Beatrice:          What do you think the problem of evil can accomplish? Can it argue someone out of their faith?

Adam:             I think so. People do lose their faith, and evil is a common reason why. It isn’t always argued or reasoned: I don’t think people are carefully constructing inductive arguments when they ask why God let their child die. Evil might subvert or damage one’s relationship with god: you might hate god, or believe that he hates you. This doesn’t make sense if God exists as advertised by religion: he hasn’t (and can’t) do anything to warrant hatred, and loves us all.

But whether there is a good argument matters. If evil doesn’t really suggest Atheism[1], then those who renounce God in the face of evil are making a tragic error. But if it does, perhaps we should make a more sober conclusion: instead of a malicious or uncaring god, perhaps there isn’t one at all. Perhaps we live unsupervised by a caring creator, and so evil is wholly expected: the world was never made to make life good for us.

Beatrice:          What do you mean by ‘good argument’? That any reasonable person aware of it must accept its conclusion? That it would be decisive for an ‘ideal’ agnostic?[2]

Adam:             Neither. I can’t think of any argument that would persuade everyone who is reasonable. And although an ideal agnostic standard is closer to the mark, I don’t think it is very helpful here – unlike some more arcane fields of philosophy, I think everyone has prior commitments and intuitions about God.

So I’d want something like the following: A good argument is one that can change a rational person’s degree of belief. A reasonable person, after considering the premises and the inferences of the argument being offered, adjusts their confidence in the conclusion.

Invalid arguments are never good. But probably unsound arguments might be. Even if a given premise of an argument is believed to be probably false, it might still undermine great confidence in the opposite of its conclusion. If you were certain of X, but only pretty sure that Y, then being presented a valid argument that X iff Y, then perhaps you shouldn’t be certain of X, but only pretty sure, like you are of Y.

Beatrice:          Perhaps, but you might do the opposite. On realizing X iff Y, and that you are certain of X, why not conclude that, in fact, you should be certain of Y too? That might be reasonable – yet it would mean this isn’t a good argument: they’re still certain of X. Yet in principle any argument can be ‘turned around’ and played in reverse to deny the premises used in a ‘Moorean shift’. So are there no good arguments?

Adam:                         There are perhaps two degrees of belief at work here: you’re actual likelihood assessment, and your confidence in that likelihood assessment. I may believe something is as likely as not because of long and bitter enquiry, or through simple ignorance – and it would take a lot more argumentative might to shift the former P ~ 0.5 than the latter.

So you might need a suite of arguments: if I thought, when showing X iff Y to get someone to be uncertain of X instead of certain of Y there was a risk they’d reinforce their priors, I might want need other arguments to close off this option – separate reasons why you shouldn’t be certain of Y.

Beatrice:          Similar difficulties apply when trying to provide these reasons for why Y shouldn’t be considered certain – perhaps I might be inclined to reverse that argument too. That doesn’t seem an unrealistic prospect for real arguments like the Argument from Evil: it touches on lots of side concerns about ethics, free will, divine foreknowledge, and so on. All of these have a plethora of different positions – all held, I imagine, by pretty reasonable people. These in turn may draw their credence from still more beliefs, and so on. To get someone to accept the Argument from Evil might require you to transform their entire web of beliefs from the locus of one argument.

Adam:                         I don’t quite agree. You are right that I am faced with lots of different webs of belief to negotiate, but I don’t need to offer arguments for every single remotely relevant belief. I might argue that a given belief doesn’t matter either way; the argument still works whether it is Z or not-Z. Or I might offer parallel arguments, one for if Z, and one for if not-Z (or for all the alternative reasonable positions if it isn’t yes or no) for the conclusion I am after.

That’s hard, but no one wants the problem of evil to be successful with some prior beliefs, but not with others; they want it to be shown that evil is good evidence or not regardless of the variation in prior beliefs sensible people may have. I think some issues cannot be side-stepped (for example, the issue of free-will) but many can.

Beatrice:          Fine. But even if an argument has persuasive power, that needn’t change someone’s mine. Even if evil does provide evidence against God, other concerns might give stronger evidence in favour.

Even if we can see that God probably doesn’t exist, then that isn’t necessarily important. I don’t think many people believe in God through evidentialist grounds – it means more than that. Likewise, I don’t think probability assignments have all that much to do with the religious form of life. Even if I thought God was unlikely, I might believe in him out of the hope he was there.[3]

Adam:             I agree with you. Even if evil does constitute evidence against God it may still be the cumulative case for Theism over Atheism is decisive. When considering multiple arguments, the picture I’ve given above becomes even more complicated. But evil is a better place to start than most: it is a common reason why people don’t believe, and ‘hits you in the gut’ a way more metaphysical concerns with natural a/theology lack.

I also agree to your second point: one needn’t believe that God probably exists to have faith in him – so for these people, God’s probability is moot. Yet I think it can inform doxastic attitudes: if you think that a world without God isn’t that bad, then you might consider having faith in God similar to hoping that you’ll receive a fortune: you might, if asked, accept that it would be good, but this won’t motivate the sort of committed hope which could resemble a ‘living faith’.

Beatrice:          Life might be wonderful for you, but what about everyone else? If God doesn’t exist, then many people – often those who form ‘case studies’ of the problem of evil – have lives that are horrendous. Whatever goods in their lives are not only outweighed but defeated by the evils they suffered.[4] So perhaps hope for them should motivate faith.

Adam:                         Pace universalism, Theists don’t hope for this either – many that live awful lives will lose out post-mortem too.[5] Perhaps whatever account they offer is still better than likely oblivion, but it doesn’t seem very hopeful to me.

Why not a universalist? Because I think it is too remote a possibility to be worth hoping for. Like me magically becoming rich, it is something that I would like, and something that is for all we know possible, but it seems a waste of time to bother entertaining hope that it will happen. So too a universalist God, if the argument from evil works as well as I think it does.

Beatrice:          Fine. So what is the argument?

Evil:

Adam:             Consider:

1)    If God exists, there are no examples of pointless evil.

2)    There are cases of pointless evil.

3)    God does not exist.[6]

‘Pointless’ means without justification. A gratuitous evil is not one that is necessary, in whatever sense, for an outweighing good.[7]

This is the core of the problem of evil. It’s surely a valid argument. I think it is basically sound as well. We don’t know for certain that there are pointless evils, but it’s pretty damn likely given the lots of apparently pointless evils that some are pointless.

Beatrice:          I know most of the criticism hinges on (2), or the evidential premise, but I have doubts about the theological premise as well. I think there may be cases where God would permit a particular case of evil, not because it itself locally permits a greater good, but that permission of that evil might be globally necessary, in whatever sense. Perhaps God must permit a certain number of horrendously evil events to occur such that we realize our fallen nature, but there are no particular events specified.[8]

This is similar to other principles that might ‘tie god’s hands’. Perhaps God cannot stop a young child being raped and murdered because he must maintain a world of moral choices, or perhaps he must allow her to drown because he cannot allow massive irregularities of the laws of nature. This gives a Theist a lot of latitude: defences, along these lines, can be vague.

Adam:             I agree with this sort of vagueness, but there still must be global justification, even if local explanations are lacking. But I wouldn’t agree with the hypothesis that there is no minimum: even if no explanation can be demanded for why this child as opposed to that, but one can be for how many children in total. Perhaps to some extent this is out of his hands, but he must pick the best strategy to minimize this global evil.[9]

I agree such concerns are useful in local evil. A valid defence to a particular charge isn’t why that child suffered, but that some children needed to – and if so, then why not that one? I am happy to argue against candidates of such defences, should the need arise.

Given how we’ve alluded to case studies and suffering children, here’s an example from recent news – if I’ve mistaken some the details, I hope you’ll agree that evils like this can and do occur.

The Puttick family was, by all accounts, an idyllic one. Neil and Kazumi were devoted to each other and their newborn son, Sam. One friend of the family said: “if you could bottle up a perfect marriage, theirs would be it.”

They were involved in a car accident in 2005. Kazumi’s legs and pelvis were broken. Sam’s spine was severed at the neck – he would have died were it not for two doctors who stopped to help. On being rushed to hospital, the parents were told that Sam’s injuries were catastrophic. Neil was defiant:

“… I believe in my heart the doctors are wrong and he will win. I believe God is with us and Sam will walk, talk and breathe again.

He was a miracle when he came to us, it was a miracle when he survived the crash and it will be a miracle when he recovers. These things do happen and they will happen to Sam.”

Sam survived, and flourished. Both Neil and Kazumi quit their jobs to devote their time to looking after Sam and raising the money necessary for his care. The wider community helped out too with sponsored events. They also sent pictures of themselves from all over the world holding cards with ‘Hi Sam!’, which Sam enjoyed immensely. Given all of this, perhaps the evil of Sam’s injury was outweighed (or even defeated) by all of these goods.

Sadly, that isn’t the end of the story. At the age of five Sam fell ill with meningitis, and it became clear there was no hope of survival. Neil and Kazumi took Sam home, and he died soon afterwards. His parents put Sam’s body in a rucksack, and filled another one with his toys. They carried both of these to the cliffs at Beachy head. Beachy head is a suicide hot-spot: a Chaplaincy has been set up there solely to try and prevent suicides. Yet neither they nor any passers-by saw Neil and Kazumi. They threw themselves to their deaths.

The point of this story is not to give other another ‘theodicial nasty’, but rather to point out the usual sub-categorizations (‘natural evil’, ‘moral evil’) aren’t always clear, and aren’t always useful. It also brings into stark relief some of the harder problems with the usual theodicies

Beatrice:          This is horrific. But what are these ‘harder problems’ why couldn’t one try and offer accounts for the natural and moral evil involved in events like these?

Adam:                          Take moral evil. The usual discussions of moral evil involve what I call deliberate moral evil: someone explicitly intends to harm someone else. An example would be van Inwagen’s example of “The Mutilation”, the true story of a woman who was raped, beaten, and both arms severed at the elbow, or Rowe’s case of “Sue”, where a young child was raped and killed.[10] Examples like these are picked to provide the ‘toughest case’ a free will defence needs to answer – if it works for them, perhaps it can work elsewhere.

Yet I think ‘Radical evils’ – to use Arendt’s phrase – aren’t the hardest ones for Theists to account for – such profound deliberate evils fit well with a Theistic account of mankind’s nature.[11] The hardest ones are cases where the choices leading to the moral evil are far less significant than the evil itself. Suppose that a Doctor – if only he knew that Sam Puttick had meningitis – could have stopped the infection before it got out of control. Or that perhaps, if he were an incredibly good Doctor he would have made the diagnosis in time, but as he was only a good Doctor he did not. There seem lots of instances where God could have gently guided people’s morally-irrelevant decisions towards the good. God might have to allow evil things to happen when people will the wrong, but why allow evil things to happen when people will the good?[12]

Beatrice:          This ties into global concerns I suggested earlier. Perhaps there are certain ‘freedom’ thresholds that God needs to keep in order to preserve a moral world, a Vale of soul-making, or something like this?

Adam:             But these ‘choices’ have no moral bearing – so why should God protect them? Surely God would want to facilitate good acts wherever possible by this ‘guidance’.

Beatrice:          Who says he doesn’t? Such ‘commonplace miracles’ are mentioned often in the lives of believers.

Adam:                         Perhaps, but what about these instances of ‘missed providence?’ What thresholds need to be observed for these morally irrelevant choices: why can’t God offer a guiding hand all the time?

Beatrice:          What about a threshold of mystery? Maybe if God did guide us too much we’d begin to wonder at all these little coincidences, why providence always favoured us.

Adam:             We seem to be going in a circle – you said a minute ago that God really did guide us so much that some of us (albeit believers) twig that he’s at work in these ‘commonplace miracles’. Besides, Theism – at least the Theism of world religions – entails commitment to the idea that God does get intervene drastically: consider the lives of Jesus or Muhammad. If he’s willing to do that, what plausible excuse does he have to do something far more subtle?

Of course, all of these leads to the problem of hiddenness – that, actually, God being mysterious and apart is exactly what we shouldn’t expect on Theism.[13] To appeal to it as a solution to evil seems to be avoiding one monster by throwing oneself down the throat of another.

This concern ramifies elsewhere: after all, the precipitating cause of the Puttick tragedy was a natural evil – meningitis. Now, I suspect you will offer some defence of natural evil on the need for having a regular order of the natural world.

Beatrice:          Partly. I also find it strange when Atheists are so confident in suggesting adjustments to the laws of nature – that we all be unable to be bodily harmed, say – as definite improvements. I have little idea what the world would be like under radically different natural laws, if you’ll excuse the term.

Adam:             It is better to focus on fairly minor changes to natural laws, especially those where we can easily imagine what the world would be like, for example a world without HIV or Polio. If we imagine an ‘evil landscape’ or phase-space, it may well be that far away from our location on this evil landscapes that there are minima lower than ours – but it’s hard for us to assess worlds so far from our own. However, if I only want to show our world has some pointless evil, then showing a local minimum nearby would be sufficient.

But the Puttick’s point to another problem: that the world doesn’t need to be actually regular. It just needs to appear regular. So it seems clear God could have simply prevented Sam Puttick from getting ill whilst still keeping up appearances of regularity and order. It isn’t like people would wonder “isn’t it strange Sam didn’t die of meningitis when he was five? That’s terribly irregular.”

Beatrice:          Two concerns. One: why not say that genuinely regular worlds are better than apparently regular worlds, in a similar way to genuinely living is better than plugging yourself into an experience machine? Two: What about the argument that there wouldn’t be a minimum to suffering, because if God stopped this instance of suffering, he should have stopped that one too, then another, and then we end up removing all the evil which was serving a purpose in the first place?

Adam:                         I think your first argument will struggle. The Theistic god regularly breaks the natural order, so you need a plausible account to justify these to avoid allegations of special pleading. I also don’t see the strength of the analogy with the experience machine: we don’t hook ourselves up because we want genuine experiences, but I don’t see the appeal of living in a world with genuinely regular laws over one with apparently regular laws. After all, for all I know, the laws aren’t regular anyway.

For the second concern, consider the world has so much evil to achieve a certain threshold. Surely we can rearrange this: so the meningitis that got Sam could have affected someone who would survive. You may then say your argument applies just as well to this: because if we rearranged this evil, why not that evil and end up with an evil being rationally arranged. Yet this isn’t true – there would be a global reason why he couldn’t eliminate all evils. We can know that your threshold concern doesn’t apply – simply because we realize that we would be none the wiser about God’s intervention in Sam’s case than if he didn’t. So we know by inspection we aren’t at the minimum threshold.

Beatrice:          Is it really as simple as that? The minimum threshold must be vague – we can’t lie ‘on the limit’, because that itself could be taken to show God’s action in the world.

Adam:                         I think you might be confusing me unnecessarily. If we grant God requires some mystery in his action in the world as justification for great natural evils. I think Sam’s case is sufficient to knock that over – if it never happened, we wouldn’t lose any of this mystery. It’s an open question how many such evils God could remove without violating this global concern, but it’s pretty clear there’s at least one.

There is a general worry here too. If you expand this idea of mystery too far – that God must make it appear that he doesn’t exist, then you might end up with a position like “God exists, but he makes the world looks like he doesn’t”. If you do, why shouldn’t someone turn around and say “Then I reject this idea in the same stroke as I do external world scepticism”?

Beatrice:          No, I see the problem. I think you are right about explanations for evil being much harder than I might hope. There are two worries: one is that the concerns a Theist offers simply don’t ‘cut it’. A theist might not agree, but I confess I am tempted to agree with Ivan Karamazov when he says free will concerns are never enough to justify the suffering of an innocent child.[14]

The second problem, which we’ve talked about, is instrumental. Even if free will, or soul making or similar are valid concerns, God seems to have done a cack-handed job of realizing them – that we can see that someone interested in free will, or soul making, or whatever, could do it better. I see that you are right in that looking at evils together, how evils can engender or amplify each other presents difficulties for the Theist.

Adam:             The usual dialectical moves in the problem of evil involve the Atheologian cutting out whole classes of evil to side-step potential theodicies. So you avoid moral evil to dodge the free will defence, and you usually end up with instances of animal suffering as the toughest problem for Theists to provide explanations for.

This approach is, to my mind, misguided: it concedes far too much ground, and ignores all the interactions which, to my mind, make evil so difficult. The cases of the Putticks, I think, is so awful precisely because of how it happened despite the moral virtues of all involved (worse, perhaps it happened because of these moral virtues: perhaps, if Sam and Kazumi were not such utterly devoted parents, they might still be alive today).

This discussion kicked-off because I wanted to justify premise (2) in my argument: that there are pointless evils. Given the formidable difficulties I’ve pointed out by trying to show it likely there are ‘points’ to the evils we observe. I think it is fair to say (2) is probably (or almost certainly) true. Given (1), or something in the neighbourhood or (1) is also true, would you be willing adjust your likelihood of god downwards?

Beatrice:           Evil already ‘adjusts it downwards’, in whatever sense. However, what you’ve said about scepticism reminded me of something. I think I might have let you go too far in your argument. I think we should be a bit more sceptical.

Appearance

Beatrice:          I think there might be another way to think about evil. We have both been groping around some of the difficulties and trying to work out how it falls together. I don’t think we are in any position at all to figure out the problem of evil. It might look like some evil is unjustified, but that is only in the same way that a patch of grass seems not to have insects on when we view it from a skyscraper. We do not satisfy the Condition of Reasonable Epistemic Access (CORNEA for short).

Wykstra put it something like this:[15]

“For X to say ‘it appears that P’, it must be reasonable for them to believe, if it were not-P, it would appear otherwise.’

In a similar way, Evil’s might appear pointless, but on further reflection we should see that we are in the skyscraper case. If so, then the rest of the discussion on evil doesn’t matter: instead of getting God’s acquittal, we’ve found out our verdict is unsafe.

Adam:             It’s hard to see, if we should doubt the appearance of pointless evil, what else we should doubt as well. How about this:

M)        Suppose you were able to stop Neil and Kazumi Puttick committing suicide. If God exists, then it’s likely that he sees great goods beyond our ken. Thus, although it might appear that stopping these people committing suicide is good, in fact we aren’t in a position of epistemic access to say this.

Yet this is strange.[16]

Beatrice:          Why should I be committed to something like this? I only need to be sceptical about how god must interact with the moral world.

Adam:             What would distinguish this from simply appealing to your reasons for Theism (whatever they may be) to rebut the argument from evil: “Sure, it appears that there are instances of pointless suffering, but I think different rules apply to God.”

And I think, if not this, you are committed to different rules. If the world is so morally obscure such that only God can fathom out the right thing to do. Yet in our day-to-day lives he ensures we can trust our faculties for the bulk of our decision making. That seems pretty ad-hoc to me.

Beatrice:          What’s the problem? Why not say that – but for the grace of God – we have no hope of understanding our moral world. This isn’t (at least for me) an ad hoc adjustment. It fits in quite nicely with the noetic effects of sin.

Adam:                         Sure, but these seem extensions to the Theistic hypothesis, and although they purchase immunity from disconfirming evidence, but at the risk of making the conjunction of (Theism & Extension) implausible – it becomes ‘top heavy’.[17] This worry I think applies if you make further moves: for example, why can’t, if there’s evil which God must permit for reasons beyond our ken, could God not give us some sense of assurance that it is all for the best? You might say ‘Why not apply CORNEA to this, too?’ but I think people are at liberty to think that God permits evils for reasons beyond our ken, and in a bulk of theses cases must, also for reasons beyond our ken not assure of that he is permitting these evils for reasons beyond our ken seems, to me, flatly ridiculous. It doesn’t get off the ground as an explanatory hypothesis, and I can only urge you to think the same.

I think we can argue that moral obscurity is implausible by its own merits. The argument in favour relies on a comparative judgement – God, if he exists, would possess intellectual and moral capacity vastly in excess of our own. Yet this isn’t enough to get to the conclusion, which is that we aren’t in a position to trust moral appearances.

