Edward Feser Five Proofs of the Existence of God Review

I just completed a three-part series exposing the laughable science illiteracy of Alvin Plantinga's "Two Dozen or So" arguments for God. I've now had several requests to take on Edward Feser'southward Five Proofs of the Being 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's a fleck lackluster). Plantinga and Feser have a common thread of ignoring the sciences; simply even more, both are acting like the Modern Age never happened. They are still thinking like Medieval monks, who didn't know how prove or science worked, didn't know Aristotle was already obsolete fifty-fifty in the aboriginal world, and idea their ain naive semantical armchair musings could tell them facts about the Universe. In this instance, explicitly. Feser confesses he's resurrecting the logic and arguments of Medieval scholasticism.

Feser'south volume contains one chapter for each of the titular five arguments, plus ii more capacity, 1 attempting to extract more attributes for his thus-proven God, and one collecting and responding to some mutual rebuttals to his V Arguments. Notably, like all Christian apologetics, that last affiliate only "succeeds" by omitting everything that really undermines his conclusions. Simply compare it with my article Bayesian Counter-Apologetics for a showtime at what's wrong here: the evidence actually argues confronting Feser'south God. And nosotros follow show. Not armchair fantasies in Feser's head. Simply here my simply thesis shall be that none of his arguments succeed in producing a sentient superbeing. But that means his penultimate chapter can also exist ignored, since all it does is build on the Five Proofs to resolve God into a more complex psychological entity with particular emotions, goals, and superpowers. Simply if none of those Proofs concur water, that chapter is just full-on moot. I won't even bother with it. Though there is a lot there of interest if you want to explore Feser'southward theology—including a actually bizarre, sexist argument for God beingness a man (around pages 246-57).

Feser'due south last chapter will also be useful to you if y'all want to run across how a theist responds to common rebuttals to his Five Arguments. In fact, the whole book is handy if you want to railroad train at this; it contains a lot of examples of badly 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 past addressing specific rebuttals). Merely my refutations here will already be immune to everything he says in his last chapter. So it won't serve whatsoever function to address information technology here.

That's considering I won't be providing or fixing up every conceivable rebuttal one could throw at Feser. There are a lot of false, dubious, or fallacious moves in this volume. 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 unmarried most unrecoverable fault in each of his 5 arguments, the one error that really simply does information technology in, rendering the rest of the corresponding chapter a waste of fourth dimension even to bother reading. Which does not corporeality to proving God doesn't exist. It just amounts to proving that in this book Feser has failed to provide any genuinely rational reason to believe in 1. I effigy you lot'll find that the about useful for dealing with fanatical Feserists on the net.

Ane common thread to understand all of what follows is that Feser is a thousand years backside the times in the scientific written report of the knowledge of ontology. Every argument Feser deploys is just a manipulation of a model in his caput. He imagines a model in the theater of his mind, and deduces some things he thinks he'd need for that model to obtain in reality. At no bespeak does he always show that this model ever corresponds to reality. This is a common and serious trouble with theology (see my article The God Impossible for some important perspective on this). Yes, perchance you tin can come upward with a model for how the universe works, such that only a God could explicate why it exists. But whether the universe actually corresponds to that model you simply invented is precisely the question we are trying to answer. No amount of tinkering with the model, can answer that question. Science is superior to theology precisely because it constitute a fashion to stop just tinkering with models in our heads and start testing which models actually utilise. And models that can't be tested, it rightly declares unknowable.

Such is the fate of Feser's imagined God.

Argument Ane: The Aristotelian Proof

A quick and muddied way to phrase this argument is: change is real; alter requires some primal underlying substrate, an ultimate "causy thing," that makes change possible; ergo, that has to be God. The handwave at the end there, from the major premise to the decision, involves some convoluted pace 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's "Unmoved Mover." How you get a mind out of that is where it gets all wobbly and his supposed logical precision dissolves.

Actually, the most nothingly nothing you can accept 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 time. And by Feser's own reasoning, the absence of everything except logically necessary states of diplomacy entails the presence of every logically necessary thing. And nothing else. Hence the absenteeism of everything including logical contradictions is the same matter as the presence of only the logically necessary. Since if some entity's existence is logically necessary, by definition its absence would entail a logical contradiction. That's literally what "logically necessary" ways.

Simply what happens when you take away everything except that which is demonstrably logically necessary? Not what we "conjecture" or "wish" were logically necessary; no, nosotros don't go to cheat. No circular arguments. Only what nosotros tin can actually formally prove is logically necessary. And that ways, show now, not at some hypothetical futurity time. Nosotros don't go to "conjecture" or "wish" into existence some new logical necessity we have notwithstanding to really prove is such. Well. What happens is, we get a goose egg-state that logically necessarily becomes a multiverse that volition contain a universe that looks just like ours. To a probability infinitesimally most 100%. See Ex Nihilo Onus Merdae Fit (or its brief: The Problem with Cypher).

