The
Rational Argumentator
Mr. scottvska: “Each one[ of your arguments] is directed at a specific type of God – the God conceived of by certain of the Medieval Scholastics – the so-called “greatest possible being” type of God. […] There are all different types of Gods. There’s Aristotle’s God. There’s Spinoza’s God. There’s the God of Alfred North Whitehead and his followers, the God of process theism. So theism is compatible with the validity of all five of your arguments – just not the type of theism that takes God to be the greatest possible being.”
Mr. Stolyarov: I acknowledge that my five arguments specifically rule out the God that is defined in terms of infinite qualities and posited as the creator of the universe. This is, however, the most prevalent conception of God, and it appears to be inseparable from any of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Indeed, this entity is what virtually any contemporary follower of these religions assumes when he or she refers to “God”.
It is true that other ideas of a god or gods are conceivable. However, my essay was titled “Five Arguments for the Non-Existence of God” – not “Five Arguments for the Non-Existence of Any God Whatsoever”. By “God” in the title of that essay, I specifically meant God (or the Abrahamic God) as he is commonly thought of by those who call themselves believers in God. I do not claim that my arguments are either necessary or sufficient for one to be a strong atheist with respect to all gods – just that they are sufficient to reject the Abrahamic God.
I am indeed a strong atheist, in that I am 100% certain that no gods – in the sense of supernatural beings requiring special reverence – exist. Other kinds of conceivable gods may require different arguments to address. For instance, Aristotle’s “prime mover” God can be refuted by reference to Newton’s First Law of Motion, which states that motion itself does not require a cause; an object in motion will continue in motion at a constant speed in a given direction until and unless it is acted on by an outside force. To keep an entity in motion, it is not necessary for an external entity to act upon it – unless there is still another force that decelerates the moving entity.
As another example, the ancient Greek gods were clearly different from the Abrahamic God. They were finite beings with superpowers and a physical presence; most of them were said to dwell on Mount Olympus. From a logical standpoint alone, such beings are plausible. The refutation of their existence is not logical-deductive but empirical. People have climbed Mount Olympus and failed to find Zeus. They have traversed the seas and failed to find Poseidon. They have descended underground (and conducted studies of the composition of the Earth) and failed to find Hades.
Why did I focus my essay on the Abrahamic God – rather than other gods? Simply, I was addressing and refuting a commonly held belief in particular. There is no particular pressing need in our era to refute the existence of Zeus or of Aristotle’s God, as almost no individuals currently believe that such gods exist. But again, I acknowledge that other arguments would be needed for other conceptions of a god or gods, and I am open to providing those arguments in response to any genuinely held conception of a god that a believer presents to me. But these arguments would only be a productive use of one’s time (in terms of actually affecting the world using ideas) if the religious beliefs they challenge are actually held ones, and not merely hypothetical.
1. Discussion of the Universe Creation Argument
Mr. scottvska: “You don’t actually say that the universe is literally everything that exists. […] The first sentence is hypothetical. I don’t know if you really think that the universe is everything that exists.”
Mr. Stolyarov: As a clarification, in A Rational Cosmology, Essay V, I do, in fact, definitively state my position that “universe” means “everything that exists.” Here is my statement:
“‘Universe’ means ‘everything that exists.’”
“The word ‘universe’ derives from the Latin universum, meaning ‘the whole world,’ that is, ‘everything.’ The term ‘universe’ does not denote an entity, however. It is the sum of all entities that exist. It is not a ‘whole’ in the sense that a person, a planet, or a star is a ‘whole.’”
[…]
“Nor is the universe a quality. I cannot have ‘universe’ in the same manner as I have color, or shape, or mass. Nevertheless, the term ‘universe’ pertains to me as it pertains to everything else that exists. It encompasses me and everything else that exists.”
“Nor is the universe a relationship. A relationship is an interaction between or among several entities that affects, in some manner, the qualities of these entities. Yet the term "universe" implies no actions by any entity. It merely denotes the totality of all the entities that exist, whatever their specific natures. These specific natures could necessitate that given entities act and relate in a certain way, but the universe is not in itself an action or relation. It is just a reference to the entirety of those entities which act and relate in some way.”
“What, then, is the purpose of the term ‘universe’? If it denotes neither entity, nor quality, nor relationship, why does the term even exist? ‘Universe’ is a collective designation, and is used for one purpose and one purpose only: word economy. The word ‘universe’ is interchangeable with ‘existence’ or ‘everything that exists.’"