Analogies offered by William Alston for sceptical theism can be co-opted to make this point clearer.[18] He points to examples like chess grandmasters to laymen, physics professors to students, or parents to children suggest instances where the former can’t explain their reasons to the latter (‘Why did you move the pawn there?’ ‘How did you derive that?’ ‘Why can’t we eat?’) yet their beliefs or behaviours being wholly reasonable. So here’s the problem – focus on the chess example:

Even if a layperson can’t dissect out optimal play or a complicated mid-game scenario, he might be able to do something simple like assess whether black is in checkmate. He might be able to work out less categorical circumstances: if white has got a pawn and black all his pieces, then they’d be surely reasonable to think ‘black is winning’. Now, a grandmaster can be more confident that ‘black is winning’, and perhaps supply many more reasons why black is in fact winning, but that still doesn’t mean our layperson isn’t in a position of epistemic access. We don’t show that by pointing to people who have far better access than us. We show the situation at hand is inaccessible.

Why believe that for day-to-day ethical scenarios? Given most conceptions of normative ethics, we are able to morally assess states of affairs somewhat competently. Moreover, these theories tend to be axiologically complete – we don’t hold open the door for other things being good besides what we specify, so qualities of ‘goods beyond our ken’ seem implausible. Instances of ‘goods beyond our ken’ with qualities we already know are plausible, but, on the bulk of normative theory, this isn’t so common as to make appearances untrustworthy. It might be harder to assess things like justification, greater goods and other concerns in the problem of evil, but it still remains surely accessible.

Of course, some moral questions might really be inaccessible – but the problem of evil looks at cases where it seems clear that something is pointlessly evil. Of course, it might be that all the apparent evils we observe aren’t evil at all. But I never claimed to be infallible. Besides, given there are lots of apparently gratuitous evils, it seems a pretty safe bet that at least some of these are gratuitous. CORNEA needs to convince us that the appearances of pointlessness give no reason to think it is pointless because we aren’t in a position of epistemic access. But we’ve seen believing that we have access (even if God’s is far better) is highly plausible. So CORNEA collapses – not because of wider conceptually difficulties, but because it simply doesn’t apply to the circumstances. We aren’t ‘on a skyscraper’ regarding pointless evil. We’re in the thick of it.

Beatrice:          Then perhaps theodicy has a role after all: to try and ‘muddy the waters’ of what appears to be. If one can be convinced that the appearances aren’t as clear as one thinks – that it is more like dissecting a complicated midgame than seeing if you’re in check, then assumedly sceptical Theism is back in the game.

Adam:                         Yes, if. Concerns of soul-making or free will or regularity do ‘muddy the waters’. Yet it needs to be made entirely opaque for a sceptical defence to work. Perhaps we do see through a glass darkly, but the image is clear enough to me.

REFERENCES:

Adams, Marilyn M. (2006). Christ and Horrors, Cambridge. Cambridge University Press

Adams, Robert M. (1972) “Must God Create the Best?” Philosophical review, 81(3): 317-332

Alston, William P. (1996) “Some (Temporarily) Final thoughts on the Evidential Argument from Evil,” In Howard-Snyder (ed.) The Evidential Problem of Evil. Bloomington. Indiana University Press.

Almeida, Michael J and Oppy, G. (2003) “Sceptical Theism and Evidential Arguments from Evil,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81: 496–516.

Chrisholm, Roderick M. (1968) “The Defeat of Good and Evil,”, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 42: 21–38

Draper, Paul. (1989). “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists,” Noûs, 23: 331-350

Hasker, W. (2008). The Triumph of God over Evil: Theodicy for a World of Suffering, Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press.

Howard-Snyder, Daniel and Howard-Snyder, Frances. (1994) “How an Unsurpassable Being Can Create a Surpassable world.” Faith and Philosophy 11: 260-268

Howard-Snyder, Daniel and Moser, Paul K. (2001) Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, New York: Cambridge University Press

van Inwagen, Peter (2006) The Problem of Evil, Oxford: Oxford University Press

van Inwagen, Peter (1991) The Problem of Evil, The Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence. Philosophical perspectives, 5: 135-165.

Murray, Michael J. (1993) “Coercion and the Hiddenness of God,”

Pojman, Louis P. (1991) “Faith, Doubt and Hope” in Contemporary Classics in Philosophy of Religion, eds. Ann Loades and Loyal Rue, Open Court pp. 183-207

Rowe, William L. (1979). “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 16: 335-41

Rowe, William L. (1984) “Evil and the Theistic Hypothesis: A response to Wykstra” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 16: 95-100

Rowe, William L. (1996). “The Evidential Argument from Evil: A Second Look,” in Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996, 262-85.

Rowe, William L. (2006). “Friendly Atheism, Skeptical Theism, and the Problem of Evil,” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 59: 79-92

Russell, Bruce and Wykstra, Stephen J. (1988) “The ‘Inductive’ Argument from Evil: A Dialogue” Philosophical Topics, 16(2): 133-160

Schellenberg, John R. (2005) “The hiddenness argument revisisted,” [two essays] Religious studies, 41:201-215 and 287-303.

Schellenberg, John R. (1993) Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. Ithaca: Cornell University Press

Weilenberg, Erik J (forthcoming) “Skeptical Theism and Divine Lies” Religious Studies

Wykstra, Stephen J. (1984). “The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of `Appearances’.” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 16

Wykstra, Stephen J. (2009). “CORNEA (1984 – 2009) In Memoriam?” Presentation at the 18th Baylor Philosophy of Religion Conference. Available online at:

Wykstra, Stephen J. (2007): “Cornea, Carnap, and Current Closure Befuddlement” in Faith and Philosophy 24:1 88.

[2] See van Inwagen (2006) Ch. 2 for an example of this criterion of ‘philosophical success’

[3] Pascal’s wager is a common argument, but here rational self-interest is not being appealed to, but rather “if God does not exist, life might not be splendid”. See Pojman (1991)

[4] ‘Defeat’ is being used in a manner after Chrisholm (1968). Evils and Goods can be outweighed by greater goods or evils. They are only defeated if that evil or good is a necessary part of the greater whole that is good or evil.

[5] This concern can explicitly motivate commitment to universalism. See (M. Adams 1999) p229-230

“Traditional doctrines of hell go beyond failure to hatred and cruelty by imagining a God Who not only acquiesces in creaturely rebellion and dysfunction but either directly organizes or intentionally “outsources” a concentration camp (of which Auschwitz and Soviet gulags are pale imitations) to make sure some creatures’ lives are permanently deprived of positive meaning.”

[6] Formations of the ‘evidential problem of evil’ are on these lines, although they might be expressed in probabilistic or Bayesian idiom (see Draper (1989)). Here, I use Rowe’s formulation, expressed first in Rowe (1979)

[7] The concept of ‘gratuitous evil’ is difficult, but will not be discussed here.

[8] van Inwagen (2006, 1991) and Hasker (2008) are two who employ this approach.

[9] Two problems: Robert Adam’s has suggested that God is ‘within is rights’ not to minimize evil (R. Adams 1972). It is also commonly urged that God cannot minimize evil, because there simply is no minimum: God is not able to do it in a similar way that he can’t tell us the last integer (See Howard-Snyder and Howard Snyder (1994)). I urge that even though God could add goods to a world without end, there is a limit to pointless evils – none. Thus (at least on this point) it is fair to demand god minimize evil.

[10] See Rowe (1979) and van Inwagen (2006) respectively.

[11] One might hope that evils like the mutilation or Sue’s murder are natural evils because those who committed them weren’t sane. Sadly, even if those evils really were done by madmen, it seems likely that at least some evils as horrific as them were done by people who were ‘in their right mind’.

[12] This point is developed, in part, from a fleeting mention in Russell and Wykstra (1988)

[13] For snapshots of the evolving discussion on the ‘Problem of divine hiddeness’, See Schellenberg (2005, 1993), Murray (1993), and Howard-Snyder and Moser (2001)

[14] See Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov, Ch. 5.

[15] After Wykstra (1984). Much like the original argument (which it was a response to) it can also be phrased in probabilistic idiom. Rowe (2006) and Wykstra (2009) give the two sides of this developing conversation.

[16] These reductios are a common response to sceptical Theism (of which Wykstra’s work is one branch). Besides arguing that it entails moral scepticism (Oppy and Almeida (2003)), it’s also been suggested that it leads to violations of epistemic closure (Wykstra 2007) and that Theists should not trust God’s revelation (Weilenberg forthcoming)

[17] This is the main objection Rowe deploys against sceptical Theism: that the ‘extension’ of moral obscurity isn’t plausible ‘by its own lights’, even if it purchases immunity from disconfirmation by apparent evil. See Rowe (1984)

[18] See Alston (1996)

Collins’ Argument Paraphrased

Collins’ cosmological fine-tuning argument is deceptively simple, yet requires an extensive vocabulary of abbreviations, various hypotheses, and scientific and philosophical terms. Here, I will attempt to offer a version of the argument that is more accessible, without losing any of the power or simplicity of the original¹.

1. Given the fine-tuning evidence, it is very, very surprising that a life-permitting universe (LPU) exists, under a naturalistic single universe hypothesis (NSU).

2. Given the fine-tuning evidence, it is not surprising at all that a life-permitting universe exists, under a theistic hypothesis (T).

3. The theistic hypothesis was advocated prior to the discovery of the fine-tuning evidence, and thus is not ad hoc.

4. Therefore, by the likelihood principle, LPU (the existence of a life permitting universe) strongly supports T (the theistic hypothesis) over the NSU (naturalistic single universe hypothesis).

(Collins 2009, p. 207)

The fine-tuning evidence of which Collins writes is the fact that the laws, constants, and initial conditions of our universe must fall within a very narrow range in order for a universe to be life permitting. A life permitting universe is one which can support the existence of, what Collins calls, embodied moral agents; complex physical beings possessing intelligence and the ability to make moral choices and affect one another. The naturalistic single universe hypothesis states that there is only one universe and that the values of the constants, laws, and initial conditions are a unexplainable brute fact, and could have had any value from a very wide range. The theistic hypothesis states that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, eternally existing, and free creator of the universe. And the likelihood principle states that the degree that a piece of evidence counts towards one hypothesis over another, is proportional to the ratio of how surprising the evidence is under each hypothesis.

The justification for the first premise comes from the fact that there is a very large range of values that each physical constant could have taken, but only a very small range of values which would have allowed the resulting universe to be life-permitting. And, given the naturalistic single universe hypothesis, there is no reason to expect each constant to take one value, as opposed to any other. That each constant took a value which allows the universe to be life-permitting, then, is very surprising under NSU.

The second premise is justified by appealing to God’s motivations, which we can know by reasoning from the attributes that Collins takes Him to have. Collins explains that the only reasons God would have to do anything would be to increase the moral and aesthetic value of reality (2009, p. 254). From that, it is reasonable to conclude that the existence of embodied moral agents does add significantly to the moral and aesthetic value of reality. Therefore, it is not surprising at all that God would create a universe (with aesthetic value in its own right) which could hold such creatures.

The third premise seems obvious, in that the theistic hypothesis was widely held well before the fine-tuning evidence came to be understood.

As for the conclusion, the likelihood principle is fairly uncontroversial and derivable from Bayes’ Theorem. If the first two premises are true, then LPU does serve as powerful evidence for T and against NSU.

The Understatement of the Century

Imagine a trial where the defendant stands accused of stabbing a man to death in the victim’s living room. The accused takes the stand, and admits to being in the victim’s house at the time of the murder. Does this evidence support the “defendant is guilty” hypothesis or the “defendant is innocent” hypothesis?

It seems easy to see that it would be unsurprising that the defendant would be in the house at the time of the murder, if he is guilty. It also seems quite surprising that the defendant would be in the house if he were innocent. Using the likelihood principle, this evidence counts toward the guilty hypothesis and against the innocent hypothesis.

Were this singular piece of evidence to be the extent of our knowledge of the events in question, this conclusion seems quite reasonable. But how would our evaluation change, were we to also know more specific facts about the case? If the defendant were locked in the basement of the victim’s house at the time of the murder, it would still be true that he was in the house at the time of the murder. But the additional, more specific evidence seems able to render the initial likelihood calculation irrelevant when determining which hypothesis is supported by the evidence.

What exactly is the relationship between more general pieces of evidence which seem to favor one hypothesis over another, and the more specific evidences which point in the opposite direction? And, most importantly, what does this have to do with the fine-tuning argument?

As for the first question, Paul Draper calls this the fallacy of understated evidence. “This fallacy (i.e., mistake in reasoning) is committed when one uses some relatively general known fact about X to support a hypothesis when a more specific fact about X (that is also known to obtain) fails to support that hypothesis. (Draper, 2008)” We can see that this applies to the case of the man accused of murder; the general fact is that he was in the victim’s house at the time of the killing, the specific fact is that he was locked in the basement while the murder took place.

As for the second question, Draper accuses Collins of unintentionally committing the fallacy of understated evidence by, “understating what we know about life, Collins makes the fine-tuning data appear to support theism more than it really does. (Ibid.)” He agrees with Collins that the mere fact that intelligent life, of some sort, exists is less surprising under theism than naturalism. But Collins ignores the more specific evidence that humans are the only form of intelligent life known to exist. Draper takes this more specific evidence to point strongly toward naturalism.

Menschliches, Allzumenschliches

Let us consider a second, more specific piece of evidence:

HE: The only intelligent life we know to exist is human.

Then, the following argument can be formed:

5. Given the fact that intelligent life exists, it is not surprising at all that the only intelligent life we know to exist is human, under a naturalistic single universe hypothesis (NSU).

6. Given the fact that intelligent life exists, it is very, very surprising that the only intelligent life we know to exist is human, under a theistic hypothesis (T).

7. The theistic hypothesis was advocated prior to the discovery of the fine-tuning evidence, and thus is not ad hoc.

8. Therefore, by the likelihood principle, HE (humans are the only form of intelligent life known to exist) strongly supports NSU (the naturalistic hypothesis) over T (the theistic hypothesis).

Under the naturalistic single universe hypothesis, it is no surprise at all that HE is the case. In evolutionary terms, intelligent life is expensive, requiring huge amounts of resources. Given that intelligent life exists, we should expect that it would be relatively unsophisticated, only incrementally better morally, aesthetically, in intelligence, and in emotional sophistication than its evolutionary ancestors, and far more common in the universe than more advanced life.

However, under the theistic hypothesis, HE is very surprising. If God’s motivation can be understood entirely in terms of adding moral and aesthetic value to the universe, that the most morally and aesthetically valuable intelligent life is human, seems very unlikely. An omnipotent God would have the power to create life which was not constrained by its evolutionary history, which was not limited in morally and aesthetically irrelevant ways, and which was “better” intellectually, physically, and emotionally. Given that intelligent life exists and the truth of the theistic hypothesis, HE is very, very surprising indeed.

The conclusion of this argument mirrors the conclusion of Collins’. As HE entails that a life-permitting universe exists, by using the more specific evidence, we should expect to obtain a more accurate conclusion. And, if this conclusion is true, it should dampen, if not extinguish entirely, the persuasive power of Collins’ fine-tuning argument.

Of Angelic Aliens…

One possible objection to this reasoning rests on the idea that, although humans are not the only kind of intelligent life we would expect God to create, our existence is a net-positive, all things considered. So the creation of humans could very well play a role in maximizing the moral and aesthetic value of reality.

I will agree with the first part of that objection; it does seem that humans, for all our flaws, are a net-positive in terms of moral and aesthetic value. But I would disagree with the second part; our existence cannot fit with a plan to maximize the moral and aesthetic value, carried out by an omnipotent being.

It seems very easy to conceive of a species of intelligent life, which was morally and aesthetically superior (if only marginally) to humans, able to live and thrive in exactly the same kinds of environments as humans, and which would be far more likely candidates for existence under the theistic hypothesis. It would be very surprising, if all of our intuitions of what kind of intelligent life is possible were false. Therefore, it would be very surprising were HE to be true, even if it were also true that humans play but a small role in a larger plan to maximize the moral and aesthetic value of reality.

…and Panglossian Possibilities

A different sort of objection to the probability calculation involving HE, is that it is possible that humans are much, much more morally and aesthetically valuable than we give them credit for, that it is possible that God has knowledge of some kind of moral consideration which makes the existence of humanity consistent with the maximization of moral and aesthetic value.

On the face of it, I would agree; this is certainly a possibility. God, with his perfect view of the moral landscape, would possess a better perspective on the relevant moral issues regarding the value of humanity. But what we are concerned with, for the purposes of this argument, is not mere possibility, but the likelihoods of those possibilities.

If the theist maintains that she would not expect to know the relevant moral considerations which would affect what actions God would take in order to maximize the moral and aesthetic value of reality, this does nothing to undercut how surprising it would be, to us, that morally and aesthetically superior beings would not raise the moral and aesthetic value of reality more than morally and aesthetically inferior beings.

So, without some kind of explicit justification for the idea that, contrary to our own moral intuitions and reasoning, God does have a good moral reason for creating humans, which is also non-ad hoc and does not fall victim to Collins’ probabilistic tension criticism for extended hypothesis, we are completely justified in continuing to believe that HE is surprising.

Conclusion

The fine-tuning argument does show that the existence of intelligent life is more likely if theism is true, rather than if naturalism is. Were the singular fact that intelligent life exists make up the totality of our evidence, this argument would require the rational person to significantly revise their degree of belief in theism upward, and their degree of belief in naturalism downward. Unfortunately for the proponents of the fine-tuning argument, LPU is not all the evidence we have available to us. If the mere specification of the kind of life which is known to exist is enough evidence to cancel out the epistemic effects of the fine-tuning argument, then there seems to be no repairing it.

Notes

[1] I have endeavored to reproduce the argument without introducing any subtle errors. To be sure, any that are found are due to my rendering of the argument, not the original. I would urge anyone interested in learning more about fine-tuning arguments to read the original, as it is a model of clarity and precision.

Works Cited

Collins, Robin. “The Teleological Argument: An Exploration of the Fine-Tuning of the Universe.” The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Ed. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

Draper, Paul. “Collins’ Case for Cosmic Design (The Great Debate).” The Secular Web. Internet Infidels Inc., 2008. Web. 26 Apr 2010. .

The cosmological argument is one of the oldest arguments for the existence of God. It has its roots in the work of the Greek philosophers Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and Plato (427–347 BCE). Today, we have two popular versions of the argument: theKalam and the Leibnizian arguments. Both attempt to show that there must have been a first cause or sufficient reason for the universe to exit. However, one seldom hears of the original cosmological argument as it was made famous by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Aquinas’s argument is handy if one wants to avoid heavy debates on the philosophy of time and the principal of sufficient reason that other cosmological arguments bring to the table.

The simplest statement one can find of Aquinas’s argument is found in his Summa Contra Gentiles:

We see things in the world that can exist and can also not exist. Now everything that can exist has a cause. But one cannot go on ad infinitum in causes… Therefore one must posit something existing of which is necessary. (Summa Contra Gentiles 15.124)

We can see that this argument, rather than focusing solely on cause and effect as Kalam does, or on sufficient reason as the Leibnizian does, attempts to combine the two by examining causal chains and their modal status. David Beck, a modern day defender of the TCA, gives the example of a train. If we visualize a train being pulled, we ask ourselves “What is the cause of the cart in front of us being pulled?” The answer is of course the cart in front of it, but what is pulling that cart? Well the cart in front of it. The problem is that we see that all the carts are dependent on the one in front of it to move, but this cannot go on forever otherwise the carts would never be in motion. We can break the causal chain by positing a being which depends on nothing for its movement; the engine which by its very nature is able to move. This illustration is clearly an analogy for existence. The contingent beings are the carts, and God is the engine: the thing of which by its very nature exists and does not depend upon another thing for its existence.

We can summarize our reasoning thus far in the following way:

P1. A contingent being exists.
P2. What explains this being’s existence must be in a set that contains either only contingent beings or contains at least one necessary (non-contingent) being.
P3. A set that contains only contingent beings cannot cause this contingent being to exist.
C1. Therefore this set contains at least one necessary being.
C2. Therefore a necessary being exists.

Premises one and two are not at question. The third premise is true due to the fact that if there was ever a time when nothing existed, then nothing currently exists, since contingent beings are finite in temporal duration and cannot cause themselves to exist. It follows then that if even one contingent thing exists, whether it be the universe as a whole, a chair, or my best friend Steve, then there exists a necessary entity.

