The Unmoved Mover and Quantum Physics

There aren't many philosophically sound arguments for the existence of God. If there were, there'd be a lot more theists by now and a lot less of everything else.

However, Doug Benscoter, at Fides et Ratio, believes that the cosmological argument of the Unmoved Mover is not only sound, but is even consistent with modern physics.

His formulation of the argument is:

1. Evident to the senses is motion. (Premise)

2. Everything in motion has its motion sustained by another. (Premise)

3. Either an Unmoved Mover exists, or else there is an infinite regress of sustaining movers. (Implied by 1 and 2)

4. There cannot be an infinite regress of sustaining movers. (Premise)

5. Therefore, an Unmoved Mover exists. (From 3 and 4)

He then goes on to briefly address a few issues that may arise with the second premise and explains how objections can be resolved by rewording the premise. A full explanation can be found HERE.

The only other objection I could see being raised is to premise 4, only because it comes close to begging the question. If there cannot be an infinite regress, then there must be a First Cause. Why would we even bother with the other premises?

Omniscience-Human Experience Incompatibility Argument

There seems to be a lot of these recycled arguments that claim that God cannot be omniscient because His divine nature precludes him from certain types of knowledge, such as knowledge of sin, or knowledge of what it is like to learn. Here is yet another of these arguments.

1. Fear is a feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by the presence or imminence of danger. (The American Heritage® Dictionary: 2000) 
2. If God exists, God cannot feel agitated, anxious or feel endangered. 
3. If God cannot know fear, he is not all-knowing. (Some would claim that it is against God's nature to be afraid. Exactly, then he cannot be omniscient. There are at least some things for which he is completely ignorant of. Stating that it's against his nature is a cop-out and a concession simultaneously.) 

It's basically the same argument those linked above, so it gets the same response.

“As man now is, God once was; as God is now man may be.” - Lorenzo Snow

Same-Sex Marriage and the Slippery Slope

It's an often used, and often mocked, argument against gay marriage that if gay marriage were legalized, it would pave the way for other types of "taboo" relationships, such as incest, polygamy, pedophilia, etc.

This argument is often dismissed on the grounds that it employs a logical fallacy known as the Slippery Slope.

HERE is an interesting post from Shameless Popery on the subject. Good for a quick read.

Let me hear what you think of the issue!

Your Logical Fallacy Is...

This sums up most of the comments on the internet.

HERE is a nice website that describes several dozen common logical fallacies used by theists, atheists and every other kind of -ist.

Just click the link above, or the one HERE, and scroll over the symbols to see a brief description of the fallacy.

I almost want to make this page required reading for anyone looking to comment here.

Or anywhere.

A Disproof of God's Existence (1970) by Michael Martin

If God is omniscient,
then can He be absolutely moral?

This is another article from Infidels.org which supposedly disproves at least one conception of God by pointing out the irrationality of one of God's attributes.  The article is very short and you can read it here.

The article presents an argument that God's absolute morality precludes Him from knowing what certain experiences are like, such as feelings of lust or envy.

The argument claims:

1. If God exists, God has not had feelings of lust or envy.
2. If God exists, God exists as a being who knows at least everything man knows.
3. If God exists as a being who knows at least everything man knows, God knows lust and envy.
4. If God knows lust and envy, God has had the feelings of lust and envy.
5. God exists. (By hypothesis.)
6. God has had and has not had the feelings of lust and envy. (By (1) - (5).)
7. God does not exist. (By (5) & (6)  Q. E. D.)

In other words, God's morality either makes Him a being who cannot be omniscient, or cannot be absolutely moral. If one imagines a God who is both omniscient and omni-benevolent, then there conception of God is impossible.

There article, perhaps in the interest of fairness, lists a few common objections and then addresses them. Many of the objections don't really hold water, but here is one objection which is not brought up, and I don't think Martin would be able to address it. He even admits that his argument is geared more towards the "common view" of God and acknowledges that no single argument can refute every conception of God. My objection involves a very uncommon view of God.

This disproof by Martin is very similar to the argument presented in Omniscience and Learning by Ryan Stringer. Therefore, the answer is very similar, too. 

