Atheism and Theism – Page 4 – Maverick Philosopher

Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil

A Catholic reader of this blog is deeply troubled by the problem of animal suffering. He reports his painful recollection of a YouTube video that depicts

. . . the killing of a baby elephant by 13 lions. They first attacked the little elephant in the open, but he was saved when several water buffalo intervened and drove the lions off. The baby then ran to two large bull elephants nearby, but rather than protecting him from the lions, they were indifferent. The lions, seeing this, rushed the baby, which helplessly ran off into the bush, where the lions, 13 in all, caught him, and began to devour him. You probably know that because of an elephant’s trunk, a lion’s bite to the neck does not kill, so I assume that the baby was eaten alive.

I find the thought of this killing and the myriad other killings like it very hard to accept. How does a theist explain such acts in nature? I know something of the various theodicies and defenses of theistic philosophers, but when confronted with this scene of terror and horrendous death, I find them all unconvincing. Something in the depths of my being rejects them all as over-sophisticated attempts to mask what is truly terrible so as to defend at all costs the first of Hume’s four options, that of a perfectly good first cause. I am not saying that I am abandoning my theistic beliefs, but I think that for too long, theists have not taken the matter of animal pain and suffering seriously enough.

Leaving philosophic theism aside, there is glaring indifference to this matter in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, where the fixation on humanity’s fall, faults, and need for salvation. Without denying whatever truth may be found in this long theological reflection on human misery, what of the animals, those here millions of years before man walked on the earth, and all those who have shared and do share the earth with him? (Your posts on animal sentience, from which I have greatly profited, form part of the background to this question.)

[. . .] You often speak of choosing, and I agree that we must choose what we believe, but there is something at the very heart of reality that undermines our choices, and we find ourselves, if we are honest, doubting what we have chosen and thrown back on uncertainty, or if perhaps less honest and more fearful, falling into elaborate intellectual defenses to fend off what is unpalatable. As I wrote to you last year, I still believe that our ignorance is perhaps the greatest evil that we must confront.

Again, I had to share this with you, since I have no one here who would understand what is troubling me . . .

The horrors of nature "red in tooth and claw" cannot be denied. Sensitive souls have been driven by their contemplation to the depths of pessimism and anti-natalism. (See my Anti-natalism and Benatar categories). The notion that this awful world could be the creation of an all-powerful and loving deity who providentially cares about his creatures can strike one as either a sick joke, a feel-good fairy tale, or something equally intellectually disreputable. As my old atheist friend Quentin Smith once put it to me, "If you were God, would you have created this world?" To express it in the form of an understatement, a world in which sentient beings eat each other alive, and must do so to survive, and lack the ability to commit suicide, does not seem to be a world optimally arranged. If you were the architect of the world, would you design it as a slaughter house?

If one suffers from the problem of (natural) evil, there is little a philosopher qua philosopher can do. Pastoral care is not his forte. But if one can gain some intellectual light on the philosophical problem, that light might help with the existential-psychological problem. I will now suggest how a theist who is also inclined toward skepticism can find some peace of mind.

Here is an argument from evil:

Theological Premise: Necessarily, if there is a God, there are no pointless evils.

Empirical Premise: There are pointless evils.

Conclusion: There is no God.

A pointless evil is one that is unjustified or gratuitous. Suppose there is an evil that is necessary for a greater good. God could allow such an evil without prejudice to his omnibenevolence. So it it not the case that evils as such tell against the existence of God, but only pointless evils.

Now the lions' eating alive of the baby elephant would seem to be a pointless evil: why couldn't an omnipotent God have created a world in which all animals are herbivores?

But — and here the skeptic inserts his blade — how do we know this? in general, how do we know that the empirical premise is true? Even if it is obvious that an event is evil, it is not obvious that it is pointlessly evil. One can also ask, more radically, whether it is empirically obvious that an event is evil. It is empirically obvious to me that the savagery of nature is not to my liking, nor to the liking of the animals being savaged, but it does not follow that said savagery is objectively evil. But if an event or state of affairs is not objectively evil, then it cannot be objectively pointlessly evil.