What then can we deduce about then nature of this necessary entity? Firstly, Occam’s Razor eliminates the possibility of there being more then one necessary being, since positing a plurality of beings does not seem to be necessary for the explanation. From this, we can conclude that monotheism is true. Secondly, since this necessary being is the cause of space and time, the necessary being must transcend space and time, and therefore exist non-temporally and non-spatially (at least without the universe). This necessary being must therefore be changeless. The cause must also be immaterial since something can only be timeless if it is unchanging, and something can only be changeless if it is immaterial. It must also be unimaginably powerful, since it created all of space, matter, and time. Finally and most remarkably, such a transcendent cause must be personal, for how else could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect (like the universe)?¹ The only entities that we know of which can be timeless and immaterial are minds and abstract objects (numbers, sets, laws, theories, colors, etc). But abstract objects can’t cause anything. Therefore the being which exists, must be an unembodied mind. If the cause were just a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions, then the cause could never exist without the effect. If the cause were timelessly present, the the effect would be timelessly present too. The only way for the effect to be timeless and the effect to be in time would be for the cause to be a personal agent with free choice. Thispersonal agent chooses to create an effect in time without any prior determining conditions.

Thus we are brought not only to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its creator. So, from the Thomistic cosmological argument alone we can may conclude that a personal creator exists, and is uncaused, necessary², unique, beginningless,changeless, timeless, immaterial, very powerful, and personal. From this, it is reasonable to conclude that God exists.”

1. This deviates from Aquinas’s original presentation of the argument and presumes the past duration of the universe to be finite. Though there are good reasons for believing the past duration of the universe to be finite (The Kalam cosmological argument takes this approach), Aquinas’s goal was more modest: his argument is compatible with a universe whose past duration was infinite. However, I wish to extend the force of Aquinas’s argument, and hence I do not assume the eternality of the universe in this essay. [↩]
2. In the factual sense. [↩]

The first objection Payton raises is as follows;

“What I consider to be the greatest weakness of Fedora’s assessment is its shameless association of the Bible and God; this assumption that the God of the Bible and the God of reality (indeed, of history) are of one mind.”

You may bring this up as a “weakness” of my article, but it’s arguments will still fall or stand on their own merits. This shows no weakness of my argument, it simply provides a scope within which it is limited. The core of the argument, sans examples perhaps, extend to the Islamic religion as well, among others. I admittedly have not researched the Muslim faith to the depth which I have the Christian faith (be it to a large extent or otherwise), and if I am wrong in saying it does extend to the Muslim faith, I apologize for my error. It is important to note, though, that this does not invalidate the argument, it merely limits its scope, albeit to one of the largest religions in the world today.

The second caveat Payton has with my article is shown in this quote.

“Now, I’m not sure if Fedora is getting at something Jesus actually said or forbade, as I’m not familiar with the story (maybe it doesn’t exist! I’m skeptical), but that’s beside the point.”

I was merely pointing out that, as far as my understanding of the crucifixion goes after my speaking with numerous theologians, some of whom had gone to college on the subject*, that Jesus was crucified to atone for our sins. This is, in essence, a sacrifice, which, as I stated, is unexpected in modern society. Payton continues with this quote.

“If Jesus did say such a thing, then I could say He was making a suggestion or teaching relative to those times.  In those days, such things were perhaps more understandable, I would not know.  In any case, such things are silly now, so we should consider whether this particular teaching is relative.”

If this is the case, then the original argument which my article was a response to falls apart, rendering my article unnecessary by default.

Another fault Payton finds within my article is raised is in the following quote.

“Who is right, Jesus or ‘modern society’?  Who is right, the God of the Bible, or “all sane humans”?…If he answers ‘modern society’, or ‘all sane humans’, hasn’t he begged the question in his article?”

Payton fails to recognize, this is the very point I am trying to make, the bedrock upon which my argument lies! The ethical facts which God follows and humans at least recognize to be true are different, and as such one of them must be wrong. As God is morally perfect, he must follow the correct ethical facts, making humanities incorrect, thus, the conclusion of my argument.

“From [1-7], the Judeo-Christian God cannot have revealed to Human beings a true, objective, perfect, set of ethical facts.”

I again quote Payton.

“The whole question of “Fact VS Metaphor” isn’t blasphemy.  A lot of the stories of God’s wrath are intended to teach people not to disobey Him.”

If I understand Payton correctly, he is essentially saying that the stories of the flood, etc. are simply meant to teach humans to fear God. This is a threat, plain and simple. Threats are considered grounds for legal conviction throughout the United States, among many other locations throughout the world. This is again an example of God’s behavior deviating from the ethical facts humans hold to be true.

The final counter-argument Payton raises is summarized in the following quotes,

“Christians hold it as a matter of fact that we are all sinners.  Secondly, we believe that all sinners deserve death,” and “Why is it that we complain that “bad things happen to good people”, when there are no good people?”

He is saying that the stories in the Bible are justified. As sinners, the humans whose deaths were chronicled in the Bible were justified. However, Jesus himself taught that sinners are to be forgiven, with such teachings as Matthew 18:21-22.

Matthew 18:21-22, “21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”

And yet, God himself does not follow this ethical law. And even so, how does this justify the grievances afflicted to Job? God himself offers Job much praise, and holds him in glowing admiration.

Job 1:8, “8 Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

God explicitly states that Job 1) is blameless, 2) fears God, and 3) shuns evil. By Paytons own admission, someone who fits this criteria would not deserve the grievances inflicted upon him. If a government official decided to, for example, prove to a different country that Americans are tougher and did the same with an American citizen, equally praiseworthy, this act would be condemned. Is God allowed to do this simply because he is God? Does his nature as God make him exempt from objective ethical facts?

Other objections raised :

In my discussion of this article with fellow UrbanPhilosophy.net users I have come across a few things I may need to clarify. These are as follows.

1.) I am not saying that human beings follow these ethical facts, they simply recognize them to be truthful.

2.) Accepting the lesser of two evils would be included in this ethical code.

3.) Humans are obligated to follow these ethical facts, not made to.

Again, I appreciate Payton’s time and effort in replying to my article! I appreciate the criticisms, and I welcome criticisms to my reply, or to my original argument. That’s what we’re here for, right? Thanks again, and I look forward to any and all replies!

______

* these are included, but not limited to, several pastors, several theology instructors, and Christians of a more intellectual persuasion. If they are in error, I apologize.

A Review of the “New” Atheism

Within the scope of this work, the “new” atheism will be considered.  First of all, it will be necessary to consider what the new atheism is, and how it is a specific representative of the atheist worldview.  Second, some of the important philosophical presuppositions within the new atheism will be considered and clarified.  It is my contention that the new atheism is really a second or third generation form of logical positivism, or scientism, two points of view that are closely connected.  In my third and final portion of this work, I will consider the implications of such a view and even suggest some of the potential weaknesses or contradictions that might ensue.

I.  Atheism in general and the particular form of atheism in question

While it seems a given as to what atheism actually means, one must carefully consider that in any worldview or philosophy, there are variations.  Not only that, but there are often different attitudes and personalities within a worldview.  While many critics of theism within this camp are quite pleased to lump all theistic activity within one ubiquitous whole, one should not respond in kind, no matter how tempting.  This is a logical fallacy of hastily generalizing a worldview and can often lead to posting it up as an easily defeated “straw man.”  Atheists pose serious questions which need to be addressed; and there is no possible way to address all these questions and inquiries within one brief work. As a result, I would like to distinguish between general, or basic, atheism, and what is called the “new” atheism.

I-A. Basic atheism

Most people readily understand the definition of the word “atheist.”  It is commonly understood as “one who does not believe in God.”  Coming from Greek meaning “without God,” this is the general, and correct, understanding, of the term.  For example, Douglas Krueger, author of “What is Atheism? A Short Introduction” defines atheism concisely:  “Atheism is the belief that there are no gods.  It’s that simple (24).”[1]

However, before Krueger defines basic atheism, he makes an important claim in his unfolding introduction to atheism.  He makes the assertion that atheism cannot be simplified to one viewpoint.  Krueger claims “Atheism itself is not a worldview, it is not a philosophy of life.  It is an important part of a larger view, but atheism alone is not supposed to be a comprehensive philosophy of life.”[2] So atheism, as defined by its own adherents, is only part of a larger philosophy of life.  While on some level this seems to be a bit convenient, as an atheist can adjust their viewpoint ex post facto, it also leaves itself open to a criticism that atheism inevitably leads to some form of existentialism where life’s meaning is both utterly and ultimately defined by the individual.  I will address these implications later in the third section.

For now, let us take this statement and uphold it, and see what may result.  If there are different forms of atheism, then it is, as I said earlier, impossible to address all of the various forms in a short work.  It is fair to say that there are typically four philosophical motifs that reassert themselves periodically throughout the main body of atheist literature, such as existentialism, scientism, utopianism and some form of nihilism.[3] However, there is philosophical diversity within the broader perspective of atheism.  For instance, Nietzsche could be identified with existentialism and nihilism, but not necessarily with scientism or utopianism.   So for now, I would like to address one strand of atheism that has asserted itself in several circles, from professional academics to curious intellectuals who purchase reading materials from Amazon.com and other commercial enterprises.  That is the “new atheism.”

II. What is the “New” Atheism?

The new atheism has some defining characteristics.  First of all, there are four authors who are its most vociferous proponents:  Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris.  These four authors are the most frequently recurring names in the literature of responding theists ranging from the extremely conservative to extremely liberal; thus they are the four who will be considered in this work.  There are other atheist authors and thinkers who may be sympathetic, or even in complete accord with the thought of the aforementioned.  The two that are focused upon in this review are Dawkins and Harris.[4] However, these are the names that keep popping up in the greater dialectic between various theists and the next generation of atheistic thinkers.[5]

So if these are the representatives of the new atheism, what are they advocating?  What are some of the common characteristics of the new atheism?  Is it presumptuous, given Krueger’s insistence that atheism is not a worldview in itself, to look for repeating ideas or themes in the books?  Does atheism have any kind of nucleus?  Actually, while reading the work of the new atheism’s representatives, there are overarching or similar concepts seen in the four authors.  Common truth claims, attitudes, and pleas for certain changes appear in all of these author’s books.  That is one main reason many observers, and not only theists, do regard this group as representative of a “new” atheism.[6] This new atheism, however, must be primarily understood not as people making claims that are radically different from those of their atheist predecessors, although there are some disconnects.  New atheism is new atheism primarily because it is the atheism of our current generation and now is the time in which theists must respond.  At any rate, what are some of the important, defining characteristics of the new atheism?

The first characteristic of new atheism that seems to be its predominant quality is its appeal to science as the only meaningful source of knowledge.  Consider this excerpt from Sam Harris:

Is a person really free to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence?  No.  Evidence (whether sensory or logical) is the only thing that suggests a given belief is really about the world in the first place.  We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification.  When their beliefs are extremely common we call them “religious”; otherwise they are likely to be called “mad,” “psychotic,” or “delusional” (71-2).[7]

Unfortunately, to get to the essential argument made by Harris, Dawkins, and the new atheists, one must sidestep a good bit of vitriol and intellectual elitism.  However in this excerpt, Harris is mostly being clear about his philosophical view without being too hurtful.  There are numerous responses to be made here, but I believe it is important to identify a premise that is implicitly affirmed in the new atheism.  The deeper presupposition made here is that anything cannot be meaningful as a statement if it cannot be empirically observed and tested.  Science and reasoning are often considered equivalent in this new atheism.  Science is the decided contemporary venue of reason. Therefore, that which cannot be examined or understood in scientific terms is nonsense, or the product of a delusional mind.  In the works of Harris and others, this epistemic view is the prevalent, if not exclusive one.

In fact, Dawkins and many of the other new atheists suggest that God be treated as a hypothesis.  The underlying logic is that anything that can or should be of value to the human race is that which can be tested scientifically.  A hypothesis is an idea which can be verified or falsified with repeated empirical analysis.[8] Does the God of a theist fit into so tight and compartmentalized a space?  Regardless of the view taken of this question, the new atheists claim that God is one among many hypotheses.  Additionally, they claim that they follow in the footsteps of Laplace who suggest that the hypothesis is unnecessary.[9] Indeed, the hypothesis of God is now defunct in the new atheist view.  Where we came from and how there is something rather than nothing is no longer a mystery whatsoever. Dawkins claims that the issue is finally solved:

This book is written in the conviction that our own existence one presented the greatest of all mysteries, but that it is a mystery no longer because it is solved.  Darwin and Wallace solved it, though we shall continue to add footnotes to their solution for a while yet. (Preface, ix.)[10]

If we were indeed to concede that the said convictions were true, think of the implications.  First of all, there would be no more need for any significant subsequent scientific speculation, only footnotes to Darwin.[11] Second, scientists would supplant the role of philosophers and theologians as arbiters of ultimate meaning.  This is precisely the aim of the new atheists.  Their aim is the end of faith (the title of Sam Harris’s first major work), and the beginning of a second wave of enlightenment identifiable by a society that totally embraces one particular scientific hypothesis.  Third, however, is that the scientific method would eliminate all others in the course of human knowledge and belief.  For example, Dawkins deeply criticizes prayer as a meaningful and important human experience throughout his work.  He also reserves some harsh words for philosophy.  However, that criticism is secondary to the underlying philosophical assumption that gives it impetus, namely that science and science alone shall pave the way forward.  Never mind that science, if we consider the warnings of many, shall always be an open-ended and unfinished endeavor.[12] Also never mind that science itself is an academic discipline prone to its own philosophical biases and political in-fighting. For Dawkins this is either irrelevant or an untrue depiction of actual science.  While Harris technically does not yield to the scientific reductionism that is more prevalent in Dawkins, he nonetheless seems to be very enamored by it.[13]

Another contemporary of the new atheists who treat God like a hypothesis is Victor Stenger, author of the book God:  The Failed Hypothesis; How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.  The title seems very conclusive, doesn’t it?  In this book Stenger states:  “As far as we can tell from our current scientific knowledge, the universe we observe with our senses and scientific instruments can be described in terms of matter and material processes alone” (16).[14] This is one of the lynchpin understandings of the new atheist; however the idea itself is not new.  It is scientism in the context of philosophical materialism, the belief that existence can be explained purely in natural terms as a result of the scientific process.  I will here employ the idea of epistemic scientism defined by Mikael Stenmark:

We can call this form of scientism, epistemic scientism, and define it as:  (4) The view that the only reality that we can know anything about is the one science has access to (4).[15]

It would seem that epistemic scientism is one of the foundational assumptions made by the new atheists.  Also, an assumption that the scientific reality is the only one in existence is an inference often made from this epistemic scientism.  The idea that only empirically verifiable matters of fact are epistemologically sound is not a new idea.  Quite the contrary, it dates back to the earliest empiricist and logical positivist philosophers.[16] Indeed one could make the claim that a wise Hebrew teacher himself had such tendencies when he made his observations “under the sun” a few thousand years ago.[17] This epistemic scientism can lead to what Stenmark calls methodological scientism, in which scientists claim that their judgment should, from a position of superiority, evaluate the opinions of all other academic disciplines.[18] Dawkins, Harris, Stenger and others do precisely that when they claim to be more aware of the truth of the world than philosophers, theologians, anthropologists, and the like.  For example, it will be biologists who teach us about survival mechanisms that instill in us the proper understanding of ethics and morality.[19] The scientific view is superior, and religion will eventually be outsourced as religion itself is defined in exclusively natural terms.[20] One of the most important characteristics of the new atheism is its foundational premise that only science can save humanity from its colossally ignorant and superstitious past of religious belief.

Not surprisingly, then, another characteristic of the new atheists is their heartfelt plea to abolish religion and faith as they are unreasonable and ignorant approaches to human living.  The new atheists are convinced that if the influence of religion continues to linger in a culture, the effects will be devastating:

Many are still eager to sacrifice happiness, compassion, and justice in this world, for a fantasy of a world to come.  These and other degradations await us along the well-worn path of piety.  Whatever our religious difference may mean for the next life, they have only terminus in this one- a future of ignorance and slaughter.[21]

Implicit in this understanding of the new atheists are at least a few propositions.  First, that religion is responsible for the ills of the world, and that abolition of religion will be equal to a cleansing of the world of moral ambiguity, hatred, and other tragedies.  Second, implicit in the new atheists’ understanding is the idea that religion has not contributed to happiness, compassion, or justice in this world in any meaningful way.  Not only are theists guilty of the moral horrors of the world, they are also responsible for all the good that they do not do, or have prevented others from doing.  This seems to be a common premise in atheist literature.  Theists are often accused of being indifferent in the processes of self-improvement or societal betterment.  For example, Douglas Krueger claims:  “Many theists prefer to think that one can lead an important, purposeful life without doing much in the way of self-improvement, and this belief, perhaps, is part of the explanation of why theism is so popular.”[22] This idea that religion either gets in the way of the good, or as Christopher Hitchens says, “poisons everything,” is common in the new atheism. [23] Suffice it to say that from a purely empirical standard this premise seems overreaching and simply incorrect in its radical and uncompromising nature, it is nonetheless, a prevalent attitude and belief among the new atheists.  One cannot deny that people have done horrors in the name of religion.  However, the new atheists are also quite reserved, if not downright sheepish, in their very intermittent, sparse confessions that theists have at least done occasional good.  It is no wonder that Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias reserves some of his strongest language in a critique of these writers:  “… he is calling for the banishment of all religious belief.  ’Away with this nonsense’ is their battle cry!  In return, they promise a world of new hope and unlimited horizons- once we have shed this delusion of God.  I have news for them – news to the contrary (16).”[24] The new atheists, one can only assume, are ready for this response from the believing world.  The language of Harris leads us to believe that nothing good can remain if even a grain of the spiritual mentality survives:

What is the alternative to religion, as we know it?  As it turns out, this is the wrong question to ask.  Chemistry was not an ‘alternative’ to alchemy; it was a wholesale exchange of ignorance at its most rococo for genuine knowledge.  We will find that, as with alchemy, to speak of ‘alternatives’ to religious faith is to miss the point.[25]

Here I simply cannot resist the temptation to mention the historical irony that most early medieval theists forebode alchemy.  Moving on, however, the point is that the new atheists are so militant that they believe that religion must be completely eradicated.  While they rightly criticize the genocidal campaigns of religions past, they still desire the complete eradication of religious dogma and superstition.  This is not as violent as a physical genocide, but it would certainly be equivalent to a mental one.  I would say a “spiritual” one, but that term is meaningless since the advent of Crick and Watson to atheists such as Dawkins and Harris.  Doesn’t “X people’s way of thinking has caused all human evils” sound like a dangerous argument?  And further, is the community entrenched within the scientistic premise free from all moral criticism as a logical corollary from the above argument?  Science has been much freer from criticism than religion because of the conveniences that modern technology has given.  Today, part of education in any field, including philosophy, is an introduction to the basics of modern science.  Many academics and intellectuals perhaps even fear-criticizing science for the possibility that they will be seen as less credible.   Still, as science continues to advance, a better understanding of the various philosophies and practices of science would be invaluable to any wary scholar.[26] In fact, many of the religious mindset sees science as potentially accommodating to their worldview (2).[27] However, Dawkins is convinced that anyone of the religious mindset will not read his work:  “Among the more effective immunological devices is a dire warning to avoid opening a book like this, which is surely a work of Satan.  But I believe there are plenty of open-minded people out there:  people whose childhood indoctrination was not too insidious, or for other reasons didn’t ‘take,’ or whose native intelligence is strong enough to overcome it.”[28] To rephrase the argument only slightly to reveal its true nature propositionally:  intelligent people are synonymous with open-minded people.  The faithful do not occupy such a category, ergo; they cannot appreciate the finer arguments and brilliance in my book.  Aren’t open-minded, intelligent people the ones who only decide something on an empirical basis?  While there is noticeable empirical data in the thesis Dawkins advances, one must also understand that the case for a certain metaphysic, or perhaps lack thereof, is also being advocated on what is more rationalistic, and not entirely empirical, grounds.  Many of the chapters of Dawkins’s book focus on logical arguments for the existence of God or wrongdoings committed by theists.  That is why, built in to this understanding that religion must go, is what could be considered to be intellectual elitism, or the view that anyone who disagrees with the new atheists are wrong or even idiotic, and must go.  The faithful, or people who are too thoroughly indoctrinated in their own worldview, are “damaged goods” and cannot receive the wisdom imparted by the new atheists.  I ask my reader now to consider:  Isn’t every author, regardless of his or her ideological stripe, deeply indoctrinated and steeped in the worldview they advocate?  Nietzsche, an atheist, accused every philosopher of writing a personal “confession” rather than a systematic pursuit of relevant inquiries (66).[29] Does the premise of the old atheist apply to the thought of the new?  The entire assumption that a completely “open” mind exists is one that can be challenged.  Even the most intelligent mind has its own ideological preferences.  And isn’t the scientific method a way to use inductive reasoning to strengthen what was first a philosophical premise (42-43)?[30] Much of what I’ve just written, I know, must sound like the critique that was meant to come later; to the reader, and to Dawkins et al, I apologize.  Despite this, the new atheism could be considered nothing more than a regime change after a bloody coup, where the spiritual bodies of clerics from multiple faiths are torn asunder.  In their place will be scientific materialists who are committed to explaining all phenomena with science and would appreciate the non-interference of all other academic disciplines.  With its strong commitment to a particular philosophy (namely the modern form of empiricist philosophy, naturalism, and scientism), its desire to completely remove one way of thinking from humanity, and its belief that those who think otherwise are fools, the new atheism, ironically enough, seems to be guilty of some of the “sins” (if I may use that word) of the religious powers of the past.  This is one of theologian John Haught’s most significant critiques of the new atheism:

Instead of compromising with religious faith in the genteel way that secular and religious moderates have done in the past, the new atheists want us to abandon any such respect for freedom of faith and religious thought altogether.  Nothing impedes a clear –sighted grasp of the world’s most urgent problem today- religiously inspired terrorism-more thoughtlessly than moderate theology and liberal secular tolerance of faith (9).[31]

If freethinking is so valuable, why destroy so many forms of theology so that atheism can reign unopposed?  As said before, is this not analogous to a bloody regime change after a coup?  Is this not simply exchanging what the new atheist calls the despotism of monotheism for a subtler form of the same political method?  Regardless, what the new atheists call for clearly is the complete removal of the religious consciousness from humanity.  The new atheism is a quest to dethrone this self-perpetuating, yet fictitious sacred and uphold the true natural order.

