Non-Cognitivism

Sometimes, I encounter non-fundamental theists who hold to a version of God that does not fall prey to the host of problems that a good majority of my arguments against the existence of the God of classical theism (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) would attack. Attributes such as infinite nature, love, creating ex nihilo, omniscience, perfection, and others makes it impossible for theists to maintain logical consistency. However, non-fundamentalists who eliminate all these troublesome attributes and define God in a vague way by simply calling him Creator will claim that God, defined in a vague and general way cannot be disproven. Indeed, many atheists concede that a god defined in a vague way cannot be disproven since we lack the data to examine the claim to determine if it is logically consistent or makes sense. As I will demonstrate in this article, an undefined, meaningless god does not need to be disproven, because belief in such a concept is senseless and invalid by default which leaves only strong atheism (the positive belief that no gods exist) to be the only default.

In order for concepts to be valid, not only do they have to be logical but they must have meaning. As I said earlier, non-fundamentalists like to define God as "Creator". But what is the substance that composes this Creator? Theists leave it undefined, or they define it negatively by calling it a spirit (non-physical). Terms that are defined negatively are meaningless. Thus, the statement that "a god exists" is meaningless and any position that even relies on the possibility of a god existing is also meaningless. A meaningless concept cannot exist. To even propose the possibility of some unknown god existing presupposes that there is even a meaning to the term 'god'. A concept that lacks meaning is equivalent to nothing. So I can claim as a certainty that God does not exist because the meaninglessness of the term is equivalent to non-existence.

Even in light of the above, theists will try to maintain that the term 'god' is meaningful. They ascribe characteristics to God such as creator, loving, perfect, all powerfull, all knowing, father, redeemer. The attributes that theists always identify are secondary and relational attributes. Examples of secondary attributes are generous, kind, good. Relational examples includes creator, greater, etc. Where theists lack a definition always deals with God's primary attributes. The primary attributes is the basic nature that a particular thing is composed of.

If I was to say that a hoolyutoboo exists, not only is the term hoolyutoboo meaningless but saying that a hoolyutoboo is an architect or a creator is also meaningless because secondary and relational attributes are dependent upon primary attributes. No possible relation can be established between a concept and its secondary or relational properties if the existant's metaphysical identity is unknown.

Another example to help drive the point is that we could say that, "Paul has fininished his math homework." Understanding that Paul is an average human being of the age of nine, we can say that this idea is entirely plausible. Because we understand that human beings of this age are entirely capable of doing math. Thus, we must first identify what a thing is before we can apply any further characteristics or traits to its being.

A theist could object and argue that while the concept of a god might be meaningless, the concept of 'creator' is not. Though the concept of creating is not entirely meaningless in the sense in which we understand it to mean a final product (whatever it may be, let's say a car) coming in existence, whether by the re-combination of pre-existing materials or ex nihilo (out of nothing, which is incoherent), the mechanism by which the creative act is done is unknown or undefined, which renders the creative act meaningless. Theists would argue that we do not need to be aware of the mechanism of how God creates. The problem here is that when theists say that they believe that, "a God creates", what such a statement implies, in light of the argument of noncognitivism, is that a meaningless unknown entity, by some meaningless unknown mechanism, created the universe. Another way of wording this is that theists essentially believe in a relational attribute (creator) that they attempt to relate to an unknown concept. But as I have shown before, relational attributes cannot be related to an undefined concept. So theists essentially just believe in the relational attribute 'creator'. Any attempts at connecting relational or secondary attributes to an undefined god is impossible. They cannot even make sense of it.

But that only address someone who already believes in an undefined creator. What about the individual that posits the possibility of an unknown being that creates in an unknown way? As I have demonstrated in the previous post, creating ex nihilo is logically incoherent so such an idea is not even a possibility. But what if a theist proposes that this unknown creator in an unknown way took the pre-existing energy and formed the universe from that building block as opposed to ex nihilo? I would acknowledge that this is a possibility and it is not the intention of this article to disprove such a possibility. While there may not be nothing wrong to propose such a possibility, what this post addresses is that already believing in such a meaningless concept is senseless. Theists who claim to believe in a creator god really just believe in a mechanistically unknown relational attribute tied in or related to absolutely nothing (god).

Theists cannot propose that nothingness (god) exists. Unless properly defined, the term 'god' holds no actual or potential place in reality.