A quick and muddy way to phrase that statement is: if nothing exists, so by definition no rules exist limiting what will happen to it; if no rules exist limiting what information technology volition happen to it, information technology is equally likely it volition become one of infinitely many arrays of things (including remaining zippo, which is just one of infinitely many other things no rule exists to preclude happening); if nosotros select at random from the infinitely many arrays of things it can become (including the array that is an empty set, i.east. continuing to be nothing), the probability is infinitesimally near 100% the assortment chosen at random will exist a vast multiverse whose probability of including a universe like ours is infinitesimally about 100%. Because there are infinitely more ways to get one of those at random, than to become, for case, the one single outcome of remaining nada. There is no style to avoid this. Unless y'all insert some law, power, rule, or forcefulness that would cease information technology, or change the outcome to something not decided at random. But once y'all exercise that, you are no longer talking nigh nothing. You lot have added something. Which you have no reason to add. Other than your human desire that information technology be at that place. Which is not a compelling argument for information technology being there.

That the evidence looks to back up the decision that there is a multiverse (far more it supports there being a god) merely verifies the hypothesis that the universe did beginning with such a nothing-state. Simply that's still just a hypothesis. There may well have e'er been something. There may have never been nothing, in any sense at all. But it's peculiar that starting with a nothing-state, gets usa exactly the weird universe we discover. That seems a pretty strange coincidence. However, I'm doing the same thing Feser is: building a model in my caput, and working out what would have to happen or be the case if that model were true. Does that hateful my model corresponds to what actually happened? No.

What this do teaches us is that Feser has no basis for arguing that the substrate, the ultimate "actuality" that actualizes all potentials, has to exist all the things he claims. He might be able to prove logically that some substrate must exist (that's nonetheless questionable, simply I won't challenge information technology in this commodity). But he doesn't actually present a valid logical argument for it being the substrate he defines. That it would take those properties is only true of a model he invented in his head. Is information technology true exterior his head? He presents no evidence to conclude information technology is. Because Feser doesn't "do" science, yous run into. He's not, like, into evidence, homo.

Feser's formalization of this argument appears effectually folio 35. It has 49 premises. I shit you not. Virtually of them are uncontroversial on some interpretation of the words he employs (that doesn't mean they are credible on his chosen estimation of those words, merely I'll charitably ignore that hither), except 1, Premise 41, where his whole argument breaks down and bites the grit: "the forms or patterns manifest in all the things [the substrate] causes…tin can exist either in the concrete way in which they exist in individual particular things, or in the abstruse mode in which they exist in the thoughts of an intellect." This is a false dichotomy, otherwise known equally a bifurcation fallacy. It'south simply not true that those are the only two options. And BTW, this Premise, is the aforementioned key premise (hereafter e'er subconscious) in all five of his arguments. We tin thus abnegate all of them, by simply refuting this single premise (more on that later).

So let'due south do that.

Ironically, a third pick that in fact I'm quite certain 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 actually exist in some physical or mental class. They merely have to potentially exist. Hence Aristotle said of Plato's "globe of forms" what Laplace said to Napoleon of God: "Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis." Potential things are past definition not actual. So obviously we don't demand them to be actualized to exist. That'southward a self-contradictory request. It's thus self-contradictory of Feser to insist that potential things must be "actualized" somewhere (a listen; concrete things). Manifestly there is no logical sense in which they must be actualized in that mode.

Aristotle argued that potentials exist inherently in everything, without anything farther needing to be the case. A cube contains the potential to be a sphere (by physical transformation); but non as if that potential is some sort of magical fluid contained physically inside the cube. It's simply a logically necessary property of any fabric that it can exist reshaped; if information technology can accept shape, it tin can accept whatever shape. Period. It is logically necessarily ever the example. And Feser must concur that if something is logically necessary, it requires no other explanation of why it exists. Non minds. Not concrete things. Nil. The but way to stop that from being truthful, would be to interject some ability or force to stop information technology, e.g. something that would brand the cube's reshaping into a sphere incommunicable. But remember, we're non allowed to exercise that. We don't get to but "invent" things and declare their existence logically necessary; and if it's not logically necessary, the potential it would have blocked remains logically possible. Of form, fifty-fifty if we could just "invent" things like that, that would simply limit what potentials exist. Still nothing more would be needed to explain that. Not minds. Not concrete things. Nothing.

