Before addressing Chris’ latest concerns, I will take a few moments to respond to a guest post that was made on ChoosingHats by ‘ZaoThanatoo’.

On Zao’s Thoughts:

I mentioned in several places throughout my posts in this series that there must be real caution taken by the theist with regard to arguments such as these, to not assume the conclusion false to show the conclusion false. Let’s quickly recap the argument in question:

Horrific Suffering (def.) = that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.

(1) Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.

(2) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God.

(3) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good. (from 1, 2)

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

(5) Necessarily, if God exists, there is no horrific suffering. (from 3, 4)

(6) There is horrific suffering.

(7) God does not exist (from 5, 6)

Now, it should be obvious that any objection to the argument which has as a component the denial of (7) is going to be fallacious. One cannot respond to this argument solely by saying, “God exists and he has morally sufficient reasons for permitting horrific suffering.’ Zao, however, extends my cautionary point into his own further analysis when he says:

Mitch contends that one must not assume that God exists (A) in order to disprove the above conclusion that God does not exist (~A).  This, he asserts, is question-begging.  However, for anyone wishing to criticize the conclusion, the alternative is to assume that God does not exist in order to argue that he does.  This is self-contradictory.  We must either assume God exists or God does not exist (A or ~A, Excluded Middle) in presenting our reasoning.  But assuming ~A to prove A is self-contradictory and assuming A to prove ~~A Mitch asserts is question-begging.

These are some strange assertions. If it’s the case that assuming that God does not exist in order to argue that he does is self-contradictory there is a real problem for argumentation in general, as assuming the negation of some proposition to prove that proposition is simply what is meant by “proof via contradiction” or reductio ad absurdum and it would be highly controversial for Zao to claim that instances of reductio are self-contradictory, yet that seems to be his suggestion. Further, it’s not clear why one need either assume that God exists or that she does not in analyzing the argument. This seems to entail that nobody who is agnostic with regards to the existence of God could ever analyze the argument, or that agnostics are committed to the claim that God does not exist, which is false. He appears to cite the “Law of Excluded Middle” as justification for this claim, but this seems confused. It may be the case that “God exists” is either true or false but this does not entail that one has to regard it as so. For example, the “Law of Excluded Middle” tells us that the proposition “Some man named Johnathan will ride a bicycle on November 21, 2014 and crash it into an Ice Cream Stand” is either true or false,  but this in no way entails that I must assume that the proposition is true nor assume that it is false. In short, nothing about the above argument begs the question. This should be clear, but it can be made clearer by formalizing the argument, if one wishes. If such is done, it will be evident that no premise is, nor has as a premise in its justification, the conclusion.

Zao also states:

I’m attempting to elevate the conversation by recognizing the epistemic role which properly basic beliefs or ultimate presuppositions (call them what you like) play in dealing with issues such as the problem of horrific suffering.

The talk about properly basic beliefs is quite confusing as it’s not relevant to the argument at all. I can only assume that when Zao speaks of “assuming” he’s not speaking of “assuming” in the logical sense, but rather in the epistemic sense. Of course, the fallacy of begging the question is a logical fallacy and so whatever might be going on with my epistemology it does not impact the logic of the argument. That is, even if I do believe that God does not exist, that does not make my giving the above argument question begging. Also, I have noticed a general trend amongst presuppositionalists to not only assume a sort of foundationalist epistemology, but to even assume others are foundationalists! How can I have properly basic beliefs or ultimate presuppositions if I think foundationalism is false? This isn’t an immediately relevant thought, but it’s interesting enough to flag.

Zao continues:

In Premise 1 we are told “Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.”  Let’s break this down quickly for definitional purposes.  We’ll take “finite persons” to be, well, finite persons.  Finite persons who “ever more fully experience the reality of God” are people living life.  Every day every finite person existing ever more fully experiences the reality of God in various ways and to varying degrees, but every aspect of life is an experience of God in one way or another.  “Realizing their deepest good” means simply that they glorify God; and one may glorify God through either salvation or judgment.

So while Mitch’s definition is good, it is incomplete, as he stated: “…Indeed such an experience of God’s reality might manifest itself in different ways to different persons.”  Indeed, some people may realize their “deepest good” (glorifying God) through horrific suffering under the judgment of God for their sins.  So, given the above definitions, Premise 2 is false since certain persons glorify God most fully by suffering horrifically under judgment for their sins; and preventing that category of people from suffering would prevent them from “realizing their deepest good.”

Here, unfortunately, Zao misconstrues the argument. The finite persons who “ever more fully experience the reality of God” are not people living life simpliciter. They are the people who believe they are in a mutually interactive relationship with God of the sort to which theists commonly attest. This is a stipulative definition and I could have perhaps made it clearer, but this is one example of why I dislike long discussions pertaining to a brief survey article of some argument, there are things which get left out or overlooked that aren’t so left out or overlooked in the primary source. But, moving on, Zao is also mistaken about what it means to “realize one’s deepest good.” If you note premise (1) it’s explicitly defining what it means to realize one’s deepest good, and it means to ever more fully experience the reality of God. The rest of Zao’s response in its current form can be overlooked since it’s simply not relevant. Zao has, perhaps unintentionally, strawmanned the argument from Horrific Suffering.

On Chris’ Thoughts:

In Chris’ recent response he begins to steer the discussion in a different direction. He states:

Mitch claims that, “In the background of the argument is the question ‘What would a perfect being do?’” However, the argument pertains to God and not necessarily a “perfect being,” thus insofar as a question like this is in the background of the argument, the question is, “What would God do?” If the Christian concept of God is in view then it is the Christian concept of God which must be evaluated in terms of what the Christian God would do. Otherwise the argument simply does not pertain to the Christian God.

The argument does take the term God to refer to a perfect personal being and insofar as Chris might propose that the Christian God is not a perfect personal being, his conception of God evades the force of the argument. I didn’t make this fact explicit in the opening post for a few reasons: the first post was never intended to be exhaustive and the position that God is not a perfect being is a minority position in the philosophy of religion, to the best of my knowledge. With that said, I do know of a recently published paper which seeks to argue against the claim that “If God exists, God is perfect” though the title escapes me at the time of writing (e-mail me if you really want to know). With that said, there are a couple of options (at least that I can foresee at this very moment) along this road of objection. One can argue against any argumentation which seeks to establish that fact, obviously. Or one can argue for the proposition, “If God exists, God is imperfect.” Also, one claim that the attributes which I’ve argued would belong to a perfect being in fact would not. We can explore Chris’ article to see which, if any, of these routes are explored.

Firstly, it’s important to note that Chris presents some citations which seek to argue against the Ontological Argument. They don’t accurately address this argument however since no appeal has been made to God being that which none greater can be conceived. For that reason, a lot of what follows will be slightly misdirected but I will respond to what I think can be redirected appropriately. Chris first cites Van Til:

[W]e should be careful when we say that God is the being than whom none higher can be thought. If we take the highest being of which we can think, in the sense of have a concept of, and attribute to it actual existence, we do not have the biblical notion of God. God is not the reality that corresponds to the highest concept that man, considered as an independent being, can think. Man cannot think an absolute self-contained being; that is, he cannot have a concept of it in the ordinary sense of the term. God is infinitely higher than the highest being of which he can form a concept…When we speak of our concept or notion of God, we should be fully aware that by that concept we have an analogical reproduction of the notion that God has of himself. (Quoted in Bahnsen, Analysis, 634)

This quotation particularly misses the mark, but it can be illustrative. Van Til is arguing against the claim that God is the greatest conceivable being on the basis that no matter how great a being human persons can conceive, God is infinitely greater. Based on this quotation, one might want to respond to Van Til by saying that God is at least the greatest conceivable being or God is no lesser than the greatest conceivable being. Both of these options satisfy the above criticisms of Van Til and allow for one to still run an Ontological Argument, albeit of a different flavor. How is this relevant to the Argument from Horrific Suffering? Well, if the objection is that no matter how many great things I think being perfect would entail my list will never be exhaustive, we can absorb the objection by simply replying that while this may be true, being perfect could not be anything less. That is, perhaps my reflections lead me to say of God that, as a perfect being, she is perfectly loving and perfectly compassionate. I should not claim to therefore have exhausted God’s attributes, but what I can claim is that any further property ascribed to God such that God’s perfection increases will add to and not take away from those about which I have managed to think. Perhaps Bahnsen is in agreement when he states:

However, God has also revealed that He is much greater than anything that we can finitely imagine. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (without our thoughts being false or misleading). (Bahnsen, Analysis, 634, n.163)

The key thing to notice here is that it is said God is much greater than anything we imagine. Greater, not worse.

Chris continues:

Recall that [Van Til] claims, “When we speak of our concept or notion of God, we should be fully aware that by that concept we have an analogical reproduction of the notion that God has of himself.” What Van Til is saying is that our concept of God  is God’s concept of God. Now this in and of itself is rather interesting, for surely no one should expect a Christian, which I would at the moment say that I am, to accept a man’s concept of God over God’s concept of God, but that is precisely what Mitch is asking us to do.

Let us keep in mind that Chris can only non-question-beggingly assert that God has a concept of God if it is non-question-begging to assert that God exists. In order for this assertion to be non-question begging, he has to mean by God something other than what the argument means by God; something other than a perfect personal being, since he has not yet argued that any of my ascriptions are false. He has suggested that my ascriptions are inexhaustive but that is of no consequence to the argument unless there is a necessary property of God such that its existence renders the operation of some other property limited. It’s yet to be seen if a suggestion such as this is even coherent, or if coherent, can apply to the ascriptions made in the previous articles.

Chris goes on to cite a previous quote of mine, I will quote the relevant portion:

Many of my discussions with Christians have resulted in their looking at the Christian story and saying that particular conceptual analyses don’t line up with the Biblical conception of God. As I’ve said before, so long as our conceptual analyses are reasonable, so much the worse for the Biblical conception of God; if a God did exist, it would not be that one.

This follows from taking the proposition “If God exists, God is a perfect personal being” to be true. If that is indeed true (and I hope to present my argumentation for this in a future article), and if the Christian story presents a depiction of God that is not a perfect personal being, so much the worse for that depiction. I hope my statement is clearer now, in light of what’s been discussed so far.

Towards the end of his response, Chris calls into question some of the ascriptions I’ve made and while I don’t see an argument against them in what he’s written, there are some questions worth answering. Chris says:

Any problems with Mitch applying his concept of “compassion” to the Christian God are now apparent as well. He writes, “Granting that there can exist no being more compassionate than God, if she exists, this perfect compassion coupled with perfect knowledge of what it is to undergo Horrific Suffering entails that God is, as Schellenberg puts it, maximally opposed to these sufferings.” But why does Mitch grant that God is compassionate at all? Perhaps some god is the very opposite of compassionate even in Mitch’s understanding of the matter. How would the argument then apply to that god?

Taking God to be a perfect personal being, we can reason as to the properties such a being would have by analyzing out the great-making properties of human persons; the great-making properties of personhood. That is, human beings possess the properties of being loving, being compassionate and being generous. These properties differ in quality from, say, the property of being deceptive or the property of being violent such that the properties of being loving, compassionate and generous can be called great-making properties. There are a lot of ways in which we can hash out this idea, but for the purposes of this article we can say that they are the properties which are intrinsically better to have than not, the properties we regard as great-making in that the more of these a person has, the more we speak of their excellence as a person in the positive sense. Now God, if the perfect personal being, will possess all the great-making properties of human persons to their maximal (highest possible) degree and probably possess some great-making properties that human persons do not. It is because of this that we can perform a conceptual analysis of what love means, what compassion means and so on, and reason (even if inexhaustively) as to which properties a perfect personal being would have. Such reasoning in this case has led us to the conclusion that because of God’s perfect knowledge and compassion which entails a profound awareness and opposition (compassion is sympathetic opposition), she will know what it is to suffer horrifically and not permit such a state if unnecessary for the deepest good of human persons. Again, since it is unnecessary for the deepest good of human persons, the existence of horrific suffering shows us there is no God.