So how do we know that the so-called empirical premise above is true or even empirical? Do we just see or intuit that an instance of animal savagery is both evil and pointless? Suppose St. Paul tells us (Romans 1:18-20) that one can just see that the universe is a divine artifact, and that God exists from the the things that have been made, and that therefore atheism is morally culpable! I say: Sorry, sir, but you cannot read off the createdness-by-God of nature from its empirical attributes. Createdness is not an empirical attribute; it is an ontological status. But neither is being evil or being pointlessly evil.

So both the theist and the atheist make it too easy for themselves when they appeal to some supposed empirical fact. We ought to be skeptical both about Paul's argument for God and the atheist's argument against God. Paul begs the question when he assumes that the natural world is a divine artifact. The atheist too begs the question when he assumes that all or some evils are pointless evils.

Will you say that the pointlessness of some evils is not a direct deliverance but an inference? From which proposition or propositions? From the proposition that these evils are inscrutable in the sense that we can discern no sufficient reasons for God's allowing them? But that is too flimsy a premise to allow such a weighty inference.

The dialectical lay of the land seems to be as follows. If there are pointless evils, then God does not exist, and if God exists, then there are no pointless evils. But we don't know that there are pointless evils, and so we are within our epistemic rights in continuing to affirm the existence of God. After all, we have a couple dozen good, but not compelling, arguments for the existence of God. One cannot prove the existence of God. By the same token, one cannot prove the nonexistence of God. One can bluster, of course, and one can beg the question. And one can do this both as a theist and as an atheist. But if you are intellectually honest, you will agree with me that there are no proofs and no objective certainties in these sublunary precincts.

This is why I say that, in the end, one must decide what one will believe and how one will live. And of course belief and action go together: what one believes informs how one lives, and how one lives shows what one believes. If I believe in God and the soul, then those beliefs will be attested in my behavior, and if I live as if God and the soul are real, then that is what it is to believe these things.

If you seek objective certainty in these matters, you will not find it. That is why free decision comes into it. But there is nothing willful about the decision since years of examination of arguments and counterarguments are behind it all. The investigation must continue if the faith is to be authentic. Again, there is no objective certainty in this life. There is only subjective certainty which many people confuse with objective certainty. We don't KNOW. This, our deep ignorance, is another aspect of the problem of evil.

Making these assertions, I do not make them dogmatically. I make them tentatively and I expose them to ongoing investigation. In this life we are in statu viae: we are ever on the road. If rest there is, it is at the end of the road.

My correspondent seems to think that I think that deciding what to believe and how to live generates objective certainty. That is not my view. There is no objective certainty here below. It lies on the Other Side if it lies anywhere. And there is no objective certainty here below that there is anything beyond the grave. One simply has to accept that one is in a Cave-like condition, to allude to Plato's great allegory, and that, while one is not entirely in the dark, one is not entirely in the light either, but is muddling around in a chiaroscuro of ignorance and insight.

Once More on Romans 1: 18-20 and Whether Atheism is Morally Culpable

Brian writes,

In Van Til and Romans 1: 18-20 you accused Paul of begging the question in Romans 1 when he characterizes the natural world as ‘created’. The question you have in mind – the one presumably being begged by Paul – is whether the world is a divine creation.

BV: That's right, but let's back up a step.

Paul is concerned to show the moral culpability of unbelief. He assumes something I don't question, namely, that some beliefs are such that, if a person holds them, then he is morally culpable or morally blameworthy for holding them. We can call them morally culpable beliefs as long we understand that it is the holding of the belief, not its content, that is morally culpable. I would even go so far as to say that some beliefs are morally culpable whether or not one acts on them.

So I don't question whether there are morally culpable beliefs. What I question is whether atheism is a morally culpable belief, where atheism in this context is the thesis that there is no God as Paul and those in his tradition conceive him.

So why does Paul think atheism is morally culpable? The gist of it is as follows. Men are godless and wicked and suppress the truth. What may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. Human beings have no excuse for their unbelief. "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made . . . ."