Perhaps there is one more attitude of the new atheists that is worth note.  That is their critique of agnosticism and other epistemologies that do not posit at least some form of certitude. For example, Harris is sharply critical of relativism.[32] This is one of the more interesting positions taken by the new atheists, who also appear to affirm a worldview that posits some form of absolute truth.  There is an overwhelming confidence flowing from the propositions made by these new atheists.  For example, consider this excerpt from Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, from a section entitled “The Poverty of Agnosticism:”   “Nevertheless, it is a common error, which we shall meet again, to leap from the premise that the question of God’s existence and his non-existence are equiprobable.”[33] Dawkins makes distinctions between temporary agnosticism and permanent, principled agnosticism, in fairness to his argument.  However, the new atheist literature seems to disdain “on the fence” thinking as much as do many theistic absolutists.  This is peculiar, and very interesting.  In fact, one may be forced to admit here some respect for the new atheists because at least, rather than taking some convoluted, postmodern deconstructionist way out of epistemology, they attack the problems of the philosophical question of knowledge directly.  Furthermore, they reject what seems to be a growing wave of agnosticism and/or relativism in American thought.  They take a side.  One that often offends, true, and one with which I disagree profoundly, true, but they take a side.  They claim knowledge.  They construct a system, as the philosophers of old.  What an act of faith.

What inference can be made from this attitude?  Dawkins believes that some matters of epistemology cannot be reacted to in a sort of knee-jerk fashion, so he advocates the occasional temporary strain of agnosticism until empirical data is found.[34] Yet if the question of God is one where only probability, and not certitude, is available to us (keep in mind Stenger says it is resolved in the negative, which makes him a “7” on Dawkins’ scale),[35] isn’t he being overly critical of theists by calling them “delusional?”  There seems to be in the new atheist literature, a sort of incongruity here.  For now, however, let us observe that the new atheists ask the agnostics of the world to decide and shed the God hypothesis.  This criticism of agnosticism and relativism seems to be a corollary from their epistemology of empirical verification.  Science produces definite results, given enough time.  The impression one receives is that Dawkins believes that his belief will be completely vindicated given sufficient time:  “It may be that humanity will never reach the quietus of complete understanding, but if we do, I venture the confident prediction that it will be science, not religion, that brings us there.  And if that sounds like scientism, so much the better for scientism.”[36] That is a very profound confidence in science indeed, and why not?  Science has made amazing discoveries.  Amazing enough, though, to trump all other forms of human endeavor and thought?  Maybe so, says Dawkins, in fact, probably so.  Science will impart to humanity all the knowledge of which philosophy and religion have robbed it.

For example, as he laments that Bertrand Russell is not critical enough of Anselm’s ontological argument, Dawkins comments:

“My own feeling, to the contrary, would have been an automatic, deep suspicion of any line of reasoning that reached such a significant conclusion without feeding in a single piece of data from the real world.  Perhaps that indicates no more than that I am a scientist rather than a philosopher.”[37]

This statement is very illustrative of several elements in the new atheist thinking.  First, a non-empirical form of thought is very untrustworthy at best.  Second, a scientist might be better fit to discern and discover the truth than any other academe. Third, Dawkins critically observes that Russell himself may have been too generous an atheist that came across as more of an agnostic at critical times in his thought.  Dawkins quite often denigrates the work of philosophers and theologians.[38] In this statement, we see all the aforementioned elements of the new atheism weaving together.  Strangely enough, though, this does make Dawkins a definite philosopher very much like Popper, Carnap, or the early Wittgenstein.[39] Philosophy, science, and math, since their genesis (excuse me, inception), have often been overlapped and approached in a holistic, integrated fashion.  That is why the idea of a “renaissance man” is reminiscent of pre-modern and some early modern academic work.  Paschal, Newton, and others were interested in the arts, humanities, religion, philosophy, and science.  Science was once called natural philosophy.[40] Also, Harris and Dawkins, the two new atheists cited throughout this work, express themselves very much like philosophers.  Propositions, that is, affirmations and denials of multiple truth claims, are made.[41] The reader is expected to agree with the affirmations and denials made in the work.[42] If I may be ruthless as to employ such terms, the new atheists hope to “convert” people who may be agnostic or on the fence.  These three elements together are the most significant characteristics of new atheism:

1.)  An epistemological stance almost completely identical to early forms of radical empiricism including logical positivism; this is rooted in scientism and philosophical materialism

2.) The adamant belief that the world shall not be clean and pure until all religion is gone

3.)  A repudiation of epistemic and moral relativism that are symptomatic of an underlying agnosticism

How then, does a theist (or perhaps even agnostic not totally sold on these premises) respond?  What are some of the implications that result from taking these stances?  This shall be the focus of the third and final section.

III. Considering the Three Characteristics of New Atheism

3-A-i.  Scientism and Skepticism

What then, are we to conclude from the three perspectives described of the new atheism?  Are they conclusive, air-tight, arguments with no weakness or undesired implications?  No, they are not, and it is incredibly important to make some distinctions.  Let us consider the propositions, starting with a scientistic method accompanied by an underlying philosophical materialism.

First, let us look at the ideas which are interconnected in the new atheism.  It has become a more viable philosophical stance now because science is believed to explain more.  Scientism has, not surprisingly, been at the forefront of human consciousness when science makes it greatest advances.[43] From some exciting breakthroughs and advances, the additional, and less warranted step in epistemology is made to subdue all knowledge claims to the realm we call science.  This is the attitude of the new atheist, and here they differentiate little, if at all, from old atheists in the vein of Sigmund Freud:  “Freud calls his worldview ‘scientific,’ because of its premise that knowledge comes only from research.  Of course, this basic premise cannot itself be based on scientific research.  Rather, it is a philosophical assumption that cannot be proven” (37).[44] Here I believe Nicholi and other academicians have noticed some of the potential flaws within the epistemology that has sustained the “no-God hypothesis.”

For instance, when it is argued that science cannot scientifically prove the whole validity of science, this is a critical assertion in any realm of discourse concerning human knowledge.  Let’s mull over, for the time being, Harris’s view of science:

But all spheres of discourse are not on the same footing, for the simple reason that not all spheres of discourse seek the same footing (or any footing whatsoever).  Science is science because it represents our most committed effort to verify that our statements about the world are true (or at least not false).  We do this by observation and experiment within the context of a theory.  To say that a given scientific theory is wrong is not to say that it may be wrong in its every particular, or that any other theory stand an equal chance of being right.[45]

First of all, Harris’s first assessment could and probably even should be construed as a clever form of the logical fallacy begging the question when it connects to the greater dialogue of the book.  It is of the form that presupposes one of its most basic underlying tenets to achieve its conclusion; namely that science and empirical epistemology are superior (or on “higher footing”) to other forms of knowledge.  A theory in science is a truth that has considerable empirical momentum, but not quite so great that as a law; here I want to refer the reader to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, where I believe the most prevalent understanding of science and the philosophy that conjoin to it are understood.[46] However, can one isolated experiment, or particular, lead to a universal statement that Harris or Dawkins make about the seemingly unerring nature of science?  Further, can any number of scientific experiments verify with finality the metaphysical assumption that nature is all there is to existence?  In fact, can even a great bundle of particulars establish the philosophical premise that empirical data is the only reliable, true form of knowledge?  One could argue that to an extent, the new atheist equivocates the meanings, or at least results, of inductive and deductive reasoning.  At times they argue that science is the strength of their argument when the real form of argument used is deductive, namely a kind of reasoning that follows a progression of related premises.  Furthermore, a scientific conclusion is cited when there is an a priori hypothesis included in an experiment which is repeated to test that hypothesis.  Often the new atheist acts as if these two domains are nearly indistinguishable.  This is, they subtly weaken or even deny, the difference, between ground and consequent type logical thinking, and causal relationships explored in the sciences.  C.S. Lewis might say:

But naturalism, even if it is not purely materialistic, seems to me to involve the same difficulty, though in a somewhat less obvious form.  It discredits our processes of reasoning or at least reduces their credit to such a humble level that it can no longer support Naturalism itself.  The easiest way of exhibiting this is to notice the two senses of the word because… (Lewis then explains ground and consequent vs. causal uses of the word)…But unfortunately the two systems are wholly distinct.  To be caused is not to be proved.  Wishful thinking, prejudices, and the delusions of madness, are all caused, but they are ungrounded.  Indeed to be caused is so different from being proved that we behave in disputation as if they were mutually exclusive (218-219).[47]

In a nutshell, one could say that the new atheist often increases the probability of an inductive result to a certainty, or as some scientists might, say, blend the line between correlation (likely relationship) and causality (definite relationship).  Simply put, science and reason are not one and the same, and inductive processes may never be able to yield absolute certainty.  Also, reason and evidence are separate criteria, established from two different ways of thinking, not one.

Additionally, one must note that in just this one instance the theist might have a very strange bedfellow in David Hume.  David Hume is readily quoted by Dawkins concerning his repudiation of miracles, the ontological argument, and teleology (of any sort, back to this later).[48] However, David Hume also took some of the empiricist and rationalist understanding to task in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.  The proper understanding of Hume, I believe, is that he generated by the end of his philosophy a radical skepticism, which not only criticized religious believers (and to give Dawkins credit, this is the group that Hume loathed greatest), but also those who had unshakable faith in human reasoning or any endeavor connected to it as such.  Simply put, Hume’s sword of skepticism is double-edged. At first, it seems that Hume is in complete accord with the dogmatic empiricism of the new atheists:

It seems a proposition, which will not admit of much dispute, that all our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions, or, in other words, that it is impossible for us to think of any thing, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal senses (62).[49]

Hume here says that the greatest certainty should be assigned to those ideas that can be tested by, or correspond to, our senses.  This is empiricism.  Any claim of meaning is one that is tested by our senses.  Harris says it more forcefully still:  “There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of human life.  But we will find that it requires no faith in untestable propositions-Jesus was born of a virgin; the Koran is the word of God-for us to do this…How is it that, in this one area of our lives, we have convinced ourselves that our beliefs about the world can float entirely free of reason and evidence?”[50] Harris’s implicit assumption, again, is that what is testable is supreme.  We can see that there is a strong resemblance between the thinking of Hume and Harris here.  What is critical is the assumption that only those ideas derived from sensory stimulus are on solid footing.  However, what is the deeper rational basis that continues to establish the intelligibility of causal and sensory data?  Hume might say it is a constant conjunction, rather than necessary connection:

But though both these definitions be drawn from circumstances foreign to the cause, we cannot remedy this inconvenience, or attain any more perfect definition, which may point out that circumstance in the cause, which gives it a connexion with its effect.  We have no idea of this connexion, nor even any distinct notion what it is we desire to know, when we endeavour at a conception of it (77).[51]

Furthermore, in this section of the Enquiries, Hume says that what we mean by causation is, either the ground-consequent relationship:  namely that every time one thing happens, x, y happens for a reason unknown to us; or the cause-effect relationship:  when I do x, y happens; x causes y. In the first case, the two events are correlated, that is we understand that they are related to each other in some way.[52] In the second, the two events are related precisely, and the relationship is better isolated and understood.  Philosophers would refer to the latter case as a necessary cause.  Hume, in this passage, has cast skepticism on both forms of proposition.  Hume undercuts, in the whole of his philosophy, the entire human ability to claim knowledge that relates objects to the one perceiving them.  Is it always the case that we really “know” that one thing causes another?  While Harris and Dawkins have great faith in reason, Hume does not share their optimism.  Hume believed that the human reasoning process was subservient to particular desires, some of which may have been philosophical presuppositions.  Furthermore, is it possible that science occasionally “cuts corners” and assumes that one sensory experience is caused by another when it is only correlated?  Certainly this has happened in the past.  What Hume suggests here is a significant skepticism in the ability of human beings to universalize from a particular and make a working cause-effect theory.  It is a skepticism that cuts at some of the very foundational assumptions that make any worldview complete, be it scientific or religious.  Imagine an acid so strong that it could dissolve the physical makeup of anything.  How would you contain such a substance?    Hume’s skepticism, while not as extreme as that of a Descartes, still comes very close.[53] Kant, a contemporary of Hume, noticed the degree of his skepticism:

Hume started mainly from a single but important concept in metaphysics, namely, that of the connection of cause and effect (including its derivative concepts of force and action, etc.). He challenged reason, which pretends to have given birth to this concept of herself, to answer him by what right she thinks anything could be so constituted that if that thing be posited, something else also must necessarily be posited; for this is the meaning of the concept of cause.  He demonstrated irrefutably that it was entirely impossible for reason to think a priori and by means of concepts such a combination as involves necessity (3).[54]

Hume’s was a radical skepticism that Kant combated with all his philosophical strength, however today in the case of postmodern thinkers such as Michel Foucault, the cases made by Hume have gone even further in tearing away at reason by its seams.[55] In short, Dawkins and Harris want to have their cake and eat it too when this isn’t really possible, slaying the beast of religiously based teleology while persevering within another teleology founded purely in reason and/or science.[56] Yet when teleology is undercut wholly, and annihilated, all ensuing forms also die.  Citing Hume to ascertain greater certainty in your worldview is not unlike digesting arsenic in the hopes that only your unneeded appendix will be destroyed and usefully removed.  In all fairness to the new atheists, all scholars have a tendency to glean from their contemporaries what is found to be useful while discarding the rest, but to take the whole of Hume seriously is to live a life of a sort of religious skepticism; that includes skepticism toward advances in all human epistemology.  Hume is more agnostic than he is new atheist.  Yet the very divorce of Dawkins and others from agnosticism should also include a more significant divorce from the work of Hume.  Many critiques of the new atheism involve a critique of the scientism that doesn’t always regard some of the important dialectics that have taken place in the philosophy of science, and that they have created a philosophy that doesn’t always honor the logical implications of its sources or deepest presuppositions.  Namely, once one finds skepticism powerful enough to kill God, it is quite possible that such skepticism also eradicates all other forms of philosophical transcendence, including the hallowed reverence which some ascribe to science and reasoning.

3-A-ii.  Is it wrong to look back, upward or inward?  Scientism, History, and Metaphysics

If scientism is a meaningful or correct approach to knowledge and human living, we must consider what some of the potential effects of scientism are.  For instance, because empirical observation is firmly rooted in the eternal now, the scientistic viewpoint casts a shadow of doubt upon the academic discipline of history, or as I simply define it (indeed some historians might get mad at me here), “looking backward.”  Yet additionally, since scientism is founded on the empiricist premise, it might have trouble with metaphysics, which again I simply define as looking “inward and or upward.”  The advocate of scientism looks exclusively outward in a sort of epistemological tunnel vision.  The logical positivist, A.J. Ayer, commented on the difficulty of accumulating sense experiences for the rugged empiricist:  “How, for example, can we hold it to be possible to express perceptual judgments in terms of sense-data if we are obliged to deny that any sense-datum can be experienced by more than one person (136)”?[57] How can the practices of metaphysics and history be equally valid alongside science if they are not predicated upon the immediate individual sense experience and subsequent line of inductive reasoning?

One of the key assumptions of the new atheists is that the longer ago an idea has its origin, the more certainly we can dismiss it as a source of knowledge.  The fact that religions are old and science new is considered enough to establish superiority:  “Religious moderation springs from the fact that even the least educated person among us simply knows more about certain matters than anyone did two thousand years ago-and much of this knowledge is incompatible with Scripture.”[58] At first, this statement seems to some as undeniably true.  However, upon reflection this statement does not seem as unilaterally true as one might think.  Surely even secular scholars who read the Bible gain some sort of historical understanding of ancient society and literature?  And is it possible that ancient man, at every critical point and turn, knew nothing of value to the contemporary person?  And what of medieval monks who in their late teens were often literate in two or more languages?  Do they not trump a modern American high school graduate who cannot read his or her native language?  And doesn’t the critic who says that a Bible cannot address modern problems admit that non-Biblical society has its own problems not caused by a theistic worldview?  All of these seem like fair contentions, but not so with Harris.  The truth is told much the same way time is:  with a watch.  Yet that watch moves forward, pushing progress to the next horizon.  Never once is it considered that the ancients knew and understood great truths that we may have missed.  The one thing that Harris finds interesting in the past is some randomly selected Buddhist literature and the religious attitude of the East.[59] However even his respect here is conditioned by the belief that science will ultimately close the gap that made the wisdom of these ancient gurus seem mystical in quality.  The epilogue Harris writes finalizes his view that anything from long ago can speak authoritatively to modern man:  “books that embrace the narrowest spectrum of political, moral, scientific, and spiritual understanding- books that, by their antiquity alone, offer us the most dilute wisdom with respect to the present- are still dogmatically thrust upon us as the final word on matters of the greatest significance.”[60] Antiquity, that is, something of old, is synonymous with irrelevance.[61] Does anyone else from the outside of the new atheism looking in see a certain eschatology associated with the behemoth of progress?  To coin a neologism, one might call the new atheism “temporocentric.”  To judge the worth and value of other cultures from the now, to look at our human predecessors with disdain and contempt, that is the absolute now.  Will our children do the same?  Will they look at the scientism and new atheism as rudimentary and foolish?  It is quite possible that they might look at the new atheists much the same way the new atheists regard those of religious disposition now.

