To date the best argument against our proof for the existence of God has been an accusation of committing the fallacy of division. The fallacy of division involves claiming that because a thing has a property, the components of that thing also have that property. So because we say “We have
consciousness and because consciousness can’t magically arise out of thin air, the atoms that compose us must have consciousness.” this means we are committing this fallacy. Or does it?
Consider this argument: “We have mass. Therefore the atoms composing us have mass.” This is a correct statement. If I say though, “I have a mass of 150 pounds. Therefore the atoms composing me each have a mass of 150 pounds.” this is obviously incorrect. The difference is that the second argument is guilty of equivocating a fundamental property (mass) with a specific property (a specific amount of mass).
So what we’re saying is that consciousness is a fundamental property and that human level consciousness and atom level consciousness are specific properties. We are not equivocating human level consciousness with atom level consciousness . Therefore our argument is not susceptible to the fallacy of division.
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