So, in summation, and to be precise, the argument demonstrates that there exists no perfect personal being. It may turn out that this argument does not impact Chris in any way because as a Calvinist, he already agrees that there exists no perfect personal being. If this is the case, so be it, as the argument was never addressed to Chris directly (though his responses are always welcome). Certainly many people do believe in a perfect personal being and this argument has much discussion to provide amongst them. Alternatively, Chris might argue against the properties I’ve associated with perfection; arguments which I imagine will be quite interesting given how obvious the analyses seem upon reflection. At any rate, having the discussion head in this direction (if it continues) could serve to be very beneficial in understanding not only this argument, but other important issues in the philosophy of religion.

Note: For those who may not know, the article image is a reference to the old Christian poem entitled “Footsteps” which tells the story of a person told by God that they never walk alone, when God is asked then why at times there is only one set of footprints she remarks that those are the times in which she carried the person. I think this, though a story, can help to demonstrate what perfect compassion might look like.

At this point, Chris is still challenging premise (4) of the following argument:

Horrific Suffering (def.) = that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.

(1) Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.

(2) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God.

(3) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good. (from 1, 2)

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

(5) Necessarily, if God exists, there is no horrific suffering. (from 3, 4)

(6) There is horrific suffering.

(7) God does not exist (from 5, 6)

In my most recent article I outlined reasons for thinking (4) is true. I want to bring out some underlying strands of the debate, that will simultaneously address Chris’ concerns.

In the background of the argument is the question “What would a perfect being do?” In answering this question, one engages in conceptual analysis (not just this question, practically all of Western philosophy involves conceptual analysis). In analyzing concepts, we take something like the concept of perfect love, for example, and ask the stereotypical philosopher question of what it means to be perfectly loving. It is the hope of the philosopher that such analysis leads to deeper understandings of the concepts in question. In my last article, I presented a series of considerations for thinking that a perfect being would only permit the existence of horrific suffering if it’s prevention would prevent finite persons from realizing their deepest goods. Forgive me for quoting at length:

Let us delve further, take the state in question, that of Horrific Suffering, defined as being “that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.” States such as this are often the most difficult times in people’s lives, one need only speak with someone who has gone through such turmoil to realize this fact. God, however, would not even need to speak with these persons. The perfection of God surely entails an omniscience that encompasses all kinds of knowledge. This includes a perfect knowledge of how particular states feel to her created beings and thus, complete insider knowledge of the experiences of every created being. Granting that there can exist no being more compassionate than God, if she exists, this perfect compassion coupled with perfect knowledge of what it is to undergo Horrific Suffering entails that God is, as Schellenberg puts it, maximally opposed to these sufferings. Granting that God stands in maximal opposition to the experience of Horrific Suffering it is surely the case, entailed by our aforementioned analyses, that God allows persons to suffer horrifically only if such suffering is a necessary condition of these persons realizing their deepest good; a relationship with the Creator that will unfold throughout all of eternity, the only thing that God’s perfect nature will deem enough. In fact, even if the existence of Horrific Suffering were a necessary condition of some very-good-other-goods such that they, perhaps in quantity, “outweighed” the non-good state of Horrific Suffering, our above analyses entail that permitting such suffering is still inconsistent with the divine nature!

Given the analysis of the concepts in question, the conclusion to which we are led certainly seems to be that (4) is true. That is, reasoning about what these particular things mean leads us to a conclusion about what a being with those properties would do.

Thus, when Chris suggests that God has morally sufficient reasons for causing or permitting horrific suffering, a few things are occurring. Firstly, he begs the question against the conclusion drawn from the conceptual analysis. He assumes that there can be a reason such that in light of this reason God would permit the existence of horrific suffering even in cases where the deepest good of persons does not have such suffering as a necessary condition. But, our conceptual analysis leads us to the conclusion that there is no such reason; God would not do such a thing. Chris cannot merely assume the failure of the conceptual analysis, he has to argue for it.

The most relevant portion of Chris’ response, is, I think the following:

Is the thought that one’s life is not worth living really something which God is “maximally opposed to?” Many of us have in fact had such thoughts and have subsequently gotten over it. Some people do not get over it. If it is true that Hitler committed suicide then it is likely the case that he did not get over it. But is God “maximally opposed” to Hitler’s horrific suffering or the possible result of him taking his own life? What about the well-to-do millionaire who decides after losing a few million that his life is no longer worth living by virtue of the fact of him losing those few million?

Well, if our conceptual analysis is reasonable (which I contend it is) then the affirmative is a reasonable conclusion to draw. I’m not sure if Chris has ever gone through such a period, but at the very least he probably knows of someone who has gone through such a period and even many who have “gotten over it” regard it as the worst point in their lives. The relevant portion of the analysis is the feeling involved with horrific suffering, not the antecedent conditions. We are reasoning about a being that is perfectly compassionate and because of her omniscience shares in our experience. Whether Hitler, a millionaire, or whomever, the experience of Horrific Suffering does not change in content. Chris has even admitted this to an extent, in pointing out that it may have led to Hitler taking his life. It is easy for us, I think, to scoff at people like Hitler and say that they deserve it or what not, but we should not assume that a perfect being, if she exists, shares our shortcomings in this respect; we many not be perfectly compassionate, but surely she is.

So, has Chris offered any reasons to think that the above conceptual analysis is in some way misguided? Not directly. Directly, he’s only begged the question against it by speaking of “morally sufficient reasons for God to permit horrific suffering.” There are hints of a better reply in his responses however, namely, that of “skeptical theism.” A treatment of that topic would require another article, so for now I will only flag it as a possible course of objection for Chris.

Something that I’ve mentioned before seems relevant yet again. Whereas I am asking the question, “What would a perfect being do?” Chris seems to be asking the question, “What has a perfect being done?” The difference is subtle, yet illuminating in how both of us approach this, and probably many other issues in the philosophy of religion. There is some initial question as to whether or not the being Bolt calls “God” possesses the properties of perfection I’ve ascribed to the term. There is a tendency that I have experienced in my many discussions with Christian people to assume that this world is the type of world that God would create, since God did create it. But if our conceptual analyses lead us to discover that this world is not the world that a God would create as I think is the case here, we are left with the conclusion that there is no such being. Many of my discussions with Christians have resulted in their looking at the Christian story and saying that particular conceptual analyses don’t line up with the Biblical conception of God. As I’ve said before, so long as our conceptual analyses are reasonable, so much the worse for the Biblical conception of God; if a God did exist, it would not be that one. While I think there are hints of this confusion occurring in Chris’ thought, I would like to thank him for not, as many confusedly and amateurishly have, done something like throw the book of Job at me or cite various parables from the Bible. It should be clear how to do so in this context, would only be to beg the question even further.

So, our conceptual analysis seems to lead us to the conclusion that this world, with it’s occurrences of horrific suffering, is not the world that a perfect being would create and thus, there is no God.

Chris’ most recent response chooses to set aside his initial two objections and focus in on premise (4) of the argument:

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

His main complaint is that no reason is given for accepting the premise. This isn’t true, in my response I provided one such justification:

Looking at an analogous instance, it seems obvious that something has gone wrong when we are saying of the parent that they are acting in accordance with anything we might remotely pick out as being “good” when they cause or permit their beloved child to suffer horrifically when the prevention of that suffering would occur at no loss to the beloved!

This is a piece of prima facie justification and whether or not Chris finds it persuasive, it is there. I will, however, take this opportunity to say much more. If there is anything that perfect goodness is not, it is the causing or permitting of non-good states to obtain for the sake of their being non-good states. What might it mean to say of some person that they are perfectly good and without repercussion can avoid the causing or permitting of some other person their experience of pain (for example), but causes or permits such pain anyhow? It is difficult to make sense of in the same way it is difficult to make sense of there being some person such that they are omniscient, and yet they do not know my name. Whatever is a property of the person in question, it surely isn’t omniscience, and in our previous example, it surely isn’t anything close to perfect goodness. We can reason then that if a perfectly good being causes or permits the obtaining of some non-good states, her doing so must in some way be necessary for some greater good state. Surely a perfectly good being, if bringing about non-good states, does so reluctantly, takes no pleasure in doing so, and would avoid doing so if at all possible without sacrificing one of the greater goods.

Good parents exemplify this in their interactions with their children. They may take their child to the dentist, permitting the obtaining of the non-good state of painful tooth extraction, taking no pleasure in the non-good state obtaining, but permitting it because it leads to the good state of having a healthy mouth. In the above example, the parents seem justified in their permitting their child to suffer because of the upcoming greater good for the child. As Chris notes, if God exists, her being our creator grants her a particular set of rights over our lives that exceeds even that of parent and child. Given such authority, however, we are not to neglect God’s perfect goodness which would ensure that the instances of non-good states are justified in some way. Let us delve further, take the state in question, that of Horrific Suffering, defined as being “that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.” States such as this are often the most difficult times in people’s lives, one need only speak with someone who has gone through such turmoil to realize this fact. God, however, would not even need to speak with these persons. The perfection of God surely entails an omniscience that encompasses all kinds of knowledge. This includes a perfect knowledge of how particular states feel to her created beings and thus, complete insider knowledge of the experiences of every created being. Granting that there can exist no being more compassionate than God, if she exists, this perfect compassion coupled with perfect knowledge of what it is to undergo Horrific Suffering entails that God is, as Schellenberg puts it, maximally opposed to these sufferings. Granting that God stands in maximal opposition to the experience of Horrific Suffering it is surely the case, entailed by our aforementioned analyses, that God allows persons to suffer horrifically only if such suffering is a necessary condition of these persons realizing their deepest good; a relationship with the Creator that will unfold throughout all of eternity, the only thing that God’s perfect nature will deem enough. In fact, even if the existence of Horrific Suffering were a necessary condition of some very-good-other-goods such that they, perhaps in quantity, “outweighed” the non-good state of Horrific Suffering, our above analyses entail that permitting such suffering is still inconsistent with the divine nature!

Premise (4) is thus established and since, as argued in the earlier articles, Horrific Suffering exists and is not a necessary condition in the relevant way, it follows that God does not exist.

Horrific Suffering (def.) = that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.

(1) Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.

(2) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God.

(3) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good. (from 1, 2)

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

(5) Necessarily, if God exists, there is no horrific suffering. (from 3, 4)

(6) There is horrific suffering.

(7) God does not exist (from 5, 6)

Chris’ first objection takes aim at premise (2) of the argument. The premise is motivated by the existence of persons in the actual world who attest to experiencing the reality of God and who, themselves, have not gone through horrific suffering. Chris mentions that we must assume that these people are not “lying, deceived, forgetful, or otherwise confused about their alleged lack of horrific suffering.” He rightly notes the extraordinary implausibility of defending such a position, and I add that it would be a most uncharitable interpretation of those in question. However, he does suggest that such a question can be asked of their experiencing the reality of God. That is, of those who attest to experiencing the reality of God and not having gone through horrific suffering, how do we know that they are not lying, deceived or confused with respect to experiencing the reality of God? Chris says:

Now we need not take so strong a position as to deny that these people have experienced the reality of God in order to plant this objection. Rather, we may point out that the subjective nature of experiencing the reality of God is sufficient to raise our suspicions about these people who claim to have had the experience of God without the experience of horrific suffering. How do we know that what one non-suffering person believes is an experience of the reality of God is anything at all like what some suffering person believes is an experience of the reality of God?

To experience the reality of God, in the context of this argument, is to be in a personal relationship with the creator of the cosmos. A relationship of the type theists mention often. It is a being as aware of the existence of God as a child is aware of his or her loving mother. That such an experience occurs in the “ever more fully” sense is to simply point out that given the infinite complexity of God, there will always be more about God for some finite human person to know. That is, if God exists and is as awesome as theists often claim, it is difficult to see how any finite human person can exhaust the things there are to know about God, or exhaust the feelings there are to be had about God, or exhaust the myriad of forms a personal relationship with her might take. It is indeed doubtful that these things can be exhausted in the context of human-to-human relationships, let alone human-to-divine relationships.  Indeed such an experience of God’s reality might manifest itself in different ways to different persons; perhaps we should even expect such a thing given God’s infinite resourcefulness, creativity, and the existence of unique individuals. Chris’ question then seems misguided. Why should we have to know that what one non-suffering person believes to be an experience of God’s reality is what a suffering person believes to be an experience of God’s reality? What is it about the subjective nature of experiencing God’s reality that should lead us to, as Chris suggests, be suspicious of those who claim to experience God, having never suffered horrifically? I fear I must have misunderstood Chris here, as I cannot bring out the objection.

