Five Proofs of the Existence of God Feser Review

I merely completed a three-part serial exposing the laughable science illiteracy of Alvin Plantinga's "Two Dozen or Then" arguments for God. I've now had several requests to take on Edward Feser's Five Proofs of the Beingness of God (2017). Since there aren't any good, easily locatable rebuttals online (this one by Jonathan Garner is the closest I could find, and it'south a chip lackluster). Plantinga and Feser have a common thread of ignoring the sciences; but even more, both are acting like the Mod Historic period never happened. They are withal thinking like Medieval monks, who didn't know how show or scientific discipline worked, didn't know Aristotle was already obsolete even in the ancient earth, and idea their own naive semantical armchair musings could tell them facts almost the Universe. In this case, explicitly. Feser confesses he'south resurrecting the logic and arguments of Medieval scholasticism.

Feser'south volume contains one chapter for each of the titular v arguments, plus ii more than chapters, i attempting to extract more than attributes for his thus-proven God, and ane collecting and responding to some mutual rebuttals to his 5 Arguments. Notably, like all Christian apologetics, that concluding chapter only "succeeds" by omitting everything that really undermines his conclusions. Just compare it with my commodity Bayesian Counter-Apologetics for a first at what's wrong here: the prove really argues against Feser's God. And we follow evidence. Not armchair fantasies in Feser's head. Simply here my only thesis shall be that none of his arguments succeed in producing a sentient superbeing. But that ways his penultimate affiliate tin can also be ignored, since all it does is build on the Five Proofs to resolve God into a more circuitous psychological entity with particular emotions, goals, and superpowers. Simply if none of those Proofs concord h2o, that chapter is just full-on moot. I won't even bother with it. Though at that place is a lot there of interest if you lot desire to explore Feser's theology—including a really bizarre, sexist statement for God being a human being (effectually pages 246-57).

Feser's last affiliate will besides exist useful to you if you lot want to see how a theist responds to mutual rebuttals to his Five Arguments. In fact, the whole book is handy if you desire to train at this; it contains a lot of examples of desperately argued points from atheists, so if you want to avoid those, he'southward given yous a kind of atlas of them (here and in each preceding affiliate, every one of which closes by addressing specific rebuttals). But my refutations here will already be immune to everything he says in his last chapter. And then it won't serve any office to address information technology here.

That'south because I won't be providing or fixing up every conceivable rebuttal i could throw at Feser. There are a lot of false, dubious, or fallacious moves in this book. And quite a lot of already-well-known refutations that are better than the ones he represents in his last chapter. Rather, I'll just cut to the chase of the single well-nigh unrecoverable mistake in each of his five arguments, the i fault that really just does information technology in, rendering the rest of the corresponding chapter a waste material of time even to bother reading. Which does not amount to proving God doesn't exist. Information technology just amounts to proving that in this book Feser has failed to provide whatsoever genuinely rational reason to believe in one. I figure you'll detect that the most useful for dealing with fanatical Feserists on the net.

One common thread to sympathize all of what follows is that Feser is a thousand years behind the times in the scientific written report of the noesis of ontology. Every argument Feser deploys is just a manipulation of a model in his head. He imagines a model in the theater of his listen, and deduces some things he thinks he'd demand for that model to obtain in reality. At no point does he ever evidence that this model ever corresponds to reality. This is a mutual and serious problem with theology (see my article The God Impossible for some of import perspective on this). Yes, maybe y'all can come up with a model for how the universe works, such that just a God could explicate why it exists. But whether the universe actually corresponds to that model you just invented is precisely the question we are trying to respond. No amount of tinkering with the model, can answer that question. Science is superior to theology precisely because it found a way to stop merely tinkering with models in our heads and start testing which models really apply. And models that tin't be tested, it rightly declares unknowable.

Such is the fate of Feser's imagined God.

Argument One: The Aristotelian Proof

A quick and muddy way to phrase this argument is: change is existent; alter requires some fundamental underlying substrate, an ultimate "causy affair," that makes change possible; ergo, that has to be God. The handwave at the end there, from the major premise to the conclusion, involves some convoluted step of reasoning about there having to be some actual thing that actualizes change, which itself is not actualized by anything else—something "self-actualizing." Aristotle'due south "Unmoved Mover." How you go a mind out of that is where it gets all wobbly and his supposed logical precision dissolves.

Actually, the virtually nothingly nothing y'all can have without facing a logical contradiction, is the absence of everything except logically contradictory states of affairs. And that means everything. Including gods, laws of physics, rules, objects, minds, or extensions of space or fourth dimension. And by Feser's own reasoning, the absence of everything except logically necessary states of affairs entails the presence of every logically necessary thing. And nothing else. Hence the absence of everything including logical contradictions is the same thing as the presence of only the logically necessary. Since if some entity'due south existence is logically necessary, by definition its absence would entail a logical contradiction. That'due south literally what "logically necessary" means.