"As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become." - Lorenzo Snow

Therefore, premise (1) is false and Martin's argument is invalid.

Omniscience and Learning by Ryan Stringer

Ryan Stringer, at Infidels.org., wrote and article called Omniscience and Learning. The article's main argument was that if God is omniscient (all-knowing), then it seems that he would have to know what it is like to learn. However, in order to know what it is like to learn, one must have learned something, which involves moving from a state of not-knowing to a state of knowing.

This entails that at one time we were in a state of not-knowing a thing that was learned, then experienced what it is like to learn. But if God is essentially omniscient, he always is and has been omniscient, so was never in a state of not-knowing. Because being in a state of not-knowing is necessary to know what it is like to learn, we would seem to have to say that God does not know what it is like to learn.

But this contradicts the original claim that he does know this based on his omniscience. Thus, it seems that God's omniscience generates a contradiction. Consequently an omniscient God cannot exist.

In response, I offer the following:

"As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become." - Lorenzo Snow

But Stringer predicted a defense much like this. He says,

"...a critic could reject committing to God's essential omniscience—the notion that, as an essential property, omniscience necessarily (and thus always) belongs to God. This imagined critic might think that at one time God was almost omniscient, and shortly thereafter acquired his last two pieces of knowledge—X, and what it is like to learn. However, this strange position has no obvious candidate for X, and in any case does not seem to be a real threat to the argument because P1[An essentially omniscient being, God, exists.] is a necessary truth by stipulation of the traditional conception of God as essentially omniscient."

In other words, it's possible to resolve this issue by admitting that there was a time when God "learned" something, but that would require the rejection of the traditional conception of God.

I'm OK with that.

The Six Ways of Atheism

A guy named Geoffrey Berg wrote a book called The Six Ways of Atheism (which is a pretentious reference to Aquinas' Five Ways).

This book was easily one of the most absurd books ever published, by anyone, on the philosophy of religion. A press release about the book stated, "For the first time in human history multiple, absolute, valid, logical, simple disproofs of God's existence have been published."

Because no one has ever written a book questioning the existence of God?

It also claimed that "this should be 'The End For The God Concept'."

Here is a list of links to each of the six ways and a look at some of the problems with each.

1. The ‘Some Of God’s Defining Qualities Cannot Exist’ Argument
2. The ‘God Has No Explanatory Value’ Argument
3. The Aggregate of Qualities Argument
4. The ‘This Is Not The Best Possible World’ Argument
5. The Man And God Comprehension Gulf Argument
6. The Universal Uncertainty Argument

Oh, wait. Maybe it's satire...

The ‘Some Of God’s Defining Qualities Cannot Exist’ Argument

The awkwardly named ‘Some Of God’s Defining Qualities Cannot Exist’ Argument claims that, well, some of God's defining qualities cannot exist, therefore God cannot exist. That's about it. It goes like this;

1. God must have certain characteristic qualities (such as providing purpose to life), otherwise he would not be God.
2. But it is impossible for any entity to possess some of these qualities (such as providing purpose to life since we can find no real purpose and therefore we in practice have no ultimate purpose to our lives) that are essential to God.
3. Therefore since some of God’s essential qualities (such as being the purpose provider to life) cannot possibly exist in any entity, God cannot exist.

This argument is so weak, that it has to have an example built into it in order to seem valid. In order to emphasize this problem, here is the argument again by itself, without the flimsy, parenthetical support.

1. God must have certain characteristic qualities, otherwise he would not be God.
2. But it is impossible for any entity to possess some of these qualities that are essential to God.
3. Therefore since some of God’s essential qualities cannot possibly exist in any entity, God cannot exist.

The reason the parenthetical example about the purpose of life is weak is because we do not need to understand the purpose of life in order for there to be a purpose. 

For example, if a child was taking a test in kindergarten, that child would not need to understand the principles of early childhood development, elementary school administration, or teacher accountability in order for that test to have a purpose. The test has a purpose regardless of whether or not the child is aware of it.