Chris’ next objection is also misguided, but I fear the fault is mine for not taking the time in the initial article to outline the meaning of “ever more fully experiencing the reality of God”.  Chris says that even granting that there exists one person who has not experienced horrific suffering and has experienced the reality of God, it does not follow that the individual is in a position to “ever more fully experience” the reality of God. I hope my paragraph above clarifies what is meant by that term. I am speaking here of, in many ways, an experience of God that unfolds throughout eternity and is such that, given God’s infinite resourcefulness and creativity, the fruits of which are inexhaustible by the finite human person. Now, as Chris continues there is an important distinction to be made. Chris says that:

It could be the case that the non-suffering individual experiences the reality of God in an increasingly fuller sense but that the individual will never experience the reality of God to the degree that she could have had she of endured horrific suffering.

But this is no objection to the argument. No matter which “level of experience” the finite human person initially finds themselves at, there will be an infinite amount of unfolding left to occur. This effectively diffuses Chris’ objection as the value is placed not in the degree at which the divine experience occurs, but in its unfolding nature, the “ever more fully experiencing.” But even setting this point aside, what would be preventing the experience of the non-sufferer from reaching the heights of the sufferer? Is it God, the nature of horrific suffering, or something else? And further, why think that such prevention is necessary? Thus, assuming Chris does not want to object to (2) by taking the strong position of denying that those who claim to experience the reality of God without having suffered horrifically have actually experienced such a reality, the premise seems to survive this round of scrutiny.

Chris’ next target is (4). The denial of (4) seems quite the denial indeed. To deny the premise suggests that if God exists, there can be instances of persons who undergo horrific suffering even though their doing so is unnecessary for the realization of their deepest good. Chris, being the good Calvinist that he is, writes:

It is conceivable that a perfectly good God would “justifiably cause/permit some person A to suffer” even if that suffering were not necessary for bringing about some greater good for A. God not only owns that person, but is Himself the standard of what is just. God does no man wrong by taking his life from him immediately and without any cause known to us, and the same might just as easily be said with respect to “horrific suffering.” Herein lies a serious difficulty with reasoning through atheists’ arguments; the assumption throughout this particular argument is that humanity is the main focus of God’s dealings rather than God being the main focus of God’s dealings as Scripture describes.

It would be fruitful to understand to which particular flavor of Divine Command Theory Chris adheres, if he does possess such a view. I think Chris owes us some argumentation as to how the existence of a perfectly good God is compatible with the existence of human persons unnecessarily undergoing horrific suffering. Looking at an analogous instance, it seems obvious that something has gone wrong when we are saying of the parent that they are acting in accordance with anything we might remotely pick out as being “good” when they cause or permit their beloved child to suffer horrifically when the prevention of that suffering would occur at no loss to the beloved! Chris hints that the analysis may be too narrow, assuming that humanity is the main focus of God’s dealings. The lurking suggestion might be that God causes or permits the existence of horrific suffering for her own “deepest good.” It’s difficult to see how this might work out. This does suggest, however, that there is some good-for-God which only obtains if finite persons exist. But goods in this category seem to be, for example, instances of personal relationship between God and the created. Certainly I do not want to limit the category to those things, but I want to note the prima facie implausibility of there being, as a good in that category, that finite beings suffer horrifically. What is it about the existence of horrific suffering that makes it a necessary condition for the realization of God’s deepest good?

But these considerations aside, Chris’ objection simply begs the question. Recall, he says: “It is conceivable that a perfectly good God would justifiably cause/permit some person A to suffer even if that suffering were not necessary for bringing about some greater good for A.” Temporarily ignoring the debate of whether or not conceivability is a suitable modal epistemology, that is, whether or not it is a suitable guide to possibility, the argument from horrific suffering seeks to demonstrate that such a thing is not possible. Thus, unless Chris is just assuming from the outset that this argument is unsound, the objection does not work. Chris needs to argue (in a non question-begging way) against any justification of that premise, rather than merely assuming the premise false!

It is also important to note that when Chris says, “… the assumption throughout this particular argument is that humanity is the main focus of God’s dealings rather than God being the main focus of God’s dealings as Scripture describes,” it seems he is taking it to be the case that if God creates a world, God creates this world. That is, he is taking the data presented by the argument and attempting to make sense of how it “fits” in this “Christian-God created world.” The argument, however, has as its conclusion that there is no God, so Chris must be careful not to beg the question against the argument by reasoning in a manner that assumes the conclusion false, to show the conclusion false. An appeal to Scripture to show that the existence of horrific suffering is consistent with the Christian story may easily yield to us the conclusion that “If God creates a world, God does not create this world.” More precisely, we must be careful in looking upon the actual world as being created by God when attempting to reason about the type of world God would create and the types of worlds she would not/could not! Argumentation may lead us to say, “So, Scripture claims that God made a world with unnecessary horrific suffering… so much the worse for Scripture.“

Given these considerations, Bolt’s objections to the argument in their current form fail, and we may successfully conclude that God does not exist.

Often online discussions devolve into endless block-quotes incomprehensible to anyone but the two discussants. Therefore, I’ll instead take the opportunity to summarize the lines of argument in ascending order of importance. Many of these criticisms parallel those made by others, and I fear I may well have failed to acknowledge all of them. My apologies in advance.

To remind ourselves, the most modern incarnation of the OTF is this:

(1) Consequently, it seems very likely that adopting one’s religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the religious dependency thesis.

(2) Hence the odds are highly likely that any given adopted religious faith is false.

(3) So the best way to test one’s adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism used to evaluate other religious faiths. This expresses the OTF.

(4) Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of religious faiths due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the religious diversity thesis.

(1) Ground clearing
(2) Making OTF1-3 valid
(3) Objections
3.1. Reductio and Atheist special pleading,
3.2. Good arguments and rude dialectics
3.3. Epistemic privilege and the insider test for infidels
(4) Conclusion

Ground clearing

As it stands the OTF seems to be trying to do too much, and in a garbled way. A lot of the talk about ‘taking the OTF’, the OTF versus the argument for the OTF and so on is hard to decipher, and criticisms, counter-criticisms and defences are often lost in a haze of not-quite-precise-enough philosophical verbiage. Some distinctions might be needed to clarify exactly what is being argued over.

The first three statements appear to be offering an argument about an epistemic pathology endemic to religious belief, and the fourth to give a cure. These can (and should) be separated for clarity – the fourth statement may still be a good epistemic norm even the foregoing argument doesn’t work, and vice-versa. Let us therefore distinguish between OTF1-3, the argument for epistemic pathology in religious belief, and OTF4, the proposed cure. We will focus on OTF1-3.

Making OTF1-3 valid

A close reading of [1] suggests that [2] might be no better than a restatement. For [1] says

Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of religious faiths due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the religious diversity thesis. [Emphasis added]

This extra rider seems awfully like stating a dependency thesis. Which is what Loftus claims [2] is:

Consequently, it seems very likely that adopting one’s religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the religious dependency thesis.

So this all seems a bit garbled. But perhaps we can see what Loftus is trying to get at, regardless of infelicities in expression: that religious beliefs show this socio-cultural patterning suggests they are often driven by cultural inertia, and not some careful reasoning untrammelled by one’s socio-cultural milieu. So let’s give a new argument that does just that.

5) The demographics of religious belief are much better explained by a cultural inertia model (that is, where people’s beliefs are driven by their socio-cultural milieu) than any other.

6) The majority hold religious beliefs due to cultural inertia.

This makes the sort of move Loftus surely has in mind: inferring from the demographics of belief to the likely mechanism of belief formation. The move from [5] to [6] isn’t formally valid either. However, it is clear on what move is being made. Further, it should also be clear that this argument can be made by adding further premises, none of which would be remotely controversial. If that’s good enough for such august philosophers like Peter van Inwagen, it’s good enough for our purposes here.

A bigger problem is the move from [2] to [3]. For on it’s face it seems a straightforward use of the genetic fallacy: to conclude from the (epistemically disreputable) mechanisms that cause people to believe p something about p’s truth.

Loftus doesn’t think this is a big deal, and refers to Parsons. Yet Parsons cautious support of genetic-fallacy-esque arguments aren’t of the sort Loftus uses in OTF1-3. The key passage is here:

Theists counter that such an argument, if taken as supporting atheism, commits the “genetic fallacy.” You commit the genetic fallacy when you conflate two questions that should be distinguished: (a) What causal processes account for the psychological origins of a belief? (b) What rational grounds are there for thinking the belief true? Just because you can explain why somebody holds a certain belief (he learned it from his mother, say) doesn’t mean that the belief has no objective truth or validity. I might be “hardwired” to think that God exists, but, nevertheless, he might really exist, as arguments and evidence might show. As the saying goes, just because you are paranoid does not mean the people are not out to get you; likewise, just because you are wired to believe in God does not mean that God does not exist (Maybe, in fact, it was God who wired you to believe in him!).

However, the charge that atheists commit the genetic fallacy is both wrongheaded and disingenuous. Sometimes, indeed, the causal history of a belief has no bearing on its credibility: I may have originally accepted the Pythagorean Theorem because my high school geometry teacher pounded it into my reluctant head, but if I can now prove it, the history of how I acquired my beliefs about the Pythagorean Theorem is irrelevant to my current judgment about its soundness. On the other hand, there are times when the causal history of a belief is highly relevant to its epistemic merits… [Emphasis added]

In other words, the ‘genetics’ of a given belief is entirely relevant to the question as to whether so-and-so is justified in believing it. But it has no bearing at all whether that belief is, in fact, true. Thus the move from [2] to [3] – from “it seems very likely that adopting one’s religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree” to “the odds are highly likely that any given adopted religious faith is false”  is surely a genetic fallacy.

Does it matter? Not too much. We can renovate this bit of the argument by talking about justification or warrant instead of truth. For if indeed religious beliefs are culturally dependant (and granting something fairly uncontroversial about culturally determined belief being usually unwarranted), then it would follow that most religious belief is unwarranted:

6) The majority who hold religious beliefs hold them due to cultural inertia.

7) Beliefs held due to cultural inertia are not warranted

8) The majority who hold religious beliefs are not warranted in holding their religious beliefs

Now we have a renovated version of the Outsider Argument. Call it the ‘Demographic Defeater for Faith’ (DDF).

5) The demographics of religious belief are much better explained by a cultural inertia model (that is, where people’s beliefs are driven by their socio-cultural milieu) than any other.

6) The majority hold religious beliefs through cultural inertia

7) Beliefs held due to cultural inertia are not warranted.

8) The majority who hold religious beliefs are not warranted in holding them

This expresses the sort of moves Loftus wants to make in the first three statements of the OTF, but does so more clearly and more strongly. How does this ‘OTF+’ stand up to scrutiny?

Objections

Reductio and special pleading for Atheism

Consider these three beliefs:

1. “All life on this planet is descended from a common ancestor”
2. “There is no God”
3. “Skin colour is morally irrelevant”

Demographic defeater type objections could be levied against these. Loftus freely accepts that the OTF1-3 is really a more specific form of an OTB – for beliefs which are highly culturally plastic, one should wonder whether you really are being reasonable in going with the flow of your prevalent cultural milieu.

Surely there are a diversity of beliefs about evolution, Atheism, and racism. And surely these beliefs are culturally plastic. Displace me a hundred years or a thousand miles, and I’d probably believe different things about a-c. A dependency thesis follows soon after: it seems unlikely given this cultural plasticity that these beliefs aren’t formed by cultural inertia. So, more likely than not, these beliefs are unwarranted.

This is bad news. For Loftus and those who agree with him overwhelmingly accept a-c, and further take their acceptance to be reasonable as opposed to cultural brainwashing. Yet if they believe that their acceptance of Evolution, Atheism, racial equality and so on can be held despite that DDF style can be raised against them, then why can’t religious believers shrug off the OTF? In short, what gives this argument selective toxicity towards religious beliefs?

