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God and Factual Necessity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Extract
Many philosophers and philosophically oriented theologians hold that it is unreasonable to treat the statement ‘There is a God’ as analytic or logically true. As an existential statement, they argue, it is no different from any statement of its kind. Existential statements cannot be analytic, because contra-existential statements cannot be contradictory. (Notice, however, that existential statements can be contradictory, and contra-existential statements can be analytic.) To say, for example, that unicorns do not exist is simply to say that no entity satisfies the description ‘unicorn’. But this cannot be complex in the sense of entailing two contradictory statements. If so, then the existential statement corresponding to it cannot be analytic. In general, since no contra-existential statement can be contradictory, no existential statement can be analytic.
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References
page 23 note 1 This position is best represented by Plantinga', Alvin ‘Necessary being’;, in Faith and Philosophy, edited by Plantinga, (William B. Erdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan), 1964, pp. 97–108.Google Scholar
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page 25 note 3 ibid.
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page 25 note 5 ibid.
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