In addition, the claim that we "can find no real purpose" is unsupported. Theists claim that we can certainly find purpose through such sources as "religious experience", or sacred texts. The validity of these sources is still debated between theists and atheists, so the argument is just begging the question by assuming these sources are invalid. 

So this argument cannot even be considered valid until some consensus is made regarding the validity of spiritual sources. But that would end the debate of whether or not God exists.Therefore, this argument simply cannot ever be considered a valid argument. If we were ever in a position where it could, then the question will have already been answered.

But even without the poor example, this argument is still just a recycled version of other arguments, such as the Problem of Evil and the Aggregate of Qualities Argument. Not only does this argument bring absolutely nothing new to the debate over God's existence, but even if it did, it would be no stronger, but much less supported, than arguments that have already been around for a long time.

The ‘God Has No Explanatory Value’ Argument

The argument that God has no explanatory value is another appeal to Occam's Razor in order to show that God is nothing but an unnecessary complication. If it can be shown that God's existence would not contribute to our understanding of the world, then we may dismiss God as unnecessary. 

A more common version of this argument claims that if God were used as an explanation, then we would then need an explanation for God, and an explanation for the explanation, etc, and therefore, God has no real explanatory value. However, the same can be said of the universe.

Instead, this version claims that if God were used as an explanation, then it simply wouldn't explain anything.

The argument is:

1. God if he exists must be the ultimate being and provide the answer to all our ultimate questions – otherwise he is not really God.
2. Yet even supposing as a hypothesis that God exists the questions that God was supposed to finally answer still remain (though in some cases God is substituted in the question for the Universe).
3. Therefore hypothesising God’s existence is only unnecessarily adding an extra stage to such problems and has no real explanatory value.
4. Therefore according to Logic (Occam’s Razor Law – ‘that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity’) we should not postulate God’s existence and there is no adequate reason to suppose that God exists.
5. Therefore we should suppose that God does not exist.

The problem with this is that many of the premises are either unsupported or much too vague. For example, what are these "ultimate questions" which would go unanswered?

If we knew that God existed, we would also know how the universe was created, where we came from, the purpose and meaning of life, whether or not there is a soul and an afterlife, whether there is objective morality, why there is suffering and evil, etc.

Are there really any "ultimate questions" which would go unanswered?

In addition, if we were basing God's plausibility on the extent to which His existence would answer deep, philosophical question, then we should come to the opposite conclusion. Questions such as the meaning of life or the whether there is life after death are simply not questions that are answerable by science, or even philosophy.

If the reasoning in this argument is correct, then we should assume that God exists, because it actually explains more than science or philosophy could. It would answer questions that fall outside of the scope of scientific study.

If this argument is correct, then we should simply assume that God exists.

The Aggregate of Qualities Argument

"...also, I can juggle!"

The Aggregate of Qualities Argument tries to claim that if there is a God, then He must have a certain combination of supernatural qualities, such as omnipotence, omniscience, omni-benevolence, etc. It is impossible for these qualities to exist in one  being, therefore God is impossible.

Here it is:

1. If God exists, God must necessarily possess all of several remarkable qualities (including supreme goodness, omnipotence, immortality, omniscience, ultimate creator, purpose giver).
2. Every one of these qualities may not exist in any one entity and if any such quality does exist it exists in few entities or in some cases (e.g. omnipotence, ultimate creator) in at most one entity.
3. Therefore it is highly unlikely any entity would possess even one of these qualities.
4. There is an infinitesimal chance that any one entity (given the almost infinite number of entities in the Universe) might possess the combination of even some two of these qualities, let alone all of them.
5. In statistical analysis a merely hypothetical infinitesimal chance can in effect be treated as the no chance to which it approximates so very closely.
6. Therefore as there is statistically such an infinitesimal chance of any entity possessing, as God would have to do, all God’s essential qualities in combination it can be said for all practical and statistical purposes that God just does not exist.

The argument hinges on the idea that these supernatural qualities cannot all exist in the same entity, but there is no evidence for this. Why can't the same being be both omnipotent and omniscient? Is there a single pair of godly attributes which directly contradict each other?