Those who support the OTF1-3 rely on tenuous distinctions to excuse them from the force of the OTF1-3. See Loftus’s explanation of why he doesn’t need to ‘take the OTF’ for Atheism:

When Christians ask if I have taken the outsider test for my own “belief system,” I simply say “yes I have, that’s why I’m a non-believer.”

They’ll ask if I am equally skeptical of my skepticism, or whether I have subjected my non-belief to non-belief, or my disbelief to disbelief. These questions express double negatives. When re-translated they are asking me to abandon skepticism in favor of a gullible faith, for that’s the opposite of skepticism—something no thinker should do. Even if having a gullible faith is desirable, which faith should we be gullible about? And how can we decide between these faiths? The bottom line is that skepticism is a word used to describe doubt or disbelief. It doesn’t by itself represent any ideas we’ve arrived at. It’s merely a filter we use to strain out the bad ones leaving us with the good ones. So we cannot be skeptical of doubt unless we think doubt is inherently wrong, which would leave us with mere belief in belief.

This doesn’t work, and the reason it doesn’t work is it equivocates between scepticism as epistemic caution and scepticism as a label for Atheism/Agnosticism. For “There is no god” is definitely an idea that we arrive at, and not just some passive heuristic for belief formation (and no, not some ‘lack of belief’ either). This game seems a roundabout way of asserting that Atheism is epistemically respectable by equating it with good epistemic method.

This is not the only example. See the reply to Reppert. Reppert offers a series of reductios, one of which is our beliefs about rape. Loftus’s response to that charge is this:

…

So can we apply this same skepticism to moral beliefs? Should I be as skeptical that rape is wrong as I am that rape is morally acceptable? No. Absolutely not. Again, look at the specific criteria I provided. I said:

The amount of skepticism warranted depends on the number of rational people who disagree, whether the people who disagree are separated into distinct geographical locations, the nature of those beliefs, how they originated, how they were personally adopted in the first place, and the kinds of evidence that can possibly be used to decide between them. My claim is that when it comes to religious beliefs a high degree of skepticism is warranted because of these factors.

That’s what I said, and so in this instance as with many other moral beliefs they do not suffer the same consequences from applying the OTF. Beliefs like the acceptability of rape are based on religious beliefs anyway, so they are subject to the outsider test precisely because of the nature and origin of those beliefs, as I said. I know of no non-believer who would ever want to defend the morality of rape, for instance, unlike believers in the past and present who do because of some so-called inspired text. We know rape is wrong, and we also know that this kind of behavior is sanctioned by religious beliefs, as is honor killing. The religious person who thinks rape is morally acceptable should subject that belief to skepticism as an outsider. And when he does this he will begin to doubt his previously held religious/moral beliefs, as I’ve argued. When it comes to Reppert, I think his moral belief that rape is wrong will survive his own skepticism, for there is evidence that as a father of a daughter he would want to help maintain a free society where she can go about her business free from being accosted. If Reppert wants to provide an argument where he can defend the morality of rape I’d like to see this. I would find it very strange if in order to escape the OTF Reppert must defend the morality of rape. That seems too high of a price to pay, but if that’s what he wants to do, then I’m all ears.

Yet, ignoring the large red herring about how religious beliefs apparently shelter rape acceptability, it seems our beliefs about rape tick the boxes of Loftus’s criteria (at least, the ones that distinguish anything) just as well as any religious belief you care to name. For surely beliefs about “when is it acceptable to have sex with a woman without her consent?” has a large number of ‘rational’ people who disagree, who are separated particular geographical and cultural ‘camps’, which were probably picked up from the prevailing cultural mores, and so on. So the argumentative weaponry behind the DDF are just as effective against these sorts of moral beliefs, amongst many others.

Good arguments and rude dialectics

Another approach when faced with a demographic defeater is to simply provide arguments in favour of the proposition in question. One may say we can prove evolution or racial equality and marshal all sorts of evidence in favour of these things. Whereas this isn’t true for something like Christianity.

Yet such a response just begs the question against all those people who want to provide reasons for their religious convictions. The reply usually is that the people offering these arguments are scrabbling around for them after the fact of their religious convictions – they aren’t really using them to guide them to their conclusions, but rather they find take them because they confirm these convictions. Once again, of course, exactly the same reply can be made whenever Atheists offer arguments for Atheism, racial equality, or whatever.

Of course, such an explanation of disagreement is logical rudeness, little different in application to a psychoanalyst whom explains disagreement with his theories as Oedipal conflict, or the Evangelical who locates the origin of disbelief in that disbelievers are blinded by sin per Rom. 1. One might find this accusation levelled against the religious implausible, even if it is granted we get nowhere far.

There are two ways of understanding this “you’re just accepting these arguments because they have conclusions you like” response. The first is the reply made is that Christians say are coming up with these arguments expressly to defend their prior commitments, and therefore these arguments are unpersuasive. That is obviously fallacious. The second reading is an epistemic one: that because Christians are coming up with these arguments to defend their prior commitments, they will still accept these commitments whether or not the arguments they have at their disposal were any good. So even if the arguments they have are good arguments, they still aren’t being reasonable because their convictions don’t track the preponderance of the arguments. This sort of reply does work.

Yet, once again, exactly the same move can be deployed against the Atheist trying to argue for Atheism, or anyone arguing for any moral truths ‘taken as read’ in modern liberal society. Even if we do have the right arguments for these things, that is just epistemic luck, in the same way a Christian would be lucky if they stumbled onto cogent arguments for their faith when desperately looking to shore it up. In neither case, it seems, are the actors behaving in epistemically respectable ways, and thus our DDF, even in its most charitable light, doesn’t give the nod to Atheism over Faith.

Epistemic privilege and the insider test for infidels

The only robust way to answer this sort of criticism is to argue for the privileged position of our particular socio-cultural millieu in contrast to others who disagree. That in fact our cultural lens is the best available to bring the issues into proper focus.

Take the theory of evolution. Affirmation of evolution is patterned, but patterned in a manner suggestive of warrant. It correlates with scientific training, educational level, and things like that. Likewise the beliefs of Doctors regarding disease and the medical laity. That there is disagreement patterned on communities need not mean they are all scrabbling in dark. It may indicate that some, but not all, have privileged access to the truth.

In the case of medics or scientists it is fairly easy to find evidence that they possess epistemic privilege regarding matters of health or the natural world: we can look to their past record of predictive success, how they exhibit particular epistemic virtues in excelsis, and so on. When confronted with the fact that we’d likely have very different attitudes about race if we brought up in 1890s Alabama or 1930s Germany, we should be thankful that we weren’t in these environments, for we think they would have led us away from the truth. Were we faced with a white supremacist or a Nazi, we take ourselves as having a dialectical advantage, that we would be able to provide a case they could not answer – and if they aren’t persuaded, it is simply because their view on these matters is impeded relative to ours. In short, we take our culture’s view on racial equality versus its detractors as privileged, much like the doctors on medicine or the scientists on science. The equality-generating cognitive environment is superior to the racist-generating cultural environment with respect to some set of epistemic norms.

Yet everyone believes their cognitive environment is superior compared to all those others that lead to people disagreeing with them. Doubtless the racists could come up with a story as to how their environment is superior relative to ours. The only way forward, it seems, to actually argue the point of issue, and see which side’s claims to dialectical superiority survive.

The same applies to belief and its detractors. Believers and Atheists will have their own stories to tell as to who has epistemic privilege. That Atheists assert – by their own lights – the atheist-generating cognitive environments are privileged compared to the believer-generating ones is no more than an insider test for infidels: for an Atheist to say religious ways of knowing are rather delusions and to urge believers to be rational and abandon them is no better than an evangelical talking about reason being a whore to satan and urging so-called ‘rationalists’ to open their hearts to Jesus. They amount to no more than assertions of epistemic ‘other’ness.

Both sides need to swallow their shrill assertions of epistemic privilege and settle down to trying to beat each other by the usual ‘rules of the game’ for debating these matters. For if Atheist has the better of the argument or has ‘facts on their side’, that would suggest she was right all along in asserting that the athiest-generating environment is better than the believing one. Yet doing so obviates the need for the whole DDF rigmarole in the first place: instead of presenting the DDF and demonstrating it is selectively toxic to belief by vindicating atheism’s epistemic privilege by showing it to be more reasonable, one can simply stick to demonstrating that Atheism is more reasonable. In short, this sort of argument has taken us in a long circle back to where we started.

Conclusion

Loftus’s project to undermine the rationality of religious belief is a failure. We can improve OTF1-3 to provide a better argument in the spirit of what Loftus has in mind, yet even this renovated argument remains unpersuasive. It is unpersuasive simply because demographic worries like the OTF attempts to exploit are endemic to beliefs we hold – were our environments different we would almost certainly believe differently, and many (perhaps most) of our beliefs are due to cultural inertia.

Against this, there is no means to put religious beliefs (over any others) under special scrutiny which isn’t question-begging nor tendentious. If demographic data is ‘good enough’ to undercut the rationality of religious belief, it is ‘good enough’ to undercut the rationality of Atheism, or most of our beliefs about science, or most of our ‘commonsense’ moral beliefs. To avoid accepting this, we say that our environment is privileged – that other cultures who differ with us see through a glass darkly, and were we transposed into this environment the different beliefs we have would be accounted for by some loss of epistemic virtue. Yet, again, these are precisely the moves a religious believe can make to defend their religious community from similar charges, and, again, there is no reason to dismiss one defence out of hand but not the other.

These defences cannot be evaluated without settling the question of whether the beliefs in question are true, or at least reasonable. Yet this is was exactly the subject under discussion. The OTF is a detour that takes us nowhere. Our time and energy is better spent otherwise.

The Argument

Let us start by defining a term:

Horrific Suffering (def.) = that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.

Now, the argument as Schellenberg formulates:

(1) Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.

(2) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God.

(3) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good. (from 1, 2)

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

(5) Necessarily, if God exists, there is no horrific suffering. (from 3, 4)

(6) There is horrific suffering.

(7) God does not exist (from 5, 6)

As you can see, the argument is pretty straightforward. Premise (1) is developed out of the idea that there can be no deepest good (where a deepest good is a greatest good for a particular individual) that is superior to the experiencing of God’s reality. What could be superior to the experience of the perfectly good, merciful, loving, just, and wise creator of everything? Premise (2) is motivated in part by the existence of persons in the actual world who attest to experiencing the reality of God in some way and who, themselves, have not gone through the horrific suffering defined at the beginning. Such suffering then cannot be a necessary condition of finite persons realizing their deepest goods and so, the prevention of such suffering would not prevent that realization from occurring. Premise (3) is a simple deduction. Premise (4) is motivated by a typical theistic response to the traditional problems of evil. That is, many theists maintain that a perfectly good God would justifiably cause/permit some person A to suffer, if that suffering were necessary for bringing about some greater good for A. Premise (4) reason then that there are instances of horrific suffering only if preventing this suffering prevents the realization of the deepest good for finite persons. We’ve already seen that it does not, however, and so from (3) and (4) we may reason (5). There obviously are cases of horrific suffering in the world, and (6) is proffered. From (5) and (6) we may deduce that God does not exist.

Free-Will Theodicy

One possible response to the argument would be to suggest that individuals need to be able to cause (or remove) this type of suffering in order to have a world that is serious enough for the virtues of soul-making and choices of destiny. But it is difficult to see how such a condition cannot be satisfied by a world where choices leading to or resulting from the horrific suffering outlined above would not suffice. Taking our actual world as an example, one is tempted to ask “How free are we really?” As we are no doubt exposed to, there exist instances where the occurrence of murder, rape or other such crimes seem to be better explained by the prior states of the world than by the free action of the individual. That is, those who are raised terribly such that their actions seem plausibly explained in sociopsychological terms properly considered an unfreedom. But more interestingly, there are a great many people who do not engage in bringing about horrific suffering who do not even seem able[1]. There seem to be good evidences that a great many people are simply incapable of performing actions which lead to horrific suffering. There are those who, no matter how hard they tried, could not bring themselves right now to rape, murder or launch nuclear bombs at some populated area. Is there really a relevant sense in which we are free?