Mr. scottvska: “And there are other ways of defining the universe – other definitions that aren’t so metaphysically laden. For instance, you could define the universe as the totality of physical space and time.”
Mr. Stolyarov: As a further clarification, for me the definitions of “universe” as “everything that exists” and “everything material that exists” (including all of the qualities of every thing – such as the spatial dimensions, time, volume, color, etc.) would be identical – because every thing that exists must be a material thing.
In A Rational Cosmology, Essay XIII, I explain that “Matter is otherwise known as the constituent quality of entities. Matter is, simply, that, which entities are made of, and without which they cannot have any other qualities. It is not the province of ontology or cosmology to describe what the fundamental ‘building blocks of matter’ (i.e. the entities that would represent Democritus's concept of ‘atomos’) are. The specific-observational sciences must discover whether such fundamental building blocks exist, how many types of them there are, what they look like, and how they behave. Cosmology has only to point out that matter exists, and exists as a quality of every entity.”
All things must be material things, because, without having the quality of matter, they would not be made of anything and so could not exist. Thus, from my standpoint, the alternate definition expressed by Mr. scottvska is identical to mine, though I might perhaps use different language in focusing on all the entities that exist, rather than only their spatial and temporal qualities.
Mr. scottvska: “But, at any rate, the definition is metaphysically loaded. It is not something that science could ever verify. Science only tests a small subset of nature. It can’t tell us whether there is anything beyond it – if there is a God or if there are universals or if there are numbers or anything immaterial, science can’t tell us because science only examines the natural world; it only examines sense [data], and God and universals […] are supersensible. So if they do exist, then science can’t tell us whether they exist.”
Mr. Stolyarov: If by “science”, Mr. scottvska means the experimental sciences (what I have elsewhere termed the “specific-observational sciences”), then he is correct. Physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, and other sciences that rely on particular observations under particular conditions already confine themselves to the material world in their basic premises. However, I have never argued that it is those sciences that can either prove or disprove the existence of a God (unless it is an empirically observable god, like the ancient Greek or Egyptian gods were thought to be). I have, rather, argued that logic and philosophy, using ubiquitous observation as a starting point (e.g., to establish the validity of the premises used to complete a syllogism), can disprove the existence of the Abrahamic God or other gods which are defined in metaphysical terms.
Ubiquitous observation is different from specific observation in that the essence of what is observed does not depend on the particular objects being observed – but can rather be inferred from observing any things whatsoever. Qualities such as matter, length, width, height, volume, and time – for instance – can be observed no matter which particular entities a human observer encounters. This is why no experimentation is needed to uncover or verify the existence of those qualities; human beings perceive them unavoidably and cannot fail to perceive them. From the starting point of ubiquitous sense experience, logic can take us the rest of the way toward refuting the existence of any supernatural being.
With regard to universals, I side decidedly with Aristotle over Plato on this matter. Contrary to Plato, who posited a separate, supernatural world of forms, of which our world is a pale reflection, Aristotle saw the essences or universal ideas of objects to be within those objects themselves. That is, there is no “tableness” outside of actually existing tables. There is no “form” of the color green outside of all the things that are actually green. In my view, to consider the universals to somehow exist outside of real-world entities is to commit the fallacy of reification. Universals are higher-order abstract concepts that we use to categorize things (and, in different situations, determine which behaviors are preferable to which others). They do not stand apart from things.
Numbers, too, are abstract concepts which humans use to describe how many actual physical things there are, or how many repetitions of an action are performed. They do not have a stand-alone existence, although, as concepts, they can be manipulated by the human mind using the language of mathematics to reach conclusions about the world of real things more swiftly and effectively than thinking only directly in terms of immediate concretes would accomplish. But there is nothing immaterial or supernatural about numbers; they are a conceptual tool of the human mind to describe the material world.
Mr. scottvska is right to suggest that the experimental sciences cannot disprove the existence of universals and numbers – particularly because such sciences must presuppose their existence in order to produce any useful results at all. But ubiquitous observation can affirm the existence of universals and numbers, which in turn provides a firm basis for the validity of the conclusions of the experimental sciences in their particular realms.