Some attributes seem to be self-contradictory, such as the Omnipotence Paradox or the Omniscience/Free Will Paradox, but these are easily resolved.

The only instance I know of more than one godly attribute in conflict is the Problem of Evil, but even that has many plausible refutations.

If all of there is no reason why these qualities cannot exist in the same being, then the argument falls apart.

The statistical portion is not only irrelevant to the rest of the argument, but also irrelevant to the question of God. Theists admit that in all of creation, there is only one. Of course the odds are infinitesimal.

But even if there was nothing in creation that possessed any of these qualities, it would still have no bearing on whether or not there was a God. A creator is not obligated to be like the creation.

The ‘This Is Not The Best Possible World’ Argument

The argument that this is not the best of all possible worlds is a watered down version of the Problem of Evil. The Argument is that if there is a God who is omnipotent and omni-benevolent, then we would have created a very different world.

The argument claims that:


1. God if he exists must be omnipotent, supremely good and our ultimate creator.
2. Therefore an existent God (being supremely good and competent) would have created the best possible world (if he created anything).
3. As the world is inconsistent (between ages and people) it cannot all be the best possible world.
4. Therefore as the world is not the best possible world, God cannot exist.

This argument makes the claim that a perfect God would have created the best of all possible worlds, and that  this is not the best of all possible worlds, therefore there is no God.

But how do we know that this is not the best of all possible worlds? What would we compare this world to in order to realize that this is not the best of all possible worlds? All of the other planets which we have discovered seem less ideal, in one way or another, than the Earth. Based on solely empirical evidence, it would initially seem like this is the best of all possible worlds.

One may argue that even the Earth could be better, such as a world without disease, or one in which our bodies are designed in a way that doesn't break down with age.

At this point, when speculating about the "best of all possible worlds," we should ask, "best at what?"

They say you can't make a better mousetrap, and this is because a mousetrap does what it does simply and effectively, but it's only good when applied toward one objective: trapping mice. When applied toward a different objective, such as opening cans, then you could certainly find a better tool than a mousetrap.

In other words, a mousetrap is the best of all possible tools (that we know of), but only at a single application.

The world is the same. It was created for a particular purpose (assumed in the argument), and it may be the best of all possible creations for that purpose, but it may seem like a cruel, unjust place if we don't understand the purpose for which it was created.

I'm not gong to go into what that purpose is, because every religion and denomination has its own view, but theism generally agrees that the world was created for a purpose.

So for the argument to clam that this is not the best of all possible worlds is to assume that the world was actually made for a purpose, and that we fully understand what that purpose is. Some denominations may make the claim that we understand that, some don't. 

Nevertheless, this argument has no power to disprove the existence of God. At best, it can disprove individual religions, but I doubt even the most zealous atheist has to patience to understand the doctrine of every religion in order to disprove them all, one by one.

The second option is that this argument could be used to support agnosticism because we do not know what the purpose is, therefore we do not know if this is the best of all possible worlds.

Either way, this is not an argument for atheism. In order for it to be an argument for atheism, we would would have to have a certain understanding of the purpose for which the Earth was created. However, if that were the case, then we would know that the universe was created by a God for a purpose.

In other words, even if this was an atheistic argument, it would be self-refuting.

The Man And God Comprehension Gulf Argument

The Man and God Comprehension Gulf Argument claims that the nature of God is so vastly foreign to us that we are not only unable to fully comprehend it, but we cannot even be aware of its existence.

Geoffrey Berg, author of The Six Ways of Atheism, said the argument "[described] the unbridgeable gulf in comprehension (and identification) for a mortal with any supposedly immortal entity."

The arguments claims that:


1. Man is finite (in time, space and power etc).
2. God if he exists is infinite (in time, space and power etc).
3. Therefore mankind cannot possibly recognize God or even know that God exists.

This argument is extremely problematic for several reasons. The first is simply that it is demonstrably false. Man is aware of many things which are infinite, such as numbers or the gravitational mass of a singularity. If Berg's reasoning was correct, then we never would have invented mathematics.

