Category: Atheism and Theism

Can Theistic Arguments Deliver More Than Plausibility?

James N. Anderson writes,

. . . a good theistic argument doesn’t have to be irrefutable, but surely we should expect the conclusions of our arguments to rise above the level of mere plausibility. If indeed the heavens declare the glory of God (Ps. 19:1), and God’s existence can be “clearly perceived” from the creation (Rom. 1:20), it would appear that God has given humans something stronger than “clues” about his existence.

I tend to differ with Professor Anderson on this point.  I don't believe theistic arguments can deliver more than plausibility. Here below we are pretty much in the dark.  Just as our wills are weak and our hearts divided by disordered and inordinate loves, our minds are clouded.  The existence of God is not a plain fact, but the infirmity of reason is.  The believer hopes that light will dawn, fitfully and partially in  this life, and more fully if not completely in the next.  But he doesn't know this, nor can he prove it.  That there is Divine Light remains a matter of faith, hope, and yearning.  There is light enough in this life to render rational our faith, hope, and yearning.  But there is also darkness enough to render rational doubt and perhaps despair.  The individual must decide what he will believe and how he will live.  He remains free and at risk of being wrong.  There are no compelling arguments one way or the other when it comes to God and the soul. 

If a black cat jumps on my lap in a well-lit room, I have no doxastic 'wiggle room' as to whether a cat is on my lap.  It's not the same with God.  I don't believe God's existence can be "clearly perceived" from the existence or order of the natural world.  What is "clearly perceived" leaves me quite a lot of doxastic wiggle room.

I develop this thought in Is There Any Excuse for Unbelief?  Romans 1: 18-20.

A Temple to Atheism in the Heart of London?

Alain de Botton's proposal  to enshrine atheistic and this-worldly values has raised the hackles of Richard Dawkins on the ground that "the money was being misspent and that a temple of atheism was a contradiction in terms."  If I were an an atheist, I would support, or at least not oppose, de Botton's idea.  It is the negativism of the Dawkins Gang that turns many away from the New Atheism, a virulent example being A. C. Grayling's rant against religion as child abuse. 

Necessary Being: A Note on a Post by James Barham

In the context of a reply to a "nasty attack on [Alvin] Plantinga by Jerry Coyne that cannot go unanswered," James Barham explains why he is an atheist:

The other reason I balk [at accepting a theism like that of Plantinga's] is that I can’t help suspecting there is a category mistake involved in talking about the “necessity” of the existence of any real thing, even a ground of being. When we speak of the ground of being’s existing “necessarily,” perhaps we are conflating the nomological sense of “necessity”—in the earth’s gravitational field an unsupported object necessarily accelerates at 32 feet per second squared—with the logical sense of the word—if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then necessarily Socrates is mortal.

Many experience intellectual discomfort at the thought of a being that is, as Barham says, real (as opposed, presumably, to ideal or abstract) but yet exists of broadly logical (metaphysical) necessity.  To discuss this with clarity I suggest we drop 'real' and use 'concrete' instead.  So our question is whether it is coherent to suppose that there exists a concrete being that necessarily exists, where the necessity in question is broadly logical.  The question is not whether it is true, but whether it is thinkable without broadly logical contradiction, and without 'category mistake.'   But what does 'concrete' mean?  It does not mean 'material' or 'physical.' Obviously, no material being could be a necessary being. (Exercise for the reader: prove it!)  Here are a couple of definitions:

D1. X is concrete =df X is causally active or passive.
D2. X is abstract =df X is causally inert, i.e., not concrete.

The terms of the concrete-abstract distinction are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive:  everything is one or the other, and nothing  is both.  And the same goes for the physical-nonphysical distinction.  The distinctions are not equivalent, however: they 'cut perpendicular' to each other.  There are (or at least it is coherent to suppose that there could be) nonphysical concreta.  Whether there are physical abstracta is a nice question I will set aside for now.

