NonStampCollector Issues A Challenge To Monotheists

August 7, 2010 at 7:33 pm Daniel Fincke

In a nutshell, the question is, what proof is there that there is one god and not multiple?

Your Thoughts?

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Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Christianity, Christianity, Islam, Islam, Judaism, Judaism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Religion, Religion Tags: Monotheism, NonStampCollector

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2 Responses to “NonStampCollector Issues A Challenge To Monotheists”

1. Gary says:

   August 8, 2010 at 2:14 am

   The quick, short, tentative reply: One cause, one effect.

   While the video was enjoyable, but I don’t think the challenge is as necessarily pointed as its author believes, or even particularly directed to religion. The general idea – that one effect, the world, requires one cause – would appear to be the same as the one expressed by Aristotle at the end of Metaphysics L: “The rule of many is not good; one ruler let there be.”

   This implicis argument expressed by Aristotle undoes the premise of the video’s challenge a bit, because either it shows (i) how a Greek polytheistic pagan could have ‘reasoned’ his way to postulating some one single principle or cause of the universe, despite the general prevailing religious beliefs of his culture; or (ii) that the question of whether there was one cause or more doesn’t have any necessary connection as a challenge to monotheistic religion, but is a general problem for any scientific account of the universe’s ‘origin’ (keeping in mind that Aristotle is talking about how many ‘movers’ to postulate in that passage).

   Anyways, sorry for the somewhat garbled and quick phrasing, hope my general point comes across.

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2. Paul Wright says:

   August 8, 2010 at 8:34 am

   Seems a very Humean approach: Philo in Hume’s Dialogues says something pretty similar, and goes on to anticipate possible objections. For example:

   To multiply causes without necessity, is indeed contrary to true philosophy: but this principle applies not to the present case. Were one deity antecedently proved by your theory, who were possessed of every attribute requisite to the production of the universe; it would be needless, I own, (though not absurd,) to suppose any other deity existent. But while it is still a question, Whether all these attributes are united in one subject, or dispersed among several independent beings, by what phenomena in nature can we pretend to decide the controversy? Where we see a body raised in a scale, we are sure that there is in the opposite scale, however concealed from sight, some counterpoising weight equal to it; but it is still allowed to doubt, whether that weight be an aggregate of several distinct bodies, or one uniform united mass. And if the weight requisite very much exceeds any thing which we have ever seen conjoined in any single body, the former supposition becomes still more probable and natural. An intelligent being of such vast power and capacity as is necessary to produce the universe, or, to speak in the language of ancient philosophy, so prodigious an animal exceeds all analogy, and even comprehension.

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