While it may be true that we cannot recognize God, which even theists admit, it does not follow that we cannot be aware of His existence through thought and reason, which is exactly what Aquinas' Five Ways tried to do. It also does not mean that an infinite entity cannot reveal itself through "religious experience."

In other words, the argument asserts conclusions which are not supported by the premises.

The Universal Uncertainty Argument

The Universal Uncertainty Argument is an argument against the existence of God that claims that He cannot exist because omniscience is impossible. It is allegedly a logical paradox, stating that, "God cannot exist because God cannot know for sure that it is God."

The full argument, as a syllogism, runs as follows:

1. An uncertain God is a contradiction in terms.
2. Everything in the Universe must be fundamentally uncertain about its own relationship to the Universe as a whole because there is no way of attaining such certainty.
3. Therefore even an entity with all God’s other qualities cannot have the final quality of certain knowledge concerning its own relationship to the Universe as a whole.
4. Therefore God cannot exist because even any potential God cannot know for sure that it is God.

The argument is a Straw Man because of the second premise, "Everything in the Universe must be fundamentally uncertain about its own relationship to the Universe as a whole because there is no way of attaining such certainty."

This is a Straw Man because it sets up an inaccurate conception of God to attack. It claims that God cannot exist because He would not understand His own relationship with the universe. It ignores a characteristic of God that is so fundamental that almost any theist will agree with it; His omniscience.

God's omniscience is a part of almost every belief system around the world. In Christian scripture, it is also well attested. One of dozens of examples is Psalms 147:5, which reads:

Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.

Because of this, one cannot present an argument against the existence of God which hinges on a statement such as, "God cannot exist because He does not know X," because if He does exist, then he does know X.

Therefore, the argument is immediately begging the question by assuming that God, as commonly conceived, does not exist.

In addition, how would we even come to that second premise? What evidence do we have that "everything in the universe must be  fundamentally uncertain?"

Why must we be uncertain? Why is it impossible to know? Also, what would lead us to think that, "We do not know, therefore God cannot know?"

Retaking the Outsider Test

The Outsider Test is a criterion for rational faith put forth by former Christian apologist turned atheist, John W. Loftus. Loftus argues that for many believers, the religion practiced is not one that they choose, but usually one which they were born into, or are determined by cultural or national factors.

Since your religion is essentially randomly determined, you should examine your beliefs with every bit as much skepticism as you would any other religion. In other words, evaluate your beliefs as if you were an outsider to that faith, with no bias or preconceived notions.

One of the nuances of the Outsider Test is that it claims atheism as the intellectual default. Skepticism is the most rational initial response to supernatural claims.

I have several objections to the Outsider Test, such as the fact that it teaches atheists not to think, that since their position is the default, they do not need to examine their beliefs.

However, RD Miksa has written a rather lengthy paper, in the form of a blog called Taking Over the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF), in which he argues that the Outsider Test does not actually support atheism at all. In fact, it supports theism, super-naturalism, and intelligent design.

For those of you with the patience to read a long (about 22K words), informal paper on the philosophy of religion, I strongly recommend this work.

The Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit

The Ultimate 747 Boeing Gambit is an argument put forth by Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, which is allegedly a counter-argument to the Argument from Design and an allusion to Holye's Fallacy.

Astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle, who was a Darwinist, atheist and anti-theist, reportedly stated that the "probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747."

The basic argument against the idea of empirical theism goes back to David Hume, who's argument ccan be summed up in the popular phrase, "Who designed the designer?"

Dawkins writes that Evolution by natural selection is the only workable solution to the question of life's origin on Earth, and since it requires fewer assumptions than the God Hypothesis, Occam's Razor demands that we accept evolution over God.

This argument forms the central argument of The God Delusion and can be read here.

There are a few problems with this.

First is that evolution by natural selection is not a workable solution for the origin of life on Earth. Evolution does adequately explain how that life moved from simplicity to complexity, but it does not explain how it began to exist in the first place. Richard Dawkins admits this.

The fact that evolution does not explain the origin of life on Earth does not mean that we must therefore accept God as the answer. It only means that evolution, by itself, is not sufficient reason to reject God as the answer.