Moreover, what is the fate of metaphysics in the hands of the new atheists?  Well, if there is any transcendental element to how one defines metaphysics, there may be no metaphysics in the eyes of modern man.  Philosophical naturalism, the view that the natural world is all that exists, is a view that has been advocated by several philosophers including Bertrand Russell and others (25).[62] This is the worldview that conditions some scientists today. Because science has created many technologies that make life more convenient, it is often sheltered from criticism.  Dawkins has never considered this in his many diatribes on how respectfully religion is treated in the public sphere.[63] In fact, because religion can often be a voice of dissension against a given cultural practice or because it requires a deep commitment, religion is often the most persecuted and discouraged form of human experience there is.  Many do not think that the benefits of religion outweigh the costs.  As such the new atheists do away with faith and God, and also expel from possibility life after death, or any special metaphysical significance humanity might have had in the world.  Furthermore, the belief that love, art, and other societal fixtures can be explained in purely natural terms, removes the transcendent or mystical quality from them.  It is not true love, which motivates, but a desire of a genetic matrix to perpetuate itself.  Art is nothing more than pigmented dye on a canvas.  Our minds lack volition to transcend their own material processing; contrary to the atheism of Sartre or Nietzsche, the new atheism is one that posits at minimum a significant genetic determinism; humans are not totally free.  This seems to be the inevitable case Dawkins would make.  Consider this excerpt from The Selfish Gene:  “Genes have no foresight.  They do not plan ahead.  Genes just are, some genes more so than others, and that is all there is to it (24).”[64] Dawkins also creates imagery that we humans are not unlike puppets on marionette strings, dancing to our DNA.  He quickly adds that he does not believe in total genetic determinism, because other factors can place overwhelming influence on us.[65] Meanwhile, what are these other influences?  Could religion and/or metaphysical speculation be one of them?

Yet in all this scientism and philosophical naturalism, the internal dialogue of the mind is merely the determined mechanics of genetics that we do not yet fully understand, but one day surely will.  However the dogmatic view of the external material world as all of reality could eliminate some useful aspects of the human self:  “The problem is that the cognitive state of being transfixed by objects ‘out there’ has become so much a part of modern intellectual sensibilities that the temptation arises to assume that there really is no ‘in here’ at all.  Or, if there is, it is a wispy lining on the underside of what is available only to objectivist scrutiny.”[66] It is precisely that kind of tunnel vision and lack of introspection that has led philosophers from Socrates forward to push us back to it, sometimes making himself an annoying “gadfly” while doing so.  When we are forced to examine the “in here”, the life of mind or spirit or soul, we are often inconvenienced with dark and deep truths that break through the conventional wisdom of the modern day and raise our level of awareness.  Modern humans, perhaps more so than any other time of history, are totally preoccupied.  Paschal takes the inability of modern man to look inward to task:

Sometimes, when I set to thinking about the various activities of men, the dangers and troubles which they face at Court, or in war, giving rise to so many quarrels and passions, daring and often wicked enterprises and so on; I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room…  Imagine any situation you like, add up all the blessings with which you could be endowed, to be king is still the finest thing in the world; yet if you imagine one with all the advantages of his rank, but no means of diversion, left to ponder and reflect on what he is, this limp felicity will not keep him going (172)[67]

It is also Paschal that coined the term “ennui” that we generally translate as “boredom.”  How ironic is it that modern people are freer to entertain themselves than ever before and yet the constant complaint of boredom rears its ugly head?  It is precisely because of this detachment from a metaphysical sense of self that has led down this path.  Modern humans, almost pathologically, deny the importance of looking away from the external world to the world of inner mental dialogue.  That is why sensory deprivation itself has become a marketable, salable entity as of late.  Do you care to get away?  People enmeshed in the modern world of scientism long desperately, even for a few short moments, to once again look inward and feel that there is some meaning in doing so.

Yet once the premise of philosophical naturalism has been established, the ability to look inward deteriorates, as does the ability to look upward.  Even Harris, when admitting the inability of scientific reductionism to completely satisfy human yearnings for ethical truths; looks to something such as happiness to build up ethics.[68] Yet what if some are “wired” for violence or other unpleasant acts?  It seems inevitable that once a naturalist has considered happiness to be the ultimate criterion of ethics and meaning, they have at once relativized the effort to discern ethical truth.  Because people often define or experience happiness very differently, this would necessitate moral relativism and the creation of thousands of different moral paradigms.  Yet it is relativism that the new atheists critique!  What if there were an absolute reference point to define human goodness and happiness?  Would that not cure the difficulty that Harris faces in trying to simultaneously assert ethical absolutism and philosophical naturalism?  For years religion served just such a purpose in the minds and hearts of people all over the world. The problem here is that when one looks inward only, instead of inward and upward, anything becomes morally permissible.  The consistent atheists of old knew this truth instinctively, that with God dead, man was free, all too free.  What the new atheists desire is some of the advantages of the old theistic morality while totally doing away with the structure of the theistic epistemology.  In reality, the two are not so easily separated.

3-B.  Better off without religion?

The world would be free of tragedy and pain if religion were to quietly die a noble death?  No, not if the twentieth century has taught us anything of value.  History has revealed that the mind of scientism can be as destructive and morally repugnant as the face of religion.  Sam Harris is deeply concerned that nuclear proliferation will lead to religious extremists destroying the entire world.[69] Yet what Harris either forgets to mention or doesn’t want to admit, is that religion did not create those weapons of mass destruction.  Science did.  It was within a private, isolated scientific community that an intense curiosity to learn new things was warped into knowledge that could destroy millions of lives in an instant.  It is ironic that Harris calls for the end of faith because of his fear of something that science created.

Without religion, it is quite possible that a number of ethically responsible people will consider the principle of harm and become sensitive to the happiness of others.  However, the twentieth century has provided examples of harsh murder and genocide at the hands of leaders who were also convinced that religion was the “opiate of the masses.”  Leaders like Stalin, Mussolini, and Mao provide examples of people who held disdain for religious thinking.  Dawkins’ argument for the case of Hitler makes him out to be a politician first before anything else, but still he was here in The God Delusion forced to say that although there are evil atheists, atheism isn’t causal of evil behavior.[70] Yet in so admitting, Dawkins has undermined the argument here that religion is a necessary cause of evil.  If it were as simple as all atheists are good and numerous religious people are bad, than any rational individual would assume bar none that atheism is the more profitable worldview.  However because there are numerous practitioners of religion that do moral good in the world such as feeding the hungry and comforting the afflicted, then the argument that religion is inherently evil loses much of its strength.  If both atheism and religion can lead to evil, then both are equally sufficient causes of evil.  The perhaps frightening reality that humans have learned together is that simply breathing seems in the human case to be a sufficient cause for evil.  That puts all humans on equal moral footing, no matter how loath the new atheists may be to admit it.

If there were a world without religion, a new atheist paradise of sorts, what would the new “summum bonum” be?  What would be the greatest good?  No eternity or life after death exists in the human consciousness any longer.  Furthermore, through some act of the natural selection mechanism the part of the brain that lent itself to belief now no longer existed.  Imagine this world.  Is it utopia, without violence?  Do people no longer fight over resources and ideas?  It seems highly unlikely.  Darwin was influenced by the work of Thomas Malthus, a scientist who studied population mechanics:

As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected.  From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form (29).[71]

Thomas Malthus and many other biologists and scientists of his time became increasingly interested in how certain populations of animals die out.  Malthus even occasionally extended his findings into speculation about the future of the global human population.  Some have even embraced ideologies called “neo-Malthusian,” which suggest that if humanity is to survive, it must de-industrialize.  It seems, in our speculation about a Darwinian paradise that survival itself would be the summum bonum, or greatest good, conferred upon its lucky recipients.  Will not, even without religion, humans continue to fight over land rights, water usage, food supplies, and money that secures these precious goods instrumental for survival?  That “struggle” to which Darwin referred was the ultimate “arche” of philosophical naturalism, and inevitably leads to survival as ultimate good.  If religion is as harmful to the survival of humanity as the new atheists claim, Darwin’s process will simply eliminate it naturally.  Apparently, Dawkins, Harris, and the rest don’t want to wait that long.

3-C.  Certainty

What is most surprising about the new atheism is its view that absolute truth exists, despite its appeal to Darwinian mechanisms and critique of religiously justified absolute truth claims.  This truth is a scientific one.  With Dawkins, evolution has seemed to be this absolute.  With Harris, the principle of harm has seemed closest to what he elevates as universally applicable.  Given their critique of religious behavior as wrong, it is not surprising that they appeal to some universal moral standard to judge the behavior.  However, what is strange about this is that the same conclusion about some moral truths as being universal led the thinker C.S. Lewis down a different path toward theism.[72] At the beginning of The God Delusion, Dawkins notes how the same experience of nature could lead one to priesthood and another to be an advocate of atheism.[73] Why can the same experience convince one person that there is no God and convince another that there is?  Even if we were to assume that any two human beings would have the same epistemic interpretation of an event, this does not necessarily entail them having the same emotional or philosophical view as a result.  Some may see pain as a strengthening event, others as a sure sign that God does not exist.  Still others may see it as something that will come and go, while being indifferent to the possibility that any intrinsic meaning can be assigned to the event.  Perhaps to put it more simply, isn’t the easiest way to answer a question regarding our interpretation of an event, “I don’t know,” or “I’m not sure?”  This is often a dissatisfactory answer when we consider the curious and inquisitive nature of the human mind.  Even more so, sometimes this answer is impossible because of the lack of existential satisfaction which it provides.  Yet if the new atheism is fueled forward by intellectual honesty, wouldn’t it be the more defendable position?

The new atheists desire to transform the culture, not from a culture which is blindly faithful to a culture that regards with suspicion all knowledge claims, but to a culture which regards with suspicion only those claims which religion makes.  The idea that a clear and articulate scientific method can lead to irrefutable results has been questioned not merely by religious extremists, but also by secular scientists who see the very dogmatic views of some scientists to be hazardous to science itself:

On closer analysis we even find that science knows no ‘bare facts’ at all but that the ‘facts’ that enter our knowledge are already viewed in a certain way and are, therefore, essentially complex, chaotic, and full of mistakes, and entertaining as the ideas it contains, and these ideas in turn will be as complex, chaotic, full of mistakes, and entertaining as are the minds of those who invented them.  Conversely, a little brainwashing will go a long way in making the history of science duller, simpler, more uniform, more ‘objective’ and more easily accessible to treatment by strict and unchangeable rules.  Scientific education as we know it today has precisely this aim… A person’s religion, for example, or his metaphysics, or his sense of humor (his natural sense of humour and not the inbred and always rather nasty kind of jocularity one finds in specialized professions) must not have the slightest connection with his scientific activity.  His imagination is restrained, and even his language ceases to be his own.  This is again reflected in the nature of scientific ‘facts’ which are experienced as being independent of opinion, belief, and cultural background (11-12).[74]

The “anarchic” approach to knowledge that is described at length in Against Method warns of dogmatism of any kind encroaching upon the human imagination, a special part of the mind that Einstein, the hero of the new atheists, held in high regard.  Many of the new atheists are quick to warn of the danger of religious absolutism.  What they suggest as the remedy?  A firm upholding of the scientific method with absolutely no religious influence exerted on any sector of the global culture.  A particular scientific paradigm, compounded with the philosophical premises of atheism and materialism, will simply take the place of the religious paradigm across the world.  The world will then be safe and move toward complete and utter knowledge of the universe.  Let us concede that this revolution shall work.  Is there any guarantee that with the knowledge greater achievements in science yield, that there will be an ethical use of the knowledge imparted?  Furthermore, with religion completely disbanded, wouldn’t the ethical justification have to come from some authoritarian, absolute form of global government?  Once the transcendental authorities of religion are removed, government seems to be the only significant way to unify and direct human knowledge and power.  In its simplest form, that is what government is, the association of people.   Despite the above thought experiment resultant from the concession of the new atheist revolution, one cannot hold in complete disdain the new atheistic desire for some form of certainty.  Yearning for certitude seems to be a common desire within every human mind.  However, if postmodern philosophy is any indication of the future of human epistemology, than any form of absolutism which could subsequently construct a “metanarrative” is viewed with equal suspicion.

Perhaps it seems hard to understand why the new atheistic belief, with its harsh criticism and blind watchmaker, [75] with random generation of a “replicator” gene over many trials and errors in primordial soup,[76] that we could arrive later at anything close to rational certainty when it is highly likely that there are thousands of different genetic matrixes that often yield diverse ways of thinking, if thinking is simply and completely a natural process.  That human opinion could converge upon any certain truth, rather than diverge into different schools of thought throughout turbulent periods of history and genetic alteration, seems very idealistic.  Perhaps far too optimistic and unreal if the greater implications of the new atheist viewpoint are taken seriously from start to logical finish.  This would seem to be the atheist introducing their own sort of wish fulfillment, that a truth would become equally obvious to all as we move to a Hegelian form of world spirit,[77] only in completely natural terms.  Harris, while repudiating the term “spirituality,” still uses the term “consciousness” to describe the human pursuit of happiness.[78] The new atheists seem to assert certain universally recognizable forms of human consciousness, such as sensation.  Yet even here certainty cannot be guaranteed, for the simple fact that some are blind, others deaf, some schizophrenic and thus imagine sensory experiences that the vast majority would tell them are not really real.  The world in evolutionary terms, as it expands, seems to yield significant diversity in numerous combinations, rather than a convergence upon any kind of epistemological or moral certainty.

IV.  Conclusion

While there are many more observations and thoughts I wish I could share regarding the new atheism, these were some of the thoughts that seemed to emerge as most important.  A theist must, for the very sake of their belief and personal integrity, interact in an ethical manner with an atheist.  An atheist, especially of the latest version, may respond with hatred, intellectual condescension, or a dismissive attitude.  Ideally the meeting of an atheist and committed religious believer could result in a mutual learning process, however from what I’ve observed on Youtube that seems an unlikely scenario.  Nonetheless, I implore theists, especially Christians of which I am one, to strive to improve their faith.  For belief in God is not so simply defined as a delusion, or a completely unfounded assent to belief, it is an encompassing and enriching way of life.

List of Works Cited

Aeschliman, Michael D.  The Restitution of Man:  C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism.  Grand Rapids, Michigan:  William B.  Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1983.

Aronson, Ronald. “The New Atheists.” The Nation June 2007

Ayer, A.J.  The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge.  London:  MacMillan and Company Ltd., 1963.  8^th ed.

—.  Ed.  Logical Positivism.  New York, New York:  The Free Press, 1959.

Burtt, E.A.  The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science.  Garden City, New York:  Doubleday and Company, 1954.

Darwin, Charles.  The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection of The Preservation of Favoured Races In The Struggle For Life.  New York, New York:  Penguin Books, 1958.  10^th ed.

Dawkins, Richard.  The Blind Watchmaker.  New York, New York:  W.W. Norton and Company, 1986.

—.  The God Delusion.  Boston, Massachusetts:  Houghton-Mifflin, 2006.

—.  The Selfish Gene.  Oxford, England:  Oxford University Press, 1989.

Feyerabend, Paul.  Against Method.  London, England:  Verso, 1988.  3^rd ed.

Foucault, Michel.  The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language.  Trans.  A.M.  Sheridan Smith.  New York, New York:  Pantheon Books, 1972.

Friedman, Michael.  Reconsidering Logical Positivism.  Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Glynn, Patrick.  God:  The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World.  Rocklin, California:  Prima Publishing, 1997.

Hangling, Oswald.  Ed.  Essential Readings in Logical Positivism.  Oxford, England:  Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd., 1981.

Harris, Sam.  The End of Faith:  Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.  New York, New York:  W.W.  Norton and Company, 2004.

Haught, John.  God and the New Atheists:  A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens.  Louisville, Kentucky:  Westminister John Knox Press, 2008.

Hume, David.  Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning The Principles of Morals.  Ed.  P.H.  Nidditch.  Oxford, England:  Clarendon Press, 1975.  3^rd ed.

Kant, Immanuel.  Trans.  Paul Carus/Rev.  James W. Ellington.  Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.  Indianapolis, Indiana:  Hackett Publishing Company, 1977.  17^th ed.

Kreeft, Peter.  Christianity for Modern Pagans:  Paschal’s Pansees Edited, Outlined, and Explained.  San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 1993.

Krueger, Douglas E.  What is Atheism?:  A Short Introduction.  Amherst, New York:  Prometheus Books, 1998.

Lewis, C.S.  Ed. Joseph Rutt/Ill. Kathleen Edwards. The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics.    San Francisco:  Harper Collins Publishing Company, 2002.

Melchert, Norman.  Ed.  The Great Conversation:  A Historical Introduction to Philosophy.  Mountain View, California:  Mayfield Publishing Company, 1999.

Nicholi, Armand  Jr.  The Question of God:  C.S.  Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Sex, Love, and The Meaning of Life.  New York, New York:  The Free Press, 2002.

Nietzsche, Friedrich.  Ed./Trans.  Walter Kaufmann.  The Portable Nietzsche.  New York, New York:  Penguin Books, 1984.  23^rd ed.

Sorrell, Tom.  Scientism:  Philosophy and The Infatuation with Science.  London, England:  Routledge, Chapman, and Hall Inc., 1991.

Stenger, Victor J.  God: The Failed Hypothesis; How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.  Amherst, New York:  Prometheus Books, 2007.

Stenmark, Mikael.  Scientism:  Science, Ethics, and Religion.  Aldershot, England:  Ashgate Publishing Company, 2001.

Zacharias, Ravi.  The End of Reason:  A Response to the New Atheists.  Grand Rapids, Michigan:  Zondervan Publishing, 2008.

[2] Krueger, 23.

[3] To give a brief example of each in literature:  Jean Paul Sartre in existentialism, scientism from logical positivists such as AJ Ayers or writers like Freud and Carl Sagan, utopianism in a perfect free-association Marxist society a la “A Communist Manifesto”, or nihilism demonstrated by Nietzsche’s “madman.”

[4] In the case of Dawkins I have gleaned from The God Delusion, The Blind Watchmaker, The Selfish Gene (and thus consequently brushed up on some Darwin’s Origin) and from Sam Harris, The End of Faith:  Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.

[5] Two examples being God and the New Atheists by John Haught and The End of Reason by Ravi Zacharias, both of which are cited elsewhere in this paper.

[6] Ronald Aronson, “The New Atheists,” The Nation June 2007.

[7] Harris, Sam.  The End of Faith:  Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.  (2004).  New York:  W.W. Norton and Company.

[8] This idea of verification is a recurring theme in philosophical empiricism and philosophy of science, including Karl Popper et al., but here I refer to Moritz Schlick’s writing, “Meaning and Verification.”

Moritz Schlick, “Meaning and Verification,” Essential Readings in Logical Positivism, ed.  Oswald Hanfling (Oxford, England:  Basil Blackwell, 1981) 32-33.

[9] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 46.  Footnote in Dawkins which reminds us that Laplace (Napoleon’s associate) had no need of the “hypothesis of God” when writing his book on mathematics.

[10] Dawkins, Richard.  The Blind Watchmaker:  Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design.  (1986).  New York:  W.W. Norton and Company.

[11] An interesting movie that at least calls into question the view that creationists are running the schools’ biology departments, Expelled, by Ben Stein, is worth considering.   Dawkins is interviewed in this movie.

[12] Even Dawkins and Harris occasionally, and subtly, admit this.

[13] Harris, 185.

[14] Stenger, Victor J.  God:  The Failed Hypothesis; How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist.  (2007).  Amherst, New York:  Prometheus Books.

[15] Stenmark, Mikael.  Scientism:  Science, Ethics and Religion.  (2001), Burlington, Vermont:  Ashgate Publishing Company.

[16] This view is summarized effectively in an excellent introduction to philosophy textbook in its analysis of Wittgenstein and other early logical positivists:  Norman Melchert, ed.  The Great Conversation:  A Historical Introduction to Philosophy.  (Mountain View, California:  Mayfield Publishing Company, 1999) 627-632.

[17] The book of Ecclesiastes is ripe with just such a type of empirical observation of the world around us, namely ones made “under the sun.”  Dawkins might think me blasphemous or fundamentalist for bringing it up, but so be it.

[18] Stenmark, 2.

[19] Dawkins, Richard.  The God Delusion.  (2006).  New York:  Houghton-Mifflin Company.  In the particular section mentioned, Dawkins makes the argument that all human behavior can, and probably will be explained all in terms of Darwinian evolution.  (214-222)

[20] This is the thesis of The God Delusion’s chapter 5, “The Roots of Religion,” pp. 163-207.

[21] Harris, 223.

[22] Krueger, 82.

[23] Hitchens recently titled a book “How Religion Poisons Everything.”