We can argue over whether there is an argument here or just some dogmatic statements dressed up as an argument. (The word 'for' can reasonably be taken as signaling argumentative intent.) Suppose we take Paul to be giving an argument. What is the argument? It looks to be something like the following:

1) It is morally inexcusable to refuse to acknowledge what is known to be the truth.

2) That God exists is known to be the truth from the plain evidence of creation.

Therefore

3) It is morally inexcusable to refuse to acknowledge that God exists.

This argument is only as good as its minor premise, (2). But right here is where Paul begs the question. If the natural world is a divine creation, it follows analytically that God exists and that God created the world. Paul begs the question by assuming that the natural world is a divine creation. Paul is of course free to do that. He is free to presuppose the existence of God, not that he, in full critical self-awareness, presupposes the existence of God; given his upbringing he probably never seriously questioned the existence of God and always took his existence for granted.

And having presupposed — or taken for granted — the existence of God, it makes sense for him to think of us as having been created by God with an innate sense of the divine — Calvin's sensus divinitatis — that our sinful rebelliousness suppresses. And it makes sense for him to think that the wrath of God is upon us for our sinful self-will and refusal to acknowledge God's reality and sovereignty.

For him to have begged the question here, wouldn’t Paul’s burden of proof have to be that the world is a divine creation? This does not seem to be his burden in Romans 1. It seems to me that Paul is accounting for why people are under the wrath of God. His answer is that: (1) they know God; and (2) they fail to honor Him as God. If (1) and (2) are the case, then this accounts for why they are under God’s wrath.

Your talk of burden of proof is unclear. You seem to think that the burden of proof is the proposition one aims to prove. But that's not right. So let's not muddy the waters with 'burden of proof.'

We may be at cross purposes. What interests me is the question whether atheist belief is morally blameworthy. I read the passage in question as containing an argument that it is. I presented the argument above, and I explained why it is a bad argument: it commits the informal fallacy of petitio principii. To answer my own question: it is not in general morally blameworthy to hold characteristic atheist beliefs, although it may in some cases be morally blameworthy.

What interests Brian about the passage in question is the explanation it contains as to why the wrath of God is upon us. Well, if you assume that God exists and that venereal disease and the other bad things Paul mentions are the effects of divine wrath, then, within the presupposed framework, one can ask what accounts for God's wrath. It would then make sense to say that people know that God exists but willfully suppress this knowledge and fail to honor God. Therefore, God, to punish man for his willful refusal to acknowledge God's reality and sovereignty, sends down such scourges as AIDS.

I have no problem with this interpretation.

So far so good. But, this is not all that Paul says. The key section for our purposes is how Paul argues for (1), the proposition that people know God. Paul claims that they all know God because He made Himself evident to them through creation. Is Paul now be begging the question because of his use of ‘creation’? Again, I do not think so. Here is the pertinent passage:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made…(Rom. 1:20 NASB).

But now I do have a problem. Brian has not appreciated the point that, to me, is blindingly evident. What is MADE by God is of course made by GOD. But this analytic proposition give us no reason to think that nature is MADE, i.e., created by a divine being that is transcendent of nature. It ought to be obvious that one cannot straightaway infer from the intelligibility, order, beauty, and existence of nature that 'behind' nature there is a supernatural personal being that is supremely intelligent, the source of all beauty, and the first cause of all existing things apart from itself. One cannot 'read off' the being instantiated of the divine attributes from contemplation of nature.

Suppose I see a woman. I am certain that if she is a wife, then there is a person who is her husband. Can I correctly infer from those two propositions that the woman I see is a wife? Can I 'read off' from my perception of the woman that she is a wife?

God, the Cosmos, Other Minds: In the Same Epistemological Boat?

Tony Flood has gone though many changes in his long search for truth. He seems to have finally settled down in Van Til's presuppositionalism. Tony writes,

God, the cosmos, and a plurality of minds other than one’s own are in the same epistemological boat. [. . .] To be skeptical about one but not the other two is arbitrary. Our innate predisposition to be realistic about all three is divinely written “software” that informs our cerebral “wetware.”