This leads to the second problem. Even if evolution by natural selection is a reality, which I believe that it is, it does not mean that we must reject God as a reality. There is nothing in evolution which disproves God, or even affects His probability of existence. At best, it disproves Young-Earth Creationism, but it actually strengthens Old-Earth Creationism.

Even Charles Darwin said that a man "can be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist."

Third, Dawkins argues that God is the ultimate Boeing 747 because if He created something as complex as the universe, then he must be even more complex. Therefore, the designer needs a designer. If the universe could not have arisen by chance, then neither could God.

However, Dawkins argues that the universe did arise by chance and that there is almost certainly no designer. Therefore, Dawkins argues that complexity does not require design. However, complexity could be designed, it is simply not required.

For example, it very well could be the case that the universe was designed, since it is possible that complexity would come about by design, but it is also possible that the universe's designer was not designed, since design is not required for complexity.

Not only is Dawkins' argument self-refuting, since he does not believe that complexity requires design, but it also completely fails to even address the issue of God's existence for the same reason.

The Argument from Parsimony

Occam's Razor

The Argument from Parsimony is an argument against the existence of God which claims that because scientific, or naturalistic, theories adequately describe the origin of life and the development of religion, the actual existence of any supernatural beings is an unnecessary detail and may be ignored unless it is shown that we need it to explain some phenomenon.

In other words, unless it can be shown that a phenomenon cannot be explained unless there is a God, then we have no reason to think that there is a God. God would complicate the issue rather than work towards resolution.

First of all, let me say that there is a difference between parsimony and simplicity. There are many simple theories which are not parsimonious. For example:

"The planets and stars are stuck to orbs around the Earth."

The geocentric model of the solar system is much simpler than our current view, that the Sun is in the center. The Heliocentric model is so complex that Sir Issac Newton had to develop a new kind of math, calculus, to describe the motion of celestial bodies and develop the laws of motion and gravitation.

But even though the idea of a heliocentric solar system is vastly more complex, it is still more parsimonious because it leaves fewer questions unanswered.

This principle is referred to as Occam's Razor. The idea that the hypothesis that requires fewer assumptions is preferable.

That's actually one of the first weaknesses with this argument. It's presents Occam's Razor as an absolute law, when it is actually just a "rule of thumb".

This is important because there are many, many examples of Occam's Razor stifling or delaying scientific advancement. For example, appeals to simplicity were used to deny meteorites, ball lightning, continental drift, DNA, atomic theory, and reverse transcriptase.

In addition to denying ideas that turned out to be true, Occam's Razor is also used to assert ideas which are false. For example, scientists thought that there must be some medium, Aether, out in space which allowed light waves to propagate, because it was less parsimonious to postulate wave propagation in a vacuum. At the time, all known waves propagated through a physical medium. We now know this to be false.

So the Argument from Parsimony fails immediately just because explanations sometimes reach beyond available data.

Second, even if the argument was successful, denial of God would bring us no closer to understanding what caused the Big Bang or life on Earth. Even Richard Dawkins admits the possibility of an origin involving intelligent beings (3:10).

For example, imagine yourself holding the end of a long chain. The other end of this chain is not in view, but when you pull on the chain, it it secured. If we were to say that there is nobody holding the other end of the chain, would we be any closer to finding out what is holding the other end? For that matter, do we have any good reason to think there is no one holding the other end? Sure, there may be no evidence that there is, but is there any evidence that there isn't? Like Dawkins, should we at least be open to the possibility of some intelligence on the other side?

Would we be making any fewer assumptions if, instead of a person on the other end of the chain, we instead said that it was fastened to some post or bolt in a wall? Or would we then need to explain how that post got there, ad infinitum?

So even if the argument is successful, which it isn't, then it still just doesn't do us any good. It wouldn't even necessary show that God is the less parsimonious hypothesis.

Dawkins Gets Nailed, So To Speak

"We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA. Flowers are for the same thing as everything else in the living kingdoms, for spreading 'copy - me' programmes about, written in DNA language.