Plantinga's God, if he exists, is concrete, wholly immaterial, and necessarily existent.  Obviously, one cannot imagine such a being.  (A point of difference with Russell's celestial teapot, by the way.) But I find Plantinga's God to be conceivable without contradiction or confusion or conflation or category mistake.   Barham thinks otherwise, suggesting that the notion of a necessarily existent concretum trades on a confusion of nomological necessity with logical necessity.  I find no such confusion, but I do find a confusion in Barham's thinking.

First of all, there is a genuine distinction between nomological necessity and logical necessity. Barham's sentence about an unsupported object in Earth's gravitational field is nomologically necessary, but logically contingent.  It is the latter because there is no logical contradiction in the supposition that a body in Earth's gravitational field accelerate at a rate other than 32 ft/sec2.   The laws of nature could have been other  than what they are.  But what does this have to do with the possibility of the coherence of the notion of a concrete individual that exists in all broadly logically possible worlds if it exists in one such world?  Nothing that I can see.  Barham points, in effect, to a legitimate difference between:

1. Necessarily, an unsupported object in Earth's gravitation  falls at the rate of 32ft/sec2
and
2. Necessarily, if all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal.

The difference is in type of modality.  In (1) the modality is nomological while in (2) it is logical.  Both cases are cases of de dicto modality: the modal operator operates upon a dictum or proposition.  But when we speak of God as a necessary being, we are not speaking of the necessary truth of a proposition, whether the necessity be nomological or logical.  We are speaking of the necessary existence of a 'thing,' a res. Accordingly, the modality is de re. So I am wondering whether Barham is succumbing to de dicto-de re confusion.  Of course, there is the proposition

3. Necessarily, God exists

where the necessity in question is broadly logical.  The truth-maker of this proposition, however, is God himself, a necessarily existent concrete individual.

My point, then , is that there is no logical mistake involved in the concept of God as necessary being, no confusion, no category mistake.  Even if the concept fails of instantiation, the concept itself is epistemically in the clear.

Barham will no doubt continue to be an atheist.  But he ought to drop the above accusation of category mistake.  He can do better. He could argue that all modality is de dicto.  Or that all necessity is linguistic/conventional in origin.  Or he could give J. N. Findlay's 1948 ontological disproof, which I will feature in my next post.  

I should add that Barham's post, What Happened to Jerry Coyne's Sensus Divinitatis, only a small part of which I examined above, is extremely good and should be carefully read.

Peter Hitchens on an Evening Without Richard Dawkins

Excerpt (emphasis added)

The most moving – and most enjoyable – contribution of the evening came from the marvellous Dr Stephen Priest, simultaneously diffident and extremely powerful. I won’t try to summarise it because I’m sure I’d fail. I hope it will eventually make it on to the web. It reminded me of why I had once wanted to study philosophy, a desire which faded rapidly when I was exposed to English Linguistic Philosophy and various other strands of that discipline which made me wonder if I had wandered into a convention of crossword-compilers, when what I wanted was to seek the origins of the universe.

Many of you will know that in his failure to face William Lane Craig, Professor Dawkins was not alone. Several other members of Britain’s Atheist Premier League found themselves unable or unwilling (or both) to take him on.

The important thing about this is that what Craig does is simple. He uses philosophical logic, and a considerable knowledge of physics, to expose the shallowness of Dawkins’s arguments. I would imagine that an equally serious Atheist philosopher would be able to give him a run for his money, but Dawkins isn’t that. He would have been embarrassingly out of his depth.

It would be interesting to compile a list of those who were dissuaded, or almost dissuaded, from pursuing philosophy by their encounter with the Ordinary Language movement.  Hector-Neri Castañeda  once told me that the dominance of the latter in the '50s and '60s almost convinced  him to drop philosophy as a profession abd go to law school.  Not being a native English speaker, he could not hope to contribute to discussions in which the subtleties of ordinary English usage are put under the microsope.  But then things changed in that wild decade of the '60s in which so many things changed, the epigoni of Wittgenstein went into eclipse, and systematic philosophy was back on track and attractive of the better heads.

My posts on OLP are collected in the Ordinary Language Philosophy category.

Were the Greatest Philosophers Theists or Atheists?

