By Schubert Ogden
One understanding of what it is to conceive the existence/nonexistence
of something is that it is to imagine experiencing its presence/ absence. But if
this is, indeed, what it means to conceive the existence/nonexistence of
something, it seems clear that the nonexistence of God is inconceivable.
Consider the following reasoning.
One understanding of what it is to conceive the existence/nonexistence of something is that it is to imagine experiencing its presence/ absence. But if this is, indeed, what it means to conceive the existence/nonexistence of something, it seems clear that the nonexistence of God is inconceivable.
...
To experience the absence of a thing x is to experience the presence of some other thing y, whose presence is incompatible with that of x. But it is a contradiction of the very concept of God to suppose that the presence of anything could be incompatible with the (omni-)presence of God. Therefore, there is no way of imagining experiencing God's absence, because one cannot imagine experiencing the presence of anything that would be incompatible with God's presence.
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