Mr. scottvska: “You could even go further than that and say, along with David Hume, that" science makes an unjustified epistemic leap from particular observations to general laws.”
Mr. Stolyarov: I am in strong disagreement with Hume on this point, for the following reasons:
(1) The empirical success of the experimental sciences (underpinned by the validity of ubiquitous observation as a starting premise), in producing technologies that successfully and universally take advantage of the laws of nature, suggests that such general laws do exist (as ways of accurately summarizing the behavior of real entities – not as “forms” standing apart from those entities). Of course, this observation raises the question of why this empirical success occurs.
(2) This empirical success occurs because a good scientific experiment – by means of such approaches as the use of controls and repeated testing – attempts to abstract away as many of the non-general, situation-specific circumstances as is needed to draw a conclusion about the general subset of experience being examined. When some of those situation-specific circumstances intervene or are unavoidable, then the scope of the experiment becomes limited by those circumstances – perhaps more so than the experimenter would like. A good scientist will acknowledge those limitations and state that his conclusions only apply to an environment characterized by the circumstances that were present in the experiment. The outcome of a proper scientific experiment, then, gives a valid general conclusion, given a certain set of particular conditions (which the experimenter attempts to make as broadly applicable as is practicable).
(3) The experimental sciences are continually evolving, particularly because of the limitations of any given experiment. The scientific models used to describe a particular specialty field (e.g., biology or physics) are based on the best knowledge we have at the given time, and are subject to falsification by further experiments that may take account of different circumstances or remove a limitation of a prior experiment. That being said, while particular observation is subject to falsification (e.g., it is possible to observe a black swan to falsify the previously held notion that all swans are white), a ubiquitous observation can never be falsified (e.g., one can know for sure that no entities with zero mass exist and that no stand-alone one-dimensional entities exist – and one can know with complete certainty that the next thing one encounters will have positive mass, nonzero volume, and some measurements in all three spatial dimensions). The irrefutability and universality of ubiquitous observation offers the particular, experimental sciences a firm foundation in that – while a given theory or model within those sciences is open to refutation – the scientific process or scientific method is a valid approach.
Mr. scottvska: “You’ve avoided answering the ‘What caused the universe to emerge?’ [question] by giving a question-begging, metaphysically loaded definition of ‘universe’.”
Mr. Stolyarov: I disagree that I have committed any avoidance of the sort. Rather, I have endeavored to demonstrate that some questions simply make no sense. While they are syntactically correct, they are substantially irrelevant to reality as it is. Another question of this sort might be, “What is the chairness of green?” Each word in that sentence has a definite meaning, and the grammar is correct – but there is no connection of the question to the real world, since human beings, by the rules of language that they developed, have the ability to form many more propositions than are consistent with both empirical observation and logical reasoning. Questions like “How was the universe created?” or “What is the meaning of life?” or “Why is there something rather than nothing?” are common examples of oft-observed human tendencies to mistake the malleability of language for presenting some manner of profound riddles about existence itself.
2. Discussion of the Infinity Argument
Mr. scottvska: “I’m not aware of any Christian philosopher who thinks of God’s attributes as quantifiable. I don’t think there’s a Christian philosopher who takes God’s attributes to be expressed as… discrete, countable quantities. When Christian philosophers talk about the infinite attributes of God, they are not talking about mathematical infinities, like the set of real numbers. They’re talking about how God’s qualities are unlimited, how they lack nothing. So that’s just a straw man. Can you point to a Christian philosopher who conceives of God’s attributes as […] an infinitely numerable, countable set of particulars?”
Mr. Stolyarov: I am not suggesting that Christian philosophers have attributed any manner of numerical description to God. However, what I am suggesting is that “In order to be understood by man, a given entity must have attributes that can be measured on some scale, be it a qualitative or a quantitative one. In order to be measurable, an entity must demonstrate a finite quantity of each measurable attribute.” (A Rational Cosmology, Essay LXIII). Thus, it may be true that no Christian philosopher ascribes a countable quantity of any attribute to God. But, if this is the case, it is exactly why the concept of God is not a well-formed concept. Any actually existing entity has finite quantities of any measurable quality – and any quality that is not strictly measurable can be spoken of in terms of presence or absence, or – with “softer” (more broadly defined) qualities and relationships – in terms of degrees of intensity or various dimensions on which entities having this quality could be compared.