To answer the title question, we must first answer the logically prior question as to who the greatest philosophers were. But this presupposes an answer to the equally vexing question of who counts as  a philosopher. Heidegger published two fat volumes on Nietzsche, but dismissed Kierkegaard as a mere "religious writer." Others will go him one better, dismissing both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche — and Heidegger as well. Was Aquinas a philosopher?  Or was he merely a brilliant man who used philosophical tools to shore up beliefs of an extraphilosophical provenience, beliefs that he wouldn't have abandoned even if he hadn't able to find philosophical justifications for them?

Note also that the question as to who counts as a gen-u-ine philosopher presupposes an answer to the hairy and hoary question as to what philosophy is. 

In any case, here is my ranking of the philosophers that made it onto a BBC shortlist from a few years ago. The ranking is mine; the list is from the BBC.

1. Plato (c. 429-347 BC)
2. Aristotle (384-322 BC)
3. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274)
4. René Descartes (1596-1650)
5. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
6. Socrates (c. 470-399 BC)
7. Benedictus de Spinoza  (1632-1677)
8. David Hume (1711-1776)
9. Epicurus (341-270 BC)
10. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
11. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
12. Arthur  Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
13. Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
14. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
15. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
16. Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970)
17. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
18. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
19. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
20.  Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994)

Here are my criteria in order of importance:

1. Truth of the philosopher's conclusions
2. Belief in reason's power to discover some of the ultimate truth
3. Rigor of argumentation
4. Appreciation of the limits of reason
5. Depth and centrality of the problems addressed
6. Breadth and systematicity of vision
7. Originality
8. Long-term influence

The first seven philosophers on my list are great philosophers, the rest are important but not great. Kierkegaard, for example, though original and influential, and (too) appreciative of the limits of reason falls short on the other criteria.

It goes without saying that my ordering of the philosophers, my criteria, and their ordering are highly subjective. They reflect my interests, my biases, and my own philosophical conclusions. For example, my primary interest in a philosopher is not in his literary merit. If that is your primary interest, then you will probably rank Kierkegaard and Nietzsche ahead of Kant. Indeed, if you do not, then you have very poor taste!

You will notice that I am biased toward the rationalists. Thus all the philosophers I call great are either rationalists, or like Aristotle and Kant, have a strong rationalist side to their thinking. And when I   list truth as my numero uno criterion, it is clear that that is truth as I take it to be.

On the score of truth,  Nietzsche really falls short. For not only is there little if any philosophical truth in his writings, the poor soul denies the very existence of truth.

When one studies the first seven on the list, one actually learns something about the world. But when one reads Nietzsche and (later) Wittgenstein, one learns highly original and fascinating opinions that have little or no chance of being true. One learns from them, and from some others on the list, how NOT to do philosophy. But that too is something worth knowing! So they have their place and their use.

Now to our question whether the greatest philosophers were theists or atheists. The greatest philosophers on my list are Plato, Aristotle,  Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Socrates, and Spinoza. All of these are theists  of one sort or another.  But even if Spinoza is excluded, that leaves six out of seven. And if you argue that Aristotle's Prime Mover is not God in any serious sense, then I've still got five out of seven.

If you say I rigged my list so that theists come out on top, I will deny the charge and argue that I used independent criteria (listed above). But if you disagree my assessment, I will consider it par for the course.

Defeasible Presumption and Evidence: A Confusion in McInerny

A defeasible presumption in favor of proposition p is not evidence for p.  In a legal proceeding there is a defeasible presumption of innocence (POI): one is presumed innocent until proven guilty.  For example, Jones, who has been charged with Smith's murder, is presumed to be not guilty until such time as the presumption is defeated.  But this presumption is not evidence of Jones' innocence.  It is a rule that governs the adducing and evaluating of evidence.  The attorney for the accused does not attempt to prove or provide evidence for Jones' innocence; his task is merely to rebut the positive arguments of the prosecutor.  Thus POI does not play an evidential role but a procedural role: it amounts to a placing of ther onus probandi on the prosecutor.

