Existence of God - Arguments Against The Existence of God - Deductive Arguments

Deductive Arguments

Deductive arguments attempt to prove their conclusions by deductive reasoning from true premises.

• The Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit is a counter-argument to the argument from design. The argument from design claims that a complex or ordered structure must be designed. However, a god that is responsible for the creation of a universe would be at least as complicated as the universe that it creates. Therefore, it too must require a designer. And its designer would require a designer also, ad infinitum. The argument for the existence of god is then a logical fallacy with or without the use of special pleading. The Ultimate 747 gambit points out that God does not provide an origin of complexity, it simply assumes that complexity always existed. It also states that design fails to account for complexity, which natural selection can explain.
• The omnipotence paradox suggests that the concept of an omnipotent entity is logically contradictory, from considering a question like: "Can God create a rock so big that He cannot move it?" or "If God is all powerful, could God create a being more powerful than Himself?". Similarly, an omnipotent god would know the position of all atoms in the universe over its ~14 billion-year history as well as its infinite future. To know that, god's memory needs to be bigger than the infinite set of possible states in the current universe.
• The Omniscience paradox shows a different angle of the omnipotence paradox. "If God is omnipotent, then he should be able to change the future to an "alternate future" that is unknown to him, conflicting with his omniscience"
• The problem of hell is the idea that eternal damnation for actions committed in a finite existence contradicts God's omnibenevolence or omnipresence.
• The argument from free will contests the existence of an omniscient god who has free will—or has allotted the same freedom to his creations—by arguing that the two properties are contradictory. According to the argument, if God already knows the future, then humanity is destined to corroborate with his knowledge of the future and not have true free will to deviate from it. Therefore our free will contradicts an omniscient god. Another argument attacks the existence of an omniscient god who has free will directly in arguing that the will of God himself would be bound to follow whatever God foreknows himself doing throughout eternity.
• A counter-argument against the Cosmological argument ("chicken or the egg") takes its assumption that things cannot exist without creators and applies it to God, setting up an infinite regress. This attacks the premise that the universe is the second cause (after God, who is claimed to be the first cause).
• Theological noncognitivism, as used in literature, usually seeks to disprove the god-concept by showing that it is unverifiable by scientific tests.
• The anthropic argument states that if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect, He would have created other morally perfect beings instead of imperfect humans.