But what happens when you take abroad everything except that which is demonstrably logically necessary? Not what we "conjecture" or "wish" were logically necessary; no, we don't go to cheat. No circular arguments. Only what we can actually formally prove is logically necessary. And that ways, prove now, non at some hypothetical future time. We don't get to "conjecture" or "wish" into being some new logical necessity we have yet to really evidence is such. Well. What happens is, nosotros get a nothing-state that logically necessarily becomes a multiverse that will contain a universe that looks just like ours. To a probability infinitesimally virtually 100%. See Ex Nihilo Onus Merdae Fit (or its cursory: The Problem with Nothing).

A quick and dingy mode to phrase that argument is: if naught exists, and then past definition no rules exist limiting what volition happen to it; if no rules exist limiting what it will happen to information technology, it is every bit probable it will become ane of infinitely many arrays of things (including remaining nothing, which is just i of infinitely many other things no rule exists to forestall happening); if we select at random from the infinitely many arrays of things information technology tin go (including the assortment that is an empty set, i.due east. continuing to be nothing), the probability is infinitesimally near 100% the array chosen at random will be a vast multiverse whose probability of including a universe like ours is infinitesimally nigh 100%. Because there are infinitely more than ways to get 1 of those at random, than to get, for example, the 1 single outcome of remaining cipher. At that place is no way to avoid this. Unless you insert some law, power, dominion, or forcefulness that would terminate it, or change the effect to something non decided at random. Only once you do that, you are no longer talking about nothing. Yous have added something. Which you have no reason to add together. Other than your human being desire that it be at that place. Which is not a compelling argument for it being there.

That the show looks to back up the determination that at that place is a multiverse (far more than it supports in that location being a god) only verifies the hypothesis that the universe did start with such a goose egg-state. Simply that'southward still just a hypothesis. There may well have e'er been something. There may have never been zip, in whatever sense at all. But information technology's peculiar that starting with a aught-state, gets us exactly the weird universe we observe. That seems a pretty strange coincidence. Still, I'1000 doing the aforementioned matter Feser is: building a model in my head, and working out what would accept to happen or exist the case if that model were true. Does that hateful my model corresponds to what actually happened? No.

What this exercise teaches united states of america is that Feser has no ground for arguing that the substrate, the ultimate "actuality" that actualizes all potentials, has to be all the things he claims. He might exist able to testify logically that some substrate must be (that'south still questionable, only I won't challenge it in this article). But he doesn't actually present a valid logical argument for information technology existence the substrate he defines. That it would have those properties is merely true of a model he invented in his head. Is it truthful outside his caput? He presents no show to conclude it is. Considering Feser doesn't "do" science, yous come across. He's not, like, into evidence, man.

Feser's formalization of this argument appears around folio 35. It has 49 premises. I shit you non. Most of them are uncontroversial on some interpretation of the words he employs (that doesn't mean they are credible on his chosen interpretation of those words, simply I'll charitably ignore that here), except one, Premise 41, where his whole statement breaks down and bites the dust: "the forms or patterns manifest in all the things [the substrate] causes…tin can exist either in the physical style in which they exist in individual item things, or in the abstruse manner in which they exist in the thoughts of an intellect." This is a false dichotomy, otherwise known as a bifurcation fallacy. Information technology's simply not true that those are the only two options. And BTW, this Premise, is the same central premise (futurity always hidden) in all v of his arguments. We can thus abnegate all of them, past simply refuting this unmarried premise (more on that later).

So let'due south do that.

Ironically, a third option that in fact I'm quite sure is actually true, is the very option described by Aristotle himself. Aristotle took Plato to chore for the mistake Feser is making, pointing out that it is not necessary that potential patterns really exist in some concrete or mental course. They but have to potentially exist. Hence Aristotle said of Plato'due south "world of forms" what Laplace said to Napoleon of God: "Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis." Potential things are by definition not bodily. So obviously nosotros don't need them to be actualized to exist. That's a self-contradictory request. Information technology's thus self-contradictory of Feser to insist that potential things must be "actualized" somewhere (a listen; concrete things). Obviously there is no logical sense in which they must be actualized in that mode.

Aristotle argued that potentials exist inherently in everything, without anything further needing to be the example. A cube contains the potential to be a sphere (by concrete transformation); but not equally if that potential is some sort of magical fluid contained physically inside the cube. It's but a logically necessary property of any fabric that information technology can be reshaped; if it tin can have shape, it tin can have whatsoever shape. Period. It is logically necessarily always the example. And Feser must concur that if something is logically necessary, it requires no other explanation of why it exists. Not minds. Not concrete things. Zippo. The only way to finish that from beingness true, would be to interject some power or forcefulness to stop it, e.m. something that would make the cube's reshaping into a sphere impossible. But recall, we're not allowed to practice that. We don't get to simply "invent" things and declare their being logically necessary; and if it's not logically necessary, the potential it would have blocked remains logically possible. Of course, even if nosotros could just "invent" things like that, that would simply limit what potentials exist. Withal nothing more would be needed to explain that. Non minds. Not concrete things. Nothing.