Feser tries to argue that the ultimate substrate must be "one, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, fully good, intelligent, and omniscient." He only does that with silly word games—few of these words does he use in any sense you'd recognize. Simply let's charitably imagine he tin can construct some model in his head whereby it would be true, and grant him his bizarre definitions of all these terms. The correct mode to test models against each other is to build multiple models and compare them against the testify. So let's build a model different from Feser's and see what happens…

I advise that the substrate of all potentiality is the appearing of spacetime. Just that. Cypher more. I've made the case for this elsewhere already (Sense and Goodness without God III.5, pp. 119-34). I don't claim it's true. I merely claim it could be true; it explains a lot; and does so better than any culling all the same offered. Including gods. The gist of it is this: every "thing" we think exists, is actually just a convoluted geometric twisting of spacetime. Photons, electrons, quarks, gluons, all just different vibrations of spacetime. This is called Superstring Theory. And different Feser's empty-headed It's a Giant Ghost hypothesis, Superstring Theory (or ST) is actually a adult theory of physics that has a number of remarkable predictive successes. Feser's theory has exactly none. For example, ST can predict exactly all the particles of the Standard Model and all of their peculiar key features and constants. Can Feser deduce all that from his It'due south a Behemothic Ghost hypothesis? No. He but has to Mary Sue information technology into existence. "Well, that'southward just what God would do." "Why?" "I don't know. It's a mystery." Which nosotros call the absence of a hypothesis.

In my proposed model, the but thing that actually exists, that causes every object and issue and constabulary and strength and constant of physics, and has no other cause of its beingness, is space-time. It is the ultimate actual affair, that actualizes all potentials; and which in plow is not actualized by annihilation else.

Spacetime:

• It's "incorporeal" (it is non itself a trunk, only by itself is the absence of all torso).
• It's "immaterial" (in the but sense Feser requires: it isn't made of thing, nor does it exist "in" infinite or time).
• Information technology's "immutable" (space-time tin change in quantity and shape, and thereby manifest unlike things, but every bit of it is e'er the same as every other fleck of it; its ultimate properties never change; just as God tin remember and feel and human activity, while his ultimate properties never modify).
• It's "i" (a continuum, a unity, unbroken, unbreakable).
• It's "eternal" (you lot can shrink or squeeze it, but you lot can't get rid of it; it could well accept always existed; and in that location is no sense in which space or time is located "in" space or time; information technology just literally is all space and time together, requiring no further location).
• It's "perfect" (in the sense Feser requires: every central property of space-time is ever and everywhere fully actualized).
• It's "fully good" (by Feser'southward definition, which contrary to his disruptive use of the word "good" isn't a value judgment, just merely the exclamation that information technology has no unactualized features; it isn't "broken" or "working below its potential").
• And information technology's "omnipotent" (in the just sense Feser requires: it 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 power can exist, merely through information technology).

And then Feser is but arguing space-time is God. Mindless, valueless, but concrete space-time. That's just atheism.

What this means is that Feser'southward entire book is virtually a single maneuver: trying to dodge that outcome by trying to bootstrap infinite-time into beingness an intelligent consciousness. Just that'southward where his argument becomes 100% bullshit. In no way does the substrate having these other properties entail it's "intelligent." Intelligence is only a potential thing space-time can manifest, beingness an organized complexity; and beingness an organized complexity, it cannot be a belongings inherent in space-time itself, which is unproblematic and uniform. Nor would it exist "omniscient," knowledge being another organized complexity, and thus just something that space-time can be organized to manifest, not a thing space-time itself is. All possible knowledge and all possible intellection is inherent in space-fourth dimension as a potential, but that is non what we mean by knowledge and intelligence. Potentially knowing everything, is not the aforementioned as actually knowing everything. A clump of goo is potentially intelligent. Organize it into a functioning brain, and it volition exist actually intelligent. They are not the same matter. And "we" are indeed a way the universe becomes conscious of itself; merely that does not brand the universe a god. Not by any definition pertinent to anyone, least of all Feser.

Hence it all falls down at Premise 41: his false exclamation that potentials, to exist in an actualizer, must exist in some mind or concrete vessel. What must exist for spacetime to actually be twisted up into a proton, and thence into a collection of particles, and thence into a tree? Merely spacetime. Zilch else. What must exist for spacetime to potentially be twisted upward into a proton, and thence into a collection of particles, and thence into a tree? Just spacetime. Nothing else. Since zip exists to stop spacetime possibly being rearranged into a tree, that spacetime can mayhap be arranged into a tree is only a fact of spacetime. No mind need exist "in improver" to spacetime, for spacetime to take that potential, ever and everywhere. Nor is any concrete thing required. Spacetime can exist completely empty. And still have the potential to form upward into matter, and thence a tree. In fact, information technology's statistically inevitable that every bit of spacetime there is, will. Someday. Information technology's a Boltzmann necessity.

