This might be my favorite argument in Geoffrey Berg’s book, The Six Ways of Atheism.  My favorite, because of how ridiculous it is.

It appears that Berg and I agree on that, for he opens the chapter:

This is my favourite argument against the existence of God and I believe it is a decisive and absolute disproof against the existence of God. (97)

The advance press does not pan out.  This proof is not decisive and can actually be refuted in a single paragraph.  First, the argument:

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.

Can you ever REALLY know your relationship to the universe? As a constituent of it, no. But what if YOU created it? You’d be pretty certain, I imagine!

God created the universe.  A creator always knows the relationship it has to its own creation.  Therefore, God may possess a certainty that none of us have since God created the thing about which we are uncertain.

Refuted. Read the rest of this entry →