In Why the Burden of Proof is on the Atheist, Ralph McInerny seems not to be clear about this ; he seems to confuse an argument for theism with an argument for a  presumption in favor of theism. He writes,

I am asking whether the skeptic is justified in calling into question the truth of 'God exists.' Why not put the burden on him? Why not insist that he is attempting to convict of irrationality generations of human beings, rational animals like himself, whole cultures for whom belief in the divine and worship are part of what it is to be a human being? Were all those millions, that silent majority, wrong? Surely to think something against the grain of the whole tradition of human experience is not to be done lightly. It is, need one say it, presumptuous to pit against that past one's own version of the modern mind. This suggests that the present generation is in agreement on things incompatible with belief in God. Or that all informed people now alive, etc. etc. Meaning, I suppose, that all present day skeptics are skeptics.

Is there thus a prima facie argument against atheism drawn from tradition, the common consent of mankind both in the past and in the present time? I think so.

In this passage McInerny appears to be confusing the question whether there is a presumption in favor of theism (so that the onus probandi rests on the atheist) because of common consent with the question whether common consent amounts to an argument for theism.  That God exists is a substantive claim made within the dialectical situation in which theist and atheist confront each other; that the burden of proof rests on the one who denies it is a procedural claim that helps define the dialectical situation.

McInerny begins by speaking of shifting the burden of proof onto the skeptic but ends by speaking of an argument against atheism.  It may be that common consent is a good reason for presuming theism to be true until shown to be false  without being a good reason for the truth of theism.

What is Behind the Terminological Mischief of the ‘Negative Atheists’?

Joseph A. suggests it's all about politics:
 
You ask in your latest post "So what's going on here?"

 
The New Atheists are largely motivated by politics, not philosophy. So, what they try to zero in on is the most effective way to advance their cause, in the public and private sphere. And that means being on defense as little as possible, honesty or reasonableness be damned.
 
It's an anecdote, but it's been my experience that New Atheists (who seem to principally be behind all these weird re-definitions of atheism) hate being on defense. That's the fun of being a skeptic after all – you risk nothing, and whoever you're talking with risks everything — so long as you can frame the conversation as "You are making a claim, and I am not". You can criticize, mock, argue, whatever you wish, and so long as you avoid the right moves, you'll have no risk of having the same come back to you. But key to that is to avoid being thought of as making claims. Someone who says "There is no God", makes a claim. Therefore, that position is avoided, at least superficially. (In my opinion, often dishonestly.)
 
After all, who wants to be in the hot seat? And where would any person who wants to advance their political cause rather be – the questioned, or the questioner? Cynically, and spoken more out of personal experience than out of any hard data, but that's how I see the answer to your question. This is all about politics, and it has been from the start. (I'm differentiating here between actual agnostics or more intellectual atheists, and New Atheists.)
 
This is as good an explanation as I can think of.  The point, I take it, is not that the New Atheism as such is solely politically motivated — which is  not the case — but that the 'redefinitional gambit' is.

Against Terminological Mischief: ‘Negative Atheism’ and ‘Negative Nominalism’

This from the seemingly reputable site, Investigating Atheism:

More recently, atheists have argued that atheism only denotes a lack of theistic belief, rather than the active denial or claims of certainty it is often associated with.

I'm having a hard time seeing what point there could be in arguing that "atheism only denotes a lack of theistic belief."  Note first that atheism cannot be identified with the lack of theistic belief, i.e., the mere absence of the belief that God exists, for that would imply that cabbages and tire irons are atheists.  Note second that it won't do to say that atheism is the lack of theistic belief in persons, for there are persons incapable of forming beliefs.  Charitably interpreted, then, the idea must be that atheism is the lack of theistic belief in persons capable of forming and maintaining beliefs. 

But this cannot be right either, and for a very simple reason.  Atheism is something people discuss, debate, argue for, argue against, draw conclusions from, believe, disbelieve, entertain, and so on.  Atheism, in other words, is a PROPOSITION: it is something that can be either true or false, that can be the object of such propositional attitudes as belief and disbelief, and can stand in such logical relations to other propositions as entailment, consistency, and inconsistency.  But one cannot discuss, debate, argue for, . . . believe, etc. a lack of something.  Atheism redefined as the lack of theistic belief is a PROPERTY of certain persons. Now a proposition is not a property.  Atheism is a proposition and  for this reason cannot be redefined as a property.

