Walton, the atheist

In his very well written essay, “Can an ancient argument of Carneades on cardinal virtues and divine attributes be used to disprove the existence of God?”, Walton sets himself to prove that the concept of God is contradictory. And he does that by using an argument from the ancient philosopher, Carneades: “Carneades’ skeptical argument is not only very powerful as a device for raising doubts or questions. It can be extended to generate a proof for the nonexistence of God, constructed below.”

 And the argument is the following:

1.      God is (by definition) a being than which no greater being can be thought.

2.      Greatness includes greatness of virtue.

3.      Therefore, God is a being than which no being can be more virtuous.

4.      But virtue involves overcoming pains and danger.

5.      Indeed, a being can only be properly said to be virtuous if it can suffer pain and be destroyed.

6.      A God that can suffer pain or is destructible is not one than which no greater being can be thought.

7.      For you can think of a greater being, that is, one that is non-suffering and indestructible.

8.      Therefore God does not exist.

        My first objection concerns the first premise. Walton takes the definition from Anselm – a definition used, also, by Kant. But, of course, this isn’t the definition a classical theist uses – the one that is derived from the cosmological argument. From the cosmological argument it follows that God is immutable and without passions (which implies the impossibility of suffering). All of these are built in the classical concept of God. So, to speak of a suffering God is a contradiction.

            Of course, any classical theist understands God as a perfect being. God’s perfection is implied by the classical definition. There is a difference, though, between “the greatest possible being” and “the greatest conceivable being”. But I’m not going to press further in this direction.

             The greatest problem of Walton’s definition is the concept of greatness. He uses this concept as if it includes the concept of being virtuous. But there is an important problem here, because the virtue of a thing depends on its nature. So, the goodness of a tree is very different from the goodness of a human being. Thus, God’s perfection is very different than man’s perfection. So, insofar as virtue can be applied to God, it must be in a different sense than it is applied to humans. In general, we use words analogically, not univocally, to speak about God’s attributes.

            More than these, there are many virtues which don’t apply to God. Some examples are: courage, prudence. And, of course, there are many aspects of divine perfection which aren’t the least relevant to human perfection.

            The conclusion is that the third, fourth and fifth premises must be rejected: the third talks about virtue in general, without concern for the virtue’s subject; premises (4) and (5) may be true about human virtue (although, they aren’t), but Walton applies them to divine perfection.

Warburton on the cosmological argument or a textbook case of the strawman

 In the introduction of his introductory book on philosophy (Warburton, 2013), Nigel Warburton writes:

            ...my aim is to illuminate some of the key areas of discussion in a tradition which began with the             Ancient Greeks... (pp. 1 ff.)

So, one would expect (certainly, I would expect) to find arguments formulated with clarity, good faith and subtlety. Let’s see...

The first chapter of the book is about God. Ok, not about God Himself, but the different arguments formulated in order to ground the proposition “God exists”. One of these arguments is the so-called “Cosmological Argument” or “The First Cause Argument”. Warburton explains:

            The First Cause Argument states that absolutely everything has been caused by something else     prior to it: nothing has just sprung into existence without a cause. Because we know that the universe exists, we can safely assume that a whole series of causes and effects led to its being as it is. If we follow this series back we find an original cause, the very first cause. This first cause, so the First Cause Argument tells us, is God. (p. 16)

            Then, Warburton proceeds to reject the argument. A very easy task, as he manages to formulate - not one, but two devastating objections in eleven lines. Oh! If only Aristotle and Aquinas knew Warburton to save them from delusion! What a pity! (Not only Warburton, for that matter, but also Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Kraus etc. etc. – all of them having such bright minds!) So, Warburton cuts through with his sharp…aaah…mind:

            The First Cause Argument begins with the assumption that every single thing was caused by something else, but it then proceeds to contradict this by saying that God was the very first cause. It argues both that there can be no uncaused cause, and that there is one uncaused cause: God. It invites the question ‘And what caused God?’ Someone convinced by the First Cause Argument might object that they did non mean that everything had a cause, only that everything except God had a cause. But this is no better. If the series of effects and causes is going to stop somewhere, why must it stop at God? Why couldn’t it stop earlier in the regression, with the appearance of the universe itself?

            There is only one problem with this argument Warburton rejects. No one defends this. No one of the defenders of the cosmological argument has ever defended such an argument. No wonder Warburton gives no citation of the argument. How could he? This would just show how deceiving he is, or how shallow he is.

            So, Warburton’s argument is just a textbook case of strawman fallacy. I will teach it in my logic classes.