[24] Zacharias, Ravi.  The End of Reason:  A Response to the New Atheists.  (2008).  Grand Rapids, Michigan:  Zondervan Publishing.

[25] Harris, 14.

[26] One surprise here is that Dawkins and Harris are often dismissive of philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn (far from religious extremist), that do not cohere with their more dogmatic version of scientific reductionism.  I will address this later on.

[27] Glynn, Patrick.  (1997).  God:  The Evidence; The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World.  Rocklin, California:  Prima Publishing Inc.

[28] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 5-6.

[29] Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm.  “Mixed Opinions and Maxims,”  The Portable Nietzsche.  Ed./trans.  Walter Kaufmann.  New York, New York:  Penguin Books, 1976.  38^th ed.

[30] This is an important criticism from opponents of strict scientism.  Aeschliman, Michael D.  (1983).  The Restitution of Man:  C.S.  Lewis and the Case Against Scientism.  Grand Rapids, Michigan:  William B.  Eerdman’s Publishing Company.

[31] Haught, John.  God and the New Atheists:  A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens.  (2008).  Louisville, Kentucky:  Westminister John Knox Press.

[32] Harris, 178-182, a section of The End of Faith where he refers to relativism as a demon (curious word choice there, still he makes an interesting point in this part of the literature)

[33] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 51.

[34] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 47-48 (highlighted here is the differentiation between TAP and PAP as he calls it).

[35] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 50-51.  The scale is 1-7, 1 being staunch theist, 7 being staunch atheist.

[36] Richard Dawkins, “Tanner Lecture on Human Values” at Harvard University, November 19 and 10, 2003, cited by Science and Theology News online, http://www.stnews.org/archives/2004_february/web_x_richard.html, qtd. In Haught, God and the New Atheists, 19.

[37] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 82.

[38] As he did right after his critique of Bertrand Russell in The God Delusion, by suggesting that philosophers lacked common sense and this was his compliment to them (is he being sarcastic or not, I really don’t know, I could see it either way).

[39] All of whom were also weary of any statement whose truth did not borrow from some empirical touchstone.  Again, The Great Conversation, 627-632.

[40] Long ago in the time of Plato, science and philosophy were very closely connected, The Great Conversation, 131-132.

[41] The Great Conversation, 612-614.

[42] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 5:  “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.”

[43] Stenmark, vii, “The overwhelming intellectual and practical successes of science that lie behind its impact on our culture have led some people to believe that there are no real limits to the competence of science, no limits to what can be achieved in the name of science.”

[44] Nicholi, Armand.  (2002) The Question of God:  C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life.  New York:  The Free Press.

[45] Harris, 75-76.  He glosses over influential philosophers of science Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper to get here, no less.

[46] Please consider the entirety of the book, from its differentiation between different levels of scientific knowledge and also the political/social structure that lends itself to most revolutions.  Furthermore one of his central premises as I understand it is that scientists can only find certainty in degrees or probabilities, not in 0% (total falsification) to 100%(total confirmation or verification)  Dawkins, Harris, and other new atheists, do not agree with some of his findings.

[47]Lewis, C.S.  “Miracles.”  The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics.  Ed. Joseph Rutt, ill. Kathleen Edwards, (2002).  San Francisco:  Harper Collins Publishing Company.

[48] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 83, 91, 114, 157.

[49] Hume, David.  Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals.  Ed.  L.A.  Selby-Bigge.  Oxford, England:  Clarendon Press, 1975.  3^rd ed.

[50] Harris, 16-17.

[51] Hume, 77.

[52] Hume, 77.

[53] Melchert, 337, “solipsism: a view that each of you (if there is anyone out there!) must state for yourself in this way:  “I am the only thing that actually exists.”  It is perhaps the most radical form of skepticism possible in the world of philosophy; it is highly likely that Descartes influenced Hume and Kant.

[54] Kant, Immanuel.  Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.  Ed. James W. Ellington.  Indianapolis, Indiana:  Hackett Publishing Company, 1977.

[55] Foucault, Michel.  The Archaeology of Knowledge.  Trans. A.M.  Sheridian Smith.  New York, New York:  Pantheon Books, 1972.  Michel Foucault wanted to “decenter” history by removing any idea of teleology from it.  In other words, history does not seem to move according to a greater or transcendental purpose.  This is an emphatic repudiation of idealism ranging from Christianity to Hegel.  While Dawkins and Harris posit some survival function of biology and anthropology as a teleological purpose derived in Darwinian terms, Foucault, a more legitimate successor to the philosophy of Hume, leaves us with not so neat a view of the “future of reason.”

[56] I do not take the position of accepting Harris’s premise that faith is devoid of reason.  Too many brilliant people from Thomas Aquinas to Blaise Paschal toiled diligently to simultaneously honor these two forces.  To view the two forces as mutually exclusive is to create a false dichotomy that dishonors or ignores too much history.

[57] Ayer, A.J.  (1963).  The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge.  London, England:  MacMillan & Comp. Ltd.

[58] Harris, 19.

[59] Harris, 216.

[60] Harris, 223.

[61] Also, the Old Testament alone was written over several dynamic changes in Hebrew political life, like families coming together to form clans, and tribes becoming the government of their own provinces, to the kingdom uniting under one monarch, to a “divided monarchy,” to political rule by foreign invaders (e.g. Assyrians, Chaldeans/Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks).  This time could easily be defined as a time of many turbulent political changes.

[62] Burtt, E.A.  (1954).  The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science.  (Garden City, New York:  Doubleday Anchor Books).

[63] That the existence of religion is tolerated at all is a negative for Dawkins, Harris, and the other new atheists.  It is so prevalent a theme in the writing that giving a particular page reference is almost misleading.

[64] Dawkins, Richard.  (1989)  The Selfish Gene. Oxford, England:  Oxford University Press.

[65] Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 331.

[66] Haught, 83.

[67] Paschal, Blaise.  Pensees.  Ed./commentary Peter Kreeft.  San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 1993.

[68] Harris, 185-187.

[69] Harris, 14.

[70] Dawkins, 272-278.

[71] Darwin, Charles.  The Origin of Species By Means of The Preservation of Favoured Races In The Struggle For Life.  New York, New York:  Penguin Books, 1958.

[72] Lewis, C.S.  “Mere Christianity,” 11-13.

[73] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 11.

[74] Feyerabend, Paul.  (1988).  Against Method.  London, England:  Verso Publishing.

[75] One of Dawkins’s books is so titled.

[76] Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 17-18.

[77] Melchert, 475.

[78] Harris, 204-221.

Now, one may attempt to answer this argument by objecting to (15) and arguing that there are rightmaking properties that override, or at least balance, the wrongmaking properties. One Swinburnean answer is that instances of natural evil give us an opportunity to exemplify goodness. One may object to this and claim that if this is the case, God would be justified in causing an earthquake that kills all but one person. However, if this opportunity is given to, say, 4 billion people, this would most likely balance the pain and suffering felt by the 200,000 or so; as well as be a better state of affairs than granting such an opportunity to only one individual.

Consider as well that this pain and suffering is not nearly as prolonged as one might be inclined to think at first glance; many people’s pain and suffering would be ended rather quickly by their death, and very few people normally suffer for days or weeks. So, the wrongmaking property of pain and suffering caused by the haiti earthquake is balanced by both the opportunity of 4 billion people to exemplify goodness, and the rather quick cessation via death of many of the victims.

Another issue is that perhaps God does not know with certainty how many people will die in any given natural disaster. Assuming Molinism (or something like it) is true, then the number of deaths may vary one way or the other. Consider that when the earthquake begins, many will panic. They may make rash decisions, such as a decision to run into a building for cover or dive into the water. God, in his omniscience, would know which buildings would collapse, where certain pieces of rubble would fall; however he may not know if someone will be inside a building or under a piece of rubble at time t. We could of course say that God knows the probabilities concerning what any given being X will do during the earthquake; however it seems rather obviously true that if one makes a snap decision during such an event, the probabilities of any possible actions will tend to even out, rather than be high for one possibility and low for another, as they most likely are when one makes a careful, considered decision.

But what of death itself? Surely death has wrongmaking properties as well, in that once one begins to exist, it is better to continue existing than to stop existing. Furthermore, one’s death carries a wrongmaking property in that it causes further pain and suffering for the family and friends of he who died. What rightmaking property could balance this? If we hold to the proposition:

(A) Once one begins to exist, it is a rightmaking property to continue existing rather than to cease existing, provided that existence does not become torturous or otherwise unbearable.

and also reason that God is perfectly good (via other arguments); then we may conclude that it is likely that there is some sort of afterlife.

This, I think, gives us a rather strong case for some sort of afterlife, provided we believe in a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect. We can also safely assume that existing in any sort of afterlife created by God would be quite a pleasant state of affairs. This would then balance out the wrongmaking properties of the death caused by the Haiti earthquake, both because the individual who died would continue to exist, and do so in a pleasant state of affairs, and because the family and friends of the victim would be comforted in knowing he is in a “better place”.

One may object to this as well by saying that perhaps the family and friends do not know that their dearly departed loved one is in a better place; by applying an argument from divine hiddenness. A response to this however is beyond the scope of this article, and must be dealt with separately.

So, why is it morally better for us to exist here from time {t1…tn} than in heaven? I have not developed a solid answer to that question as of yet (and it is certainly an important one); however this argument from evil is inductive, and so I think that the theodicy offered above weakens the argument a bit – certainly enough to swing the probability of theism back towards the positive quite a bit. I will say however that I suspect the answer lies in some sort of personal growth we must undertake, or some lesson we need to learn in order to become better moral agents.

My final thought applies Rawls’ veil of ignorance to the problem of evil. Suppose that we are behind a “moral-societal” veil of ignorance; that is, we live in an ideal society which, due to social and technological advancement, always(or almost always) works together in an effective manner in order to produce a state of living that is the best possible state of living that we could achieve, for every member of society. What might such a society look like?

I strongly suppose that if society were to be in such a state for any extended period of time(perhaps even as little as 50 years), we would have nearly unlimited resources to fuel any sort of thing we might want to do. Fuel for transportation would not be much of a problem; it would be cheap(or even free), and abundant. Furthermore, we would have some sort of ideal global government, which always carries out its action fairly and without bias. If it were the case that we were to develop such a society, it seems that the problem of both moral and natural evil would be almost entirely eliminated. If there were a hurricane, we would know about it quite far in advance, and would be able to quickly remove people to a safe location. If an earthquake were to occur, it would not be very much of a problem for us, as our structures would be incredibly well-built.

Such a society seems, at least, logically, perfectly within our power to actualize; and it also appears to be the case that the only reason it is not is because of moral evils in the world. So, it seems that another way of answering the natural problem of evil is to reduce it to the moral problem of evil. The moral problem, historically, has had far more, and stronger, responses than the natural problem (such as Plantinga’s free will defense). I will, therefore, leave discussion of the moral problem for another time.

Before I begin, I would like to make the point that the claims in my paper do not need to be true for the TAG to be defeated (with regard to logic, in this circumstance). The TAG fails due to the fact that logical conventionalism is coherent. Zao briefly touches upon this point, which I will address later, but I want to make it clear that my paper attempts to go beyond the mere claim that “logic does not presuppose God” and suggest something closer to the idea that it cannot.

The Criticisms

In my paper, I remark:

It seems to me that some hybridization of any of the mentioned means of justification may bring about a new means of justification. For example, a hybridization of an a priori and conventionalist system may succeed in providing the justification of logic sought by Bahnsen, but in a manner wherein the new system may be thought of as unique to both previous a priori systems, and forms of conventionalism.

Zao takes issue with this, stating:

Mitch starts off on the wrong foot immediately by proposing a hypothetical “hybridization” of two positions which is also “unique” to those other positions. So, is it a “hybrid” or is it “unique”?

I don’t think that one needs to choose between something being a hybrid, or unique. It’s doesn’t seem to be an either/or situation. For example, take gas-powered automobiles  and electric automobiles and combine the two concepts so that we create a gas-electric hybrid. In this circumstance we have a car that is unique in that there is a property that members of the previous categories do not have, namely, the property of being both gas and electric powered. Must we agree with Zao’s criteria that because this car is a hybrid, it cannot be unique or vice versa? I don’t think so, in fact it seems to me that it may be unique by being a hybrid!

Zao suggests that if there is such a system, I should present it rather than bringing it up as a hypothetical because it isn’t an objection. I think, however, if Zao understood me correctly he(?) would see that I merely rely on the possibility of a system and that this possibility is enough to make the point I wanted to make.

He also takes issue with the formal presentation of the TAG I’ve included in my paper which I’ve borrowed from Sean Choi. Zao states:

…advances have been made in presuppositionalism which have shown Choi’s position to be mistaken. Don Collett has argued effectively (in Revelation and Reason edited by K. Scott Oliphint) that Van Til’s conception of presuppositional semantics is identical to the Strawson/Van Fraasen semantics, which makes a clear distinction between “presupposition” and “implication.” (Even John Frame has accepted Collett’s argumentation in this respect.)

Choi presents his formulation of the TAG as a traditional transcendental argument (a la Kant) which would suggest (in this context) that the existence of logic implies the existence of God. Strawson in attempting to formalize a sufficient theory of presupposition proposes something similar to the following:

P presupposes Q if and only if Q is true provided P is true or P is false.

Where P is logic and Q is God, if one is to use this formulation instead of the previous, we would not say that the existence of logic implies God but that even the denial of the existence of logic also presupposes God. But what real difference does this make to our discussion? If I’m missing something then I wait to be informed, but it seems to me that even under this view the claim that “Both the truth of P or falisity of P presupposes Q” will reduce, in our discussion, to the claim that “logic presupposes the existence of God” since I am not denying the existence of logic. In other words, what difference does this make to any of my subsequent criticisms insofar as they pertain to the presuppositionalist ideas I mention?

This much can be said about the entire section of my paper where I introduce Choi’s formalism. It is of course nice to have something with which to work, but I am not dependent on this formulation. The arguments in my paper can be extended and applied to any (as I can conceive) assertion that amounts to “logic presupposes God.”

I go on to criticize Bahnsen’s idea of the “impossibility of the contrary” stating:

But what might this mean for our discussion? If Bahnsen is permitted to carry on with his criteria, then if any a priori, a posteriori or conventionalist justifications of logic are shown to be false (and subsequently, the worldviews that house and depend on them) all other formulations which properly fall under those headings will also be false (worldviews included) since they employ the same proposition, namely, ‘Christianity is false’. Of course, this is not sound reasoning unless the shared proposition is what is causing the justification to be false. Bahnsen needs to show that ‘Christianity is false’ is the ‘false-making’ proposition of all non-Christian worldviews, and it doesn’t seem that this is possible by any means other than (i) showing that all possible non-Christian justifications will have ‘Christianity is false’ as the onlyproposition in common (for if there is even one other proposition shared by these worldviews, how might one disqualify that proposition as possibly being the ‘false-maker’?), and (ii) showing that Christianity is not false. The obvious problem is that if (ii) is shown, the TAG becomes superfluous as it is no longer needed; one has already arrived at the truth of Christian theism, and for (i) to be shown, one still has to have an awareness of “every single variation of unbelieving philosophy.”

Zao replies that the false-maker of the proposition is its axiomatic nature. But I cannot see any reason to accept the claim that every worldview which has the proposition “Christianity is false” has that proposition as an axiom.

He states:

If the most basic presupposition of a non-Christian worldview is “not Christianity” (which appears to be definitional, given the above framework), then it is the basic nature of the presupposition which exerts a rational controlling influence on all other worldview content. It is not merely one proposition among many, floating loose and free in a certain worldview, but is rather foundational.

Again, why is this true? It seems to me that the only reason for claiming that “Christianity is false” is the most basic presupposition of non-Christian worldviews lies simply in identifying them as non-Christian worldviews. That is to say, I might identify some worldview as being non-Mitchist because I see that their worldview does not utilize what I utilize as my axiomatic foundation but I cannot see how this entails that “Mitchism is false” becomes their foundational axiom. It also seems that depending on who is looking at Bob’s worldview, he has several other axioms! For instance, what if a Muslim is looking at Bob’s worldview, does he now have as a foundational axiom that “Islam is false?” If a Hindu is looking at his worldview, does he now have as foundational the axiom that “Hinduism is false?” It even seems that atheists can analyze Zao’s worldview under his own criteria and suggest that he has as a foundational axiom that “Atheism is false” as his most basic presupposition.

Further, imagine Bob the Buddhist who has as his foundational axiom “Buddhism is true.” If we take Zao’s criteria, then since Bob the Buddhist can be identified as possessing a non-Christian worldview it follows that he has, also as a foundational axiom that “Christianity is false.” We can say that he’d also have as foundational axioms, under Zao’s criteria, propositions such as “Islam is false,” “Confucianism is false,” and “Scientology is false.” It seems more proper to say that Bob merely has the axiom “Buddhism is true” (if even this), and that he deduces from this postulate all of the other aforementioned propositions. That is to say, “Christianity is false” is not an axiom for Bob, it’s a deduction and so like other deductions it is “floating loose and free”. If we are to follow Zao’s criteria, it seems we render the term “axiom” meaningless. In fact Bob would have possibly an infinite number of axioms about religions of which he has not even heard! I see no reason to accept such absurdity.

In further response to my mention of Fristianity, Zao responds:

Being quite thoroughly familiar with various Fristianity objections, I had to chuckle at this one. I apologize for it, but I did. Let’s be perfectly clear here: an atheist can get zero cash value out of the Fristianity objection in debate with a Christian. Are you planning on being baptized in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit and “Fred” anytime soon, Mitch?

The Fristianity objection, if sound, merely shows that the central claim of presuppositionalism is false. That is, if the Fristianity objection holds then it is false that no non-Christian theistic methods can possibly justify X, Y, Z. This is all I was intending to show.

Moving right along we come to my application of a Euthyphro-like dilemma to the laws of logic. Similar to many Christians with regard to the actual Euthyphro dilemma, Zao takes the route of stating:

The Christian’s argument is that logical laws are a reflection of God’s thought which is in accordance with God’s nature, which are all necessary.

But analyze what I said in the section, as Zao even quoted himself:

Frame essentially makes the claim that it is logically impossible for the nature of God to change. But the standard Frame is using to identify logical possibility is allegedly the nature of God. As such, his claim appears to be represented more accurately as:

(C)  Based on God’s nature it is logically impossible for God’s nature to be different because God is necessarily a rational God

This does not seem to assist in any regard as what is rational is allegedly determined by God’s nature. So to argue that God’s nature must be the way it is because God is necessarily rational seems to only appeal to a standard of rationality that is separate from God, otherwise it is clearly circular.

In what manner would it be the case that God’s nature was not rational? It does not seem that a God who forms the basis of logical principles and thereby is the standard of rationality can ever be irrational (though he may certainly appear irrational when judged by a foreign standard). That is to say, if one wants to state that the Christian God forms the basis of rationality and the logical principles thereby in effect cannot be anything other than what they are, they must be appealing to a standard of logic that is separate from God’s nature as to appeal solely to God’s nature does not sufficiently answer the question; it is a non-answer.

If Zao does not think that (C) is circular, I suggest he read a bit closer. He says that my dilemma is circular in itself because the first horn “…asserts that there is a meaningful sense in which logic is independent of the thought of God.” What is the implication of the aforementioned circularity in basing them on God? It seems to me that, as a direct implication, we must conclude that the necessary principles of logic indeed are external to God just as is the case with necessary moral principles and the original Euthyphro dilemma. I have not, as Zao has suggested, assumed that they are independent to show they are independent, I’ve formulated a dilemma and shown that given the alternatives are incoherent we have no choice but to accept that logical principles exist independently of God.

We might even supplement this by raising a point that was conveyed to me by a fellow UP.net member. Zao stated that the logical laws are a reflection of God’s thought and that God thinks logically. Moving over the seemingly obvious incoherence in such a statement, one might want to ask what it even means to say that God thinks logically? Logic permits us to deduce from premises, distinguish conclusions and so on. But God, if he is omniscient, surely does not have to do any of these things to have knowledge. God does not “reason” to his conclusions, he simply knows them. To say that the logical laws are reflections of God’s logical thinking stands in opposition to the idea that God knows all there is to know. Truly omniscient beings do not require logic, because they do not require a means to apprehend knowledge. This, I think, just adds to the incoherence of stating that logical principles reflect God’s rational thought.