Someone who understands this might nevertheless maintain that 'negative atheism' is a proposition, namely, the proposition that there are people capable of forming and maintaining beliefs who simply lack the belief that God exists.  Admittedly, one could use 'atheism' as the label for the proposition that there are such people.  But then atheism so defined would be trivially true.  After all, no one denies that there are people capable of beliefs who lack the belief that God exists.  Furthermore, if 'atheism' is so defined, then theism would be the view that there are persons capable of belief who have the belief that God exists.  But then theism, too, would be trivially true.  And if both are true, then they cannot be logical contradictories of each other as they must be if the terms are to mean anything useful.

Now what is the point of the terminological mischief perpetrated by these 'negative atheists'?  It is terminological mischief because we have just seen it ruin two perfectly good words, 'atheism' and 'theism.'  If atheism and theism are worth discussing, then atheism is the view that God does not exist and theism is the view that God does exist. ((I am assuming that by 'God' we understand that being who is the main target of the venom of militant atheists, namely, the God of the Abrahamic religions. We are not talking about Spinoza's deus sive natura or anything of that order.)

Consider the parallel case of a nominalist who for whatever reason does not want to be taken to be asserting any positive thesis.  So instead of adhering to the standard understanding of 'nominalism' according to which it is the view that there are no universals and that particulars alone exist, he proposes to redefine 'nominalism' as the absence of the belief that there are universals. 

But now the same problems arise.  One cannot argue for or against nominalism if it is merely a lack of belief.  And if you say that nominalism is the proposition that some people lack the belief in universals then that is true, but not worth arguing for or against.  One does not argue for or against a trivially true thesis that all accept.

So what's going on here? 

Are Atheists Theologians?

This from a reader:

I’m e-mailing you with this question because it’s bothered me for a while and I think you are more than capable of giving me a better understand of it. “Can atheists rationally ignore theology? Further, if they do need to study it, quite how much should they study, and which aspect(s) of it?” Many atheists think that studying theology would simply waste their time, whereas I now think that no rational person’s atheism is complete without engaging with the best theology on offer.

Well of course you are right:  any atheist who does not engage with a sophisticated conception of God is simply attacking a straw man and may be ignored for that very reason.  I see little point is discussions with atheists who liken God to a flying spaghetti monster or a celestial teapot.  Let them first show that they have mastered the complexities of a sophisticated God conception, and that they have respect for, and some understanding of, the religious sensibility, and then we will talk with them. If they polemicize, or are disrespectful or dismissive, then they are best ignored.

My own position is that atheism is a kind of rival theology (atheology?), just as every disbelief is a kind of rival belief, and that no atheist can rationally afford to ignore theology.

Here you have to be careful.  Suppose S disbelieves that p.  (For example, Jones disbelieves that Osama is dead.) It does not follow that Jones believes that ~p.  For it may be that S neither believes that p nor believes that ~p.  If one neither accepts nor rejects the proposition that Osama is dead, then one could be said to disbelieve that Osama is dead without believing that he is alive.  So there are two modes of disbelief with respect to a proposition p.  Either one believes that ~p or one suspends judgment with respect to p.  So I don't agree that every disbelief is a kind of rival belief.

In fact, every atheist is implicitly a theologian. For instance, Thomas Aquinas believes that God is simple, and Richard Dawkins believes that God is complex. Dawkins and Aquinas seem to compete in the same arena and talk on the same subject, so aren’t they both theologians, albeit rival ones? Further, every informed atheist must hold that the arguments that are meant to establish the existence of God fail. To think this is to engage positively with theology. Not to think this is to fail to rationally found one’s atheism. An atheist who is ignorant of theology, in my view, is rather like someone who disbelieves in the planets but is ignorant of astronomy. Atheists who do not take God and theology seriously do not take their own atheism seriously either.

