Quentin Smith tries so hard
My friend L. tells me that if she were to become a collector, she would collect adorably insufficient proofs for the existence of God. I have to concur, but I’m afraid that she has left out an important set of collectibles: adorably insufficient arguments for atheism. A fine start to anyone’s collection would be Quentin Smith’s A Formal Logic Proof of Atheism [Internet Infidels].
Now, I am not a Christian in any sense, and generally speaking the only particular sympathies I have for religion are aesthetic ones. However, I have to laugh each time one of these little arguments comes along down the Internet atheist pipeline. Quentin has apparently devoted quite a few words in his career to attempting to show that God cannot cause the universe under ordinary understandings of the word cause
. I really have to wonder why he thinks that he has accomplished anything even if he does show this; what theist in the world is really going to have that much of a problem with saying O.K., I was speaking sloppily, God’s will logically necessitates the universe’s existence rather than causing it per se. My bad. Now why should I accept premise (5)?
But hey, Quentin, plug away. My collection is still in its infancy.
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I am suspicious of anything that claims to prove or disprove God. The Universe can carry on physical processes with no requirement of any mythic divinity, but existence itself is the most miraclous thing imaginable. I have come across an intriguing modern perspective the subject, claiming that the Universe is itself God. http://www.ctmu.org