Is this a good argument against God's existence?
Posted on: January 3, 2010 - 2:42am
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Is this a good argument against God's existence?
Argument for Atheism
P1: God is non-physical.
P2: God has a mind.
P3: Non-physical entities cannot include physical processes, or they would cease to be non-physical.
P4: Information processing requires physical processes, i.e. expenditure of energy.
P5: Mind requires information processing.
C1: Therefore, God cannot exist.
Are the premises self-evident, or do any require justification?
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Well...
Just to be pedantic, this only disqualifies some gods.
Again... you're going to get some resistance to this. Of course, you're perfectly justified in asking how a being can "think" without a "mind," but what I'm getting at is that you've got a lot of undefined terms, and theists will exploit that fact while continuing to leave their own undefined terms.
You're going to have to be more specific here. In other words, you need to demonstrate that the non-physical (whatever that is... DEFINITIONS!!) cannot replicate physical processes in a non-physical way.
It's a bold claim without further backing. Why?
I'm pretty much ok with this. Mind being an information processing device by definition.
Honestly, you're going to get ripped to shreds. You have too many undefined terms.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
On the other hand, theists love undefined or vague terms, it is where their god hides. There's a catch though, they insist they are the ones that get to assert the undefined terms.
Not really.
ciarin.com
I would get rid of the first two premises, because they contradict the conclusion. Premise three is not self-evident to me. It might be possible for a non-physical entity to contain some physical processes. This premise is almost true by definition. Premise four is not self-evident to me. It might be possible for non-physical entities to process information. I agree with Hambydammit that premise five is true by definition.
The conclusion is on shaky ground. I don't know of a sound argument that "God cannot exist."
I beg your pardon. My above statement does not apply to the pagans, who just believe in weird shit.
Ok, thanks for the replies. I see how the first two premises contradict the conclusion. I really just included those to define what type of "God" I was talking about. I wasn't trying to argue against physical or mindless Gods.
Thanks for pointing out the other errors and weak points. I'm just starting to study logic so I figured I would make many mistakes at first.
Fixed.
ciarin.com