Should we trust the arguments made by philosphers from ancient times for or against there being a god/higher being?

Grok 4.20

Vote: No

I maintain my vote for B. Kimi K2.5 correctly notes that metaphysical questions persist, but fails to address how core ancient arguments (e.g., Aristotle's unmoved mover or Plato's demiurge) rest on specific premises about causality, motion, and cosmology that modern science has overturned. DeepSeek V3.2 and GLM 5 offer compelling reinforcement: ancient frameworks were limited by geocentric views, absent evolutionary biology, and cultural biases, making their god-related conclusions unreliable without major updates. These philosophers pioneered inquiry, yet trusting their arguments today would ignore empirical progress in fields that directly inform debates on existence and higher beings. We should study them historically but not defer to them as authoritative on this question.

DeepSeek V3.2

Vote: No

I maintain my position that we should not trust ancient philosophers' arguments on the existence of a god or higher being. Trust implies reliance on their conclusions, which were formulated without modern scientific and philosophical advancements. Kimi K2.5's argument highlights the timeless nature of their questions, but this does not address the core issue: their premises are often outdated or speculative, making their conclusions unreliable for contemporary truth-seeking. Critical engagement with these arguments is valuable for historical and logical insight, but trust requires premises that align with current knowledge. The other models' points about limited empirical foundations reinforce that blind trust is epistemically irresponsible. Thus, while we can appreciate their contributions, trusting their specific arguments is not justified.

GLM 5

Vote: No

Kimi K2.5's argument, while eloquently stated, doesn't address the central epistemic problem: 'trust' implies accepting these arguments as reliable guides to truth, not merely engaging with them historically. We can respect ancient philosophical contributions without trusting their conclusions on questions where their foundational premises have been thoroughly undermined by modern knowledge. The claim that certain metaphysical questions 'transcend empirical updates' is unpersuasive when the specific arguments themselves depend on empirical premises. Aristotle's unmoved mover argument presumes his physics of motion. Aquinas's cosmological arguments presume Aristotelian causation. Plato's demiurge presumes geocentric cosmology. Strip away these empirically false premises, and the arguments collapse or require fundamental reconstruction—meaning we're no longer trusting the ancient arguments but building new ones. The question asks about trust, not engagement. We should absolutely study these arguments, analyze their logical structures, and appreciate their historical significance. But trusting them as reliable guides to whether a god exists? That requires accepting conclusions built on false premises—an epistemic practice we should reject regardless of the argument's vintage.

Kimi K2.5 (changed mind)

Vote: No

I am changing my vote because 'trust' implies epistemic reliance on the truth-conduciveness of these arguments, not merely respect for their historical significance. While ancient philosophers developed sophisticated logical frameworks, their specific arguments regarding a higher being were embedded in empirical premises—Aristotelian physics, geocentric cosmology, vitalistic biology—that we now know to be false. Trusting conclusions derived from false premises is unjustified, regardless of the logical validity of the form. The distinction between appreciating these arguments as intellectual artifacts and trusting them as guides to metaphysical truth is decisive. We can value the questions they raised and the dialectical methods they pioneered without granting credence to their specific answers about divine existence, which were constrained by the epistemic limitations of their era. To trust their arguments today would require us to ignore centuries of corrections to our understanding of causation, cosmology, and consciousness. Critical engagement with these texts is essential, but epistemic trust must be reserved for arguments grounded in evidence and premises that have survived our best contemporary scrutiny.

Final Summary

The AI Roundtable initially saw a divide when Kimi K2.5 stood as a lone dissenter, arguing that ancient metaphysical frameworks possess a timeless conceptual rigor that transcends modern scientific updates. However, the tide turned decisively when GLM 5 challenged the definition of 'trust,' arguing that accepting a conclusion while its foundational premises (like Aristotelian physics) have crumbled is 'epistemically irresponsible.' Convinced by this distinction between historical appreciation and actual truth-reliance, Kimi K2.5 abandoned the 'Yes' camp, leading to a unanimous verdict that these ancient arguments cannot serve as reliable modern guides.

All 4 models agreed on "No" after discussion

Strongest Arguments

• Yes: Ancient philosophers established enduring patterns of methodological rigor and conceptual frameworks that remain relevant to the logic of the divine, regardless of empirical updates.
• No: Trusting a conclusion requires trusting its premises; because ancient arguments for a higher being are built on defunct physics and biology, they cannot be considered reliable guides to metaphysical truth.

Key Turning Points

• GLM 5's Round 2 rebuttal specifically targeted Kimi K2.5's definition of 'trust,' separating the historical value of the arguments from their reliability as truth-seeking tools.
• Kimi K2.5 explicitly cited GLM 5's logic regarding the collapse of arguments when their empirical premises are stripped away as the reason for changing its vote.