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The
Atheist Devotional: Timeless Meditations for
the Godless by M. Moore
Copyright ă 2008 M.
-Reading Number Nineteen -
Quentin Smith Proves Something or Other
Excerpted from: Smith, “Causation and the Logical Impossibility of a Divine Cause”*
Philosophy is a wonderful thing, especially in the hands of atheists. Quentin Smith is a philosopher who wrote what he calls “A Formal Logical Proof of Atheism.”** His proof is based on another paper of his called “Causation and the Logical Impossibility of a Divine Cause,” in which he seeks to prove that God could not logically have caused the universe to exist. Therefore, God does not exist. It makes for an interesting argument.
Things can be a cause of something else, or they can be a logically sufficient condition of something else being true. What’s the difference? Here’s an example. Say I heat water to exactly 100° C, and it starts boiling. The heating to 100° was the cause of it boiling. But it was not the logically sufficient condition of it boiling. If it were, then logically it would have to always be true that heating water to 100° causes it to boil. But there’s nothing in logic that says that that has to be true. And in fact, it’s not true if the water is at an altitude lower than sea level. An example of a logically sufficient condition would be this: Heating water to 100° C means logically that the water is at some temperature. It’s logically impossible for something to be at 100° C and not have a temperature. Heating water to 100° C is a logically sufficient condition of it having a temperature. The cause of something is never also its logically sufficient condition. “For any two particular events or states x and y, if x is a logically sufficient condition of y, then x is not a cause of y.” Logical relationships are very different than physical cause relationships. The two don’t overlap. But now let’s look at God causing the universe to exist. We’re told that God created the universe by willing it to exist. Was this willing a cause or a logically sufficient condition or the universe existing? Well, if God really created the universe, then his willing it to exist was the cause of it existing. That’s obvious. On the other hand, it also seems to be the logically sufficient condition of it existing. This is because God is omnipotent, which means that it’s logically impossible that God would will the universe to exist, and it doesn’t happen. But we’ve already seen that a cause of something is never also its logically sufficient condition. So we’re faced with a dilemma. If the universe was caused by God willing it to exist, that willing was also a logically sufficient condition for it. But this is impossible, as we’ve seen. Therefore, it must not have happened. God never willed the universe to exist. And yet if God exists, he did created the universe by willing it (otherwise he wouldn’t be God)...which takes us right back into the same logical impossibility. Therefore, God does not even exist.
Perfect! No more need to wonder if there’s a God out there. By simple, human logic we can prove the non-existence of God. Of course, Smith’s logic is a bit strange. It implies that an omnipotent being cannot cause anything to happen by willing it. You would think that by definition, an omnipotent being could do all things, including cause something to happen by willing it... Anyway, as a good philosopher, Smith considers the objections that might be raised to his argument and answers them. For instance, one could make this objection: Sure, all the x’s we know of in our experience that cause some y are not also logically sufficient conditions of that y. But that doesn’t mean that something cannot be a cause as well as a logically sufficient condition for some y. Maybe in the case of an omnipotent being the situation is different, simply because that being is omnipotent.
“This objection fails...[My] argument is that all cases of causation that are not in dispute are inconsistent with the hypothesis that there is a correct definition of the sort mentioned [a definition of causation that could also include God’s willing the universe to exist]... Both parties to the dispute agree that physical events cause other physical events, and that the mental events of intelligent organisms cause other events...and this agreement is the common ground between the opponent and defender of the "there cannot be a divine cause" thesis.” But with all these physical causes that we know about and agree about, the cause is never also a logically sufficient condition. So that’s how we have to define “cause”—as never being a logically sufficient condition. That rules out God willing the universe to exist.
In other words, no causal relationship that we know of is also a relationship of logic; therefore, there can never be an example of a relationship being both. Sort of like saying, “All the life we know of came from planet Earth; therefore, no life could come from anywhere else.” As I already pointed out, this reasoning leads to the absurdity of saying that there is something an omnipotent being cannot do, something we would normally expect omnipotence to be able to do—namely, cause something to happen by willing it. We humans have bodies that we move by willing them to move. If I want my hand or my mouth to move, I will it to move, and it does. Now, could God (if he exists) inhabit a body? Sure he could—he’s omnipotent. But according to Smith, if God was in a body, he would not be able to move even a muscle, because he can’t do anything by willing it. So an omnipotent being could not do something even tiny babies can do. Pretty absurd. And anyway, why does Smith think that God’s being omnipotent means that anything he wills has to happen? What if God said, “I hereby decree that no universe will come into existence during the next 30 seconds, even if I will it!” Then 15 seconds later he willed a universe to exist. Would it logically have to come into existence, based solely on God’s omnipotence? No. To be omnipotent simply means that you can do anything, including causing a universe to exist by willing it. But there’s nothing in the concept “omnipotent” that implies that what you will to happen always has to happen. Nothing. It only means that you can do it, not that it has to happen every time (for example when you have decreed that it will not happen). So maybe the absurdity that Smith’s argument leads to, and the weak logic on which it rests, show that it just doesn’t work to take what we know about causation in our normal experience and extrapolate it to what would be true of an omnipotent being? Maybe. But I prefer to accept the absurd understanding of “omnipotence” that Smith would have us accept, rather than allow for God’s existence. And I think any true atheist would do the same. As an atheist, I say if it’s a choice between belief in God and absurdity, I choose absurdity every time.
* “Excerpts” are paraphrased, except for “words in quotation marks and italics,” which are direct quotations from the excerpted work. ** http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/logic.html
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