Feser tries to debate that the ultimate substrate must be "i, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, fully good, intelligent, and omniscient." He just does that with featherbrained word games—few of these words does he apply in any sense you'd recognize. But let's charitably imagine he tin can construct some model in his head whereby information technology would be true, and grant him his bizarre definitions of all these terms. The correct style to test models against each other is to build multiple models and compare them confronting the evidence. And then let'southward build a model different from Feser'southward and run into what happens…

I propose that the substrate of all potentiality is the actualization of spacetime. Just that. Nothing more. I've fabricated the example for this elsewhere already (Sense and Goodness without God III.v, pp. 119-34). I don't claim information technology's true. I only claim it could be true; it explains a lot; and does so better than whatever culling yet offered. Including gods. The gist of it is this: every "thing" we recall exists, is really simply a convoluted geometric twisting of spacetime. Photons, electrons, quarks, gluons, all merely unlike vibrations of spacetime. This is called Superstring Theory. And dissimilar Feser's featherbrained Information technology's a Giant Ghost hypothesis, Superstring Theory (or ST) is actually a developed theory of physics that has a number of remarkable predictive successes. Feser's theory has exactly none. For example, ST tin predict exactly all the particles of the Standard Model and all of their peculiar fundamental features and constants. Can Feser deduce all that from his It's a Behemothic Ghost hypothesis? No. He just has to Mary Sue information technology into existence. "Well, that's just what God would practise." "Why?" "I don't know. It's a mystery." Which nosotros call the absence of a hypothesis.

In my proposed model, the only thing that actually exists, that causes every object and event and law and force and constant of physics, and has no other cause of its existence, is space-time. It is the ultimate bodily affair, that actualizes all potentials; and which in turn is not actualized by anything else.

Spacetime:

• It's "incorporeal" (it is not itself a body, but by itself is the absenteeism of all body).
• It's "immaterial" (in the merely sense Feser requires: it isn't made of matter, nor does it exist "in" infinite or time).
• It'southward "immutable" (infinite-time can change in quantity and shape, and thereby manifest different things, but as of it is always the same as every other bit of it; its ultimate backdrop never modify; only as God can think and feel and act, while his ultimate properties never modify).
• It'south "1" (a continuum, a unity, unbroken, unbreakable).
• It's "eternal" (y'all tin shrink or clasp it, but you lot tin't get rid of it; it could well have e'er existed; and in that location is no sense in which space or time is located "in" space or fourth dimension; it just literally is all infinite and time together, requiring no farther location).
• It's "perfect" (in the sense Feser requires: every fundamental belongings of infinite-time is always and everywhere fully actualized).
• It'southward "fully practiced" (past Feser's definition, which opposite to his confusing employ of the word "good" isn't a value judgment, but simply the assertion that it has no unactualized features; it isn't "broken" or "working below its potential").
• And it'south "omnipotent" (in the only sense Feser requires: it tin can realize all things that can exist or happen, and therefore has all the power that it is possible for any entity to have; in fact no ability tin exist, just through it).

Then Feser is merely arguing space-fourth dimension is God. Mindless, valueless, merely concrete space-time. That's just atheism.

What this means is that Feser's entire volume is well-nigh a single maneuver: trying to dodge that outcome by trying to bootstrap infinite-fourth dimension into being an intelligent consciousness. Just that'southward where his argument becomes 100% bullshit. In no way does the substrate having these other properties entail information technology'south "intelligent." Intelligence is only a potential thing space-fourth dimension can manifest, being an organized complexity; and being an organized complexity, information technology cannot be a property inherent in infinite-time itself, which is simple and uniform. Nor would it be "omniscient," cognition being another organized complexity, and thus only something that space-time tin be organized to manifest, not a affair space-time itself is. All possible knowledge and all possible intellection is inherent in space-time as a potential, but that is non what we mean by cognition and intelligence. Potentially knowing everything, is not the aforementioned as actually knowing everything. A clump of goo is potentially intelligent. Organize it into a performance brain, and information technology will be really intelligent. They are not the same thing. And "we" are indeed a way the universe becomes conscious of itself; but that does not make the universe a god. Not by whatever definition pertinent to anyone, to the lowest degree of all Feser.

Hence it all falls down at Premise 41: his imitation exclamation that potentials, to exist in an actualizer, must exist in some heed or concrete vessel. What must be for spacetime to actually exist twisted upwardly into a proton, and thence into a drove of particles, and thence into a tree? Just spacetime. Nothing else. What must exist for spacetime to potentially be twisted up into a proton, and thence into a collection of particles, and thence into a tree? But spacetime. Null else. Since nil exists to stop spacetime maybe being rearranged into a tree, that spacetime can mayhap be arranged into a tree is merely a fact of spacetime. No mind need exist "in addition" to spacetime, for spacetime to take that potential, always and everywhere. Nor is any physical thing required. Spacetime can be completely empty. And nonetheless have the potential to class up into matter, and thence a tree. In fact, it's statistically inevitable that every scrap of spacetime in that location is, volition. Someday. Information technology'due south a Boltzmann necessity.

So up to the point where Feser violates basic canons of logic, all his Aristotelian argument gets us to is "mindless spacetime is the fundamental substrate of all beingness." He should now get a physics degree and dedicate his life to developing Superstring Theory.