I further write that “To claim that any dog has infinite measurements of given qualities is absurd: if something is infinite, and does not have a set, delimited quantity to be measured, how can it be measurable? If it is not measurable in some manner, absolute or relative, how can it serve as a necessary quality in the definition of a concept?” (A Rational Cosmology, Essay LXIII). It is precisely my point that, in order for God to be a valid concept, some of the qualities of God (e.g., physical expanse, temporal existence) and relationships of God with the world (e.g., the physical forces God would exert to affect events on Earth) would need to be measurable and detectable in some meaningful way. Since they are not – and, indeed, there is not one iota of empirical or logical evidence that God exerts any influence on the world we experience – one can conclude that a God does not exist, and that the very idea of God is incoherent. After all, God is posited to be omni-everything – and yet one encounters no trace of him! One could live one’s entire life without identifying a single phenomenon and being struck by the realization that, indeed, this inescapably has to be the work of God.
3. Discussion of the Infinite Regress Argument
Mr. scottvska:
Mr. Stolyarov: The idea of any single “necessary being” is another error that I reject, as I will explain below. Logically, it is entirely admissible to subject a particular concept to scrutiny on multiple fronts. It seems that Mr. scottvska is suggesting that, in accepting the idea of God for the sake of argument, I should accept all of that idea and then only criticize one aspect of it in my argument. I do not see why that limitation ought to be observed. I am simply attempting to subject God to the same standards of rigor to which I would subject any other entity. If God is an entity, and every entity has a beginning (i.e., was created by some process by or out of some other entities), then it is entirely legitimate to ask what created God.
Mr. scottvska: “And this is not special pleading; there’s a very sophisticated metaphysical argument behind this concept. You and I are contingent beings. You and I exist but we may not have. All of the objects that we encounter in our daily lives are contingent objects. They exist, but they might not have existed; they might have existed in another form. Their material components may have been aligned differently, or they may not have existed at all. Even the universe (and by “universe” I mean the extent of space, time, and matter; I don’t mean reality as such; I don’t mean everything that exists) may not have existed. The physical universe is contingent. Astrophysicists can conceive of the universe not existing. The Big Bang Theory says that the universe didn’t exist at one time. It emerged in a singularity. So you could conceive of the universe having been very different from the universe we inhabit. And you could conceive of […] all possible universes not existing.”
Mr. Stolyarov: As an aside, I would like to point out that I do, indeed, challenge the Big Bang Theory as well, precisely because I consider creation ex nihilo to be impossible and because I see it as logically inadmissible that the universe – everything that exists – could ever have not existed. In A Rational Cosmology, Essay VI and Essay VII, I explain why I reject the idea of a singularity or beginning to the universe (which is not an entity, but rather a convenient, concise referent to the totality of disjoint and distinct entities).
But I do agree with the idea that every entity that exists is a contingent entity – at least in the sense that we can logically conceive of a world where that entity did not exist. (Indeed, there may be a future state of the world in which that entity will cease to exist.) I simply would not apply that same statement to the universe itself, since the universe is not an entity.
Mr. scottvska: “What you couldn’t conceive of is nothing existing – not because of some limitation imposed on us by our cognitive apparatus, but because “nothing” or “nothingness” is metaphysically impossible.”
Mr. Stolyarov: In fact, I agree with this statement rather strongly – but I take it in a different direction than Mr. scottvska. I take it to imply that the universe must have always existed – in the sense that some subset of entities would have been in existence no matter how far back temporally one would look. However, this does not have to be the same entity each time.
Mr. scottvska: “So there has to be something, so there has to be a necessary being – not necessarily God, but there has to be a necessary being. The necessary being might be Plato’s forms, for example… That is how God is conceived [by the Medieval scholastics].”
Mr. Stolyarov: This is, I think, the major non sequitur in Mr. scottvska’s reasoning here. Just because some thing always has to exist does not mean that it has to be the same thing all the time. For instance, one could just as readily imagine a situation in which, every million years, entity An gives rise to entity An+1 while An itself ceases to exist. (Actually, logically, there always need to be at least two entities – or one heterogeneous entity – in simultaneous existence, but we can just focus on the chain of consecutive entities for sake of simplicity here. Essay XXVI of A Rational Cosmology presents my thoughts on the impossibility of first and last entities.) So, in this hypothetical example, as long as any of the subscripted A-entities exist, we do not run into the problem of absolutely nothing existing. Nothing in logic requires a single eternal being. Indeed, logic rules out the possibility of a particular entity with no beginning, since, while every entity had to have an origin, existence itself could not have had an origin. Thus, it must be that, before the oldest entity in existence today was formed, there were some other entities that existed back then that were formed even earlier but are no longer extant. But all of them must have been physical entities with ubiquitous qualities such as matter, length, width, height, and time. This rules out God as the Abrahamic religions conceive of him.
