The meaning, I take it, is clear: It is as idle to suppose that there is a God as to suppose that there is an irate unicorn on the far side of the moon. Of course, there could be such a unicorn. It is logically possible in that there is no contradiction in the idea. It is also epistemically possible in that the supposition is consistent with what we know. (Perhaps a clever extraterrestrial scientist synthesized a unicorn, put him in a space suit, and deposited the unfortunate critter on the moon.) But there is no positive reason to believe in something so outlandish.
Similarly, according to Abbey and Magee, God could be a reality. There is no contradiction in the idea, and nothing we can claim to know rules out the existence of God. The existence of God is no more ruled out, than it is ruled in, by what we know. So it is both logically and epistemically possible both that God exist and that God not exist.
Now Magee's point, when it comes to God and the soul and all matters relevant to religion, is that the situation is exactly parallel to that of the angry lunar unicorn. We are not entitled to hold these beliefs just because they could be true. The example Magee gives is the supposition that upon death our souls are liberated from our bodies and "are at once transformed into invisible, intangible, and inaudible hippopatamuses that then take up residence in the departure lounges of the world's airports . . . . (Confessions of a Philosopher, p. 447) Magee proceeds:
This could be true, and no one can prove that it is not. Indeed, I could claim, less than half jokingly, that it is no more unlikely than some actually held religious and superstitious beliefs. But there is not the slightest reason why anyone should waste a moment's consideration on it. (And that is how I feel about many religious beliefs.)
How does one respond to Magee?
I would say that God and the lunar unicorn are not in the same logical boat. For one thing, if God exists, then God is the cause of the existence of every contingent being, and indeed, of every being distinct from himself. This is
not true of lunar unicorns and invisible hippos. If there is a lunar unicorn, then this is just one more isolated fact about the universe. But if God exists, then everything is unified by this fact: everything has the ground of its being in the creative activity of this one paradigmatic being.
This is connected with the fact that one can argue from general facts about the universe to the existence of God, but not from such facts to the existence of lunar unicorns and invisible hippos. Thus there are various sorts of cosmological argument that proceed a contingentia mundi to a ground of contingent beings. There are also arguments from truth, from consciousness, from apparent design, from desire, from morality, and others besides.
The very existence of these arguments shows two things. First, since they move from very general facts (the existence of contingent beings, the existence of truth) to the existence of a source of these general facts, they show that God is not a being among beings, not something in addition to what is ordinarily taken to exist. Second, these arguments give positive reason for believing in the existence of God. Are they compelling? No, but then no argument for any substantive philosophical conclusion is compelling.
Invisible, intangible, inaudible ... in what sense hippos?
At least according to Christianity God make physical contact with mankind. Magee seems to have missed that bit.
Something could be physical (as a hippo must be) and yet invisible, intangible, and inaudible if it is small enough.
Is there perhaps a circle if you try to prove God from Christ? Don't you need an independent reason to believe in God if you are to indetify a particular man as God? To recognize a man as divine seems to presuppose the antecedent recognition that there is an existent divine principle.
Hippos aren't nano-sized objects either.
There's certainly nothing circular in the historical argument for the existence of God, any more than there is in the argument for the existence of electrons or black holes from the behavior of visible objects.
I note that you're using the word 'prove' here, which is a term I normally reserve for contexts where a deductive argument is in view. Perhaps the difficulty arises because you're thinking of this as a deductive argument, whereas I'm thinking of it as an explanatory inference with a Bayesian underlying structure?
But all of this beside the point of your excellent post...
God's existence, on the other hand, is quite relevant to the way I live my life, and, for some people, whether life is worth living at all. Pascal's Wager, while not wholly valid in my opinion, at least points out the importance of giving the existence of God serious consideration. No one can reasonably say the same about unicorns on the moon. (And I say this as a "soft" agnostice.)
Or if you're not into pasta-meatball deities, there's always The First Church of Shatnerology.
Shatner still lives among us, a fact which those partial to incarnational theology will find reassuring.
Kevin
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