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

In the terminate, my model is as coherent every bit Feser'southward. Indeed, arguably more so—information technology'south far simpler, far clearer, has a more scientific foundation, and requires no groundless suppositions (like his Premise 41). But let'southward but pretend they are equally coherent. Which one is true? Can we tell from the armchair? No. Does Feser requite whatsoever argument for his model being more likely than mine? No. Simply at that place are things my theory predicts that his does not—and those things nosotros observe to be the example. 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 being far more probable than his. And if my model is more probable to be truthful than his and my model is false, then his model is even less likely to be truthful. Because my model can merely be false if some other model is more than probably truthful. Just if My Theory is more probable than His Theory, and Another Theory is more probable than My Theory, so necessarily Some Other Theory is more probable than His Theory.

There is no way Feser tin rescue his model here. He'due south washed. Cooked. Time to move on.

Statement 2: The Neo-Platonic Proof

Something has to hold everything together. Otherwise, it would all fall autonomously, right? So that has to exist God! That's the gist of this statement. And it'south merely as ridiculous as it sounds. This ane has 37 premises! (Around page 79) There are a lot of dubious bounds in this one. But let's merely assume they all concur up, all the way to the premise that we will grant just for giggles, that everything has an "admittedly simple or noncomposite cause" holding it together (and preventing it from falling apart). Shit hits the fan correct after that, at Premise 22: "Everything is either a mind, or a mental content, or a cloth entity, or an abstract entity." That's another fake lemma. Remember Aristotle? There is at least i other thing that isn't whatsoever of those things: infinite-time. It's non a heed, information technology's non a mental content, it's non a fabric entity, and information technology's non an abstract entity.

One might endeavour to play Devil'due south Abet and say, well, space-time isn't a material entity in the sense that it'southward not "fabricated of matter," and obviously isn't itself located "in" infinite or time, sure. Simply what does Feser hateful by "material entity"? Well, he defines that as "having parts which demand to be combined in order for them to be," which makes them able to come up into being and pass away. This doesn't actually include space-time; and even if one thought information technology could, we can simply ascertain our model'southward substrate equally a space-time that tin't be broken up or fabricated or dissolved. Equally a hypothesis, that'south as good as Feser's; and in fact more than congruent with his insistence that the substrate be "absolutely elementary," considering it'south hard to get simpler than a mindless infinite-time with no other fundamental backdrop. Certainly that's far simpler than a vastly circuitous heed with unlimited superpowers. It likewise doesn't get you anywhere to ask what holds space-fourth dimension together and keeps it from dissolving. Considering we can just equally easily ask, "What holds God together and keeps him from dissolving?" Whatever answer you give to that, we tin can requite for space-time. That'south how models work. Isn't that great?

So hither we are edifice on everything we pointed out in respect to Statement One. What holds a tree together is the electromagnetic forcefulness. What holds the electromagnetic forcefulness together is photons. What holds photons together is space-time. And in that location is no next level. That'south information technology. The buck stops there. In what I'll now telephone call the Neoaristotelian Superstring Model (or NST), a photon simply is a bend in infinite-time. The remainder is geometry. What keeps the photon aptitude? Space-time. What keeps the infinite-fourth dimension bent? Nothing. It just is aptitude. And where it's bent a sure fashion, we call information technology a photon. Because that shape interacts with all other shapes geometrically in ways that nosotros draw as the properties of a photon. Nosotros can explain how a ripple over here, moves across space-time like a wave on a sheet, to cause another ripple over there. And thus we can explicate the forming and dissolving of a photon. Only the substrate, the space-time, never forms or dissolves. It just changes shape. When the photon is gone or falls apart, the infinite-time that was manifesting information technology remains, unchanged in basic properties, unharmed, unaltered. Ready to exist vibrated into some other photon someday. Or anything else.

Space-time also has "parts" in the sense that in that location is some of it over here, and some of information technology over at that place, 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 space-time tin never be broken up. Its parts are ever a compatible and continuous whole (even if quantized, the quanta of spacetime can't be broken apart). No matter how the different "parts" of it get bent or vibrated. There is no statement in Feser against that kind of composition being the fundamental underlying cause of all other composites. And at that place is no possible argument of the kind to exist had. Manifestly this can be the primal substrate belongings all composites together. Obviously nil more is needed. No world of gremlins and faeries demand exist to hold the infinite-fourth dimension and shape it. If you shake a rug causing a ripple to move across information technology, no "gremlin" is needed to keep pushing the ripple. Information technology pushes itself. It's a geometrically necessary issue.

Space-time likewise could conceivably have "come into existence," merely again not in any sense Feser is concerned with. There can't accept been whatsoever time before space-time, nor any place apart from it either. And so if infinite-time came into being (and reverse to what Christian apologists falsely tell you, we don't know it did), information technology did and so from a nothing-state. Which I already discussed to a higher place: an actual nothing-land volition inevitably produce a vast, messy infinite-time, by logical necessity, owing to the absence of any laws, thereby entailing a completely random outcome. In the "nothing-country" the merely potential that existed was the potential for space-time. Once space-time existed, every potential existed within it that it could manifest. And that's why we come across the universe nosotros see today: one completely reducible to the bumps and geometry of a mindless infinite-time.