Mr. scottvska: “So if you’re going to assume the existence of God, for the sake of argument, for the sake of attacking the existence of God, then you have to be clear about what type of God you’re assuming. And it seems to me, from these arguments, that you’re attacking the ‘greatest possible being’ type of God, which is a necessary being, and thus does not have a creator… So the question [of what created God] doesn’t make any sense. God is a necessary being and doesn’t require a creator.”
Mr. Stolyarov: Again, if the idea of a single necessary being is itself logically flawed, then I am permitted not to allow that idea to give the entire concept of God (of the “greatest possible being” type) the cover that might “save” that concept from the Infinite Regress argument.
Furthermore in my discussion of this argument, I would like to emphasize my comments regarding Occam’s Razor, which Mr. scottvska did not yet address. Occam’s Razor can dispense with the idea of God as simply superfluous in explaining the universe.
“Here is what Occam's Razor tells us on the question of what created the universe: The simplest working explanation is that the universe did not need to be created. The universe just is, always was, and always will be. Granted, particular entities in the universe changed. Star systems formed and disintegrated. The Earth was once a cloud of dust particles, and our distant ancestors were once single-celled organisms. But existence itself (i.e., the universe) always existed. We do need to undertake infinite regress to speculate as to what created the Creator, because even the very question is not a logical one to raise. The universe can be explained just fine without God, or without the Big Bang, or without any theories whatsoever about universal creation and/or destruction.”
4. Discussion of the Omnibenevolence Argument
scottvska: “There is a Calvinist philosopher who teaches at Notre Dame by the name of Alvin Plantinga who has […] dispensed with the problem of evil. Basically, as long as it’s possible for God to have a reason for permitting suffering, then the argument collapses… It seems to me that what […] most atheists that I’ve encountered seem to be doing is […] you’re assuming that if God has a reason for permitting evil, we would have to know what it is. Supposing that such an omnibenevolent God exists, why should we presume to know his motive for allowing evil. As long as it’s possible for God to have a reason for permitting evil, then the argument doesn’t work. You assume that we would have to know God’s motive for allowing evil. If you’re not assuming that, then the argument doesn’t make any sense. As long as it’s logically possible for God to have a reason for allowing evil, no matter how implausible that reason is, then the 'problem of evil' argument, in both its deductive and inductive forms, doesn’t work.”
Mr. Stolyarov: I disagree strongly with Mr. Plantinga here, precisely because morality is objective – and readily identifiable in many cases. For instance, genocide is morally wrong – always and in every case – and a genocidal murderer is always evil. Child molestation is always morally wrong, and the child molester is always evil. Torture is always morally wrong, and the torturer is always evil. There are no exceptions to these moral truths, and no extenuating circumstances that would somehow excuse the acts in question. At the point at which one posits an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being who has the power to end these atrocities but chooses not to – that means that the being is either not omnipotent, not omnibenevolent, neither omnipotent nor omnibenevolent, or simply nonexistent. To say that there can ever be a legitimate reason to permit an action that is morally wrong on its face is to deny objective morality. (This is motivation for my argument in my video series “Life as the Origin and Basis of Morality” – here and here – that genuinely objective morality cannot come from a God or from any entity whatsoever – since that would make the morality subjective, or subject to somebody’s will.)
If morality is objective, and in at least some cases brooks no exception, then it is not possible for an all-powerful God to permit immoral actions without himself being immoral. Since humans can understand completely and irrefutably that genocide is always wrong, this means that there can never be a legitimate reason for permitting it, no matter who does the permitting or what superlative attributes that being is deemed to have.
scottvska: “This is not an argument here; you make a couple [of] statements and ask a few questions.”