In the cease, my model is as coherent as Feser's. Indeed, arguably more so—it'due south far simpler, far clearer, has a more scientific foundation, and requires no baseless suppositions (like his Premise 41). But permit'southward just pretend they are equally coherent. Which one is true? Can we tell from the armchair? No. Does Feser give whatsoever argument for his model beingness more likely than mine? No. But there are things my theory predicts that his does not—and those things we find to be the case. Everything, in fact, is unexpected on his theory; yet completely expected on mine. The universe does appear to be born of and wholly governed past a mindless substrate. That argues for my model beingness far more probable than his. And if my model is more than probable to be true than his and my model is false, then his model is fifty-fifty less likely to be truthful. Because my model can just exist false if some other model is more probably truthful. Merely if My Theory is more probable than His Theory, and Some Other Theory is more likely than My Theory, then necessarily Some Other Theory is more probable than His Theory.

At that place is no style Feser tin can rescue his model here. He's done. Cooked. Fourth dimension to move on.

Argument Two: The Neo-Ideal Proof

Something has to hold everything together. Otherwise, it would all fall autonomously, correct? So that has to be God! That's the gist of this statement. And it's just as ridiculous as information technology sounds. This one has 37 premises! (Around page 79) In that location are a lot of dubious bounds in this i. But let's just assume they all hold upward, all the manner to the premise that we will grant just for giggles, that everything has an "absolutely simple or noncomposite crusade" holding it together (and preventing it from falling apart). Shit hits the fan correct afterward that, at Premise 22: "Everything is either a mind, or a mental content, or a fabric entity, or an abstruse entity." That'south another fake lemma. Call back Aristotle? There is at to the lowest degree one other affair that isn't any of those things: space-time. It'due south not a listen, it's not a mental content, information technology's not a material entity, and it's not an abstract entity.

One might try to play Devil'southward Abet and say, well, space-time isn't a material entity in the sense that information technology's not "fabricated of matter," and apparently isn't itself located "in" space or time, certain. But what does Feser mean past "cloth entity"? Well, he defines that as "having parts which need to be combined in society for them to exist," which makes them able to come into being and laissez passer abroad. This doesn't actually include space-time; and even if 1 idea information technology could, we can but ascertain our model'south substrate as a space-time that can't be broken up or made or dissolved. As a hypothesis, that's as good as Feser's; and in fact more coinciding with his insistence that the substrate be "admittedly unproblematic," because it's hard to get simpler than a mindless space-time with no other fundamental properties. Certainly that's far simpler than a vastly complex heed with unlimited superpowers. Information technology also doesn't get y'all anywhere to enquire what holds space-time together and keeps it from dissolving. Because we can only as easily inquire, "What holds God together and keeps him from dissolving?" Whatever answer you give to that, we tin can give for space-time. That's how models piece of work. Isn't that great?

So hither we are building on everything we pointed out in respect to Argument 1. What holds a tree together is the electromagnetic force. What holds the electromagnetic force together is photons. What holds photons together is space-fourth dimension. And at that place is no side by side level. That'due south it. The buck stops there. In what I'll at present call the Neoaristotelian Superstring Model (or NST), a photon but is a curve in infinite-time. The residue is geometry. What keeps the photon aptitude? Space-time. What keeps the space-time bent? Zero. It but is aptitude. And where information technology's bent a certain way, we call it a photon. Because that shape interacts with all other shapes geometrically in means that nosotros describe as the properties of a photon. We can explain how a ripple over here, moves across infinite-time like a wave on a sheet, to cause another ripple over there. And thus we can explain the forming and dissolving of a photon. But the substrate, the infinite-time, never forms or dissolves. Information technology just changes shape. When the photon is gone or falls apart, the infinite-time that was manifesting it remains, unchanged in basic properties, unharmed, unaltered. Ready to exist vibrated into another photon someday. Or anything else.

Space-time also has "parts" in the sense that in that location is some of information technology over here, and some of it over there, and different "parts" are shaped in different ways, manifesting different particles and forces, but this is a different sense of "having parts" than Feser is concerned about. Because infinite-time tin never exist cleaved up. Its parts are always a uniform and continuous whole (even if quantized, the quanta of spacetime can't be broken autonomously). No matter how the unlike "parts" of it get bent or vibrated. There is no statement in Feser against that kind of composition being the central underlying cause of all other composites. And there is no possible argument of the kind to exist had. Obviously this tin be the primal substrate holding all composites together. Obviously nothing more is needed. No world of gremlins and faeries need be to concord the infinite-time and shape it. If you milkshake a carpet causing a ripple to move across it, no "gremlin" is needed to keep pushing the ripple. It pushes itself. It's a geometrically necessary issue.

Space-time also could conceivably take "come into being," but once again non in any sense Feser is concerned with. There can't take been any time before space-time, nor any place apart from it either. So if space-time came into existence (and contrary to what Christian apologists falsely tell you, we don't know it did), it did then from a zilch-state. Which I already discussed above: an actual nothing-state will inevitably produce a vast, messy space-time, by logical necessity, owing to the absenteeism of whatever laws, thereby entailing a completely random outcome. In the "zippo-country" the only potential that existed was the potential for space-time. In one case space-time existed, every potential existed within information technology that it could manifest. And that's why nosotros see the universe nosotros see today: one completely reducible to the bumps and geometry of a mindless space-fourth dimension.

