By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Why are necessary truths implied by any and every contingent fact?
Because—but only because—every contingent fact has certain things in common with any conceivable contingent fact, namely, the things expressed summarily by "factuality," formed like Heidegger's "existentiality" (die Existentialität).
God is not a fact, but the necessary condition of the possibility of any fact. So the atheist, or antitheist, is not just denying a fact, but even the possibility of a fact.
In other words, "God does not exist" means "Nothing exists." And "Nothing exists" is not merely false but necessarily false and therefore absurd, its contradictory, "Something exists," being necessarily true.
3 May 2009
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