I wish I could accept this, but I don't, and I believe I have good reasons for my non-acceptance.

By "in the same epistemological boat," Flood means that God, the physical universe, and other minds are all on a par in respect of dubitability. No one of them is more open to reasonable doubt than the other two, and none of them is open to reasonable doubt. Therefore, one can no more reasonably doubt the existence of God than one can doubt the existence of other minds. Atheism is on a par with solipsism in point of plausibility.

And bear in mind that by 'God' here is meant something very specific, the triune God of Christian theism, the God of the Bible as understood by Van Til and Co. It is one thing to argue — and it can be done with some plausibility — that the validity of all reasoning about any subject presupposes the existence of an omniscient necessary being. It is quite another to argue that the presuppositum must be the God of Christian theism as the latter is expounded by a Calvinist!

Now I concede that doubts about the external world and the the reality of other minds are hyperbolic, and if taken as genuine doubts, as opposed to thought experiments deployed in an epistemology seminar, unreasonable. No one really doubts the existence of rocks or other minds. Not even Bishop Berkeley doubts, let alone denies, the existence of rocks, the tree in the quad, and suchlike. This is why it is perfectly lame to think that Berkeley's idealism can be refuted by kicking a stone. (See Of Berkeley's Stones and the Eliminativist's Beliefs and Argumentum ad Lapidem?)

The hyperbolic skepticism of Descartes' dream argument and its latter-day brain-in-the-vat incarnations are methodological tools of the epistemologist who seeks to understand how we know what we know, and what it is to know what we know. A philosopher who wonders how knowledge is possible may, but need not, and typically does not, deny or have any real doubt THAT knowledge is possible. For example, I may be firmly convinced of the existence of so-called abstract objects (numbers, sets, propositions, uninstantiated properties, etc.) but be puzzled about how knowledge of such entities is possible given that there is no causal interaction with them. That puzzlement does not get the length of doubt or denial. The same holds, mutatis mutandis, for knowledge of the past, knowledge of other minds, and knowledge of the external world.

My point, then, is that (i) practically no one has real doubts about the existence of the external world or the existence of other minds, and that (ii) it would not be reasonable to have such doubts. But (iii) people do have real doubts about the existence of the God of Christian theism, and (iv) it is not unreasonable to have such doubts. The various arguments from evil, and not just these, cast reasonable doubt on Christian theism.

One type of real doubt is an 'existential' doubt, one that grips a person who succumbs to it, and induces fear and perhaps horror. There are those who lose their faith in God and suffer in consequence. They experience a terrible sense of loss, or perhaps they fear that they have been duped by crafty priests who exploited their youthful innocence and gullibility to infect them with superstitious nonsense in order to keep the priestly hustle going. One can lose one's faith in God, and many do. No one loses his faith in the external world or in other minds. And this for the simple reason that there was no need for faith in the first place.

I believe I have said enough to cast serious doubt on, if not refute, the idea that God, the the cosmos, and other minds are are in the same epistemological boat. That's a boat that won't float.

Does Everyone Have a Religion? Even Atheists?

Andrew Sullivan opines,

Everyone has a religion. It is, in fact, impossible not to have a religion if you are a human being. [. . .]

By religion, I mean something quite specific: a practice not a theory; a way of life that gives meaning, a meaning that cannot really be defended without recourse to some transcendent value, undying “Truth” or God (or gods).

Which is to say, even today’s atheists are expressing an attenuated form of religion.

Sully is not being specific enough. Consider Communist ideology. It is a practice, not just a theory. It is a way of life that gives meaning. It appeals to values that transcend the current situation such as the value of a classless society free of exploitation and alienation, a society with no need of the illusory consolations of religion, a society in which that opiate will not be needed because each will realize himself to the fullest in the here and now. Pie here below will obviate the hankering for pie in the sky. It is easy to see how so many millions in the 20th century could be recruited to the Communist cause.

On Sully's definition, godless communism is a religion that rejects religion, which is to say: it is not a religion on any appropriate understanding of that term. Sully's definition is not specific enough, sullied as it is by being too broad.