One could then say that therefore that nothing-state (which again nosotros are just speculating once existed) independent all potentials, and therefore it is the ultimate substrate, the ultimate cause, the absolutely simple noncomposite matter that began everything else. But that nonetheless isn't a God. Being a nothing-state, it is far simpler than a mind or annihilation else substantive or item at all. It simply has those things potentially. Not actually. It is therefore the absence of a God. Not the presence of one. And that is in the by now. And so it can't exist holding things together now. Therefore it isn't the affair that answers Feser'south "Neoplatonic" business concern. Though it works well enough for his "Aristotelian" concern. If you desire to go there. Only until we have evidence that that model is real, we don't actually have any business asserting information technology is. Merely we tin assert it's a hell of a lot more than 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 infinite-fourth dimension began and is the logically necessary being, then we tin just as readily conclude the goose egg-state information technology sprang from logically necessarily contained a single dimensionless point of space-time and thus was space-time. For the naught-state tin can't e'er have existed…if it never existed (if at no time it existed) or if it existed nowhere (if it never existed at any location); for those are identical to saying information technology didn't exist at all. Therefore, it is logically impossible for a nothing-country to have always existed, that didn't contain any point of infinite-time. And then. Gosh. It ends up being space-fourth dimension all the way down!

Either mode, my infinite-time model works as well as Feser's. It is absolutely unproblematic (you tin can't split up away its properties; it'due south everywhere the same), it is noncomposite (you can't break information technology apart; it's always there no thing what else its continual reshaping manifests equally coming or passing abroad), it requires nothing else "beneath" it to give information technology existence and shape, and information technology explains every limerick (the geometry of spacetime is what causes what we observe as the interactions of particles and thus the forces that explicate all textile objects and events); at least likewise every bit his Giant Ghost does. And better, when yous consider what a mindless substrate predicts we should observe, that a sentient substrate does non predict (without a massive Rube Goldergesque parade of ad hoc contrivances for which there is exactly goose egg evidence or logical demonstration).

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

Argument Three: The Augustinian Proof

This is just a standard Statement from Abstract Objects. This fourth dimension with just a lean 28 premises. I already exposed the flaws in that kind of reasoning when I dealt with information technology in Plantinga (his Argument from Sets, Argument from Numbers & Backdrop, and Argument from Counterfactuals). The only thing new here is that Feser fabricates the premise that "Aristotelian realism" holds that "abstract objects exist only in human or other contingently existing intellects." That'due south not true. Maybe some Medieval interpretation of Aristotle ended that. Only that is certainly not Aristotle's actual account of abstractions—or more properly, universals. Feser seems to accept confused what Aristotle said most how we observe and apply universals in human thought, with what he said most what universals are. Once nosotros right the mistake, Feser's unabridged third argument collapses.

This puts the devastation of Feser's argument at Premise viii (around page 108). One could quibble well-nigh other bounds in his argument, just like I said, I'm not going to trouble myself. It'south enough to identify the most 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 tin exist there, as in, the perception and comprehension of them can exist in a mind; only these are apperceptions of things that exist exterior the mind. No heed need exist in Aristotle's system, for all universals to however still be. And they really be, because the things that manifest them really exist. And this is true even of things that don't exist: because the potential always exists in all the things that can become something else. Thus, a new and unrealized species of creature or government "exists," in the sense that the universe contains the potential to generate information technology.

But I don't want to argue over what Aristotle thought (there are indeed many disagreements on that). Because he's obsolete. And what Feser needs is the about robust, modern version of "Aristotelian realism," non Aristotle'southward outdated version of information technology (much less some Medieval dishonest'south distortion of it). I outline what a modern, robust version looks like in Sense and Goodness without God (III.5.four, pp. 124-30). As you'll meet 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. Every bit shortly as there are two triangles, there is a common property they share (like, having three sides). No mind need be (nor Platonic Forms for that affair) for it to exist truthful that both triangles have 3 sides. Their being alone is enough to make information technology true. The "having of three sides" is therefore simply a property multiple objects possess. Period.

What if no object always forms a triangle? That's where Aristotle'due south stardom between potentiality and actuality enters. A region of infinite can exist shaped into a triangle. Multiple regions of space can be shaped into triangles. No mind need be (nor Ideal Forms for that affair) for information technology to be true that many regions of space can be shaped into triangles, even at the same time. Thus the universal property of triangularity ever exists, potentially, wherever space-fourth dimension exists. Fifty-fifty if no actual triangles are e'er formed in that space-fourth dimension. Considering there is cipher to logically forbid that space-time from having that shape. And if always it does have that shape, it volition automatically be the same property manifested, every time it does. No mind demand exist (nor Platonic Forms for that thing) for that to be true.

