Atheism Vs. Theism

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate November 2001

download word file, 6 pages 0.0

Downloaded 24 times

Atheism vs. Theism Two arguments shall be considered and evaluated for validity, soundness, and the overall persuasiveness. In addition, a counter argument shall be proposed for each. In order to be sound, a valid argument must be present, otherwise the truth of the conclusion may be ambiguous, and therefore what could be concluded. Thus the validity shall be investigated foremost.

If we take all the premise to be true, will the conclusion be a necessary consequence? The first is a compound statement, which contains two simple premise. The first claims god exists with the conditional implication that upon existence: He is all knowing, all powerful, and all good. The consequent is the equivalence of existence defined by the conjunction of three conditions. Statement two is similar, claiming that this existence will have the conditional implication defined as the negation of the existence of evil. Statement three has the lone premise of the existence of evil.

The fourth statement gives the negation of the existence of the all knowing, all-powerful, and all good being. The fifth statement uses the transitive property of equality to therefore conclude that god doesn't exist. By following the flow of logic, this argument is valid. The argument asserts that if God exists, then he exists with three conditions. If a being exists with these three conditions, then evil cannot exist. Then the argument asserts that evil exists, therefore a being with these three conditions doesn't exist. Since God was asserted to be this being, it follows logically that God doesn't exist. Provided the premise are true, then the conclusion is guaranteed and can be nothing else.

One counter argument that may cause a fallacy, would be the following. This would be the notion of good and evil. One can argue that evil needs to exist...