Sullivan ought to say something sensible. I suggest the following. Human beings have very strong worldview needs. Doxastic security needs, I call them. It is impossible not to have some worldview or other, tacit or explicit, unexamined or examined, uncritically imbibed from one's social environment or worked out for oneself. No human being lives, or can live, adoxastos, without beliefs, and in particular without action-guiding beliefs, beliefs that direct, as well as overarching beliefs that orient us in the scheme of things. Not even the Pyrrhonian can pull it off.

Now, in the genus worldview, distinguish two species: religious and non-religious. Communism, being militantly atheistic and anti-religious, is a non-religious worldview. By contrast, Catholicism is a religious worldview.

At this point you ought to ask me for the specific difference. If rationality is what distinguishes human from non-human animals, what property or set of properties distinguishes religious from non-religious worldviews? My answer in The Essence of Religion.

No good purpose is served by calling atheism a religion. It is a cheap piece of journalistic sloppiness too often maintained, too infrequently reflected upon.

Are Atheists Vincibly Ignorant?

In Catholic thought there is what is called vincible ignorance. Here is a definition:

Lack of knowledge for which a person is morally responsible. It is culpable ignorance because it could be cleared up if the person used sufficient diligence. One is said to be simply (but culpably) ignorant if one fails to make enough effort to learn what should be known; guilt then depends on one's lack of effort to clear up the ignorance.

For present purposes, it suffices to say that 'God' refers to the supreme being of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

I hold that there is vincible ignorance on various matters. But I deny that atheists are vincibly ignorant. Some might be, but not qua atheists. Whether or not God exists, one is not morally culpable for denying the existence of God. Nor do I think one is morally culpable if one doubts the existence of God.

If God exists, and one is an atheist, then one is ignorant of God, but it does not follow that one is culpably ignorant.

This puts me at odds with St. Paul, at least on one interpretation of what he is saying at Romans 1: 18-20.

Rethinking the Presumption of Atheism

Keith Burgess-Jackson just sent me his article Rethinking the Presumption of Atheism (Int J Philos Relig (2018) 84:93-111). I hope to read it soon.

When Reasoned Faith No Longer Strikes One as Reasonable: What Then?

Thomas Doubting inquires,

I’ve met and talked to a number of people who, while originally atheists, have found faith in God and become active Christians as result of their intellectual pursuit that led them to the conclusion that God is logically necessary.

There is an ambiguity regarding 'logically necessary' that needs to be removed. Suppose there is a sound deductive argument A for the existence of God. Necessarily, if the premises of A are all true, then A's conclusion — God exists — is true. That is not to be confused with: If the premises of A are all true, then A's conclusion — God exists — is necessarily true.

The necessitas consequentiae must not be confused with the necessitas consequentis. See my separate post on this topic. The premises of a sound argument logically necessitate its conclusion, but that does not imply that the conclusion is logically necessary.

So even if one succeeds in demonstrating the existence of God, one has not thereby demonstrated the existence of a necessary being. For one might have succeeded only in demonstrating the existence of a logically contingent being.

I will read you as saying that there are people who come to faith in God via deductive arguments that they consider to be sound, just that, without the additional idea that the God so demonstrated is a necessary being.

Other relevant sources of ambiguity: Are you thinking of persons whose faith is SOLELY based on argumentative considerations? Are the argumentative considerations demonstrative only, or are probabilistic considerations relevant?

I will assume an affirmative answer to both questions.

I've always wanted to know, but was a bit uncomfortable to ask, how well are they prepared to deal with a quite conceivable situation where they should accidentally discover that their investigation was logically flawed and from the rational point their conclusion is not valid and, therefore the their faith in God’s existence has no logical grounding.

In other words, if your intellect guided you on the road to God and in the years following the finding of God you developed strong faith in and love for God would you still cling to your faith if you had suddenly discovered that the reasoning that brought you to Him was defective?

Suppose someone comes to accept the existence of God on the basis of one or more arguments, but then discovers that those arguments are flawed. It would not follow from this that the person's reasoned faith has no logical grounding. For there could easily be other arguments that establish the existence of God.