Freedom in the actual world, thus, does not seem ‘bound up’ with the capacity to cause horrific suffering. But perhaps our reasoning is incorrect, perhaps this is not the case. At least, God could ensure that through the relevant stages, creatures are incapable of performing actions leading to horrific suffering without rendering them less free than they actually are. But even if this is misguided as well, surely we can think of a world where such horrific suffering is absent and note that this world still contains freedom and responsibility. Persons, even if unable to bring about horrific suffering, could have the ability to bring about many nonhorrific evils. This seems to satisfy the relevant concerns as in this world there is much for us to work on improving: emotional pain still exists, we are afraid of death, we have political disputes that may result in war, etc. Such instances are occasions ripe with the ability to produce, in the relevant creatures, choices moral/spiritual significance. We seem able, then, to detach horrific suffering from the development of our selves in this way.

Free-Will Defense

Schellenberg makes use of Peter Van InWagen’s outline of a defense (page 262). Schellenberg notes that the defense, which I will not produce here, makes the following assumptions (keep in mind that InWagen is a Christian):

(1) That love might essentially involve free will.

(2) That creatures gifted with the beatific vision might nonetheless rebel against God and leave Eden.

(3) That what it means to be separate from God might be to live in a world of horrors.

(4) That seeing the horror of life without God might provided the most effective motive of cooperation and return.

(5) That if a reconciliation plan involving horrors was implemented when the rebellion first occurred, many millennia ago, that plan might nonetheless not yet have proved successful.

(6) That those who experience horrors might all know of the existence and nature of God and of God’s call to return.

(7) That if God’s plan is thus, the number and distribution of horrors today might be great and wide enough.

These are assumptions which I want to flag for the purposes of introducing Schellenberg’s argument and a couple of responses, but for a full outline and criticism of InWagen’s Christian Story consult the primary source already named at the beginning of the article. Suffice for the purposes of this brief overview is to note the assumptions above as being assumptions which are anything but obviously (or perhaps even plausibly) true. A brief interesting question to note in passing, re (1), is “What really happens to what we know of love if we find out that we cannot have done otherwise?”

Lastly, one other type of defense would suggest that it is logically possible that God, when contemplating her creation of the world, saw that for each world she would create without horrific suffering in which free creatures achieve their deepest good in freely chosen relationship with her, the attempt to actualize it would be disrupted by uncooperative free agents. Thus, since it’s possible that God cannot achieve her goal of freely chosen relationship with persons without permitting horrific suffering, then any claim that God would necessarily prevent horrific suffering is, at best, unjustified. However, this, Schellenberg suggests, is the wrong conclusion to draw. That God would necessarily prevent horrific suffering becomes unjustified only if freely chosen relationship with God is entailed by possession of the deepest good for creatures. But, it seems clearly not. Taking God’s options in creation and the infinite number of modes of relationship with her, there must be many ways in which our deepest good can be achieved in the absence of freely chosen relationship. It could be the case that God’s glory is made so clear to creatures that our desires to oppose her simply fade away. That is simply one example out of an infinite number. 

Surely God would give consideration to the modes of relationship other than freely-chosen relationship. Alternatives to permitting horrific suffering that are still compatible with finite creatures realizing their deepest good. Any such alternative, since these worlds are equally (as Schellenberg says) splendid is always going to seem preferable to a world where horrific suffering occurs, even if the world in question is a world with freely chosen relationship. Simply consider, as Schellenberg invites, “…if a perfectly good, and loving, and empathetic, and wise God is able to choose between a scenario whose goodness is very great but requires the permission of horrific suffering and a scenario with goodness equally great and no need for such suffering, how does one think the divine would choose?”

_____________________________

[1] As Schellenberg notes, where capability in this context is hashed out by my rejecting the idea of perpetrating horrors at one time, and at the same time being able to choose to do otherwise.

Preliminary Discussion

                It is useful to begin by saying a brief bit on logic. Logic concerns itself with consequence, which has been referred to as truth-preservation. An analysis of consequence is performed by demonstrating the validity of arguments such that:

(Logical Consequence) Some conclusion C is a consequence[4] of a set of premises P iff in a case where all the premises of P are true, it is a case where C is true.

The “cases” referred to above are laid out by truth-conditions. Systems of logic provide truth-conditions for that which will be parsed through them[5], or rather, what will be a consequence of what. For example, I might provide the following condition (Where P and Q are the ‘things’[6] being parsed):

P ^ Q is true in some case iff P is true and Q is true in the same case.

In providing such a truth-condition I have enabled the system to demonstrate the validity of the following:

P ^ Q

_____

P

If P ^ Q is true then P is true, or in other words, P is a consequence of P ^ Q. The question is whether or not there are multiple ways to understand, or lay out, the aforementioned cases. Logical pluralism rejects the position[7] that there is only one way to determine whether or not some argument is formally valid, or put differently, that there is but one true logic[8].  It proposes instead that there are multiple ways of specifying cases (truth-conditions), all of which are true. If you were to ask the logical particularist whether some argument were valid he or she would maintain that there is only one answer to that question. The logical pluralist would reject that statement.

The Presuppositionalist’s Logical Laws[9]

                In much of the literature I have come across and in my discussions with presuppositionalists as they defend their thesis re logic they state that the non-believer cannot account[10] for the truth of the so-called Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM) and the Law of Identity (LI). These titles denote particular propositions found in, at least, Classical Logic (let the following ‘P’s stand for any sentence letter or compound sentence:

LNC: ~(P ^ ~P)

LEM: (P v ~P)

LI: A <-> A

These propositions are tautologies under Classical Logic and while their being named “laws” by some; they possess no special status over any other tautology under Classical Logic, such as:

((A v B) ^ (A -> C) ^ (B -> C)) -> C

Tautologies are formulae which are always true in their systems by virtue of the logical rules, regardless of the truth-value assignment of some sentence letter or compound sentence. That is to say, the mere syntax of the system is sufficient for the truth of tautologies. As an example, take the LEM: (P v ~P) is always true because the logical rules for Classical Logic state that a disjunction is only false when both disjuncts are false and whatever truth-value assignment we give to P, one of the disjuncts in the LEM will be true (Classical Logic only has two truth values: T/F) and that is sufficient for the truth of the entire disjunction.

I suspect that the presuppositionalist will want to disagree with my statement above, that the logical rules of a system are sufficient for the truth of that system’s tautologies. The presuppositionalist will claim that the existence of God stands in some truth-making relation to the tautologies (and everything other truth the system parses). It seems abundantly clear, however, that the logical rules are enough. I suspect the presuppositionalist would posit God as a necessary and sufficient condition, in some fashion, to the truth of the LEM (for example, and to remain consistent).

I have heard two common expositions of the truth-making relationship between the existence of God and the LEM (or any other logical truth). One maintains that the LEM is a reflection of God’s nature. I do not know precisely what is meant by this particular suggestion. What does it mean to be a ‘reflection’ in this context? How is the LEM a reflection? What is it about God’s nature that causes the LEM to be reflected? The questions are numerous. The other suggestion is that the LEM (or any other logical truth) is a reflection of the way God thinks. Similar questions arise to this suggestion as well. In order to move the discussion forward, we can at least concede that both suggestions suggest that there is something about God that makes (in some way) the LEM true.

Concerns

                Now, recall logical pluralism once more and consider some ternary logic (a three-valued logic) in which the LEM comes out false. The LEM essentially states “either true or false” but ternary logic introduces some third value (depending on the system that value might be: indeterminate, irrelevant, unknown, etc.) and so regards the LEM false. This system of logic will have a different logical rules than Classical Logic, in many ways it is a different language as French is different to English. The logical pluralist wants to maintain that this system is fundamentally no ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than Classical Logic (though different systems may in different contexts be more ‘useful’). This system will also have tautologies which differ from those of Classical Logic and the pluralist will maintain that they are true tautologies, given the particular ternary system.

Let us assume, though it may be difficult to do, that the logical rules of this system are not sufficient conditions for the truth of some proposition which entails the falsehood of the LEM, and that the existence of God is a necessary and sufficient condition of the truth[11]. If we take the relationship between the existence of God and the truth of the proposition to have something to do with his nature or thinking, then it seems that there is something about God’s nature or thinking that is making the LEM true in one instance and making the LEM false in the other. That is, where under Classic Logic God is making (a) (P v ~P) true, under some ternary logic he is making (b) ~(P v ~P) true.

The two propositions initially seem to be contradictions of each other, but because they are arising out of different logics, they are essentially arising out of different languages. If no translator were present, I think it obvious that “I am hungry” does not contradict “Je n’ai pas faim.” A contradiction only seems to arise when we parse one sentence from some other language into whichever one we are using. So, if I translate “Je n’ai pas faim” and I see that it is the negation of “I am hungry”, now I have some contradiction where prior to the translation/integration, I merely had foreign symbols. So where (P v ~P) and ~(P v ~P) seem to be contradictory, I suggest that this is only the case if taken into a common language where both are expressed and where the rules of that language determine them to be in contradiction. We should not be misled, in our example of (a) and (b) both instances use the same symbols but essentially arise from different languages. So, (a) as expressed in Classical Logic is only contradicted by (b) if it too is expressed in Classical Logic and so on.

Now, continuing along with our assumption that the existence of God (in some way) is a necessary and sufficient condition of the truth of the aforementioned propositions in their respective systems if they are to be non-contradictory, it seems that they must be non-translated. But, focusing on God’s thoughts, what might it mean to say that God’s thoughts (or thinking) act as the truth-maker for the truth of both statements, but that he thinks them in a manner analogous to thinking a statement in French and thinking a statement in English and not knowing the translation[12]? Surely if the statement is translatable, God knows the translation. Put in another way, God in some way makes (a) true in Classical Logic and (b) true in some ternary logic. Assume that by translating (a) into the system of (b), (a) is rendered false and by translating (b) into the system of (a), (b) is rendered false. Something about God (presumably an unchangeable something, according to the Reformed tradition) in this example makes (a) true and makes it false, and likewise with (b). How is one to make sense of this?

Perhaps it is the case that God possesses a system of logic which he translates both (a) and (b) into, and this logic is such that the contradiction yielded by the aforementioned translation “does not matter”. This would be to suggest that God-Logic[13] is dialtheist in some sense, permitting of contradictions in a non-explosive manner. This God-Logic however will of course have its own logical rules, but continuing with our assumption these are insufficient for any of the truths yielded, the truth-maker will have to be something about God. Now we also have something about God that makes the LNC, after translation into God-Logic, both true and false. If this is true then the presuppositionalist explanation regarding what logic is, or how the existence of God relates (in a necessary way) to logic, becomes quite unparsimonious, on one hand leaving being quite mysterious and barely serving as an explanation, and on the other having to invoke a God-Logic which all ‘subsidiary’ logics depend on for coherence.

It renders the position far less plausible, I think, than accepting that the logical rules of various logic systems are the necessary and sufficient conditions for their respective logical truths and that each system generating propositions which may conflict only when translated into another system where the logical rules generate the confliction is not a problem.

Though, at this point, the presuppositionalist may just want to rid themselves of logical pluralism. They may admit to the existence of these other logical systems but deny that they are the one true logic. In this case, as presuppositional logical particularists it seems that they would suggest there exists only one system of logic that is true and something about God stands in a necessary and sufficient truth-making relation to the truths of this system. They might further suggest then that all of this talk about other logics generating contradictions when translated is simply not a problem because that is what we should expect if the other systems are wrong. The problem with this route, I think, is that we do not appear to have any way of knowing which system of logic is the one true logic! From the various presuppositional writings it sounds like the consensus amongst them would be that Classical Logic is the one true logic, but why must one accept this? It would seem then that all of the talk about the “laws” of logic, which are just tautologies of a particular system, is quite possibly irrelevant and incorrect if there exists one true logic. We are in an uncomfortable epistemic position, the very thing from which presuppositionalism promised us deliverance.

