Imagining Discovering God’s Non-existence
There was a discussion today at http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=127250 about “what you would do if you discovered that there is no God.”
It’s not possible to imagine discovering that there is no God.
- To discover something means to come to a knowledge of its existence.
- For example, a sailor lands on an island that he had not known existed. He has discovered the island.
- This must be accurate knowledge.
- For example, a physicist thinks he has discovered a new particle, but it turns out to be a particle that he already knew about. He has not discovered a new particle.
- God exists.
- To discover that God does not exist is impossible since God does exist.
- However, we are talking about imagining discovering that God does not exist.
- To imagine something, the object of our imagination must not necessarily be real but must have real properties.
- Especially, the object of our imagination must be coherent.
- For example, you can’t imagine a thing not being identical with itself or two and two adding up to five.
- God is the necessary being. This means that God has to exist. Nothing else has to exist, but God does have to.
- Everything thing else that exists owes its existence to God who is the source of Being.
- Therefore, discovering that God does not exist would be discovering that nothing is. This would not be a discovery at all since there would be nothing to discover and no one to discover it.
- Therefore, to discover that God does not exist is not a coherent idea.
- Therefore, it is impossible to imagine discovering that God does not exist.
The question quite clearly should have been “what if you didn’t believe in God?” instead of “what if you discovered there were no God?” I take things too literally most of the time. It’s probably because of all that philosophy.