Here again you have to be careful.  It is not as if there exists an x such that x = God and that Aquinas and Dawkins have contradictory beliefs about this one entity, x.  They are not disagreeing in the way two theologians might disagree over say,  divine foreknowledge or the filioque, or divine simplicity.   These theologians disagree, not about the existence of God, but about his exact nature.  By contrast, Aquinas and Dawkins are not presupposing a common subject matter about whose attributes they disagree.  So it is highly misleading if not outright wrong to say that Aquinas and Dawkins are rival theologians.  For Aquinas, theology has a subject matter; for Dawkins it does not.  So they do not "talk on the same subject."

It helps if you distinguish concepts of God from God.  For Aquinas, there really is an entity which some of those concepts are concepts of, even though no concept could be adequate to the divine reality.  For Dawkins, however, nothing that could reasonably count as a God concept is a concept of anything.

I think you have the right idea, but you are putting it in the wrong way.  You are right that serious and intellectually responsible atheists must address themselves to the most sophisticated conceptions of theists.  In this sense they must "engage positively with theology."  But that is not to say that "every atheist is implicitly a theologian."  Atheists deny the existence of God.  So for them there cannot be any theology, any study of God, as a legitimate inquiry into a domain of reality.  And please note that one can deny the existence of God without in any obvious way presupposing the existence of God.  How?  In the same way one denies the existence of Pegasus without presupposing the existence of Pegasus.  One cannot predicate nonexistence of Pegasus without presupposing the existence of Pegasus.  But one can predicate noninstantiation of the concept winged horse of such and such a description without presupposing the existence of Pegasus,  And so it is with the denial of God.  The atheist simply claims that no God concept is instantiated.  So I deny that atheism is a species of theology.  It is a rejection of all theology.

I also deny here and here that atheism is a religion, though I grant that it is like a religion in some ways. 

Practical and Evidential Aspects of Rationality: Is it Ever Rational to Believe Beyond the Evidence?

I need to get clearer about the rationality of beliefs versus the rationality of actions. One question is whether it is ever rational to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence. And if it is never rational to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence, then presumably it is also never rational to act upon such a belief. For example, if it irrational to believe in God and post-mortem survival, then presumably it is also irrational to act upon those beliefs, by entering a monastery, say. Or is it? 

W. K. Clifford is famous for his evidentialist thesis that "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence." On this way of thinking, someone who fails to apportion belief to evidence violates the ethics of belief, and thereby does something morally wrong. Although Clifford had religious beliefs in his sights, his thesis, by its very wording, applies to every sort of belief, including political beliefs and the belief expressed in the Clifford sentence lately quoted!  I take this as a refutation of Clifford's evidentialist stringency. 

 If I took Clifford seriously I would have to give up most of my beliefs about politics, health, nutrition, economics, history and a crapload of other things.  For example, I believe it is a wise course to restrict my eating of eggs to three per week due to their high cholesterol content.  And that's what I do.  Do I have sufficent evidence for this belief? Not at all.  I certainly don't have evidence that entails the belief in question.  What evidence I have makes it somewhat probable.  But more probable than not?  Not clear!  But to be on the safe side I restrict my intake of high-cholesterol foods.  It's a bit like Pascal's Wager.  What I give up, namely, the pleasures of bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning,  etc. is paltry in comparison to the possible pay-off, namely living  and blogging to a ripe old age.

And then there is a problem  whether Clifford has sufficient evidence for his evidentialist thesis.  It is obvious to me that he doesn't but I'll leave that for the reader to work out. 

Why I am a Quasi-Atheist*

A guest post by Peter Lupu with some comments in blue by Bill Vallicella.

[This essay is dedicated to the memory of Ann Freitag, my significant other, who passed away on April 17, 2010, 11:30am. She gave me two priceless gifts: Herself and a deep understanding that the love of life is not a mere gesture, but a way of loving every living being.]

The title of this essay expresses what it is like for me to experience an ever ascending spiral of theistic aspirations inhibited by atheist inclinations, and vice versa. My predicament is both intellectual as well as existential. It is a blending of the two that fuels a restless existence, one which propels me to journey on this ascending spiral of unfamiliar territory towards an unknown destination.

