Question

Presupposition of the question.The question, DoesXexist? is either trivial or empty. On the one hand, as Hume said one time, it seems as if in thinking of something, I always think of it as existing (if only in thought). On the other hand, as Kant said one time, it seems as if in describing something asX, I do not (qualitatively) describe less of it than when I describe it as an existentX. So the naively free-floating use of the word exists is ambiguated between inherently uninformative meanings.⚝(Note: thisdoes not mean that quantifiers are useless, just that their usefulness is independent on whether they are taken to recapitulate our ontological naivete.) In a slogan, Nothing exists. The slogan explained: not, then, however, to say that things do the opposite of existing, either; or, just because something doesn't exist, doesn't mean that true statements about it cannot be made. The modern princess of Antarctica has not shaved her head, for instance, but she also has no head to shave and isn't actually a princess, for that matter, either. Atheism.It would be pointless to say, God does not exist, then. Of course It doesn't exist: nothing whatsoever exists! But it wouldnotbe pointless to say, God did not create the world.Thatis what an atheist would say in this context; that or, then, The world was not created by God. What would justify an atheist in saying this, though? Now, there are many uses of the word creation, and some are allowable, here, e.g., Matter was rearranged into the form ofX, is the from-prior-substance definition, and to reword that as, Xwas created, would go through as such. But the general definition of creation is to cause to exist, which then adverts to either the naive use of the word existence that was presuppositionally ruled out, or to sophisticated replacement assertions. It seems as though talk of creation from nothingness involves ontological naivete, as if nothingness too is a real predicate alongside somethingness, which after all we just said that we deny, here. In other words: is saying, God created the world from nothingness, the same as saying, God predicated existence of the world? Yet then if existence is not a predicate, or if it is pointless to talk about things existing as such, then our atheism would be stated as, The world was not caused to exist from nothing, and even, God did not create the world from nothing. But it seems strange to be able to deduce atheism, even in this form, from abstract premises. ⚝Consider the peculiarity of asking, Why is there something instead of nothing? This doesn't seem so far from asking, Why are there reasons-why for anything? or anyway, the answer to the former would seem as if it would have to involve the answer to the latter. But if the latter is pointless, so too is the former; or, again, asking about things existing in such a free-floating way seems like not asking a real question. But it seems strange to be able to deduce atheism, even in this form, from abstract premises. Well of course it is. One is only ever an Atheist in reaction to a concrete stipulation about the realm of theology. The neutral, abstract position contains no realist content about god or godsat all, not even the possibility of their existence, until the semantics are introduced. a) Existence and Creation

b) Atheism and Abstract Premises
c) Philosophical Perspectives on Existence

Answer 1

The debate on whether God exists typically involves ontological arguments, like those of Anselm, which assert necessary existence as part of the concept of God. Kant counters this by asserting that existence cannot simply be attributed to a concept without empirical evidence, challenging the validity of ontological proofs and impacting the philosophical basis of atheism.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question of whether God exists has been debated through various ontological arguments, particularly those initiated by Anselm, and critiqued by philosophers like Kant. Anselm's approach was to use a reductio ad absurdum strategy, suggesting that God, being the greatest conceivable being (GCB), must exist, as the concept would be contradictory if God existed only in the mind.

However, Kant objected to this ontological argument, arguing that existence is not a predicate; that is, one cannot confer existence upon a concept simply by including existence within the definition of the concept. For Kant, existence must be verified through experience, not merely asserted a priori. This position fundamentally challenges the ontological argument for God's existence by suggesting that affirming the concept of God as existing does not necessitate actual existence.

Moreover, Anselm's argument that one must think of the GCB as existing, and Descartes' assertion that conceiving an all-perfect being requires thinking of that being as existing, do not, according to Kant, confirm actual existence. They represent mental exercises lacking empirical validation. Atheism, in this philosophical context, is the absence of belief in a deity, neither based on ontological naivety nor necessitating concrete refutation of a deity's existence, but rather on the absence of empirical evidence of such existence.