Friday, April 01, 2022

Argument from explanatory vacuity

 On this old post I came up with an argument for atheism. It got over 300 comments. 

This is the argument. 

1) If Billy Graham were to fall ill, many Christians all over the world would pray for his recovery.
2) If Billy were to recover, they would all praise God and credit him with the healing.
3) If Billy were to die, they would say that it was not God’s will for Billy to recover.
4) But if God can be used to explain why something occurs but also why something does not occur, then it really does not explain it at all.
5) But if this is so, the appeal to God explains nothing.
6) If God explains nothing, then we should simply deny God’s existence.
7) Therefore, we should believe that God does not exist.

1 comment:

oozzielionel said...

It partially hinges on the meaning of "explain." If "explain" means to identify prayer as the cause of the various results, then 5 is plausible. The prayer can result in two very different outcomes. This would be a problem if prayer was a magical incantation that required God to respond one way and not another. If prayer is interaction with a sovereign Creator of the universe, then both 2 and 3 offer the explanations themselves (God's will). The "God" of 4,5,6,and 7 is a genie-god, that actually does not exist.