In his book God is Not Great, Christoper Hitchens makes excellent arguments against God.
One of Hitchens‘ first arguments deals with Laplace, who, when asked where God stood in his cosmology, simply said there was no place for God, and in fact, no need. The simple fact is, if we attempt to explain the universe in terms of a creation of God, we must first demonstrate that there is or was actually a God to create it.
Hitchens then goes into the arguments known as Occam’s Razor, or Ockham’s razor, developed by one William of Ockham. Ockham developed what was recognized as a “principle of economy”, stated simply as “Do not multiply entities beyond necessity”.
If you watched the movie “Contact” the idea of Occam’s Razor was employed quite often. If two or more competing theories attempt to explain a theory of existence, the one that explains the most with the least effort and unnecessary detail will probably be the truth. (I quote from memory. I’m sure there are better explanations).
To quote from Hitchens‘ book, “Ockham stated that it cannot be strictly proved that god, if defined as a being who possesses the qualities of supremacy, perfection, uniqueness, and infinity, even exists at all….’It is difficult or impossible(wrote Ockham) to prove against the philosophers that there cannot be an infinite regress in causes of the same kind, of which one can exist without the other’. Thus the postulate of a designer or creator only raises the unanswerable question of who designed the designer or created the creator”.
Stated in a popular fashion by such people as physicist Paul Davies, “it’s turtles all the way down”. I hope you’re familiar with that story.
I like Hitchens‘ statement just a paragraph later: “If one must have faith in order to believe something, or believe in something, then the likelihood of that something having any truth or value is considerably diminished.”
So, if I tell you “there is a God”, the only possible “explanation” can come up with is that it was “revealed”.
Big problem: how does one prove a revelation? Only one way it can be done, and that is to prove it by some method that demonstrates beyond any doubt, by reason, logic, or physical demonstration. But that presents a further problem: if I can prove it by reason, logic, or demonstration of physical example, I don’t need a revelation! it would be a fact of existence!
Ockham, therefore, has left us with the realization that existence, and the reason we discover within existence, simply cannot rely on revelation, since the very process of explaining the revelation makes it unnecessary in the first place.
However, this leaves us right in the same position as I mentioned earlier: I will add a qualifying statement to it. If there is a God, any facts of evidence we present to demonstrate existence could not depend on unproven revelations, since the very proof of itself would be contained with no necessity for such a revelation. It would simple “follow” from the proofs inherent in the explanation.
So, if there is a God, it would stand to reason that such a God would either exist within the proofs stated by reason, or that “God” cannot exist within those proofs, leaving us with exactly the same statement made by the apostle Paul in Romans 8:7: the natural mind is enmity against God, and cannot be subject to “his” laws.
And that places us on a par with Occam’s razor, since the results achieved IF the mind is enmity against God, will produce no evidence of God, and further would produce no decision procedure by which we may demonstrate any relationship to God.
And that is precisely what Paul said in Romans 9:16-22. Further, if we try to apply definitions of “God” in any human sense, both Occam’s Razor and Romans 8:7 would lead logically to the same results: a multiplication of entities trying to define “God” outside the power of human reason.
But Ockham says that such multiplication of entities is unnecessary, and would prove absolutely nothing. Therefore, with both Paul’s statement and with Occam’s Razor, we are left with one unavoidable conclusion: there is no need to follow or believe in any religion that claims to represent God. That is just what Jesus said in Matthew 24:23.
Prove me wrong.
