Atheistic Induction by Boltzmann Brains

In Jerry L. Walls & Trent Dougherty (eds.), Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project. Oxford University Press (2018)
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Abstract

I present a new thermodynamic argument for the existence of God. Naturalistic physics provides evidence for the failure of induction, because it provides evidence that the past is not at all what you think it is, and your existence is just a momentary fluctuation. The fact that you are not a momentary fluctuation thus provides evidence for the existence of God – God would ensure that the past is roughly what we think it is, and you have been in existence for roughly the amount of time you think you have. I don’t have a definitive way for the atheist to refute this argument, but I give one suggestion that relies on physics-based simplicity considerations. I close with an epistemological discussion of self-undermining arguments.

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Bradley Monton
Wuhan University

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