Hi there,
Even Christians know that Zeus exists.
Becoming a Christian is an act of will. It’s a denial of a belief in Zeus.
One might be tempted to think of this as a reversible claim, but upon reflection, I don’t think that’s the case. Pagan gods, ancient or modern (take the Flying Spaghetti Monster, for example) are conceived as corporeal beings, composed of parts. Yahweh, on the other hand, is in many ways comparable to the God that philosophers, like Aristotle, came to believe in.*
This thread is a bit long, so I’ll re-post some of my earlier comments.
- Every dependent thing has a cause.
- The series of dependent causes either proceeds to infinity, or has a self-existent first cause.
- The series cannot proceed to infinity.
- Therefore, there exists a self-existent first cause.
Through experience, we all know what (1) is saying. Even assuming that some events are random (i.e. quantum fluctuations), they still have a cause in some sense. Quantum fluctuations are dependent on the energy contained within the quantum vacuum, so they’re caused in that sense.
The series of dependent causes is not temporal in nature, but ontological. At any finite period of time, the human body is dependent on its systems, its systems on organs, its organs on cells, and so forth. However, it would take infinite time for an infinite series to cause anything. Therefore, the ontological series of dependent causes must be finite. The first cause cannot be dependent, since that would result in its not being first, which is a contradiction. Hence, the first cause is self-existent (i.e. it exists by a necessity of its own nature).
The first cause is also eternal, one, and simple. It must be eternal, since it cannot depend on any state of affairs to come into, or go out of, existence. It must be one because the uniformity of nature entails that every existing thing participates in the singular attribute of intelligibility. Finally, it must be simple, since every composite thing is dependent on the ordering of its parts. And, since the first cause is not dependent, it must be simple.
Zeus, and other pagan gods, are incompatible with these descriptions. I believe that since we so commonly and intuitively use the notion of causation, that within every person is an innate knowledge of God. One may or may not be conscious of this knowledge, though.
What are your thoughts?
*I’m not suggesting Aristotle was a proto-Christian. I do, however, think a number of his views are consistent with Christian theism.