One could then say that therefore that nada-land (which again we are just speculating in one case existed) independent all potentials, and therefore it is the ultimate substrate, the ultimate cause, the absolutely elementary noncomposite thing that began everything else. Just that still isn't a God. Being a nothing-state, it is far simpler than a listen or annihilation else substantive or particular at all. It but has those things potentially. Not actually. It is therefore the absenteeism of a God. Non the presence of 1. And that is in the by now. And so it tin can't be holding things together now. Therefore it isn't the thing that answers Feser's "Neoplatonic" business concern. Though it works well enough for his "Aristotelian" business. If you lot desire to go there. But until we take prove that that model is existent, we don't really have any business asserting information technology is. Just we tin can affirm it'southward a hell of a lot more likely than his Behemothic Super-Ghost.

We could even merge the nothing theory with the infinite-time theory, with the same logical semantics Feser enjoys using to build-out his marvelous God: for if space-time began and is the logically necessary being, then we can just as readily conclude the goose egg-land it sprang from logically necessarily contained a single dimensionless betoken of infinite-time and thus was space-time. For the nothing-state tin can't always have existed…if it never existed (if at no time information technology existed) or if it existed nowhere (if information technology never existed at any location); for those are identical to saying it didn't be at all. Therefore, information technology is logically impossible for a nothing-state to have ever existed, that didn't contain whatsoever bespeak of space-fourth dimension. And then. Gosh. Information technology ends up beingness infinite-time all the way down!

Either fashion, my space-time model works besides as Feser'southward. It is absolutely uncomplicated (yous tin can't dissever away its properties; it's everywhere the aforementioned), it is noncomposite (yous can't intermission it apart; information technology'south ever in that location no affair what else its continual reshaping manifests every bit coming or passing away), it requires nothing else "below" it to give it beingness and shape, and information technology explains every limerick (the geometry of spacetime is what causes what nosotros detect equally the interactions of particles and thus the forces that explain all material objects and events); at least as well as his Giant Ghost does. And better, when you consider what a mindless substrate predicts we should observe, that a sentient substrate does not predict (without a massive Rube Goldergesque parade of ad hoc contrivances for which there is exactly zero prove or logical demonstration).

So once once more there is no manner Feser can rescue his model hither. He'southward done. Cooked. Fourth dimension to move on.

Statement Three: The Augustinian Proof

This is simply a standard Statement from Abstract Objects. This fourth dimension with but a lean 28 premises. I already exposed the flaws in that kind of reasoning when I dealt with it in Plantinga (his Argument from Sets, Argument from Numbers & Properties, and Argument from Counterfactuals). The but thing new hither is that Feser fabricates the premise that "Aristotelian realism" holds that "abstruse objects be merely in homo or other contingently existing intellects." That's not true. Maybe some Medieval interpretation of Aristotle ended that. But that is certainly not Aristotle's actual account of abstractions—or more properly, universals. Feser seems to have confused what Aristotle said about how we notice and employ universals in human thought, with what he said nigh what universals are. Once we right the mistake, Feser'south unabridged third statement collapses.

This puts the destruction of Feser's argument at Premise 8 (around page 108). Ane could quibble about other premises in his argument, but like I said, I'yard not going to problem myself. Information technology'southward plenty to identify the almost fatal error. And this is it. To quote the peer reviewed Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Aristotle…argued that forms are intrinsic to the objects and cannot exist apart from them." He did not argue they exist "in human minds." They can exist in that location, as in, the perception and comprehension of them can exist in a mind; but these are apperceptions of things that exist outside the heed. No mind demand be in Aristotle's organisation, for all universals to even so still exist. And they really exist, because the things that manifest them really exist. And this is true even of things that don't be: because the potential always exists in all the things that can go something else. Thus, a new and unrealized species of animal or government "exists," in the sense that the universe contains the potential to generate it.

Simply I don't want to argue over what Aristotle thought (there are indeed many disagreements on that). Considering he'south obsolete. And what Feser needs is the most robust, modern version of "Aristotelian realism," not Aristotle's outdated version of it (much less some Medieval quack'southward distortion of information technology). I outline what a modern, robust version looks like in Sense and Goodness without God (III.v.four, pp. 124-30). As you'll see in my articles All Godless Universes Are Mathematical and How Can Morals Be Both Invented and True?, universals are simply the shared properties of particulars. As soon as there are two triangles, there is a mutual property they share (like, having iii sides). No mind need be (nor Platonic Forms for that matter) for it to be true that both triangles have 3 sides. Their existence alone is enough to brand information technology true. The "having of three sides" is therefore simply a property multiple objects possess. Period.

