existed, but can never exist by definition. 

But here lies the essential difficulty as well: If attribute A can never exist, nothing like it ever has. “A” would have as much cognitive meaning as a square-circle or a married-bachelor. Now what follows? It follows that, whatever form the rest of the argument takes will be an argument that, for example, Omniscience (A) either would or could do X, or that Omnipotence (A) is or does X, or that Goodness (A) never does X, and so on. But if the argument makes good on its claims, then the subject of any of these propositions is a non-subject and can have no predicates. Even Feuerbach, in the course of attempting to show that the divine is the projection of man’s nature, said as much,

“To deny all the qualities of a being is equivalent to denying the being himself. A being without qualities is one which cannot become an object to the mind, and such a being is virtually non-existent.”2

Nothing could ever be known about a non-thing.

Some Examples of Logical Atheology

Let us take the example of divine omniscience. There are several ways in which God’s existence has been called into question on account of this attribute. Yet in order to show what omniscience would or could do, or what it is and is not, omniscience has to exist at least as a coherent concept, even if not as an actual entity. If it did not exist precisely because it could never exist, then “it” (there wouldn’t be an it) could not be anything, nor do anything. Consider,

1. God is, by definition, omniscient.

2. An omniscient being would (or could) do x.

3. Yet this God cannot (and does not) do x.

4. Therefore, an omniscient being (God) cannot exist.

5. Therefore, omniscience cannot exist by definition.

6. That which cannot exist cannot be or do anything (x or otherwise).

∴ An omniscient being would or could do a thing and cannot be said to be or do that thing, at the same time and in the same relation.

This conclusion will no doubt cause the atheist to object. Nevertheless, both sides of the contradiction come from his own premises—the first part from premise 2 and the second part from premise 6.

To put things in a different, but much more concise way—Contradictions in terms do not signify possible things (nor, for that same reason, actual things).

Consider now that,

1. God is, by definition, immortal.

2. Immortality cannot be mortal by definition.

∴ “God dies” is a contradiction in terms

Why? It is because the subject term is synonymous with immortality. Hence the logical equivalent of “God dies” is “The immortal is mortal,” or, in other words “The immortal is not the immortal.” Likewise with “God lies,” as,

1. God is, by definition, truth.

2. Truth cannot be false by definition.

∴ “God lies” is a contradiction in terms.

To this an atheist will naturally object, “You are only defining ‘God’ that way! But why should I accept your definition?”

My reply would be: First, because you have an interest in doing so. Whatever other concept of “God” you may have refuted, you have’t done it to this one. Your work is not done until you do so. Second, it is because if you have any familiarity with Christian theism at all, you know perfectly well that its conception of God is as a Being who has immortality and truth in Himself. So, in short, you should refute this idea of God as you will be exposed as having only knocked down a straw man if you shrink back from it. Let us then examine what are the most frequent challenges of this atheology.

A Little Story-Telling Conceals the Contradiction

The notion that God ought to be able to “make a rock too heavy for himself to lift” has made many feel clever and others confused. But it involves two basic errors. First, it places upon the Christian theist a burden of defending a notion that they do not mean by “God.” So it is another straw man. Second, its notion of divine omnipotence is incoherent in any event, which is also no longer the Christian theist’s problem.

In keeping with our practice of translating supposed logical problems into the proper terms of logic, we should say that this “dilemma” is logically equivalent to the proposition that “An omnipotent being can lack a power,” which is a violation of the law of non-contradiction. C. S. Lewis has a relevant discussion on what he calls the “intrinsically impossible” in Ch. 2 of The Problem of Pain that answers this very well. There he wrote, 

“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say, ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, ‘God can.’ It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”3

Now why should we compare the two terms Lewis exposes as contradictory—(A) “God gives free will to x.” (~A) “God does not give free will to x.”—to our skeptical friend’s conundrum? It is simply that what he is really referring to is the state of affairs that, (A) “God has power to do all things.” and (~A) “God does not have power to do all things,” offering this rock as a counter-example (i.e. one power he lacks). But we must next ask: Is this instance of ~A truly a coherent thing? The question is begged. Indeed an incoherent straw man of omnipotence as “power to ‘possess’ non-power” (A = ~A) has been embedded (unwittingly, no doubt) within the larger contradiction. Whatever else this logical monstrosity is, it is certainly not the theist notion of God, and so it is in no sense our burden to defend.

Ralph McInerny gave a summary very much like Lewis’s in saying:

“Things that are impossible because they make no sense cannot be caused by God and this is scarcely a restriction on or a diminution of his omnipotence. That God cannot bring it about that what is true is also false does not detract from his power. Can God bring it about that the past has not been?”4

Some Christians will balk at putting things in this way, preferring instead to say that God cannot do anything that violates His character. Of course we agree with this entirely, but we insist that the way that Lewis and McInerny put this is not at all inconsistent with this and in fact adds important dimensions of insight.

Even the famous “Invisible Gardner” parable told by the atheist philosopher Anthony Flew really depends upon the same borrowing. Because it takes the form of a parable and an exasperated conclusion, we may easily miss the unspoken conditional premise: All difference-making-causal-beings are sensory-detected-effect-producing-causal-beings. It may be countered by the atheist that while this is not stated as a premise, it is no matter, because this is obviously what is challenged openly by the concluding words of the last speaker in the parable. But surely this makes the parable an intellectually lazy cop-out. The intelligent theist is well aware that this is where the debate it. That being the case, our counter-premise is nowhere represented by this parable.

We maintain that causal beings may (and, in fact, ultimately do, as it relates to ultimate efficient causes) produce exactly the sort of effects that are not observable. This is not a matter of “convenience,” but of intelligible kind. And this is true even of those causes that all parties would agree are scientific in nature, since all material phenomena are more ultimately owing to causation on the quantum level, which cannot be observed.

All of this to say, the atheist must always assume this or that divine attribute’s intelligibility (precisely in a way that has no duplicates, lest he violate the LNC the other way around) in order to show why it is incoherent. This then implies: “Divine attribute A is and is not” at the same time and in the same relation. Therefore, all possible forms of atheism are a violation of the law of non-contradiction.

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1. Winfried Corduan, No Doubt About It: The Case for Christianity (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997), 83.

2. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1957), 14.

3. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 25.

4. Ralph McInerny, St. Thomas Aquinas (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1977), 35.