What the deck is
Ergo is a playing deck of the ordinary kind: fifty-two suited cards and two jokers. On the face of each suited card is a philosophical argument for the existence of God, set out as numbered premises and a conclusion, in plain modern English. Beneath the argument stand its name, its author, and the work in which it appears, together with a short address that brings you to that card's own page on this site.
Many people take belief in God to be a purely personal or emotional matter, and are unaware that rational arguments for it exist at all. This deck exists to show that they do; that there are a great many of them; and that they have names, authors, and a long standing in the literature. Fifty-two is a large number, and the number is part of the point.
An argument is not a quarrel
An argument, in the sense meant on every card, is a logical process. Premises are stated, and a conclusion is drawn from them. It carries no heat and no feeling; it is a structure, and it can be examined as one. A quarrel is the opposite: feeling in search of a conclusion. What the deck presents are arguments in the first sense, and nothing else.
What we claim
Our claims are deliberately narrow. We claim:
- that each argument on the cards exists in the philosophical literature;
- that we have correctly identified and named its author;
- that we have identified the work in which that author first stated the argument or fully developed it.
On fitting an argument to a card
A playing card is a small surface. Every argument has been compressed to fit it, and there is always some loss in doing so. What we maintain is that each formulation on a card is logically valid, so that the conclusion follows from the premises as stated, and that it gives a reasonable sketch of the argument as its author made it.
The wording is ours, composed afresh from the primary sources, and every argument can be stated in different ways. Each card's page carries the full citation and points to where the argument may be read in the author's own words.
If an argument seems difficult
Some of these arguments are hard. No one grasps them all at first reading, including philosophers, some of whom have spent their lives on just one. Readers differ, too: what is clear to one can puzzle another. A card also leaves out the author's examples and explanations, so the original work is often easier to follow. You do not need the detail on this site to begin. Choose one card that interests you and read it a line at a time. Ask whether you accept each line, and whether the conclusion follows. Talk it over with someone. Then follow the links on that card's page.
Old arguments, and a few newer ones
Most of the arguments in the deck have been in the literature for a very long time, many of them for centuries. Objections have been raised to every one of them, and each card's page links to a principal objection so that you can read it in full. But none of the arguments has been discredited. Each remains the subject of lively discussion.
We have also included a sprinkling of more recent arguments that are popular or have good standing in the philosophical community. Many more modern arguments exist than we could include.
How the deck is arranged
The deck has an internal logic, and the arrangement of the cards is itself a classification.
Suits. The four suits group the arguments into families.
- ♠Spades are cosmological: arguments that run from the existence of the world to that on which its existence depends.
- ♥Hearts are teleological: arguments from the order, design, and fitness of things.
- ♦Diamonds are ontological and a priori: arguments that begin from the content of a thought, from a concept or a truth available to the intellect whatever the world happens to contain.
- ♣Clubs are moral, experiential, and pragmatic: arguments from moral obligation, from religious experience, and from what it is reasonable to believe or to do.
The test that decides a card's suit is where its argument starts. Spades, Hearts, and Clubs begin from something in the world; Diamonds begin from the content of thought.
Rank. Within each suit, rank follows historical prominence. The court cards carry major historical philosophers. The twos are seeds: the early statements from which a family later grew. Aces are high.
Inference type. Every card is also classed by what its conclusion asserts. There are four types. They differ in what is claimed, never in rigour.
- Demonstrative
- The conclusion asserts that something exists: a first cause, a necessary being, a designing mind. Where the author identifies that being as God, the card says so, and the identification is the author's.
- Evidential
- The conclusion asserts that some feature of the world is better explained by one hypothesis than by a named rival.
- Analogical
- The conclusion is reached by comparison with a known case, and states what the parallel entitles us to infer.
- Conjectural
- The conclusion asserts not that something exists but that belief is warranted: that a hypothesis has the highest claim on belief before it is tested, or that assent is required on practical or prudential grounds.
Each card's page records further classifications besides these: the argument's logical form, what it concludes to, the ground of its premises, the modal strength of its conclusion, what it licenses, its period, and its tradition. These are explained, with a fuller account of the anatomy of a card, including the two jokers, at Reading a card. The index at The cards lays out all fifty-two by suit and rank, and can be filtered by inference type.
What we do not do
We do not defend the arguments, raise objections to them, or reply to objections. Nor do we claim to provide expositions of the arguments, of the objections, or of the replies. A vast literature deals with all of these matters, and it is that literature which should be consulted. Each card's page points into it.
What we will gladly do is correct our own mistakes. If you find an error on a card or on this site, whether a misattribution, a wrong citation, or a premise that does not carry its weight, write to us. Errata are recorded at Corrections, and they stay there.
Athens & Jerusalem
ERGO is published by Athens & Jerusalem, an imprint that takes its name from Tertullian's question, What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?, and answers it more generously than he did. Athens stands for reasoned argument; Jerusalem for faith. The imprint publishes work in which the two meet. The ERGO deck is its first product.
ERGO is a deck of fifty-two such cards. Buy the deck