What if no object e'er forms a triangle? That's where Aristotle'southward stardom between potentiality and actuality enters. A region of space tin be shaped into a triangle. Multiple regions of space can be shaped into triangles. No listen need exist (nor Ideal Forms for that affair) for information technology to be true that many regions of space can exist shaped into triangles, fifty-fifty at the same time. Thus the universal property of triangularity ever exists, potentially, wherever space-time exists. Even if no actual triangles are ever formed in that infinite-fourth dimension. Because there is nothing to logically forbid that infinite-time from having that shape. And if ever it does have that shape, it will automatically be the aforementioned property manifested, every fourth dimension it does. No mind demand exist (nor Platonic Forms for that thing) for that to be true.

And that's just all there is to it. It's not like if you took God abroad from the universe, that suddenly triangles couldn't exist, or wouldn't have three sides, or we couldn't notice this. Since all those things would remain without a God, their existence tin never fence for the being of a God.

So once once more there is no way Feser can rescue his model here. He's done. Cooked. Time to move on.

Argument Four: The Thomistic Proof

We need God to explain essences. Which is kind of similar saying we need God to explicate phlogiston. Essences, in the sense Feser means, don't exist. They've been ruled out past science for centuries, as quaint and blowsy notions. What he actually ways is something else, but as "phlogiston" didn't really be, but was a failed attempt to explain something else, namely fire (and related phenomena). Fire actually exists. Just phlogiston doesn't. And burn down isn't, it turns out, an element, nor is information technology caused by air absorbing a chemical called phlogiston. Similarly, "essences" don't exist. And we've long known they don't exist. That's why they are no longer used in any scientific theory. Simply other phenomena that "essences" were a failed attempt to explain, do be. This is why the Wikipedia article on "Essences" never in one case mentions any scientific utilize or application of the term. And why the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a whole section titled Death of Essentialism. Now set up theory has replaced the unabridged concept.

And then right out of the gate this statement is pseudoscientific garbage.

Fifty-fifty from a formal standpoint, this one is just a terrible mess. His syllogism has a ton of boner mistakes in it; for example, Feser's Premise 2 (around page 128), asserts that "If [the distinction between an entity's essence and its existence] were not a real stardom…then we could know whether or not a affair exists merely by knowing its essence." Um. Yes. That's how nosotros know dragons and unicorns don't exist, and lions and tigers exercise. Because it would exist impossible to know the complete essence of, say, a unicorn, and not notice that among its properties is the feature of "being fictional." One could circularly define that one matter as not part of one'southward essence, but and so you're just arguing in a circumvolve. Even if you lot try to get all Frege and Russell on me, and insist existence is not a property, that tin can only exist true if existence is already inherent in the other asserted properties of an object; hence we're back to indeed knowing whether something exists merely by wholly knowing its essence…that is in fact Frege and Russell's whole signal!

In that location is just no recovering from this gaffe. The argument is hosed.

How did Feser fuck this up? Because he confuses someone beingness told an incomplete clarification of a affair, with really being informed of its essence (as he defines it; remember, essences don't really be, then I'thou moving around in the model in his caput, not the one that exists in reality). A fully informed account of an entity's essence would include when it exists or didn't. It is essential to Hitler, for example, that he did non live in the 21st century. It is essential to Yoda, for case, that no one could ever have spoken to him—other than in fiction or pretense. Yous could not fully sympathize what "Hitler" or "Yoda" were if y'all weren't informed of these facts. And just excluding that one piece of information, literally the most important one, from what you volition arbitrarily classify equally "an essence," is only a semantic game. And semantic games can't go you to any grand realizations in metaphysics.

Feser actually burns a few pages arguing he is not engaging in this confusion. But alas, his protests make no logical sense. He insists if you lot mistakenly recollect lions are fictional monsters, "you lot have not misconceived what it is to exist a lion." Um. Yeah. Y'all have. You've totally misconceived what it is to be a lion. Simply if you lot arbitrarily demarcate how y'all'd exam whether a lion existed, with the upshot of that exam—as if somehow the latter was not an attribute of the lion—can you get to Feser'southward ridiculous premise. But that's completely arbitrary. Why are we demarcating away that single holding of lions as no longer essential to being a lion? Simply because I know how to detect a dragon if 1 existed, does non hateful I am necessarily fully informed as to what it is to exist a dragon. If, unbeknownst to me, dragons exist, so I am only misinformed about dragons.

Exactly this kind of nonsense Feser is tripping all over is one of the reasons essences have been abandoned by all the sciences as a useless concept. Feser'due south bounds but get more ridiculous and convoluted from at that place. And this statement racks upwards at 35 premises. But where it really fails is once over again where it trips over competing models of reality, which is at Premise 33, where he leaps without any logical basis, once over again, from "a purely actualized entity" (he means, this fourth dimension, an ultimate substrate whose existence is identical with its essence), to a beingness that has a mind ("immutable, eternal…[etc.]," and "intelligent and omniscient"). But we already saw that does non logically follow. And he gives no logical argument for information technology here. He simply skips to asserting it; premises missing.

Once again, infinite-time is an ultimate substrate whose existence is identical with its essence. And according to this AST model, space-time indeed causes what Feser means by essence and beingness (considering existing means just that space-time is actually and not just potentially so shaped; and the shape information technology's in, fixes every other property, and therefore annihilation's "essence"). And, again, space-time has all the properties Feser insists upon ("immutable, eternal…" etc.), except intelligence and omniscience….because, notwithstanding again, Feser confuses a potential for intellection and knowledge, with bodily intellection and cognition. Space-time does indeed contain all potentials, at all times and places. But that does not mean all potentials would necessarily be actualized, much less at every time and place.

