I greatly appreciate the opportunity to debate this topic with squarecircle. It is a subject of interest to me, and I see it is to him as well, as I would hope that it is for all freethinking human beings.
The god-concept presented herein poses quite a challenge, at least in the sense that it is not one that is expected when entering a discussion of 'god', though it might seem that a non-cognitivist has been invited to refute what a non-cognitivist
cannot refute: the universe. So, non-cog, at least in the
'Smith-ian'[**] sense, as I often use it, is not
entirely effective here; its main concern is with god-concepts that amount to the agnostic 'unknowable god', or some form of a god that requires other forms of assumed 'knowledge'--the 'immaterial' concepts--but that is not what is here presented. Elements of non-cog
will yet be
quite useful in establishing incoherence within and among terms though, but certainly will not be employed to establish ('~its') non-existence, for that would be tantamount to swindling all of us (if it were possible), participants and readers, and in fact the entirety of the universe itself, out of existence; it would be sort of a silly semantic adventure, so I will not try to resolve
that challenge and will instead focus on engaging the coherence, of the terms 'god', 'omnipotence', and 'omniscience', if they can even be described as having such--I will submit that they cannot.
In order to demonstrate this, I will show that what is presented is a god-concept that:
1) is not parsimonious: it is equivocal in ascribing the word 'God' to the universe.
2) is incoherent in its use of the term 'omnipotent', particularly in juxtaposition with the establishment of a deterministic universe.
and 3) is incoherent it its use of the term 'omniscient', which would require the establishment of the universe as a vast consciousness, a brain of sorts (at least in principle), thereby inducing a contradicton in identity.
***
In brief, 'non-cog' is concerned with propositions--making true statements, or examining the possible truth value(s) of them.
Ex: To say "Sparky exists", expresses a true statement. It is: (1) -
internally consistent, meaning that it is a grammatically coherent sentence; (2) -
externally consistent, meaning that the subject of the sentence has a physical referent (which is particularly important in the context of this sentence since it is overtly referring to the subject's physical existence), for the sake of this example: as would be assumed, 'Sparky' is a dog; and (3) -
true, for there is a
specific dog named 'Sparky' that verifiably exists.
We could just as easily say, 'Dog exists', but this is not a fully coherent statement, unless one happens to be talking about a particular dog named 'Dog'. Assuming that this is not the case, 'Dog' lacks a specific identity, for while there are certainly dogs that verifiably exist, it is clear that 'Dog exists' is intended to refer to a
specific dog: in this case, 'Sparky', so 'Dog' does not tell us which
specific dog we are referring to.
Let's say that we're
not referring to this specific dog, and instead say, "
A dog exists."
This expresses a true statement. We are quite aware that a great many dogs exist, in a vast array of species, wild and domestic, so we could point to any one of them and the statement 'A dog exists' would be coherent and verifiably true.
Moving on...
It is suggested here that 'God exists' represents a true statement. This would suggest that 'God' has an unique identity. The natural question to ask, when one has no idea
what 'God' is, would of course be: '
What is God?' Typically, when the subject is addressed, we are given numerous suggestions of 'immaterial', which would automatically render any statement regarding a god, that is presented as such, plainly incoherent, since it would not be able to rise to the requisite of being
externally consistent, when external consistency requires a physical referent and physicality includes
only material conditions. The 'subject' of the debate is not 'immaterial' though; it is the universe, explicitly the material world in which we reside, so in this case, 'God exists' is the same as saying 'the universe exists' or 'existence exists'. The latter proposition is a
seemingly true one, but it is redundant and
only expresses identity; it would be like saying, 'motion moves'; it is self-referrential and cannot express anything other than what is meant by the subject to begin with, so in that regard it is not a fully coherent statement, in which case it cannot reach the stage where we can assess a truth value for it. 'Existence is existence', but that doesn't tell us anything more than what we already knew, since 'existence' is simply the word we assign to the state of being of, in this discussion, the universe.
'The universe exists', however, fares much better. 'The universe' is designated as 'all matter and energy', while 'existance' is a state of being. "'All matter and energy' exist" is a coherent and true statement.
'God', capitalized, traditionally represents the Judeo-Christian god, while 'god' could represent any proposed god, but it is assumed that it is referring to some 'deity' or 'a being'. But, here it is suggested that God = the universe. I submit that this is an inaccurate treatment of
both words; it is a mere equivocation. One could just as easily state that 'Ra' = the universe, and then declare that 'Ra exists' expresses a true statement. If that is the case, then 'Gahdoaijblk exists'
also expresses a true statement when we equivocate that spontaneously generated 'word' with the universe. Pure nonsense.
'God' is a word that does not
specifically refer to
only the universe, while 'universe'
is specifically a word that
does not refer to an entity or 'a being' apart from itself. We could of course describe the universe as 'being' itself, i.e. existence, but that would be akin to the incoherent 'existence exists' statement. Also, it would be entirely inappropriate to describe the universe as '
a being', as that would suggest that the universe is something that is not itself, as in 'one of many', or at least 'one in distinction to another'. So already we are left with no options; we are either meaninglessly equivocating or we are employing an incoherent phrase.