                Thusly, the common presuppositionalist argumentation regarding logic and God’s necessity hitherto has, I think, some explanatory work to undertake. It is currently far from convincing that one should reject the sufficiency of a system’s logical rules regarding the truth of some proposition arising from that system in favor of adopting the presuppositionalist view on the matter.

[2] ‘Experience’ should be taken very loosely.

[3] This list is not exhaustive, but is indicative of the usual discussions as per my experience.

[4] One can also make sense of the principle by replacing ‘consequence’ with ‘follows from’.

[5] Provided that what is parsed is capable of being expressed given the system.

[6] Most commonly a claim of some type

[7] Hereby referred to as logical-particularism

[8] The particularist will not deny the existence of other systems of logic any more than the religious particularist denies other religions; he or she will merely deny their truth.

[9] I find it a source of confusion that presuppositionalists only seem to refer to three particular tautologies of a particular system. I do not understand the restriction, but perhaps sake of simplicity plays a role.

[10] I cannot find a conceptual analysis of their usage of ‘account’ though it seems to mean a type of explanation.

[11] Again, that is to say it stands in some type of truth-making relation

[12] Assuming the translation will yield a contradiction.

[13] Thought of as an overarching logical system.

In keeping with the spirit of Lao Tzu, I would like to “respond intelligently, even to unintelligent treatment”. There were some points raised that I think should be responded to, some of which are more ‘personal’ in nature. Again, I must encourage everyone to listen to the recording prior to reading this response, as to obtain the appropriate context of the statements made by both parties. Some sections that follow may feel a tad bit nit-picky, but this is done on purpose. I think this will be a fun exercise in critically examining what’s being said by Slick during this radio show, and discerning just how much substance there is to all of it.

The Persecution

At 2:55 Festivus comes early with an airing of grievances! It is indeed true that recently there has been some hostility between DC (the ‘persecuted’) and some of the other users here at UP. Chat logs demonstrate that there has been hostility of the type outlined in the audio passage on both sides of the issue, that is, performed by both DC and others. In all cases disciplinary action was taken, however, the chat logs do not (to my knowledge) show any instance in which someone called DC “stupid for believing in a mythical god”. In fact, I suspect most of the users would frown on such a statement given how “New-Atheist-ish” it sounds. This is, of course, small potatoes when contrasted with where the audio journey will take us.

It may be worth mentioning that I’ve, personally, noticed what I think to be an interesting change in DC as of late. I have noticed that DC has become quick to pronounce his persecution at the hands of non-Christians when interacting with them in discussion. Now, I am not denying that Christians are indeed persecuted at times (I think it safe to say that every human being is persecuted at some time or another, and Christians are certainly human beings, sometimes persecuted because of their beliefs) but Slick offers a trinket of encouragement at 3:46 that makes it all too easy for the Christian to think that instances of disagreement are instances of Christian persecution, saying  ”If you’re not being attacked, you’re not doing the word of god”. There is some question as to what it means to “do the word of God” but the most charitable interpretation I can think of is that it means (or at least involves, largely) defending one’s Christian commitments. Given this statement we can know (via modus tollens) that if one defends Christian commitments, they will be attacked! Slick is quick to qualify that his principle is only meant to apply to situations of argument. What seems odd here is that by restricting the usage of his principle, he hasn’t actually told us anything interesting! Should it not be entirely obvious that if a Christian is in a situation where he/she is defending their Christian commitments, they are being attacked? If there’s no attack (or at least, a perceived attack) from where comes the need for a defense? Note a couple of things about Slick’s principle; firstly, it’s applicable to absolutely anyone. No matter who you are, or what you believe, if you are in a situation of argument and you are defending your position, you are being attacked. Secondly, note how the rhetoric is constructed in such a way that makes it very easy to affirm such persecution. The principle imposes itself on instances of discourse and fuels this notion of persecution. Consider, if you are an atheist and in the context of an argument, if you are defending atheism then you are being attacked. That’s great! But why think this is an instance of persecution rather than disagreement?

There is another way to interpret Slick’s statement, and that is to take “attack” to refer to a type of person-centered (rather than argument or idea centered) criticism. Something akin to the instances of hostility referred to above. I thought to include this interpretation of Slick’s principle first, but did not do so because it is uninterestingly false. Modified, it would be roughly: “In situations of argument, if you are defending Christian commitments, you are receiving person-centered attacks.” I doubt it will take much argument to show why this is false, but one absurd conclusion from Slick’s principle is that in every dialog ever had between a Christian and a non-Christian the only times where the Christian was *actually* defending Christian commitments are the times in which the non-Christian interlocutor retaliates fallaciously. All of those civil dialogs between prominent Christian philosophers and their opponents can be discarded, unless the opponent lashes out at some point. For added absurdity, look now to Jesus’ interaction with Nicodemus (John 3:1-21). In the defense that Jesus offers in response to Nicodemus’ questions, Nicodemus does not attack Jesus. If Matt Slick is correct in what he has said here, Jesus was not doing the word of God. This seems too silly to take seriously, but again, the rhetoric is certainly useful in invoking feelings of the previously mentioned sort.

Strangely, at 5:04, Slick tells DC that these people (the ‘attackers’) are not insulting ‘him’, they are insulting a ‘figure’ (referring to his screen name, I assume). The use of language here becomes a bit confusing, if ‘DC the person’ is not being insulted, what has Slick been talking about all this time? He then concludes from this that ‘DC-the-person’ just has to “take it”… but take what? We were just told that he’s not being attacked! This appears to be the second instance of a sentence which doesn’t really say much of anything. I find sentences of this type to be particularly interesting in counselling-type conversations, they are the blank cheques of language. I find they are often thrown about and fully left to the counseled to interpret, the end result of course that they are often interpreted as favorable to the perception of the status of whatever ailment is being discussed at the time. Sylvia Browne seems to do it, and now, Matt Slick?

At 5:11 Slick graciously remarks that those who engage in the aforementioned hostility are “servants of the evil one”. As far as I know, I’ve not been hostile in this way to DC and so thankfully am excluded from being a servant of the evil one (for the time being) . Not only are these people servants of the evil one, but DC is told at 5:21 that if he lets them get to him, he will become depressed and start to doubt everything! Not only is this section a glaring instance of a special type of ad hominem we like to call ‘poisoning the well‘, the things DC is being steered away from are curious. Apparently, becoming depressed and starting to doubt things are some very bad things to go through, but I’ve heard numerous conversion stories that start out precisely like that: “Well Karl, I was really depressed and I started to doubt everything… [fast forward 5 minutes] Hallelujiah!” In fact, DC is an example of one of these folks himself (I will not repeat the story here, as I do not know if he would approve, but you can ask him yourself!), but for DC these things led to a great realization. I suppose going through depression and intense doubt is only bad, and should only be avoided, if they do not lead to Jesus. But, what if DC feeling these things indicates yet another coming great realization (surprised face)?! At any rate, what Matt Slick seems to be doing here is, in fact, poisoning the well against those would would attack DC. Of course, he is being attacked because these people are servants of the evil one who despise the lessons of righteousness he espouses, they couldn’t possibly have a point, because they seek only to persecute!

At 6:00 DC is told that “… when you ruffle the feathers of the bad guys… [inaudible]… but you have to understand that in the demonic realm that there’s going to be a certain amount of attack that comes to you… and, plus, if you just hear how bad you are in so many different ways it has an effect on you as well.” A few things, firstly… the bad guys? This well is getting awfully poisoned! Demonic realm? No comment. I did however find the last portion interesting, it’s spoken in a rather negative tone saying that “if you just hear how bad you are in so many different ways it has an effect on you as well”. The tone and the context leads me to think that the effects which Slick is referring to are negative effects. If this is what he means, I would agree with him that hearing how bad you are over and over has negative effects. Empirical verification of this fact can be obtained by sitting in the CARM chat room and listening to some Christians talk about, as they often do, what terrible, worthless, abominations of human beings they all are. Now I’m no psychiatrist, but I’m not sure that partaking in such a discussion is good for your mental health (were we not just implicitly told that we should avoid depression? If this doesn’t cause depression, what does?!). I find the differences in reactions to negative labels particularly interesting, as they seem to change in different contexts. Consider: Christian #1: “Hey, you’re a terrible human being!” Christian #2: “Thanks, you too!” vs. Non-Christian #1: “Hey, you’re a terrible human being!” Christian: “Help, I’m being persecuted!”

Slick confesses at 6:34 that “It is difficult to love the people who are in the [service] of Satan. It is difficult to try and reason with them, and they express hatred. You love them, and they are vile to you.” There are a couple of gems here, but most importantly look at how the term “hatred” is used. Remember, it’s hatred folks, not disagreement, but hatred! He continues, “How do you maintain an attitude of love for them by not being affected by their ungodly demonic attacks?” Correction on my previous sentence, it’s ungodly demonic attacks folks, not disagreement. It seems astoundingly easy to feel persecuted when instead of finding yourself in a disagreement, you find yourself in some remake of Constantine!

Moving along, 7:50: “There are times when I say to myself I’m not being loving enough, and I pray, Lord forgive me, I’m not being loving enough…” 8:48: “You’ll notice, I go in the chat room, you notice I’m very quick to hit the ban button… I am not going to put up with any crap from these idiots… I’ll tell you why, because what they do, they are spiritual vampires, they will suck you dry…”

Well no wonder DC and Matt feel persecuted, with demons and vampires already around, they are one werewolf away from being in a Twilight film! But in all seriousness, I just want to draw attention to the interesting juxtaposition between Matt’s statements. Perhaps it would be easier to love these people, if you didn’t paint them as idiotic demon spirit-suckers. But, more seriously, this is another clear instance of well poisoning.

Moving forward a bit, DC questions why, on this site, no other Christians stepped in to help him defend his position. At 12:33 Slick remarks that “…you will find Christians, for example, who will say ‘you are a bigot, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re in sin’ and these are the ones that are aiding and abedding the enemies of the gospel.” At this point we seem to be moving away from statements that, I contend, bring about or strengthen a persecution mindset, and we are moving towards what seems to be almost a type of paranoia. “You can’t even trust some Christians, as they are in cahoots with the demon soul-suckers. Who are these Christians that are in cahoots? Oh, well the ones who disagree with you!” What does this do to the idea of Christian edification?

Atheism

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, at 16:45 Slick remarks: “When you tackle atheists, because these usually are atheists and liberal wackos, they don’t believe in the Christian God… it’s an easy thing to do… it’s really easy to beat atheists.” Now, I’m not sure how we suddenly jumped from the persecution of DC to talking about atheists, but it happened.

The chat continues: Matt: “You said it was an atheist website, right?” DC: “Yup.”

Hold the phones! UP isn’t an atheist website. Sure, lots of articles are written by atheists (theists, UP wants your contributions!) but the majority of our chat users (where DC spends all of his time here on UP) are non-atheists. I don’t know why he thinks we’re an atheist website (maybe it makes the plot of the persecution story juicier?), but let me put the kibosh on that right now. We’re certainly not a Christian website, but we are not an atheist website.

At 17:12 Slick remarks, with regard to atheists, that: “… you’ve already got them beat. The way to do this is to be strategic. You’ve got to understand that what atheists like to do is gang up on you, you’ll say one thing and they will come in fifty different directions… and complain that you don’t know this and that.” At this point, Slick has appeared to have stopped consoling DC and is now gearing him for battle (Go Team Edward!), but not before he poisons the well yet again and commits the fallacy of hasty generalization. In fact, to avoid repeating myself, roughly all of his chat about “atheists” and what they do commits this fallacy. Further, Matt’s discussion about ‘atheists’ and how they respond to arguments and the like suggests to me that Matt should interact with some more philosophically minded atheists. I’ve extended an invitation to interact with him a couple of times, but as you’ve heard while listening to this radio excerpt, he does not like to engage in written format. He has invited me to phone into the radio show, but I think the issues with some of his particular thoughts far too complicated to be discussed via that format. Though, at 18:30 Matt would have you believe that the reason I’ve not called up is because I know I’m going to get my “clocks cleaned”. I’d like to know how he thinks he knows such things, but needless to say, that statement is probably based on yet another instance of fallacious reasoning. Granted, while we’re playing this game, let me join in and say that the reason Matt Slick will not engage in written dialogue with me is because he’s afraid he’ll get his “clocks cleaned”! Hey, that was kind of fun…

18:37: “Now what they’re going to do is hide, and lie, and cheat, and steal. Just consider them like that.” If you’re confused, you’re not alone! Perhaps we should thank Matt here though, since he did restrain himself from mentioning our demonic soul-sucking practices in this particular example. Not only do I not understand the relevance of this point, I find his usage of “just consider them like that” interesting as well. We’ve poisoned this well so much that the residents of the city are drinking alcohol for hydration! Is he actually telling DC to just consider atheists as those who hide, lie, cheat and steal? Do I even need to list the fallacies at play here?