Mr. Stolyarov: Actually, I did make an argument in my second paragraph: “My answer [to the preceding questions] is that free will undeniably exists. It is what is called an epistemological axiom; we cannot even attempt to refute it without implicitly confirming it in the process. In the attempt to deny free will, we are exercising our free will. But, to consistently embrace the existence of free will, one must reject the possibility of anybody being omniscient about the decisions anybody else will make in the future. Thus, God, by the standard definition, is ruled out.”
So my argument states that, because free will exists and its existence is epistemologically axiomatic, an omniscient God cannot exist. The existence of an omniscient God would negate free will, and we know that we have free will.
Mr. scottvska: “It seems to me that you would have to show two things here. You would have to show that knowledge is causally efficacious, and further that God’s knowledge is deterministic. It’s hard for me to understand how knowledge can be causally efficacious. In other words, let’s say that I live across the street from you, and I have foreknowledge of your actions. I know every action you will ever perform in your life, and I sit back and watch you. Does that mean that my knowledge is causing your actions? It may be, but you would have to explain what that relationship consists of. I don’t understand it. When I think of determinism and how antecedent causes […] influence the choices we make, I think of environmental stimulus and physical causes. If our knowledge of our present actions doesn’t determine them, then why would knowledge of someone else’s future actions determine them? You need to flesh the argument out a little further.”
Mr. Stolyarov: The idea of omniscience is problematic with respect to the future, particularly because the future does not yet exist. If only a limited god were posited – e.g., a god that knows the present and the past, because those have already happened – then this god could be consistent with humans having free will. In that situation, the god would know what has happened up to now, and when a human makes a decision, the god would become aware of it instantaneously. This is highly implausible, but still logically conceivable – e.g., a god like that could employ nano-scale robot-cameras to spy on every person’s every move and every chemical reaction within every human brain.
But, with respect to the future, there is a crucial difference between predicting the future and knowing the future. To predict the future means to look at it from a present vantage point and successfully guess what will happen. It may be possible (setting practical constraints aside) to make a prediction about a future outcome with certainty – and this would not mean that one’s prediction has actually physically determined the future outcome. But to know the future requires a presumption that, in some respect, the future has already happened. The idea of God’s omniscience, or all-knowing, is that God knows (not just successfully predicts) all events in the future as if they were in the present or the past. Such omniscience would imply that human actors do not really have a choice, even if they think they do, because God, in his knowledge of the future, would effectively form it – placing the future into the present in order to have perfect knowledge of it.
Mr. scottvska: “Even if God’s omniscience is incompatible with free agency, if you assume that we have free agency, it still doesn’t follow that God does not exist.”
Mr. Stolyarov: I see two ways to interpret what Mr. scottvska is stating here.
(1) Mr. scottvska may be stating that, even if God’s omniscience is incompatible with free agency, the incompatibility could be resolved by rejecting free agency, rather than God’s omniscience. This is, for instance, what the Calvinists tried to do. I rule out this scenario on the grounds that free will is an epistemological axiom and is confirmed in the very attempt to deny it.
(2) Alternatively, Mr. scottvska may be stating that, even if one assumes the existence of free agency and God’s omniscience is incompatible with free agency, this is still not grounds for denying the existence of God. It is rather, only grounds for denying the existence of an omniscient God. In that case, I could agree that the existence of free will is by itself compatible with the existence of a God that knows everything up to the present moment – but with regard to the future can only be a very shrewd forecaster. But this is not, in my understanding, the God of Christianity or any of the other Abrahamic religions.
Mr. scottvska: “The validity of all five [of your] arguments, taken together, does not give you the non-existence of God. It implies the non-existence of a certain type of God – the ‘greatest possible being’ conception of God.”
Mr. Stolyarov: I do not dispute this – except to clarify that the “greatest possible being” idea of God is the most prevalent idea of God in our time. And I do hope that, if the “greatest possible being” idea of God is rejected by theists, some of those theists attempt to formulate a more reasonable alternative. Ultimately, my aim in presenting these arguments is not so much to convince everyone to become an atheist – although these arguments do go a decent way toward explaining my own atheism. Rather, I hope to encourage theists to think of more rational and rigorous formulations of their religions – which are more compatible with logic, observation, and modern civilization. In a sense, my critique of prevalent notions of God may well help theists who take these critiques seriously to preserve their religions by rendering them compatible with the progress of human thought. Ultimately, my aim is a more peaceful, rational, and rapidly advancing world.