That we exist--that the universe exists--is axiomatic; there is no need to even question it, for questioning it would assume existence. We
know that 'the universe' exists as the sum of all matter and energy, so it does not need another name or descriptor; to do so would be a case of 'multiplying entities', particularly when 'god' (capitalized or not) carries with it so many characterizations that expressly
do not refer to the universe. In any case, at this point the term 'God' loses meaning, or is an attempt to usurp what is indicated by the term 'universe'. Therefore, it would be parsimonious to snip the word 'God' out of our speech altogether if all we are referring to with that word is the universe.
It is also stated that this God is 'omnipotent', 'omniscient', and 'omnipresent'. The last of which is not problematic. If God is equivocated with the universe, then omnipresent seems like a fairly appropriate word to use when 'omnipresent' really amounts to 'omni-extant', or 'all that exists'; it is a fair representation of "'All matter and energy' [that] exists." However, the former two terms do cause some problems.
Before I begin to address the proposed attribute of 'omnipotence', I will gladly concede the establishment of a deterministic universe; I see no reason to refute it. Yet, it should be clear that, if we were referring to 'a being', that being would necessarily be material and subject to the systematic quandry of a deterministic universe, meaning it would have no 'power' whatsoever that was not ruled by the physical, and deterministic, laws
of the universe. It would be a completely
impotent god. As it is, we
are intentionally presented with a god-concept that is entirely material and therefore subject to the very determinism that governs 'all matter and energy [that] exists.'
I should also point out that even by my opponent's admission: "The god I present acts without purpose or will." If the 'god' in question has no 'free will', or even a limited will, then we cannot consider any form of 'omnipotence', no matter how neutered or redefined. If we were to suggest that God
is the deterministic universe, it
still has not the power to do anything apart from what it
is, i.e. we are still left with a redundant 'motion moves' type of statement. Saying 'the universe is 'omnipotent'' has no meaning; it is not coherent.
To say that God is 'omniscient' would suggest that it has a brain, or such a similar material structure capable of hosting a consciousness--being a fundamental requirement for knowledge, which should not be confused with material
fact. Yet, saying that it
has a brain, or a consciousness, would imply that the brain is not all that it
is, i.e. it is implied that there is something more to this God that
is not its consciousness. Instead what is being suggested here is that it
is a consciousness, that the universe is a consciousness.
Returning to 'fact vs. knowledge' for a moment, claiming that fact = knowledge would be more equivocation, where 'knowledge' is a term appropriate to humans, 'fact' to the universe. It would be more appropriate to say that the universe is 'all knowable facts', rather than 'all knowledge', for while there are many facts that we do know; there are still many that we do not know, meaning there are facts that are still only facts because we have not reigned them into the realm of knowledge yet. Fact is a bit of information that can be apprehended and fitted into a current body of knowledge by a conscious mind; knowledge
requires that a fact be apprehended and corroborated with other known facts.
Is the universe capable of 'understanding' in this way? If a 'yes' answer is given to this question, then God as is presented, is incoherent, for a great deal of understanding--knowledge--would require a consideration of fact that lies beyond the self. To identify 'self' is to distinguish personal identity as separate from the rest of the universe, yet such a separate identity is not possible if 'self', as in the case of the universe, is equivalent with
all that exists. If God is the sum of all possible knowable fact, then it cannot apprehend anything that is
not contained within itself. If it can even be said to
apprehend anything at all, it certainly cannot apprehend anything that it
isn't; it would be an affirmation of identity and nothing more.
To be concise, what we are aiming for with a word like 'omniscient' is actually not 'all-knowledge' anyway. When we say 'all-knowing' we shouldn't just stop there and assume that we know what that phrase means; the next logical question would be: 'knowing what?' In this case, 'knowing all facts', so what 'omniscience' is really implying is 'all-
fact-knowing', which would further imply that fact is something apart from what it--the universe--
is to begin with, so its identity breaks down and becomes contradictory at that point. Therefore, omniscience is not coherent.
Due to the problems posed by ascribing the terms omnipotent and omniscient to the universe, it is clear that if the definition of God herein requires those terms to apply, then the definition is not coherent, hence then this God cannot justifiably be equivocated with the universe. We human beings have been having meaningful discourse about the material world for quite some time now, identifying
all matter and energy as 'the universe'. When we say God = the universe, we are not adding anything new or meaningful to the discussion, but we are in fact muddying it. Therefore, this god-concept yet remains an incoherent and unparsimonious contextual application to the universe, and so, is entirely unjustified. The universe, most assuredly and axiomatically, exists, but this god-concept cannot exist as anything more than an incoherent proposal.
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[**] My source here is only for reference, since I am not actually quoting anyone's work. George Smith's
Atheism: The Case Against God expresses the argument from non-cognitivism in detail and the link above summarizes it quite well.