At 18:50 Slick begins to draw some battle plans. “Here are some principles: use what they say against them… it’s very easy to do. You have to understand something, they do not have the proper basis of rational thought, nor do they have the basis of moral objectivity. They don’t have those things…” He continues on recounting a dialog between him and some atheist wherein he “stumps” them by asking, “how do you know?” I think the same question needs to be extended to Slick based on the statements he’s just made. 19:52: “She has now hung herself [by making an assertion]… when they make assertions, ask them to verify their assertions.” I feel just eerie listening to this, it really is some sort of battle plan (though it kindly left out the bit about how you can defeat us by driving stakes through our hearts!).

Aside from DC’s monumental misunderstanding of moral nihilism espoused in the latter portion of minute 21 (how can things be morally permissible if there exists no morality?) Matt continues with his instruction, at 21:48 he states “…in order to [use the atheists statements against them] you’re going to have to study logic… you should learn [list of fallacies]…” I will politely recommend that this instruction be adjusted inward. What Matt seems to take to be the goal of logic, I doubt is actually the goal of logic. But, further, he tells us about a girl who said she enjoyed the content on his website, but could not trust it because Matt is a Calvinist. Matt identifies this as an instance of the genetic fallacy. At 22:32 he says, “… the information on the website needs to be studied on its own merits and not judged by the source, but by what it is.” Well let’s hold the phones again, Matt seems to tread awfully close to committing this fallacy throughout the discussion. I find it curious that he acknowledges that arguments need to be considered on their own merits, but spends a considerable amount of time teaching DC how to argue against atheists and not particular atheistic arguments. Interesting, yes?

The reason I feel so uncomfortable about discussions like this is that its all too similar to putting guns on children and sending them out to shoot people. Matt Slick has given DC a particular rhetorical technique to use, but he’s not given him any explanation as to why his analysis is correct. I find that to be some scary stuff indeed.

At 24:11 he goes on to suggest that in arguing with atheists DC should think about where their argument leads. Just a minor point of clarification, if Slick is suggesting a proof by contradiction, hooray. If he’s not, he’s implicitly utilizing another fallacious method of reasoning, namely, the fallacy of the slippery slope! If he does that, he’ll just commit a whole bunch of other fallacies! (There’s an example of it, just for fun!)

Oh, another added bonus, at 25:31 Matt actually utilizes the fallacy of the slippery slope. Doesn’t he offer a course on logic on his website? Oh well, at least he doesn’t soul-suck.

The next portion is largely uninteresting, as I find it to be the usual confused chatter about morality. I strongly suggest a course in ethics for Mr. Slick, however.

At 28:20 something really strange happens. Earlier, DC identified with Matt an instance of fallacious reasoning known as the genetic fallacy, but now DC actually commits the fallacy! He says: “Even if an atheist gives you a formal argument, and you don’t understand it at the time, if you put enough time into it, you start to look at where the worldview is coming from, you can tear it to pieces.” What?! Why didn’t Matt Slick, our resident logician for the day, call DC out on this fallacy? Maybe fallacies are only fallacies when used by vampires!

Conclusion

I could go for quite awhile, I think, but I don’t want to make this too long to read. Admittedly, I have been facetious in places but I hope at the very least I’ve drawn out some issues that are interesting to think about. The encouragement or provocation of “Christian Persecution-(ism?)” from fellow Christians, the vilification of non-Christians, and the arming of ill-prepared Christians with quick-draw tactics forgoing teaching with any real rigor. When all is said and done, this conversation at least gives the non-theist a basis for claiming persecution. I’ve never felt more vilified in my life!

But I am not done, as I have pointed out once or twice already.  I had originally intended to write an article about a certain verse in Paul’s letter to the Romans as my next article, but Machen has jumped the gun on me by bringing up Leviticus in his response to my original article about a week ago.  So, I have decided to write my article about Leviticus first.  It draws heavily from, defends, and explains the work of Justin Cannon and William Lindsey, so please bear with me on the extended quotations, and note that this article is any attempt of mine to “try my hand at Greek”.  As I already cleared in a comment with C. L. Bolt, “I have no hand at Greek!”

So, in this article here I will do two things;

1)    I will deal with Machen’s criticism independent of any interpretation of Leviticus.

2)    And, I will offer an interpretation of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, in the context of a rebuttal to Machen’s criticism of my interpretation of 1 Timothy.

Now, let’s begin with Machen’s criticism of my article.

His argument centers around the idea that in 1 Timothy, Paul is referring to the Septuagint translation of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13.  In Leviticus, he claims, the phrase, “arsenos koites”, is used to mean, “lie with a man”.  Seeing as how the compound word, “arsenokoitai”, is used in 1 Timothy, it seems no real stretch to him to suggest that “Paul condemns what Leviticus condemns”.

Unfortunately, this can either help or destroy Machen’s case.  Extraordinary as it may sound, if it is indeed true that Paul is condemning what Leviticus condemns, then it is possible that Leviticus does not condemn homosexuality.  It can go either way. This is going to be the cornerstone of my first argument, though it is just a thought.

Having introduced that concept, let’s review what I said in my previous article with respect to the context of “arsenokoitai” in 1 Timothy.  Machen seems to think that I don’t think “koites” is a sexual term, and criticizes me for it.  Of course, this is completely false.  Not only did I never say any of that, but the sexual nature of “koites” is a fundamental assumption of Cannon’s argument.

Here is what Justin Cannon originally said about 1 Timothy:

Looking closely at 1 Timothy 1:9-10, we can see that there are what I will call ‘structural pairs’ that are reflected below in the English as well as in the Greek–the original language of the New Testament.

1 Timothy 1:9-10 (RSV) – Greek

Row A:	anomoi             kai                          anupotaktoi
Row B:	asebesin           kai                          amartwloi
Row C:	anosioi              kai                          bebhloi
Row D:	patralwai          mhtralwai                androfonoi
Row E:	pornoi              arsenokoitai            andrapodistai
Row F:	yeustai              epiorkoi

As you will notice there seems to be a relationship between the words in each row. The chart below illustrates that the words in each row are either synonyms or closely related in some manner:

Row A:	lawless & disobedient	=  two synonyms
Row B:	ungodly & sinners	=  two synonyms
Row C:	unholy & profane	=  two synonyms
Row D:	murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers, manslayers	= three types of murderers
Row F:	liars & perjurers	=  two synonyms

But what about row E? What do “immoral persons, sodomites, and kidnappers” have in common? To answer this question beyond a shadow of a doubt, we will need to explore the Greek. The three Greek words present in line E are: pornoi (pornoi), arsenokoitai (arsenokoitai), and andrapodistai (andrapodistai).

NOTE: Evidently, WordPress latinized the Greek characters above.

“Arsenokoitai” does not mean “prostitute”.  I never said this.  Row E should be translated like this: “Pornoi” means prostitutes, “arsenokoitai” means those who sleep with prostitutes, and “andrapodistai” refers to the people who kidnap the prostitutes.  this is the conclusion I presented in my previous article.

That pornoi and andrapodistai refer to prostitution is undeniable and near-universally believed.  We can assume, following Paul’s obvious pattern here, that whatever “arsenokoitai” means, it has something to do with prostitution.  I have concluded that it refers to the men who sleep with the prostitutes Paul is talking about here.

Even without having attacked my argument, Machen’s own argument regarding Leviticus is silly.

In my research for this article, I contacted William Lindsey about Machen’s argument via email.  Among other things, he had this to say (my notes are in brackets):

1. He emphasizes repeatedly that Paul’s intent is to condemn “homosexual practice.”  Yet he launches into an argument which focuses exclusively on forbidding male homosexual contact, as if “homosexual practice” is equivalent to male homosexual behavior.  Homosexual women: you have a free pass!

2. He dismisses the powerful and significant argument that Paul uses a neologism in this passage, when koine Greek of his period had specific and well-understood words to describe homosexuality.  And he does so by suggesting that Paul is trying to replicate in Greek a Hebrew phrase; when Paul is writing for and communicating with people who are culturally Greek and not Hebrews at all, for the most part!

This would imply that Paul’s intent is to equate the gospel with Jewish law and custom, something he vehemently works against in writings like Galatians.  Not to mention the fact that nobody would have noticed the reference at all.

But to point out the obvious–that koite often refers to sexual contact in Greek–is really to say nothing at all, nothing significant about this word for his argument.  He seems to think that by making this etymological point he proves that the word refers to homosexual sex when joined with the word “arsenos.”  [Of course, I have already shown what “arsenokoitai” means.  It is not in conflict with Machen’s etymological point here, either, as it definitely would have included homosexual sex.  What Machen does not realize is that it must have been homosexual sex in the context of prostitution, as I said earlier.]

He’s arguing that because Paul was intent on communicating clearly, he adopted a mysterious and totally undefined new word!  And that he did so while addressing a Greek audience, in order to play on an understanding of a Hebrew text with which they were not familiar, because they were culturally Greek and not Hebrew at all.

He’ll have to do far better to build a convincing argument.  If so much hinges on condemning homosexuality, why would the person who thinks that everything hinges on it resort to such intricate, unexpected verbal tactics to communicate a very plain point that could easily have been communicated in the plain Greek that the people to whom he was writing spoke?

But what if Paul really is acting unreasonably?  What if he is making a subtle, unexpected, and obscure reference to the Hebrew Scriptures to communicate a very simple point in his letter to a bunch of Greeks?

Even still, Cannon’s argument would still stand.  I mentioned earlier that Machen’s argument from the similarities between 1 Timothy and Leviticus could either help him or destroy him.  Having shown that they cannot help him, by saying that the meaning of arsenokoitai in 1 Timothy is already absolutely obvious, let’s count the ways it could destroy him.

To be clear, I don’t argue any of the following seriously. I only offer it as an overkill tactic designed to show that even if Machen’s argument is right, it is still useless.  I maintain what I wrote before; that there is probably no connection between Leviticus and 1 Timothy as Machen claims.  But if we were to assume that there is such a connection does exist, all that this shows is that either 1 Timothy means what Leviticus means, or Leviticus means what 1 Timothy means.  Since we can see from Cannon’s argument that Paul is referring to prostitution in 1 Timothy, we can assume that if he is also making a reference to Leviticus in that verse, he also thinks Leviticus refers to prostitution.

This is more than likely not the case, in my opinion.  There are few textual clues in Leviticus that could be construed to support such a conclusion.  However, Mr. Cannon provides an interpretation of Leviticus which may be more reasonable, yet also provide for a connection between it and 1 Timothy.  He says:

Even if we accept the NIV or KJV translations, (KJV: “Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination.”) we still must understand the historical context of how a man laid with a woman, for this is the qualifier of the phrase. Some affirm that this law is quite straightforward. Clearly from the previous sixteen verses, we know that these laws are written to men. Thus, some may say, this law forbids men to “lie with”, or have sex with, other men. This interpretation is flawed as it entirely ignores the phrase “as with a woman.” These four words cannot simply be understood to refer to lying sexually, since that is already indicated in the Hebrew word translated “to lie with.” If the above interpretation were what the author means he could have just written, “Thou shalt not lie with a man; it is an abomination.” 