That is EXACTLY what we are for. We are machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self sustaining process. It is every living objects' sole reason for living..." - Richard Dawkins

"You are merely handing on to him a problem you dare not settle yourself. It is as if a man were asked, "What is the use of a hammer?" and answered, "To make hammers"; and when asked, "And of those hammers, what is the use?" answered, "To make hammers again". Just as such a man would be perpetually putting off the question of the ultimate use of carpentry, so... all the rest of us are by these phrases successfully putting off the question of the ultimate value of the human life." - G. K. Chesterton

C.S. Lewis on Evil

Here's a quote from C.S. Lewis about the Problem of Evil and his reasoning as an atheist.

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it?... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if i did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist - in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless - I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality - namely my idea of justice - was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.' ~C.S. Lewis” 

In other words, if the universe is just, then the Problem of Evil falls apart. If the universe is unjust, how would we have even known?

A Logical Proof That Mormonism is False?

There is an organization called the Christian Apologetics & Research Ministries which posted an article allegedly describing a logical proof that Mormonism is false.

You can read the full article here, but the main point of the argument revolves around the LDS concept of Exaltation.

The LDS church teaches that through obedience to Gospel principles, we can, at some point in the eternities, eventually become like God.

Lorenzo Snow, a former President of the LDS church, also taught that, “As man now is, God once was; as God is now man may be.”

From these two ideas, it is inferred that God has a God, who has a God, who has a God, and so forth. This sets up an infinite regress, which is impossible.

There are two main problems with this "logical proof."

First of all, the Mormon church does not teach that God has a God, who has a God, etc. To the best of my knowledge, the church's official position on this topic is, "We don't know and, frankly, we don't care." Therefore, any inference of an infinite regress is just the unofficial conjecture of the members, or words put in our mouths by CARM, but it is not LDS doctrine.

Second, even if it's true that God has a God who has a God, and so forth, it does not necessarily lead to an infinite regress.

For example, it is a common idea in Christianity that God exists outside of time. He is not bound to a linear chronology the way we are. In other words, He is capable of time travel.

Imagine that in the beginning, there was nothing. Then a God appears, creates a world populated by people, some of which go on to be exalted and receive Godhood. Then, one of those exalted beings travels back and becomes that first God who appeared.

Is that what happened? I don't know. Probably not. But the point is that it is entirely in line with LDS doctrine and resolves CARM's "logical proof."

So CARM's argument fails in two ways. First is that it is based on a doctrine which is not even taught by the church. Second, even if the LDS church did teach such a doctrine, it would not necessarily lead to an infinite regress.

Religious Experience as Evidence

The Argument from Religious Experience basically says that there are decent reasons for considering at least some religious experiences authentic, therefore there must be some God behind them. The argument is problematic, at best, for obvious reasons.

For example, for all but the most extreme examples, how would you even authenticate something like that? Also, as much as theists hate to admit it, theories that they are hallucinations or neural misfires are valid points.

However, in order to think that they are hallucinations, you must have examined the accounts and found some evidence that they are hallucinations, such as a pre-existent psychological condition, a doctrinal inconsistency, or some other reason to discount it.

To be fair, theists also need evidence to claim that they are legitimate, but the point is that these accounts must be evaluated before any conclusion can be drawn. As long as there remains accounts of religious experiences which have not been investigated, then we must remain agnostic regarding their truth or falsity.

For example, imagine I had a powerful telescope. Through this telescope, you can look out into space and see Russell's Teapot. I would now be a believer in Russell's Teapot. To me, a random china teapot orbiting somewhere in between the Earth and the Sun would be a pretty extraordinary thing. I would likely invite someone else to look through the telescope and see what I see.

What if that person were to say to me, "No. I will not look. It is your burden to prove to me that the teapot is there. Until you prove it, I will assume it is a hallucination."

I would urge him again, "Look! The evidence is there, but you must look. I can't prove this to you, but you can prove it for yourself if you look."

It's true. I might be hallucinating, but the reasonable thing to do is to simply look through the telescope, rather than refuse until I can prove the Teapot's existence with a logical proof.