In my section entitled “God and the Abstract” I offered an argument which is basically as follows:

The dependence relationship between “God exists” and “logical principles exist” seems problematic. If God is the source of all things other than himself, and he depends on nothing for his existence, surely the relationship must be asymmetrical (with primacy granted to God), but it appears not to be. It can be shown, in fact, that God depends on logical principles for his existence.

Lewis’ counterfactual semantics tell us that ‘any proposition is counterfactually implied by a necessarily false proposition’. Since “logical principles do not exist” is a necessarily false proposition, it counterfactually implies any proposition whatsoever.[21] So it is also true that if logical principles did not exist, neither would God. Thus, God depends on logical principles for his existence.

The relationship between the existence of logical principles and the existence of God would be asymmetrical iff God depended on nothing for his being and logical principles depended wholly on him. In this regard, the relationship of dependence is one-way; logical principles depend on God but not vice versa. If dependence is asymmetrical, then logic cannot depend on God as it has been shown that God depends on logic.

The asymmetrical relationship can be depicted further: where P refers to logical principles and Q refers to God. If P depends on Q asymmetrically, then the worlds in which P is true must be a proper subset of the worlds in which Q is true. Since it is the case that the principles of logic hold in every world, and the set of all worlds is not a proper subset of any other set of worlds, the laws of logic cannot depend on anything, including God.

Zao responds:

Given the nature of the points under contention (the existence of God and the relationship between God and logic), to argue that “logical principles do not exist” counterfactually implies that God depends on logical principles for his existence is to beg the question in a rather bald and obvious sort of way. How about, “God does not exist” is a necessarily false statement? Given that TAG is intended to argue for the necessary existence of God, to assume the contingency of God’s existence upon logic in order to prove God is contingent upon logic is, well, unpersuasive (to put it mildly).

I might be mistaken, but it seems to me that Zao interprets my argument as an argument against the existence of God. This is not the case, however. I can accept both the necessary existence of God and the necessary existence of logical principles, and still deny the type of relationship that the presuppositionalist is proposing. It’s not the necessary existence of either of these things that is the issue, it’s the proposed asymmetrical relationship between God and logic. I think Zao has really misunderstood the thrust of my argument here.

After a point about my brief treatment of divine simplicity and Trinitarianism (I agree, that could be a paper unto itself!) Zao closes with a very brief criticism of logical conventionalism. Zao states:

Finally, we have a section where logic is said to be both conventional while necessary and universal. This is rather fun. It’s like something from Alice in Wonderland. “Sentence first – verdict afterwards!

This is a claim that is thrown around a lot, and it is a claim that is just simply false. There simply is no problem with logic being conventional, while having its principles be necessarily true. Zao is welcome to either read the literature cited in my paper, the brief treatment here or wait for an upcoming article I’m expecting authored by a logician.

Conclusion

Again, the arguments in my paper are not needed to show that the TAG fails, the mere coherence of Conventionalism serves as a defeater for the endeavor. What my arguments seek to show is that logic cannot be based on God in any such implied way. I can only say that Zao’s brief treatment of Conventionalism towards the end of his post seems to violate his own suggestion of “… [understanding] the matter for [one's self] before attempting to criticize…”

P.S: I’d like to politely ask that in the future Zao link to my articles rather than pasting them in full. I’d also like to ask that he adds a hyperlink to the specific post he’s writing about. Thanks!

First I will examine this argument from Joshua Rasmussen[1]:

(1) Intrinsic properties that can be exemplified by something that has a cause are such that if any one were to begin to be exemplified, that beginning could have a cause.
(2) There can begin to be contingent (non-necessary) things.
(3) Being contingent is an intrinsic property.
(4) Some contingent things can have a cause.
(5) Therefore, there can be a cause of a beginning to the existence of contingent things [from (1) – (4)].
(6) If (5), then there is a Necessary Being.
(7) Therefore, there is a Necessary Being.

It should be noted here that this is not necessarily an argument for God, rather it is an argument for something which has causal power and cannot fail to exist. This argument employs a very weak causal principle – even weaker than the W-PSR. Rasmussen gives the following analogy to explain intrinsic properties being caused to begin to be exemplified:

Consider first the property of being an armchair. That property began to be exemplified when the first armchair was constructed, and of course, that beginning had a cause. Consider next an intrinsic property that has never been exemplified, but could be: being a fifteen-legged animal, say. It is plausible that if that property were to begin to be exemplified, that beginning could be caused: imagine an evolutionary process leading to the birth of the first fifteen-legged animal.

So considering this, (1) seems to work, at least for things such as “being blue” and “being rectangular”.

(2) and (4) seem so obvious, I do not feel that they need a defense. However, I will defend them if an objection arises. But what of (3)? Rasmussen explains intrinsic properties thus:

(I) p is intrinsic if there is no external relation r, such that (anyone who fully grasps p, thereby grasps r, and it is not necessary that if p is exemplified by an x, then x bears r to x or one of x’s parts).

An example of an intrinsic property would be mass; physical objects have mass no matter where they are, and no matter what conditions they are under. An objects’ mass always = x. Weight, however, is an extrinsic property. An objects’ weight will be X on earth, but may be Y somewhere else. So, it seems apparent that contingency is an intrinsic property. We are not contingent because of anything, we just are.

(5) of course follows from (1) – (4). (6) Follows from (5) because things can only be necessary or contingent, and something contingent cannot cause the beginning of the existence of contingent things; this thing would have to cause itself to do that. So we arrive at (7) There is a necessary Being. It should be noted here that this argument is very modest – the “Being” in the conclusion does not need to be God, or even something supernatural; this being could very well be entirely natural, as long as it is necessary.

Is God Coherent?

Given that the previous argument does not necessarily show there is a God, why do I think there is? The first step is to show that God is a coherent idea; that is, I must show that this being could possibly exist. I will start by explaining what I mean by “God”, and define His attributes:

God:

There exists a necessary being with properties including, but not necessarily limited to, perfect freedom, omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, who caused the beginning of the existence of contingent things, and who may or may not have created the universe.

Perfect Freedom:

If P does A freely, then no cause makes him do A. He is ultimately responsible for A being done; for nothing makes him make A be done. [...] An action, I suggest, is a free action if and only if the agent’s choosing to do that action, that is having the intention to produce the result of that action, has no full explanation—of any kind, whether of the kind described by scientific explanation or of the kind described by personal explanation. [...] But the suggestion that a man might see refraining from A as over all better than doing A, be subject to no non-rational influences inclining him in the direction of doing A and nevertheless do A, is incoherent. [...] it follows that a perfectly free agent will never do an action if he judges that over all it would be worse to do the action than to refrain from it; he will never do an action if he acknowledges overriding reasons for refraining from doing it. Similarly, he will always do an action if he acknowledges overriding reasons for doing it rather than for refraining from doing it, if he judges that doing it would be over all better than refraining from doing it.[2]

Omnipotence:

A person P is omnipotent at a time t if and only if he is able to bring about the existence of any logically contingent state of affairs x after t, the description of the occurrence of which does not entail that P did not bring it about at t, given that he does not believe that he has overriding reason for refraining from bringing about x.[2]

Omniscience:

A person P is omniscient at time t if and only if he knows every true proposition about t or an earlier time and every true proposition about a time later than t which is true of logical necessity or which he has overriding reason to make true, which it is logically possible that he entertains then.[2]

Perfect Goodness:

A person P is perfectly good if P is so constituted that he always does what there is overriding reason to do, and always refrains from doing what there is overriding reason for not doing.[2]

Given that moral judgements have truth values, an omniscient person will know them. His judgements about which actions are morally bad and which actions are morally good will be true judgements. Hence a perfectly free and omniscient being can never do actions that are morally bad, and will always do the best action, or an equal best action, or a best kind or an equal best kind of action (if there are these) [3]

Swinburne’s view is that God’s perfect freedom, omnipotence and omniscience entail his perfect goodness. That is, if X is omniscient and omnipotent, X will always know what the best action is to take, and will be able to take that action. Furthermore, X will know “I ought to take the best action”. So, as per his freedom, this will be an overriding reason to take that action, and thus He will.

First Cause:
It has already been shown that this being is the cause of the beginning of the existence of contingent things (see section I). But what of the universe; is this being the direct cause of the universe, or only indirectly, by virtue of causing contingent things? Well, I think that remains to be seen. This issue still seems to me to be explored further, as there are good arguments as to whether God is the direct cause of the universe on both sides.

Granting that all these properties are coherent, it follows that God is coherent; that is, He could exist.

Moving from A to B

So, two things have been established:
1) There exists some sort of necessary being.
2) The concept of God is coherent.

But are there reasons to think that the necessary being is God (that this being has the properties of God)? I again cite Rasmussen in support that God is the necessary being. He first introduces the concept of a gridscape[4]:

(1) Gridscape S =(def) For some concrete objects, the x’s, and some intrinsic properties and/or relations, the y’s, S is the state of affairs of the x’s instantiating the y’s.

That is, imagine four concrete objects represented as dots. These dots have circles attached to them, representing properties; and lines connecting them, representing relations. He then introduces a related concept:

(2) Wholly contingent gridscape S =(def) A gridscape all of whose properties and/or relations are contingently (not necessarily) instantiated by concrete objects in the gridscape.

He then introduces a causal principle:

Causal “x ((x is a wholly contingent gridscape) → ◊(x’s obtaining is causally explained)). {or} for any bunch of contingent, intrinsic properties or relations, their joint instantiation can be causally explained. For example, John’s jellybean being red can be causally explained.

Further on, he offers an argument for the omnipotence of the necessary being (N):

For any measurable [finite] attribute A, where A consists in having determinable D to degree µ, and any concrete object x that has A, there is some degree such that it is possible for x to have D to degree µ – e or µ + e.

That is, if we say a being has a finite amount of power, that being could have a little more or a little less power. This implies that having an attribute to a certain degree is contingent, because it could have been a slightly higher or slightly lower degree. Let us assume this is the case, and we have a gridscape containing some number of contingent objects, and the necessary being from section I. Let us also assume this being has finite power. If this is the case, then this property would be contingent, and we no longer have the necessary being we need to explain contingent things. So, N must be infinitely powerful.

Next he discusses free agency:

If N is not a personal agent, then if N brings about a state of affairs, N does so in virtue of exemplifying some property or properties, perhaps in combination with some law obtaining.

The idea behind this is that if N causes X, it did so either through free choice, or because it was a certain way/had certain properties. So, let’s imagine a gridscape again, this time one in which N is not a free agent. If this is the case, then N has “probability-fixing properties”; properties which will entail that there is a certain degree of probability that a wholly contingent gridscape G obtains. But let’s say that N has a property such that it creates a 0.2 probability of G obtaining. We again run into the same problem; it could be slightly higher or lower, and this leads to a wholly contingent gridscape.

Now, what of omniscience? Again, we run into the same problem:

If N is a personal agent, then N is capable of knowing at least something.

Let’s suppose that N has a finite degree of knowledge. Once again, N could have slightly more or slightly less knowledge, which leads to a wholly contingent gridscape.

Finally, what of perfect goodness? We have previously seen Swinburne’s view; that perfect goodness is entailed by God’s other attributes. However Rasmussen gives another argument:

Now suppose that N is finitely good (has finite degree of positive moral status) or finitely bad (has finite degree of negative moral status) or both. Suppose also that: There can be no causal explanation for N’s having the degree of positive or negative moral status that it has (had and will have).

Just as with the other attributes, we see that N could be slightly more or less morally praiseworthy. This leads to the conclusion that N must be either infinitely good, or infinitely bad. Rasmussen offers this in support of N being infinitely good:

N has at least some positive moral status: there is a situation in which N would freely bring about a good state of affairs.

This, combined with Swinburne’s thoughts on moral goodness, lays out a strong case for N being perfectly good.

Conclusion

So finally, we come to this:

1) There exists a necessary being.
2) This necessary being is, given its attributes, likely to be a being we may consider “God”.

Of course, much more may be said on this line of reasoning; it is quite complex and I have not even begun to explain all the details. I have not included any possible objections, or addressed the various atheistic arguments. However, I hope this brief summary will inspire further inquiry into my new-found belief in God.

_________

[1]Rasmussen, Joshua. “A New Argument For A Necessary Being.” Yale & UConn Graduate Conference (Feb 2009).

[2]Swinburne, Richard. The Coherence of Theism. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 1993. Print.

[3]Swinburne, Richard. The Existence of God. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2004. Print.

[4]Rasmussen, Joshua. “From A Necessary Being to God.” International Journal of Philosophy of Religion. 66.1 (2009): 1-13. Print.

In response to Bolt’s opening post, I replied and Bolt has since authored his rebuttal. What follows will be a response to the issues he raises therein.

Liangzhi, Proper Function, and Selflessness

First, I will explain some more about li, qi, and liangzhi. To quote directly from Tien’s paper:

For most Neo-Confucians, li describes the way a thing or state of affairs ought to be. So when things or states of affairs are in accord with li, they are deemed “natural,” and when they are not, they are deemed “deviant.” All things possess all the li of the universe within them. In human beings, the li exist complete in the mind (xin). For Wang, though, the mind not only contains li, the mind is itself li.

The liangzhi is the mechanism by which one can come to know the li or the principle of all things. Liangzhi is both a cognitive and affective (thinking and feeling) faculty. The li serves as the principle which describes the way things ought to be. Every existing thing contains all of the li within and so li is completely existent within the mind and while the mind contains li it is also, itself, li. Birth endows all human beings with a perfect mind or xinzhibenti. The perfect mind does not come to knowing by thinking, but simply knows. Liangzhi is a faculty of this mind which discerns “flawlessly, naturally and spontaneously between right and wrong,” thus forming correct beliefs and correct affective responses. However, there is a problem of qi:

All things in the universe are a combination of li and qi. Qi is the stuff of which the universe is made. It exists in various grades of purity. Although all things possess all the li of the universe within them, because of the impurity of the qi of which they are composed, some li are obstructed, thereby accounting for the differences between things.

Just as all things possess all of the li of the universe, because of the qi that forms their composition some li are obstructed. However, human beings have the ability to purify the levels of qi within and in turn allow the li to “shine forth”. Internal manifestations of qi within human beings are self-centered desires. It is these desires, or subsequent states of mind that cause us to lose touch with our pure mind and liangzhi. That liangzhi is to operate effectively requires that the self-centered desires are eliminated. Thus, our minds while li, are corrupted by qi. But how then can we come to know things? Regarding proper function, one can be said to be able to discern knowledge when one is employing liangzhi at some time; that is, our beliefs are warranted when we come to them while employing liangzhi. But how may we do this when qi “blocks” the liangzhi?

The proper functioning of the mind is acquired through selflessness or the absence of self-centered desires. Self-centered in this context does not mean selfish, but is translated from si meaning “to make oneself the center of one’s world.” It can be said that being in a state of selflessness in order to employ liangzhi equates to being unselfconscious of personal agency. To form an analogy, we can say that in order for our beliefs to be warranted, we must polish (liangzhi) the dust (qi) off of a mirror, in order to see the reflection (li) clearly. This “polishing of the dust” is a cumulative process, we must first rid ourselves of self-centered thoughts one at a time; and each time we do, we become better equipped to do so with other self-centered thoughts in the future. Second, we must extend liangzhi to our everyday lives.

The means by which one achieves a state of selflessness is firstly through the rectification of thoughts. This is simply to purge one of the impurities of self-centeredness to permit the second stage of the extension of knowledge, which results in the attainment of warranted belief.  The rectification of thoughts or gewu explains that the mind is li and the proper place to discover li is in the mind and not in any outside world. In eliminating incorrect thoughts, one’s mind can function freely and being to operate properly. Gewu entails that once a single self-centered thought begins to stir, it must be cast out. As it is a continual effort, each individual success allows the liangzhi to operate more freely and the more freely the liangzhi is the more easily it can identify incorrect thoughts and eliminate them. As such, when one eliminates some self-centered desire relevant to a particular belief, one attains an affective state of selflessness in relation to that belief and the liangzhi constitutes a properly functioning cognitive-affective faculty relative to that belief. This is, in effect, polishing the mirror to reflect the images before it.

Further, there is the additional criterion of the extension of knowledge. Succinctly, this is to extend the liangzhi to matters of everyday life. It is the difference between knowing “how” and knowing “that.” One cannot extend the liangzhi if they are not in an affective state of selflessness to some specific belief which would prevent one from attaining an affective state of action which stands as a necessary condition for true belief to constitute warranted knowledge. In some instances self-centered desires hinder the liangzhi from extending and the effective way of unearthing one’s incorrect thoughts are by attempts at such extension. “When the attempted extension fails, the subject will then be in a much better position to identify the relevant self-centered desires, and when they are identifies, she will be forced to confront them.” Upon doing so, extension of the liangzhi will be possible. That is, failure to extend one’s liangzhi reveals the relevant self-centered desires that need overcoming. As such, the rectification of thoughts and the extension of knowledge is a cyclical process. “The rectification of thoughts is the effort to extend knowledge. As one knows how to extend his knowledge, he also knows how to rectify thoughts. If he does not know how to rectify thoughts, it means he does not yet know how to extend his knowledge.” For those who have already eliminated all the self-centered desires and still cannot extend the liangzhi the issue of unity between knowledge and action arises. That is to say, the extension of liangzhi is merely acting upon the deliverances of the properly functioning liangzhi. Is it possible to know that filial piety involves caring for one’s parents in both winter and summer without actually doing so? One might have right beliefs about such but until one extends this otherwise lesser kind of knowledge, one will never truly “know.” Knowledge is the beginning of action, and action is the completion of knowledge.

And so, we can identify the Neo-Confucian theory of warrant as:

A belief p will have real warrant for a person S if and only if S is in an affective state appropriate to belief p, and p is produced in S by properly functioning cognitive-affective faculties in an appropriate cognitive affective environment for S’s kind of cognitive-affective faculties, according to a function successfully aimed at truth, and the degree of warrant p enjoys for S is directly proportional to the firmness with which S holds p.

Bolt’s Lack of Clarity

Bolt writes:

Recall that the reason atheistic epistemic justifications fail is because atheism does not provide for objective epistemic normativity which is required for propositional knowledge.

As evidenced by the italics in the above quote, Bolt clearly considers justification and normativity to be two different things. This statement seems counter to some things Bolt has said in his opening statement:

“Something like justification or warrant is required in order for someone to have propositional knowledge.”

“What is required for propositional knowledge is some sort of objective epistemic normativity.”

“Some type of epistemic warrant must be accounted for in Nocterro’s view of the world because of the need for warrant in knowledge.”

“The character and command of God and His having created us in His image and obligated us toward Him provides for the epistemic normativity necessary to right belief.”

“Epistemic warrant is in some sense necessary for human intelligibility yet it is foreign to an atheistic worldview while the Christian worldview provides for epistemic warrant. “

Bolt, in his most recent response, claims that atheistic epistemic justifications fail because atheism does not provide for objective epistemic normativity. However, as evidenced by the quotes above from his opening post, he uses the terms “justification”, “warrant”, and “normativity” interchangeably. So I must wonder, what is he asking the atheist to provide? In fact, I must wonder this same thing overall. I do not think Chris has been at all detailed enough in describing his worldview and how it provides warrant/normativity, or in stating what it is the atheist needs to do in order to effectively argue against his position. Furthermore, Bolt states in his response that:

Nocterro allegedly provides a brief summary of Plantinga’s position on epistemic justification which I do not adhere to and did not bring up in my opening statement.

Firstly, I am not sure what Bolt means here by “allegedly”; I must ask him to clarify his choice of words. Bolt thinks I am assuming that Plantinga’s position is his position as well. However, this is not the case. There are two reasons why I chose to discuss Plantinga’s view on warrant. The first is that Bolt, in his opening statement, never went into detail on what the concept of warrant entailed. I was thus forced to go with the leading view in order to discuss the topic:

Perhaps the most prevalent view of warrant in contemporary philosophy is that of proper function, as employed comprehensively and famously by Alvin Plantinga.

