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The greatest possible being needn't be anything impossible

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2014

PATRICK TODD
PATRICK TODD*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Dugald Stewart Building, 4.04a, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD, UK e-mail: ptodd2@staffmail.ed.ac.uk
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Abstract

There are various argumentative strategies for advancing the claim that God does not exist. One such strategy is this. First, one notes that God is meant to have a certain divine attribute (such as omniscience). One then argues that having the relevant attribute is impossible. One concludes that God doesn't exist. For instance, Dennis Whitcomb's recent paper, ‘Grounding and omniscience’, proceeds in exactly this way. As Whitcomb says, ‘I'm going to argue that omniscience is impossible and that therefore there is no God.’ This is not, I hope to show, a very promising way to start a paper. If having a given property is impossible, the greatest possible being need not have that property. Accordingly, the argumentative strategy in question is doomed to failure. The upshot of this article is a quite general one concerning how arguments against the existence of God in fact must proceed.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 531 - 542
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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