The formalism of Feser's argument here is just garbage, and so it'south hard to observe the hidden premise he is relying on to get from "ultimate substrate whose existence is identical with its essence" to "has all these astonishing backdrop," without his just punting to the other arguments, which I've already refuted. And if that's what's going on hither, this isn't a fourth argument. It's just a cluttered discussion wall, which suddenly at Premise 33 merely repeats the concluding clamper of arguments one, ii, or three. And in that event, Premise 33 is simply false. The substrate he requires, doesn't need, nor would plausibly have, intelligence or fifty-fifty knowledge (much less omniscience). And he has presented no syllogism showing otherwise. The merely time he ever attempts 1 anywhere in the volume, it's that nonsense Premise 41 in Statement 1. The same fake dichotomy he uses in every one of his five arguments to conjure mental backdrop for what turns out to just be…space-time.

At nearly one can infer that Feser means to become to the conclusion that something exists that is "purely actual" by some new means hither (something incoherent nigh essences and being), but from in that location, the argument isn't new. And since the borrowed part is already fallacious, all the effort he goes into to get to "purely actual" in another way hither, is just a waste of anybody'south time. "Purely bodily," simply doesn't get y'all to God. As I've already shown for the previous iii arguments. But to address what would be dissimilar about this statement, is to focus on this nonsense about essences and existence being different. Which isn't truthful in any real earth sense. It can but be truthful in an arbitrary, advertisement hoc, semantic structure in his head—which doesn't represent to reality. Non but because there is no such thing as an essence. But also because even what he means by an essence can't exist separated from existence in whatsoever fashion other than by his own capricious decisions; and reality cannot be discovered by just "deciding" that information technology exist a sure way.

"I merely don't recall knowing whether Hitler was a real person or a fictional character is important to knowing who Hitler essentially was," just isn't a rational matter to say. Nor can such a weird decision on your function, somehow unlock the mysteries of the universe outside your head.

Then over again there is no way Feser can rescue his model hither. He's washed. Cooked. Fourth dimension to movement on.

Argument V: The Rationalist Proof

Here Feser calms downwardly to using only 26 premises. Only all he does at present is deploy the standard Statement from Sufficient Reason. He goes on with a bunch of rigmarole about the "Principle of Sufficient Reason," and builds out a lot of dubious premises on that, just I won't trouble myself with that here. Though he's incorrect (the PSR, if false, would not entail "things and events without axiomatic explanation or intelligibility would be extremely common," as his Premise two alleges, around page 161), I don't really care. I'k content to grant the PSR for giggles. And some of his premises I take no effect with at all, like Premise 11, which argues that even if we are looking at an space past concatenation of contingent events, why "that infinite series as a whole exists at all would remain to be explained" (a point I myself fabricated, and explore, in Sense and Goodness without God 3.three.v, pp. 83-88).

Just and then nosotros go to the heart of the affair. This i does the same thing as Argument Four. Information technology concocts a syllogism that starts out pretty clean, but ceases to brand sense near the terminate of it, once more simply sneaking in the exact same argument from "pure authenticity" borrowed from every other argument in the volume (here, it's snuck in as false Premise 24). The only thing different, is that now he'southward trying to get there in some fifth, novel way, by some unclear, convoluted means—by arguing God is the merely thing that tin can be the "ultimate" Sufficient Reason for everything else, requiring no further reason for his own existence or properties.

The argument is a mess. But ultimately, all Feser ends up doing here again is just proving mindless space-time necessarily exists. For in my competing model, by definition it is infinite-time, without any mental powers or properties, that "is the caption of why any contingent things exist at all and which is the crusade of every item contingent thing'due south existing at any moment" (Feser'due south Premise 22). For it has all the properties Feser's substrate needs to respond his Principle of Sufficient Reason, yet doesn't demand "intelligence" and "omniscience," considering it necessarily contains only the potential for intellection and cognition (in that it can manifest minds that know things, but space-fourth dimension itself is not a mind that knows things). Therefore my model is simpler. And everything is thereby explained.

It won't do to say that space-time is itself a contingent being. Because that'southward begging the question. For exactly the same reasons Feser gives for saying the same of God. I have imagined a space-time that necessarily exists. That'due south my competing model. Every argument Feser gives for his "God" necessarily existing, all five, I accept already shown fence that spacetime necessarily exists. The only matter he adds, each fourth dimension, is to try and sneak in some mental powers ("intelligence and omniscience"). Merely equally I showed correct at Argument One, he has no logically valid road to that decision. And when you take them away, what you have left is simply: a necessarily real spacetime. Which has no intelligence and isn't conscious. And that isn't God. It is, quite merely, the absenteeism of God.

In one case again at that place is no way Feser can rescue his model here. He'southward done. Cooked. Time to move on.

Indeed, even his attempt at rebutting me has failed. Twice.