The second reason has nothing to do with Bolt’s (as yet explained) account for warrant, but a possible atheistic account for warrant. I merely presented Plantinga’s view as background information, going on to quote Plantinga himself in defense of atheistic warrant:

Even if [the atheist] doesn’t think we human beings have been designed and created by a powerful and highly competent being who proposed to endow us with the ability to achieve true beliefs, he may nonetheless think of this idea as a convenient and useful fiction [...] he may say that our cognitive faculties are working properly when they are working in the way they would work if the theistic story were true. He may therefore treat this story the way corresponding stories are treated by some who accept ideal observer theories in ethics…

Perhaps in response to this, he writes, in the section previous to his quote above:

Finally, Nocterro believes that he can presuppose God in his reasoning without believing that God exists. Not only does the argument presented show that epistemic normativity is impossible on a view where God does not exist, but it is impossible to “presuppose God” without believing that God exists, so Nocterro fails in his attempt to escape the conclusion of the argument given the soundness of the argument.

I agree that it is impossible to presuppose God without believing that God exists. Plantinga’s quote above states that the atheist does *not* presuppose God (which would entail belief that He exists), but rather that he may take the idea to be “a convenient and useful fiction”. That is, the atheist may use the concept of God as a thought experiment, and nothing more. To conclude, I must ask Chris to clarify his views on a few things before this discussion can proceed any further:

1) What is warrant?

2) What is justification?

3) What is epistemic normativity?

Bolt’s Objections to Neo-Confucian Warrant

Bolt states:

Nocterro has not provided any explanation of how the liangzhi may have been designed to function as it is held to function as opposed to any other way.

This, however, strikes me as similar to asking why God is the way he is rather than other way. Do questions such as these really have answers? Surely they are brute facts that are unexplained by any external states of affairs.

Bolt further states:

The liangzhi must be the result of unintentional, undirected, non-human, non-divine, non-intelligent processes by which the liangzhi came to be or comes to be.

Or simply not a result of anything at all, similar to how God is not a result of any non-God thing. If what Bolt is hinting at here is a sort of evolutionary objection in that it seems odd that evolution would develop liangzhi, I think we can agree with him. Of course, under Neo-Confucianism the existence of a mind necessarily entails the existence of liangzhi so that insofar as we have an explanation as for why evolution would bring about a mind, we have thereby explained why there is liangzhi. That liangzhi is the type of faculty that it is seems to be merely a brute fact.

Bolt states:

Further, he implies through his use of terms like “ought” that li, while only a descriptive concept, is somehow normative. Indeed he states this outright but without any reason for doing so.

But the li is not only a descriptive concept, it is both descriptive and normative as outlined above: “…when things or states of affairs are in accord with li, they are deemed ‘natural,’ and when they are not, they are deemed ‘deviant.’” Bolt states:

… the question remains as to why the li should be preferred over qi anyway. Again, epistemic normativity is lacking in this view and there is no apparent reason why one is obligated to conform one’s thoughts to li to begin with.

This seems no different than asking why one would prefer or adjust their lives towards God over Satan? Bolt might answer that we should do so because God created us, but where is the principle that says if one creates another, we should adjust our lives towards them? Even if there were such a principle, why should one follow it rather than not? Perhaps Bolt would state that because God commands us to do so, but why should we listen to his commands rather than not? Bolt might state that we’ll be punished if we don’t, but why should we prefer non-punishment over punishment?  Of course, perhaps there is no obligation under Neo-Confucianism to conform to the li, or perhaps one should prefer the li because of the better lives that result in ridding one’s self of self-centered desires. The question seems to be importing standards from Bolt’s own view in examining Neo-Confucianism but he must not judge this system by his presuppositions to determine internal incoherence he must examine my system from within and there does not seem to be any necessity for this idea of “preference” that Bolt is introducing. Bolt states:

Some may think that I have already given Nocterro too much, for while Christianity is a revelatory worldview, Neo-Confucianism is not. There are questions concerning how anyone comes to know these sort of claims concerning liangzhi and li and qi to begin with. Has Nocterro ‘discovered’ and ‘reached’ the liangzhi? If he has not, then he cannot claim to have come to know the liangzhi apart from the ‘authority’ of Wang (given that Wang reached it himself), but this is not bringing even one’s most basic thoughts into conformity with li because Wang was just another human being.

Given the discussion on the role of action, it would actually be impossible to count claims based on authority as knowledge. There must be that role of personal experience and affective states. This doesn’t, then, seem to be a problem. He further states:

The world of li and qi is not an appropriate cognitive environment for the operation of liangzhi since qi obstructs the operation of the liangzhi so that it does not function properly.

Of course the same might be said for his worldview as well, that the noetic influence of sin prevents any knowledge whatsoever. However, Bolt has the faculties of the so-called sensus divinatus as an alleged “way-out” of this problem, and so too has the Neo-Confucian a “way out” in the criteria previously outlined.

Conclusion

It does seem that Neo-Confucianism epistemology permits the ideas of warrant, proper function and normativity (as understood by traditional definitions, I now assume that Bolt is using them as such). Indeed, since this is true Bolt’s claim that only Christianity could do so is clearly false. Since this also forms the basis of his argument for the truth of Christianity, one is not required to accept his conclusion that Christianity is true and one need not accept on this basis that scripture is true, or that I presuppose God. If Bolt’s key argument for the Christian position has indeed failed, one must wonder by which means is he now establishing the truth of Christianity.

1) The reliability of scripture
2) The self-deception of atheists
3) The presupposition of God in my reasoning

¹Response to the “Reliability of Scripture”

Bolt writes:

Scripture is reliable and is the source of my claim that Nocterro believes both ‘God exists’ and ‘Nocterro does not believe that God exists’. Scripture is also the source of my claim that Nocterro presupposes God in order to reason at all.

Bolt bases his other claims on the claim that scripture is reliable. But how does he know scripture is reliable? He writes:

From the providence of God and the results of textual critical science it can be known that we currently posses substantially correct transcriptions of the autographa of Scripture. Nocterro must assume from the outset of the discussion that God has not spoken clearly and that He has not provided us with an adequate means of learning what He has said if Nocterro is to call into question the reliability of Scripture.

It is interesting here that Bolt is not defending the claim that scripture is true, rather he is defending the claim that our current texts match the originals. Also interesting is that one of his justifications for this claim is “the providence of God” – going on to state that:

Nocterro must assume from the outset of the discussion that God has not spoken clearly.

He claims that scripture is the source of his claim that I (and presumably everyone else) must presuppose God in order to reason. He is presupposing God in order to show that scripture is true. But surely scripture is correct only if both the Christian God exists and one must presuppose the existence of God to account for reason.

Bolt must show both that the Christian God exists and that we must presuppose the existence of him to account for reason but cannot use Scripture alone to do so. To do so would be to assume the very thing in question. Bolt can’t use that which necessarily depends on the existence of the divine to argue for the existence of the divine using its proposed divinity as a reliability-maker.

Response to “Self-deception”

He also writes:

It is worth noting that the second-order belief mentioned influences the way that Nocterro interprets evidence. Nocterro suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. This feat is accomplished through rationalizing away evidence of the existence of God, ignoring obvious points, dodging anything which might challenge his anti-Christ presuppositions, etc.

There are a few things to say about this:

a) Can Chris point to anything I have ever written that is an example of me rationalizing away evidence of the existence of God?
b) What “obvious” point or points does he feel I have ignored?
c) What have I ever dodged?

Apparently Bolt feels that I have been intellectually dishonest in this discussion by not addressing the issue directly.

Scripture, according to Bolt, states that I am self-deceived. But why believe Scripture? If Scripture is false, then it seems Bolt has no reason whatsoever to claim that I am self deceived, but as we have seen above, we may not simply assume that Scripture is true since it is obviously false if God does not exist, and if I do not have to presuppose him.

Further, if there are good arguments which reduce the probability of God’s existence then so too is the likelihood of Scripture’s being true reduced and by proxy this reduction extends to my being self-deceived. Granting that there are such arguments and coupled with the fact that I have a privileged access to the contents of my own mind, in that I experience them directly, it seems even more unlikely that I am so deceived.

To quote Richard Swinburne:

The adequacy of grounds is often expressed in terms of probability—both by the externalist and by the internalist. The grounds for a belief are adequate to the extent to which they render the belief probable. (And if the grounds for one belief B consist of another belief C, then, for B to have adequate grounds, Cs grounds must make B probable. (Epistemic Justification, pg. 56)

In other words, a belief on a certain matter is justified if it is more probable than other mutually exclusive beliefs on the matter. So, if this argument is sound, then I am justified in my belief that I am not self-deceived.

Response to “Presupposing God”

This is quite clearly the most important portion since Bolt’s justification for all the previous sections is based on the success of his argument here. That is to say, if Bolt does not succeed in showing that God exists and that I must presuppose him in order to reason he has, by proxy, not succeeded in showing that scripture is reliable, and that I am self-deceived.

Bolt writes:

Given his anti-theistic worldview, Nocterro cannot posit the notion of right or wrong ways that beliefs should either come about or be held and hence his position is reducible to absurdity.

Bolt assumes here either that (1) no atheistic epistemic justifications have ever been offered; or (2) all such justifications offered fail. As for (1), even a simple Google or Wikipedia search will show this is blatantly false. Regarding (2), Bolt has a grand task indeed if he must offer objections to ALL forms of non-theistic theories of justification.

He states:

There is no absolute person or persons on an atheistic view which provides an account for epistemic normativity.

This assumes that any justification must necessarily be based on an absolute person or persons (by which I assume he means a deity) – it begs the question against atheism.

He continues:

The character and command of God and His having created us in His image and obligated us toward Him provides for the epistemic normativity necessary to right belief.

It seems quite odd to me that while several philosophers have written entire books on epistemic justification, Bolt’s justification consists of merely a single sentence – a sentence which, all things considered, doesn’t really tell us much at all. All Bolt does here is state that his theory of justification is based on God; he does not explain how or why, he gives no details. How exactly is it that belief in Yahweh leads to correct beliefs? Is it Bolt’s claim that if one is a believer, then Yahweh will prevent that person from ever believing something which is false? I’m also not sure what Bolt means by “right belief”. Is a right belief a belief with is justified? Is it a belief which is true?

Truth be told, this conversation seems eerily similar to Bolt’s conversation with Mitch LeBlanc regarding another formulation of TAG (Transcendental Argument for the existence of God), the laws of logic, and conventionalism in which LeBlanc states:

[The TAG] is no better than a God of the Gaps argument, applied to logical justifications. Why can’t epistemology rely on the possibility of there being justifications? If you’re saying that the case is such that these three justifications have been shown to be false, and Christianity has not, therefore we must choose Christianity, I think you’ve just begged the question in favor of Christianity. If the arguments in the bulk of my paper hold up, it is an incoherent notion to state that logical principles can be grounded in the existence of God.

To which Bolt replies:

I can deny that lightning is caused by Zeus and even come up with other explanations for it, even other unscientific explanations, and not be concerned about my entire epistemology crashing down. You actually cannot, however, deny that Christianity is the precondition for logic and come up with other “explanations” for it and not be concerned about your entire epistemology crashing down. If you are actually unable to account for logic then you are reduced to absurdity and unable to even entertain allegedly possible justifications for logic. You have no place to stand.

All this ties in closely with the notion of the ”impossibility of the contrary”. Bolt’s overall argument here (modified to reflect our current discussion) is:

1) Christianity gives a sound epistemic justification.
2) Nocterro cannot give a sound non-Christian epistemic justification.
3) Therefore, Nocterro must borrow from Christianity for epistemic justification.

However, Bolt has merely asserted (1). He has offered no real defense of this, or even explained how Christianity does so. Until he can do that, (3) does not follow from (1) and (2). Furthermore, even if he successfully defends (1), he must still defeat any epistemic justification I could possibly offer in order to show that (2) is true.

Leblanc touches upon this notion in a paper by referencing presuppositionalist Greg Bahnsen’s attempt at avoiding having to show all possible justifications false:

As such, in an attempt to avoid the arduous task of showing that all flavours of the aforementioned possible justifications are false (and thereby that any worldviews that employ them are false), he seeks only to show that they all depend upon a particular claim, that ‘Christianity is false’, and that this claim renders everything unintelligible….

To paraphrase this section of LeBlanc’s paper:

i) One must have knowledge of all possible non-Christian justifications in order to show that they all share this claim in common.
ii) If one shows that this claim “Christianity is false” is false, then the TAG is no longer needed.

On Warrant

Perhaps the most prevalent view of warrant in contemporary philosophy is that of proper function, as employed comprehensively and famously by Alvin Plantinga. To say that warrant is proper function is to say that some persons true beliefs are justified in counting as knowledge if they have arisen by virtue of the proper functioning of some cognitive faculties.

Plantinga outlines some criteria in his paper “Epistemic Justification” (Nous, 1986):

A) Your faculties must be in good working order.

This is of course not a problem for the theist, since he will believe that he was designed with faculties in good working order. However, I think two points need to be brought up:

1) Many theists can believe this, not just Christians.
2) Even an atheist may employ an “epistemic veil of ignorance”; that is, he may use God merely as a hypothetical, just as Rawls did in discussing how we may decide what is moral.

In regard to (2), Plantinga writes:

Even if [the atheist] doesn’t think we human beings have been designed and created by a powerful and highly competent being who proposed to endow us with the ability to achieve true beliefs, he may nonetheless think of this idea as a convenient and useful fiction [...] he may say that our cognitive faculties are working properly when they are working in the way they would work if the theistic story were true. He may therefore treat this story the way corresponding stories are treated by some who accept ideal observer theories in ethics…

B) You must be epistemically dutiful.

This merely means that you make real, honest efforts to come to hold true beliefs.

C) Your environment must be appropriate for your particular repertoire of epistemic powers.

Plantinga asks us to imagine:

You awake on a planet near Alpha Centauri. There, conditions are quite different; elephants (or their counterparts) are invisible to human beings but emit a sort of radiation that causes human beings to form the belief that a trumpet is sounding…

…The problem is that your cognitive faculties and the environment in which you find yourself are not properly attuned. The problem is not with your cognitive faculties; they are in good working order; the problem is with the environment.

So basically, it must be the case that our faculties are “suited” to our environment.

Warranted Neo-Confucian Belief

Bolt states:

Given his anti-theistic worldview, Nocterro cannot posit the notion of right or wrong ways that beliefs should either come about or be held and hence his position is reducible to absurdity.

Based on this statement, and drawing from other conversations that Bolt has had, it seems that he is making the claim that only the Christian God can provide the type of warrant required for knowledge. That is to say, he is attempting to prove the truth of Christianity by showing that a denial of Christianity necessarily leads to a denial of warrant, and thereby a denial of knowledge. This, however, is dubious for it is certainly not clear that only the Christian worldview can account for warrant. As one example, David Tien shows that Neo-Confucianism meets the criteria for warrant² (should Bolt also want to claim that his belief is properly basic, Tien’s discussion attempts to show that warranted Neo-Confucian belief provides a defeater for Christian theism).

Briefly, in Neo-Confucian belief, the liangzhi is the “perfect state of mind”. The li (or principle) is the way things ideally ought to be. So, if it can be said that one has a liangzhi state of mind, one’s state of mind is ideal, natural, or perfect. A Christian may consider the mind of God to be liangzhi.

Tien states:

The liangzhi operates as a faculty of the mind that discerns flawlessly, naturally, and spontaneously between right and wrong. It not only forms correct beliefs, it also produces correct affective responses.

I will not delve too much into affective responses here, as I do not think it is important to the discussion. However, the Chinese scholar Wang Yangming states that all humans innately possess liangzhi.

In response to one seeming problem with such an account of the mind,  how does Wang account for our poor moral choices? He offers this explanation:

All things in the universe are a combination of li and qi. Qi is the stuff of which the universe is made. It exists in various grades of purity. Although all things possess all the li of the universe within them, because of the impurity of the qi of which they are composed, some li are obstructed, thereby accounting for the differences between things.

Wang’s view is that while humans possess both li and qi, we are able to purify our minds and eliminate qi. He says that qi is manifested mainly as self-centered desires. Qi can thus be compared to the Buddhist concept of negative karma, or the Christian concept of sin.

In Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief, he states that, according to the sensus divinitatus, Christians have warrant for belief because they have a faculty that produces true beliefs. Thus, Christian belief is warranted (the SD being created by God). However, Wang’s Neo-Confucian beliefs also meet Plantinga’s criteria for warrant.

Tien writes:

First, the liangzhi, once it is discovered and utilized, is a properly functioning (and affective) faculty. Second, the world of li and qi is an appropriate cognitive environment for the operation of liangzhi. Third, the liangzhi faculty of our original minds is simply the conscious aspect of li, which is itself descriptive and normative truth; li conveys the truth about the way things are when they are the way they should be.

Plantinga defends his warrant by stating that if his model is true, then Christians and non-Christians are in different epistemic situations. He also states that one who holds to a non-Christian worldview is necessarily assuming the Christian worldview is false. If this is the case, then it is also the case that the Christian is assuming all non-Christian worldviews are false. Plantinga holds that the claim of arbitrariness only works if the Christian and non-Christian are in similar epistemic situations. If, however, the Christian account is epistemically superior, then the objection is not sound. Since the Neo-Confucian account for warrant is at least internally consistent, and the Neo-Confucian account is epistemically similar to the Christian account, then the Neo-Confucian may accuse the Christian of arbitrarily assuming the falsity of non-Christian belief, just as the Christian may likewise accuse the Neo-Confucian. Thus, Plantinga’s response is self-defeating.

Later on in his paper, Tien examines the overall issue:

And all along, I have claimed that Neo-Confucian belief is probably warranted only if Neo-Confucian belief is true, and Plantinga has claimed the same for Christian belief. The de jure objection is dependent on the de facto objection. If Wang’s description of ultimate reality is true, then Wang’s Neo-Confucian beliefs probably are warranted. If it is false, then they are probably not warranted.

To conclude:
1) If Christian beliefs are possibly warranted (by Plantinga’s method), then Neo-Confucian beliefs are also possibly warranted.
2) If Christian beliefs are true, then they are probably warranted; and likewise for Neo-Confucian beliefs.

As such, if Bolt intends to make the claim that only Christian theism can account for epistemic warrant, it seems that he is simply wrong. Further, it is also an open issue as to whether or not Neo-Confucianism is overall a preferable system to Christian Theism, as well as whether or not Bolt’s system succeeds in providing what he hopes it does. One might discover that I am not presupposing God to reason, but rather, that Bolt is presupposing Neo-Confucianism (and further, possibly deceived about his doing so!) It seems to follow that Bolt should make a case not that Christian belief (and only Christian belief) is warranted, but that it is in fact true.

Assumption vs. Existence

Further, even if Bolt is correct in saying that I must presuppose God, it obviously does not follow that God exists. Bolt seems to be operating with a principle similar to: If I can do Q by assuming P and P only, then my assumption is true where Q is account for reason, or having warranted beliefs and P is that God exists. However, would it not be more accurate to say: If I can do Q by assuming P and P only, then I must assume P? Does the necessity of assuming P entail that P is true? I think not. So, even if Bolt is correct in that I must presuppose that God exists (and I do not think he is), that would mean only that Bolt’s belief in God is possibly justified, not that God actually does exist.

Conclusion

As such, our three topics are really one topic. Of that one topic, it does not appear to me that Bolt has presented any sufficient case or convincing reason to accept that (i) his Christian theism provides warrant, (ii) no non-Christian system can possibly provide warrant. Indeed, the internal consistency of Neo-Confucianism and that it meets the criteria for warrant seems to render at least (ii) obviously false. Given that one does not need to presuppose the Christian God in order to satisfy the requirement of warrant in knowledge, one does not need to accept the authority of scripture and given that, one need not to accept that they are self-deluded if they think differently than Bolt does.

___________________________

¹Any time the word “God” is used, it refers to specifically the Christian God, unless stated otherwise.

²Tien, David W. “Warranted Neo-Confucian Belief: Religious Pluralism and the Affections in the Epistemologies of Wang Yangming [1472-1529] and Alvin Plantinga” in International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 55:1 (2004).