And that's but all there is to it. It's not like if you took God away from the universe, that suddenly triangles couldn't exist, or wouldn't have 3 sides, or we couldn't find this. Since all those things would remain without a God, their being can never argue for the existence of a God.

And so again there is no way Feser tin rescue his model here. He's done. Cooked. Time to movement on.

Statement Four: The Thomistic Proof

Nosotros need God to explain essences. Which is kind of like maxim we demand God to explain phlogiston. Essences, in the sense Feser means, don't exist. They've been ruled out by science for centuries, as quaint and antiquated notions. What he actually ways is something else, just as "phlogiston" didn't really exist, just was a failed attempt to explain something else, namely fire (and related phenomena). Burn down really exists. But phlogiston doesn't. And fire isn't, it turns out, an element, nor is it acquired past air absorbing a chemical chosen phlogiston. Similarly, "essences" don't exist. And nosotros've long known they don't exist. That'southward why they are no longer used in whatsoever scientific theory. Merely other phenomena that "essences" were a failed effort to explain, do exist. This is why the Wikipedia article on "Essences" never once mentions whatever scientific use or application of the term. And why the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a whole section titled Death of Essentialism. At present set theory has replaced the entire concept.

And so right out of the gate this argument is pseudoscientific garbage.

Even from a formal standpoint, this ane is only a terrible mess. His syllogism has a ton of boner mistakes in it; for example, Feser'due south Premise 2 (around page 128), asserts that "If [the distinction between an entity'southward essence and its existence] were not a existent distinction…so we could know whether or not a thing exists only by knowing its essence." Um. Yeah. That'southward how we know dragons and unicorns don't be, and lions and tigers do. Because it would be 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 thing every bit not part of one's essence, simply then y'all're merely arguing in a circle. Even if yous try to get all Frege and Russell on me, and insist existence is not a property, that tin can only be true if existence is already inherent in the other asserted properties of an object; hence we're dorsum to indeed knowing whether something exists simply by wholly knowing its essence…that is in fact Frege and Russell's whole betoken!

There is but no recovering from this gaffe. The argument is hosed.

How did Feser fuck this upwardly? Because he confuses someone being told an incomplete clarification of a thing, with really being informed of its essence (equally he defines it; remember, essences don't really exist, and so I'm moving around in the model in his head, not the 1 that exists in reality). A fully informed account of an entity'due south essence would include when it exists or didn't. It is essential to Hitler, for example, that he did not live in the 21st century. It is essential to Yoda, for case, that no one could ever accept spoken to him—other than in fiction or pretense. Yous could not fully empathise what "Hitler" or "Yoda" were if you weren't informed of these facts. And only excluding that one piece of information, literally the most important one, from what you will arbitrarily classify every bit "an essence," is just a semantic game. And semantic games tin can't get you to whatever grand realizations in metaphysics.

Feser really burns a few pages arguing he is not engaging in this defoliation. But alas, his protests make no logical sense. He insists if y'all mistakenly think lions are fictional monsters, "yous have not misconceived what it is to be a lion." Um. Yep. You accept. You've totally misconceived what information technology is to exist a lion. Only if you arbitrarily demarcate how you'd test whether a lion existed, with the outcome of that test—as if somehow the latter was not an aspect of the panthera leo—can yous get to Feser's ridiculous premise. But that's completely arbitrary. Why are we demarcating away that unmarried property of lions as no longer essential to being a king of beasts? But because I know how to discover a dragon if i existed, does not hateful I am necessarily fully informed as to what it is to exist a dragon. If, unbeknownst to me, dragons exist, then I am merely misinformed about dragons.

Exactly this kind of nonsense Feser is tripping all over is one of the reasons essences take been abandoned by all the sciences as a useless concept. Feser's premises just get more ridiculous and convoluted from there. And this argument racks up at 35 premises. Merely where it really fails is one time again where it trips over competing models of reality, which is at Premise 33, where he leaps without any logical basis, over again, from "a purely actualized entity" (he means, this time, an ultimate substrate whose existence is identical with its essence), to a being that has a mind ("immutable, eternal…[etc.]," and "intelligent and omniscient"). But we already saw that does not logically follow. And he gives no logical argument for information technology here. He but skips to asserting it; premises missing.

In one case again, space-fourth dimension is an ultimate substrate whose being is identical with its essence. And according to this AST model, space-fourth dimension indeed causes what Feser means by essence and existence (considering existing means merely that space-time is really and not only potentially so shaped; and the shape information technology's in, fixes every other property, and therefore annihilation's "essence"). And, once once again, space-time has all the backdrop Feser insists upon ("immutable, eternal…" etc.), except intelligence and omniscience….considering, yet again, Feser confuses a potential for intellection and knowledge, with actual intellection and cognition. Space-time does indeed contain all potentials, at all times and places. Just that does non mean all potentials would necessarily be actualized, much less at every time and place.