“As with a woman” must have been added for some reason, and we must understand the context of this law to understand it fully. The status of women in that time was much lower than that of men, and women were even considered property of the men. This belief regarding gender relations is rejected by most of the Christian church today, but in order to make sense of this specific Jewish law we must keep in mind this context in which it was written.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow explains, “The whole structure of sexuality in the Torah assumes a dominant male and a subordinate female.”⁴ In other words, women were obedient to men, and men in that time would have been dominating and controlling in sexual encounters. The woman did what the man wanted and how the man wanted it. For a man in a sexual encounter to be treated in that way, within the Jewish culture of the time, the man would have be taking a lower status, as well as being sexually dominated and controlled. To do so would have been reducing him to property and in effect defiling the image of God, which man was considered in that culture. This, however, is exactly how men would have treated the male temple prostitutes—in a controlling and abusive manner, and also is how individuals would have been treated in the sacred sexual orgies with which Baal was worshiped. They would have lied with other men “as with a woman.”

What I find valuable in this interpretation is that the manner in which a man would have sex with a male prostitute, as in 1 Timothy, is exactly how a man “lies with a woman”!  It is a controlling, aggressive, dominant sort of act; one which would reduce the male prostitute to the role of a woman.  So if we accept Justin Cannon’s interpretation of Leviticus, we should also be able to accept Machen’s argument by showing it to be the case in 1 Timothy as well.

In my completely unprofessional opinion, I might point to Cannon’s English translations of the original texts, and offer another possible interpretation:

“And with a male you shall not lay lyings of a woman.”

Right off the bat I think this is telling men not to submit themselves sexually to other men, i.e., don’t be the bottom guy in the relationship.  I can’t say for sure, as I have no formal education in Jewish cultural history, but I might think this was intended as a precaution for the men of Israel not to submit themselves in any way, simply for the sake of Israel.  This seems like an issue of national or tribal pride, which would make sense in the context of Leviticus, which is full of rituals and customs designed to separate Israel from the surrounding races, so as to set God’s own apart.  But that is just a thought.  I say it only as a suggestion.

And that concludes my rebuttal to Machen and my interpretations of Leviticus.  I have provided the really convincing argument that there is no realistic connection between 1 Timothy and Leviticus, and then offered a further argument just in case Machen continues to assert that there is such a connection.  I will clarify, at this point, that I have judged the initial “choice” on the question of whether or not there is a connection between 1 Timothy and Leviticus to be easily decided by logic.  I believe that there is no connection as I stated earlier.  My second major point, indeed, the second half of this paper, is really “just in case”.  In this way, I think I’ve thoroughly dealt with 1 Timothy, and Machen’s objection to my interpretation of it, but I have not given Leviticus the treatment it deserves.  I have offered nothing but a hypothetical interpretation of Leviticus, and so I may decide to write a more thorough article later on it to do it justice.  As for 1 Timothy, I will only say that I do not enjoy repeating myself.  Don’t make me.

I focus on Christianity and homosexuality due to prominence and familiarity. What I say applies just as well to other anti-gay religious beliefs and other sexual identities (e.g. bisexuality, transexuality). I do not deal with them separately to avoid repeating myself.

Why there’s nothing bad about homosexuality

Equality should be presumed. It wasn’t the case that blacks or women needed to ‘prove themselves’ before society condescended to treat them fairly – it should have been like that in the first place. So those who think homosexuality is bad should explain what is bad about it.

There are three main strategies. First is that homosexuality leads to bad things. Second is that homosexuality is bad in itself. Finally homosexuality might be known to be bad through religious conviction.

Does homosexuality lead to bad things? There’s a huge volume of research done on what correlates with homosexuality; some bad, some good, and most indifferent. There are also problems of whether results in one cultural setting apply to another, and much of it is confounded by stress induced by societal homophobia and conflict between sexual preference and religious identity. Happily, experts have already waded through this quagmire on our behalf. Take gay parenting – as if homosexuals can raise children, there’s probably nothing too badly wrong with them.

Here’s an excerpt from an amicus curiae brief by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Council of Social Workers:

Indeed, the scientific research that has directly compared outcomes for children with gay and lesbian parents with outcomes for children with heterosexual parents has been remarkably consistent in showing that lesbian and gay parents are every bit as fit and capable as heterosexual parents, and their children are as psychologically healthy and well-adjusted as children reared by heterosexual parents. Amici emphasize that the abilities of gay and lesbian persons as parents and the positive outcomes for their children are not areas where credible scientific researchers disagree. Statements by the leading associations of experts in this area reflect professional consensus that children raised by lesbian or gay parents do not differ in any important respects from those raised by heterosexual parents. No credible empirical research suggests otherwise.

Similar statements have been made by professional bodies representing child psychiatrists, family physicians, counsellors, psychotherapists, teachers, lawyers, and adoption agencies. This is not confined to the US – UK and Canadian psychiatric bodies say the same. In short, the people who actually know what they are talking about unanimously agree that homosexuals, far from being uniformly bad parents – or even sub-optimal parents – are just as good as heterosexual parents. Exactly the same story emerges if we look at other bad things homosexuality is meant to lead to: it doesn’t.

The argument wouldn’t work anyway. Pretend that all the experts are wrong, that there is some ‘endogenous malaise’ to homosexuality. So what? We should only object to those homosexuals who actually do these bad things (whatever they are), not the entire group ‘at risk’ of doing so. Even if homosexuals would be ‘better off straight’, their sexual preference isn’t a matter of choice. The question would be how these people could make the best of the sexuality they were given – lifelong celibacy or forcing themselves into heterosexual relationships would seldom be it. Even if the ‘facts’ are granted, they still aren’t good reasons.

So maybe something’s intrinsically wrong with it. What would that be?

Maybe it’s unnatural. But what ‘natural’ means or what’s bad about being unnatural are hard to fathom. In many ways, homosexuality is natural: it arises without outside interference, and it occurs in other species too. In this sense medical interventions are unnatural, but these aren’t bad things – unnaturalness has nothing to do with badness. A moralized conception of ‘natural’ is needed for the argument to get anywhere, but this begs the question: why takes moralized conception A, which rules out homosexuality, instead of moralized conception B, which doesn’t – save for a reason why homosexuality is bad in the first place?

Maybe homosexuals aren’t using sex the way it is supposed to. But there isn’t any ‘supposed to’ about it. Humans arose by evolution, which isn’t goal oriented: what happens to improve survival flourishes, what doesn’t dies out. Pace natural law theory, there isn’t a ‘supposed to’ stamped on biology itself, but rather a ‘just happens’. Sex is a good way of transmitting our genes forward in time, and that’s why our minds and bodies are wired towards it.

Homosexuality might be considered faulty wiring – having sex with your own gender isn’t a good way to reproduce. In evolutionary terms, it probably is counter-selective. But evolutionary advantage, like unnaturalness, has nothing to do with good or bad. Celibacy, monogamy and unconditional altruism might also be counter-selective, but they aren’t bad things.

The secular case against homosexuality is wrong. In many cases, it is doubly wrong: invalid arguments based on bad data. Although only touched upon, the case for homosexuality is overwhelming: it is vindicated both by the abject failure of these arguments and the (pretty normal, pretty positive) lives of homosexuals themselves. The reason why the vast majority of the irreligious think homosexuality isn’t bad is because – barring religious conviction – everything speaks obviously and powerfully in its favour. For all the insinuations, all the canards, and all the slurs you can dredge up against homosexuality, reality begs to differ.

As it happens, the ‘secular case’ is made by people who are actually religious. Seldom are anti-gay arguments penned by inquisitive Atheists forming their beliefs by free inquiry, but Christians trying to justify beliefs they are already committed to. The real issues are religious. Are religious convictions against homosexuality right, or at least rational?

How not to be a religious nutter

Assume God exists. Assume Christianity is true. Imagine yourself as a Christian. Say you know that there’s a mountain of evidence suggesting that homosexuality isn’t bad, yet your religious beliefs say it is bad. Which should you trust?

God cannot be gainsaid, but given how many slavers, terrorists and ethnic cleansers thought God was on their side, he is evidently misheard often. All sorts of silly (creationism, heliocentrism) and evil (slavery, segregationalism) ideas have been read into the Bible or endorsed by the church. Given Holy Scripture or Sacred Tradition track truth unreliably, you shouldn’t stick to them in the face of immense countervailing evidence.

To take the Bible (rather, your interpretation of the Bible) or Tradition (rather, your tradition) in the teeth of all the evidence suggesting they are mistaken requires exceptional confidence in their reliability: it is belief in them no matter what. But belief no matter what is crazy – if you are mistaken, nothing can rescue you from your error. And we know that mistakes have happened in the past – in the case of creationism and anti-miscegenation, they are still happening now.

The sane thing to do is adjust your religious convictions. If your reading of the Bible suggests God made the universe several thousand years ago and man was designed specifically whilst all of modern science suggests the universe kicked off fifteen billion years ago and man evolved, it is your reading of the Bible you should reject, not modern science. Likewise, if everything shows homosexuality is fine and only your reading of the Bible says otherwise, you should look for another interpretation congruent with ethical fact.

Christians willing to do this are often called a variety of nasty names by those who aren’t: that they are selling out to popular culture, that they’re willing to take social norms over Biblical wisdom, that they’re not really Christian. But they aren’t ‘not Christian’; they’re just ‘not crazy’. The ethical concerns that speak in favour of homosexuality are both overwhelming and consonant with a programme of liberation which has an excellent track record: it was right about slaves, and those who said God wanted some for servitude were wrong; it was right about sex, and those who said God wanted submissive women were wrong; it was right about race, and those who said God wanted black and white segregated were wrong. It is right about homosexuality, and those who say God wants gays to apologise for their relationships are wrong.

Where’s the problem? What’s the problem?

The arguments against homosexuality are rubbish. They are usually invalid, often are based on false data, and are in any case woefully insufficient to justify the ‘Christian position’ on homosexuality. Christians might try to sweep these beliefs under God’s carpet to relieve them of having to consider the issue on merit, but we have seen this can only be done by adopting the belief forming practises of a nutcase. So Christians opposed to homosexuality, for whatever reason, are being irrational – and are irrational whether or not Christianity is true or reasonable. But why is this bad?

Opposition to homosexuality fosters discrimination. Those who oppose homosexuality generally also oppose their unions being given equal recognition before the law, oppose homosexuals adopting children, and at least want to preserve their ability to discriminate. All of these are harmful, not only to the minority treated unjustly, but for wider society as well

Not all Christians who oppose homosexuality are like this. Some might endorse a robust divide between church and state, and so not want any differential recognition enshrined in law. Also, although they think homosexuality is bad, they don’t think homosexuals are worse than anyone else: homosexuals are sinners just like they, and would still be sinners regardless of gay sex being sinful. So where’s the problem here? Hate the sin; love the sinner, after all.

The problem is these beliefs are evil. Homosexuals are accused of suffering some mental or moral malaise; of being better off straight; that any romantic or sexual relationships they form are wrong; that the love they feel for their partner is a twisted, second rate, facsimile of the heterosexual ‘genuine article’; that they are unfit to bring up children. Alone, these are despicable. Together, they are a programme to attack, demean and castrate someone’s sexual identity. They are appalling even if they remain legally silent – and are toxic to a just and humane society.

An attack on an enemy of freedom

Not all Christians oppose homosexuality. These people should be praised – it isn’t easy being right when your religious community is wrong. But they remain a noble minority; worse, Christianity itself seems to drive the sexual prejudice expressed by most Christians. Those who aren’t Christians probably won’t care what damage this does to the Church, but everyone should care about the damage the Church’s attitudes have on society in general, and homosexuals in particular. What should we do about it?

Opposition to homosexuality should be attacked – it is the casus belli for a culture war. These beliefs should be silenced not just in the statute books, but in popular culture as well. The two main sources of homophobic sentiment in the public sphere are the far right and the clergy. Neither should be gagged by censorship, but drowned in contempt and ridicule. The laughter that greeted Nick Griffin’s ‘almost totally non-violent’ KKK should greet those who suggest the equally ridiculous ‘disorder’ of homosexuality. When religions are co-opted to shelter it, they should be attacked as well – the rainbow flag should be stuffed down the Church’s throat. Anti-gay sentiment should be recognised as irrational, immoral, and illicit for civilized society. We should all come out of the closet as gay rights activists.

Acknowledgements:

I thank Nathan Paylor and Nicholas Inglis for their criticism of earlier drafts and ideas.