The Argument from Imperfection

The most popular, and powerful, argument for atheism is the problem of evil. While I do not find it convincing, I certainly understand why so many people find it to be a persuasive argument for atheism. Recently, I heard a variation of the problem of evil from Ben Watkins of Real Atheology that is worthy of response. It’s called the argument from imperfection. I’m paraphrasing his argument so this may not be what he exactly said, but the general argument goes like this:


  1. God, if He exists, is a perfect being and is the Cause of all things apart from Himself.

  2. A perfect being cannot cause imperfection.

  3. There are imperfect beings.

  4. Therefore, God does not exist (from 1, 2, and 3).


All of the premises in this argument are true, but the argument, as it stands, is invalid and requires another premise to make it valid:


  1. God, if He exists, is a perfect being and is the Cause of all things apart from Himself.

  2. A perfect being cannot cause imperfection.

  3. There are imperfect beings.

  4. God is the Cause of the imperfection in imperfect beings (from 1 and 3).

  5. But, God cannot be the cause of imperfection (2).

  6. Therefore, God does not exist (from 1, 2, 3, and 4).


This argument is valid, but it now will not convince any theist to be moved toward atheism as no theist will say that God is the Cause of the imperfection in things. Indeed, it is impossible for God to be the Cause of any imperfection for imperfections are modalities of nonbeing, but God cannot cause nonbeing: there is literally nothing to cause. The first rendition of the argument is invalid because in order for the conclusion to follow, God must be the Cause of the imperfection in things, but no theist has ever claimed that (except for Calvin, perhaps). God is the Cause of all things apart from Himself insofar as they are perfect, which is to say insofar as they are, and can in no way be the Cause of the imperfection in things as there is literally nothing to cause.  So God is the Cause of the imperfect beings, but He is not the Cause of the imperfection in these beings, He is only the cause of the perfection in these beings.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In Defense of the Proof of God in De Ente et Essentia: A Response to Existential Inertia

         I wrote this article a couple of years ago in the hopes of having it published in an undergrad journal,  but I was unable to do so. I am now uploading this to the blog because I do not have plans on publishing it, and if I decide to try and publish it again, I will edit and expand the current version since this paper does not engage all of Joe's work on existential inertia, but I think it's a good starting point for my  engagement of his work. I hope whoever  reads this finds it helpful.   Introduction In an early work called De Ente et Essentia , St. Thomas Aquinas makes an argument for the existence of God, whom Aquinas takes to be pure existence itself. Critical to his argument is the notion that substances do not have existence in themselves, but rather are granted existence from another, namely God, who has existence in itself and is, therefore, pure existence itself. Since this is the case, if substances do actually have existence and persist in existence without
Read more

A Brief Explication of the De Ente Proof

St. Thomas Aquinas is probably most well known for his “Five Ways”, Quinquae Viae, found in the Summa Theologiae (ST I, q. 2, a. 3). However, these arguments are frequently misunderstood because they are often presented totally removed from their relation to the rest of Aquinas’s corpus, which makes them appear much weaker than they actually are. For example, Aquinas’s First Way is often displayed as being nothing more than a reiteration of Aristotle's argument for an unmoved mover in Book 8 of the physics, however this fails to capture the novelty of the First Way, and the other Five Ways in general (Physics 251a8-251b10). The actual power of these arguments comes from Aquinas’s metaphysics of esse as presented in the De ente et essentia . This power is mostly clearly observable in chapter 4 of the De ente et essentia because this is where Aquinas provides his argument for God’s existence as first cause while explicitly utilizing his metaphysics of esse . In order to fully
Read more

Some Thoughts on the Identity of Indiscernibles

The identity of indiscernibles (IoI) is a principle which is controversial in contemporary analytic philosophy, but I can’t understand why. I’m fully aware of the fact that philosophers are known for holding flatly absurd positions, and it may be the case that the reason many philosophers reject IoI. I’d like to provide reason why we ought to accept this principle, but first a formulation is in order.  Identity of Indiscernibles (IoI): if x is F where F is all the true predicates of x, and y is F, the x and y are identical. To my mind, this is obviously true, but since it is so controversial, I’ll provide some reason for accepting it. The main response to the IoI is that distinctness can be a primitive, but this seems weak, to my mind, as this would violate the PSR, which has plenty of reason behind it (see here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-020-01482-3 , https://www.amazon.com/Principle-Sufficient-Reason-Reassessment-Philosophy/dp/0521184398 , https://www.youtube.c
Read more