The ceremonial of Feser's statement hither is just garbage, so it'due south hard to find the hidden premise he is relying on to get from "ultimate substrate whose beingness is identical with its essence" to "has all these astonishing properties," without his just punting to the other arguments, which I've already refuted. And if that's what's going on here, this isn't a fourth statement. It's just a chaotic give-and-take wall, which of a sudden at Premise 33 merely repeats the concluding chunk of arguments one, two, or three. And in that issue, Premise 33 is simply faux. The substrate he requires, doesn't need, nor would plausibly accept, intelligence or even cognition (much less omniscience). And he has presented no syllogism showing otherwise. The only time he always attempts 1 anywhere in the book, it'southward that nonsense Premise 41 in Argument One. The same imitation dichotomy he uses in every one of his five arguments to conjure mental properties for what turns out to just be…space-time.

At most 1 tin can infer that Feser means to get to the decision that something exists that is "purely actual" past some new ways hither (something breathless about essences and existence), but from at that place, the argument isn't new. And since the borrowed part is already fallacious, all the endeavor he goes into to get to "purely actual" in another way hither, is only a waste of everyone'southward time. "Purely actual," just doesn't go you to God. As I've already shown for the previous three arguments. Merely to accost what would exist unlike about this argument, is to focus on this nonsense near essences and existence beingness different. Which isn't truthful in any real world sense. Information technology can merely be truthful in an capricious, ad hoc, semantic construction in his head—which doesn't correspond to reality. Not only because there is no such thing as an essence. But also because even what he means by an essence tin't be separated from existence in any mode other than by his own capricious decisions; and reality cannot be discovered by just "deciding" that it be a certain style.

"I just don't think knowing whether Hitler was a real person or a fictional grapheme is important to knowing who Hitler essentially was," only isn't a rational thing to say. Nor tin such a weird decision on your part, somehow unlock the mysteries of the universe outside your head.

And then once once again there is no manner Feser can rescue his model here. He's done. Cooked. Fourth dimension to movement on.

Statement 5: The Rationalist Proof

Hither Feser calms downwardly to using merely 26 premises. Simply all he does at present is deploy the standard Statement from Sufficient Reason. He goes on with a bunch of rigmarole most the "Principle of Sufficient Reason," and builds out a lot of dubious bounds on that, just I won't trouble myself with that here. Though he's wrong (the PSR, if false, would non entail "things and events without evident explanation or intelligibility would be extremely common," as his Premise 2 alleges, around page 161), I don't really care. I'm content to grant the PSR for giggles. And some of his bounds I have no issue with at all, like Premise 11, which argues that even if nosotros are looking at an space past chain of contingent events, why "that space series as a whole exists at all would remain to be explained" (a point I myself made, and explore, in Sense and Goodness without God 3.3.5, pp. 83-88).

Only so nosotros get to the middle of the matter. This i does the same thing as Statement Four. It concocts a syllogism that starts out pretty make clean, merely ceases to make sense near the end of it, again merely sneaking in the exact same argument from "pure actuality" borrowed from every other statement in the book (here, it's snuck in as false Premise 24). The only thing different, is that now he'south trying to get there in some 5th, novel style, by some unclear, convoluted ways—by arguing God is the only thing that can exist the "ultimate" Sufficient Reason for everything else, requiring no further reason for his own existence or properties.

The argument is a mess. Simply ultimately, all Feser ends upwardly doing here once more is just proving mindless infinite-time necessarily exists. For in my competing model, by definition it is infinite-time, without whatsoever mental powers or properties, that "is the explanation of why any contingent things exist at all and which is the crusade of every particular contingent thing's existing at any moment" (Feser's Premise 22). For it has all the properties Feser's substrate needs to answer his Principle of Sufficient Reason, yet doesn't need "intelligence" and "omniscience," considering it necessarily contains just the potential for intellection and knowledge (in that it tin can manifest minds that know things, but space-time itself is not a mind that knows things). Therefore my model is simpler. And everything is thereby explained.

It won't exercise to say that space-fourth dimension is itself a contingent beingness. Because that's begging the question. For exactly the aforementioned reasons Feser gives for saying the same of God. I have imagined a infinite-time that necessarily exists. That's my competing model. Every statement Feser gives for his "God" necessarily existing, all five, I take already shown argue that spacetime necessarily exists. The only thing he adds, each time, is to try and sneak in some mental powers ("intelligence and omniscience"). Just every bit I showed correct at Argument One, he has no logically valid route to that conclusion. And when you accept them abroad, what you have left is simply: a necessarily existent spacetime. Which has no intelligence and isn't witting. And that isn't God. It is, quite simply, the absence of God.