Conclusion

Feser'due south whole schtick is to effort and fence there must exist some ultimate, fundamental basis of all being, which explains why everything is the way information technology is, and why universal properties be, that causes all forms of change, and holds everything together and keeps it from falling autonomously. And he tries to debate that this footing of all being must have the properties of beingness "one, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, fully skillful, intelligent, and omniscient." But none of his arguments ever logically get to "intelligent and omniscient." Those just become thrown on the jumble, every fourth dimension without whatever syllogism supporting them, all based on a single false dichotomy right in Argument One (at Premise 41). Somewhere in there he conjures those attributes from a fallacy of conflating potentiality with authenticity. And hopes no one notices.

Instead, Feser's five arguments only, at all-time, become to that fundamental whatsit existence "one, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, and fully good," under the foreign definitions he contrived for those terms. Which but describes space-time. So we have every bit much reason to conclude space-time is the ground of all being. And given that that makes far more sense of countless observations, nosotros should sooner conclude then. Atheists can even so argue it'south something else; but whatever candidate they propose, they'd withal be arguing confronting God existence it. I will at to the lowest degree hold that there must be some ground of all being, in many or all of the ways Feser insists. But it does non follow that we can already at present declare that we know what information technology is. Nor does it follow that we can declare the best candidate for the job is God. It's not. A better candidate by far is already just space-time. Feser'southward God? We have no need of that hypothesis.

Epilogue

As I already noted, Feser has completely failed to answer to the actual arguments of this article. Not simply one time. But twice. And then I've written this epilogue to complete the point that he has failed to get.

Many attempts have been fabricated to try and cipher spacetime every bit the candidate for the primal ground of all being. All accept failed. To the contrary, all of Feser's own arguments prove that it is—by proving a unified, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, almighty, and fully good thing exists. Considering by his own peculiar definitions of those terms, they describe spacetime to a T. He but fails to produce any logically valid step to "add" the attributes of omniscience and intelligence (much less any qualities of mind). And then what his own arguments leave us with, is spacetime.

Although spacetime does comprise all potentialities, then it is "omniscient" in that sense, just that's not conscious awareness. Conscious awareness, besides intelligence, is always a composite, an emergent outcome of a complex causal network. It is therefore a direct logical contradiction to claim a conscious intelligence is elementary. A witting intelligence is by definition a circuitous. That is what separates a smart from a dumb entity: increased complexity, in what information technology is, contains, and can exercise. And scientific discipline has proven consciousness is a property of exceedingly complex intelligence. You can't have a consciousnessness devoid of any intelligence. And the simplest intelligences lack consciousness. Intelligence is always a contingent. And consciousness is contingent on intelligence. Information technology tin can thus emerge from a fundamental ground of all beingness. But it can never exist the fundamental ground of all beingness.

I already showed how spacetime is on Feser's own stated terms a unified, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, and fully expert matter. It therefore is his ain fundamental ground of all being. Information technology is a continuum (hence one). It is fundamentally the same, everywhere and e'er (hence immutable). It by definition ever exists, equally existence time itself, in that location is no fourth dimension it never is, and therefore it ever "is" (hence information technology'due south eternal). It is non made of matter or objects or fabric of whatsoever kind, or indeed of anything else but itself (hence incorporeal). It is not a blended, either, since there is no amount of chopping it up at which you would stop up with something that wasn't spacetime. The fundamental properties of spacetime are ever and everywhere fully actualized, nothing held back (hence it's as well perfect). None of its fundamental features are unactualized, nothing about it is broken or working below its potential (hence it's fully skilful). And it can realize all things that can exist or happen, and therefore it has all the power that it is possible for any entity to accept; in fact no ability can exist, but through it (hence information technology's omnipotent). Spacetime is as well simple, however, to fundamentally possess complex composite backdrop like intelligence and consciousness. But Feser presents no logically sound arguments that the substrate has these backdrop. Then that'south where he goes incorrect. He gets to spacetime. Only not to God.

And this should have been obvious from the beginning. To exist, an entity requires at that place to be a place and time to exist. Otherwise information technology past definition never exists and exists nowhere. Thus all entities that exist are dependent on and thus subordinate to spacetime. Everything that exists, to exist, requires spacetime. But spacetime itself, to exist, requires nil but itself. It does not crave some extra place and time to exist. Information technology is identify and time. Spacetime is therefore the only conceivable thing that requires no further substrate for it to be. Nothing "extra" demand exist for spacetime to exist. Merely something extra must always exist for anything else to exist. That something extra is spacetime: a place and time to exist.

And then it should take been obvious that spacetime is the primal basis of all being. We demand nothing else to explain beingness. Considering it needs aught else to exist. All the "being" and "isness" that is and e'er was and ever can be, boils downward to nothing more identify and time: existing somewhere, at some time. Even what everything is ultimately made of, may well indeed be null other than spacetime, suitably twisted and knotted upwardly into the geometries nosotros mistake equally atoms and photons. There is no bear witness it's not.

-:-

For more on Feser'southward travesties see Thomism: The Artificial Science and Joe Schmid's excellent drove of related critiques.

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Source: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13752

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