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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