I. Why I am not an Atheist

Let me begin with atheism. Atheism is first and foremost a rejection of theism. However, the rejection of theism itself springs from several often misunderstood sources. A deep and personal disappointment with a particular religion frequently converts into a fervent rejection of theism and all that it means. A second source may begin with a genuine delight in the achievements of science which now and then, and quite unnoticeably, spills over into a materialistic metaphysics. The latter, in turn, bluntly opposes theism’s commitment to a transcendent reality. Thus, what starts as a delight in the potential of inquiry to unlock the mysteries of the physical universe migrates into an impatient and often mocking rejection of anything non-physical. Theism is a casualty of such a sentiment.

Continue reading “Why I am a Quasi-Atheist*”

God, Probability, and Noncontingent Propositions

Matt Hart comments:

. . . most of what we conceive is possible. So if we say that

1) In 80% of the cases, if 'Conceivably, p' then 'Possibly, p'
2) Conceivably, God exists
Ergo,
3) Pr(Possibly, God exists) = 80%
4) If 'Possibly, God exists' then 'necessarily, God exists'
Ergo,
5) Pr(Necessarily, God exists) = 80%,

we seem to get by.

I had made the point that conceivability does not entail possibility.  Hart agrees with that, but seems to think that conceivability is nondemonstrative evidence of possibility.  Accordingly, our ability to conceive (without contradiction) that p gives us good reason to believe that p is possible.

What is puzzling to me is how a noncontingent proposition can be assigned a probability less than 1.  A noncontingent proposition is one that is either necessary or impossible.  Now all of the following are noncontingent: 

God exists
Necessarily, God exists
Possibly, God exists
God does not exist
Necessarily, God does not exist
Possibly, God does not exist.

I am making the Anselmian assumption that God (the ens perfectissimum, that than which no greater can be conceived, etc.) is a noncontingent being.  I am also assuming that our modal logic is S5.  The characteristic S5 axiom states that Poss p –> Nec Poss p.  S5 includes S4, the characteristic axiom of which is Nec p –> Nec Nec p.  What these axioms say, taken together, is that what's possible and necessary does not vary from possible world to possible world. 

Now Possibly, God exists, if true, is necessarily true, and if false, necessarily false.  (By the characteristic S5 axiom.)  So what could it mean that the probability of Possibly, God exists is .8?  I would have thought that the probability is either 1 or 0.  the same goes for Necessarily, God exists. How  can this proposition have a probability of .8?  Must it not be either 1 or 0?

Now I am a fair and balanced guy, as everyone knows.  So I will deploy the same reasoning against the atheist who cites the evils of our world as nondemonstrative evidence of the nonexistence of God.  I don't know what it means to say that it is unlikely that God exists given the kinds and quantities of evil in our world.  Either God exists necessarily or he is impossible (necessarily nonexistent).  How can you raise the probability  of a necessary truth?  Suppose some hitherto unknown genocide comes to light, thereby adding to the catalog of known evils.  Would that strengthen the case against the existence of God?  How could it?

To see my point consider the noncontingent propositions of mathematics.  They are all of them necessarily true if true.  So *7 + 5 = 12* is necessarily true and *7 + 5 = 11* is necessarily false.  Empirical evidence is irrelevant here.  I cannot raise the probability of the first proposition by adding 7 knives and 5 forks to come up with 12 utensils.  I do not come to know the truth of the first proposition by induction from empirical cases of adding.  It would also be folly to attempt to disconfirm the second proposition by empirical means.

If I can't know that 7 + 5 = 12 by induction from empirical cases, how can I know that possibly, God exists by induction from empirical cases of conceiving?  The problem concerns not only induction, but how one can know by induction a necessary proposition.  Similarly, how can I know that God does not exist by induction from empirical cases of evil?

Of course, *God exists* is not a mathematical proposition.  But it is a noncontingent proposition, which is all I need for my argument.

Finally, consider this.  I can conceive the existence of God but I can also conceive the nonexistence of God.  So plug 'God does not exist' into Matt's argument above.  The result is that probability of the necessary nonexistence of God is .8!

My conclusion:  (a) Conceivability does not entail possibility; (b) in the case of noncontingent propositions, conceivability does not count as nondemonstrative evidence of possibility.