Once once more there is no manner Feser tin can rescue his model here. He's washed. Cooked. Time to motion on.

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

Conclusion

Feser'due south whole schtick is to endeavour and argue there must be some ultimate, fundamental ground of all being, which explains why everything is the manner it is, and why universal properties exist, that causes all forms of modify, and holds everything together and keeps it from falling apart. And he tries to argue that this ground of all being must have the properties of being "one, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, fully adept, intelligent, and omniscient." But none of his arguments ever logically get to "intelligent and omniscient." Those just get thrown on the jumble, every time without whatsoever syllogism supporting them, all based on a single imitation 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 best, go to that fundamental whatsit existence "i, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, and fully skillful," nether the strange definitions he contrived for those terms. Which simply describes space-time. So nosotros accept as much reason to conclude space-time is the ground of all being. And given that that makes far more than sense of countless observations, we should sooner conclude so. Atheists can still argue information technology's something else; but whatsoever candidate they advise, they'd nevertheless be arguing confronting God being it. I will at to the lowest degree concur that in that location must be some ground of all being, in many or all of the ways Feser insists. But it does not follow that nosotros can already now declare that we know what it is. Nor does it follow that nosotros can declare the best candidate for the chore is God. It's not. A improve candidate past far is already but space-time. Feser'southward God? We have no need of that hypothesis.

Epilogue

As I already noted, Feser has completely failed to respond to the actual arguments of this article. Not just once. Merely twice. So I've written this epilogue to complete the point that he has failed to become.

Many attempts have been made to try and nix spacetime as the candidate for the central ground of all existence. All take failed. To the contrary, all of Feser's own arguments evidence that information technology is—by proving a unified, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, and fully good thing exists. Because by his ain peculiar definitions of those terms, they describe spacetime to a T. He only fails to produce any logically valid step to "add" the attributes of omniscience and intelligence (much less any qualities of mind). So what his own arguments get out united states of america with, is spacetime.

Although spacetime does comprise all potentialities, and so information technology is "omniscient" in that sense, merely that's not conscious awareness. Conscious awareness, also intelligence, is ever a composite, an emergent effect of a circuitous causal network. It is therefore a direct logical contradiction to claim a witting intelligence is simple. A conscious intelligence is by definition a complex. That is what separates a smart from a dumb entity: increased complication, in what it is, contains, and can do. And scientific discipline has proven consciousness is a holding of exceedingly complex intelligence. You tin't have a consciousnessness devoid of whatever intelligence. And the simplest intelligences lack consciousness. Intelligence is always a contingent. And consciousness is contingent on intelligence. Information technology tin thus emerge from a key basis of all being. Simply information technology can never be the fundamental ground of all being.

I already showed how spacetime is on Feser's own stated terms a unified, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, and fully skillful affair. Information technology therefore is his own fundamental ground of all existence. It is a continuum (hence 1). It is fundamentally the same, everywhere and always (hence immutable). Information technology by definition ever exists, as being time itself, there is no time it never is, and therefore it always "is" (hence it's eternal). It is not made of matter or objects or material of any kind, or indeed of annihilation else only itself (hence incorporeal). It is not a blended, either, since there is no corporeality of chopping information technology up at which you would terminate upward with something that wasn't spacetime. The key properties of spacetime are always and everywhere fully actualized, nothing held back (hence it'due south also perfect). None of its primal features are unactualized, cypher near it is broken or working beneath its potential (hence it'due south fully good). 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 have; in fact no power can exist, merely through it (hence it's omnipotent). Spacetime is too simple, however, to fundamentally possess complex composite properties like intelligence and consciousness. Merely Feser presents no logically sound arguments that the substrate has these properties. And then that'due south where he goes wrong. He gets to spacetime. But not to God.

And this should have been obvious from the start. To exist, an entity requires there to exist a place and time to exist. Otherwise it by 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 nothing merely itself. It does not require some extra place and time to be. It is place and time. Spacetime is therefore the merely conceivable thing that requires no farther substrate for it to be. Cipher "actress" need exist for spacetime to exist. But something actress must always exist for annihilation else to exist. That something extra is spacetime: a place and time to exist.

So information technology should have been obvious that spacetime is the fundamental basis of all being. We need goose egg else to explicate existence. Because information technology needs cypher else to exist. All the "being" and "isness" that is and ever was and e'er can be, boils downwardly to nothing more than place and time: existing somewhere, at some time. Fifty-fifty what everything is ultimately made of, may well indeed exist nothing other than spacetime, suitably twisted and knotted up into the geometries we fault as atoms and photons. At that place is no evidence information technology's not.

-:-

For more on Feser's travesties see Thomism: The Bogus Science and Joe Schmid'south excellent collection of related critiques.

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