"God" Is Meaningless

Logician A. J. Ayers maintained that 'god' and other metaphysical propositions are meaningless. What did he mean by this? Did he mean that people don't care about 'god'? Did he mean that they are not emotionally invested in the idea of an existing 'god'?

No, of course not.

What he meant was that statements such as "x exists" should be either true or false...

A. "X exists".

...And if we aren't able to show that statements like statement A above is either true or false then we can't show that it has any meaning to anything which may be said to be contingent on the truth or falsity of statement A. For instance, if there is a 'god' who created the universe, then certainly there must be at least one 'god' that exists, because a 'god' must exist before it can create universes.


"What is truth" ~ Pontius Pilate

There are two conditions that must be met before we can call a sentence true.

1. It must be truth functional (i.e. it must be either true or false).
2. The truth functional negation is contradictory.

(In other words, something is true, if it is true or false, and it's not false).

Contradictions are false (and "false" means contradictory).

"In base-ten math, 5 + 2 = 19", is false because in base ten math
5 + 2 = 7 and only 7. "5 + 2 = 19" contradicts the rules of base ten mathematics.

"Pittsburgh is the capital city of Tennessee" is false because the capital city of Tennessee is Nashville, and Nashville is not identical to Pittsburgh.

"Pittsburgh is the capital city of Tennessee" contradicts the facts of reality and is therefore false.


Let's look at statements 1 and 2 above.

Consider: "Red is nice".

"Red is nice" isn't truth functional. It's neither true nor false, as it's a personal preference only, so "red is nice" doesn't meet the requirement stated in statement 1 above.

Consider: "Some dog exists".

"Some dog exists" is truth functional. It's either true or false.
And the truth functional negation of "Some dog exists" is "No dog exists" or "There is no dog".
We can show that either of these statements contradict realty by showing the existence of at least one dog. By showing at least one dog, we can can qualify the truth of the "Some dog exists" statement.

Being able to validate such an existential statement is what is known as "Existential Import".

An existential statement that has no existential import is unjustified by definition. In formal logic, no one has any 'business' stating "x exists" if they can't, even in theory, show that the set of all 'x' has at least one existing member.


Consider: "There are no four-cornered triangles".

This can be shown to be either true or false, and if we consider the truth functional negation of this statement, we get, "There are four-cornered triangles". However, this contradicts the rules of geometry, as triangles are "a-priori" (or "defined") as having exactly three corners. "There are four cornered triangles" is a-priori false in the same way that "5 + 2 = 19" is false. The definitions and rules which apply dictate that "There are four-cornered triangles" is false, therefore "There are no four-cornered triangles" must be true.


Consider" "Some god exists".

Since "Some god exists" is an existential statement, then if the term "god" has any meaning, then "Some god exists" should meet conditions 1 and 2 for truth, as stated above.

It's arguable that something metaphysical that's defined as "a divine mystery", that is said to be "ineffable" and "inscrutable" wouldn't be able to be said to be either true or false.

But even if we assume, just for the sake of argument, that "Some god exists" meets the criteria of condition one, does it meet the criteria of condition 2?

If "Some god exists" is true, then "There is no existing god" should prove to be contradictory, even in theory. Yet no one it seems can, even in theory, show us direct evidence of any existing 'god'. Where is it? Show it to me. Can you show that the set of all 'gods' contains a single existing member? Some 'god' must exist before it can create a universe or life in this universe.

If 'no', then "Some god exists" can't be considered a true and justifiable statement.

What about the statement "There is no existing god"?

Well, the truth functional negation is "Some god exists". Can we show that "Some god exists" poses a contradiction?

No.

Why?

Because one cannot show direct evidence of nonexistence. (This is why Kant said that existence is not a property), and "There is no existing 'god'" is not a-priory false. (It's not definitively false, like '5 + 2 = 19' is because it poses no contradiction).

Arguably, "god' is too meaningless to be false...or true.


Since "X exists" should be a truth functional statement, and since "Some god exists" can't be shown, even in theory, to be either true or false, then "god" is a meaningless term and "Some god' exists" has no merit. Which means that you can't prove, even in theory, that the existence or nonexistence of said "god" has any contingent outcome on anything else in the universe.

Ironically, many poor-thinking theists consider the fact that atheists can't prove that no 'god' exists to be some sort of positive to their claim that some 'god' exists, (when they also cannot show that some 'god' in fact exists). Actually it just goes to show how meaningless their merit-less claims prove to be.