So your question is better put as follows. "Suppose a person who became a theist solely on the basis of arguments comes to believe that there is no extant argument that demonstrates the existence of God. Would that person be justified in clinging to his faith in God?"

The question is interesting and important but also very complicated. I'll just make a couple of points.

Does the person also believe that there is no extant argument that demonstrates the non-existence of God? Suppose that is the case. Then the person has three beliefs: that God exists; that God's existence cannot be demonstrated; that God's non-existence cannot be demonstrated. Is he rationally justified in holding all three? The theoretically-rational course would be to suspend judgment on the question of God's existence by neither affirming that God exists nor denying that God exists.

But there is also prudential rationality to consider. If the arguments pro et contra cancel out, then God might or might not exist for all we know. Believing would then be the prudentially rational thing to do, and pragmatically useful to boot. This is because the question of the existence of God is not a merely theoretical question, but one that bears upon our ultimate happiness and well-being.

If, on the other hand, the person in question has come to believe that some argument demonstrates the non-existence of God, then to be rational he ought to reject belief in God. Or so it will seem to most.

But it is not that clear. Suppose one believes that there are no good arguments for the existence of God, but there are good arguments for the nonexistence of God, arguments from evil, say. Suppose the person is also skeptical about the power of reason to decide such a weighty, metaphysical question.

Would it not be prudentially rational for him to go on believing? After all, God might exist. And what would one lose by believing? What one would lose by believing would be as nothing as compared to what one might gain by believing and coming into right relation with God.

Could a Theist Maintain that Some Lack a Religious Disposition?

Suppose you believe that man has been created in the image and likeness of God. Could you, consistently with that belief, hold that only some possess a religious disposition?

I have discussed this before, but the question came up again in an e-mail from a reader.

I often say things like the following:

The religious person perceives our present life, or our natural life, as radically deficient, deficient from the root (radix) up, as fundamentally unsatisfactory and unameliorable by unaided human effort whether individual or collective; he feels it to be, not a mere condition, but a predicament; it strikes him as vain or empty if taken as an end in itself; he sees himself as homo viator, as a wayfarer or pilgrim treading a via dolorosa through a vale of tears that cannot possibly be a final and fitting resting place but is instead a place of probation and a vale of soul-making; he senses or glimpses from time to time the possibility of a Higher Life; he feels himself in danger of missing out on this Higher Life of true happiness. He feels his fellows to be fools endlessly distracted by bagatelles, sunken deep in Pascalian divertissement, as Platonic troglodytes unaware of the Cave as Cave.

I maintain that one in whom the above doesn't strike a chord, or sound a plaintive arpeggio, is one who lacks a religious disposition. In some the disposition is simply lacking, and it cannot be helped. I 'write them off' no matter how analytically sharp they are. One cannot discuss religion with them, for it cannot be real to them, any more than one can share one's delight in poetry with the terminally prosaic, or one's pleasure in mathematics with the mathematically anxious. For those who lack the disposition, religion is not what William James in "The Will to Believe" calls a "living option," let alone a "forced" or "momentous" one. It can only be something strained and ridiculous, a tissue of fairy tales, something for children and old ladies, an opiate for the weak and dispossessed, a miserable anthropomorphic projection, albeit unconscious, a wish-fulfillment, something cooked up in the musty medieval cellars of priest-craft where unscrupulous manipulators exploit human gullibility for their own advantage.

A perceptive interlocutor raises an objection that I would put as follows.

You say that some lack a religious disposition. I take it you mean that they are utterly bereft of it. But how is that consistent with the imago dei? For if we are made in the divine image, then we are spiritual beings who must, as spiritual beings, possess at least the potentiality of communion with the divine source of the spirit within us, even if this potentiality is to no degree actual. After all, we are not in the image of God as animals, but as spiritual beings, and part of being a spiritual being is having the potentiality to know itself, and thus to know that one is a creature if in fact one is a creature, and in knowing this to know God in some measure.

How might I meet this objection?

One way is by denying that all biologically human beings bear the divine image, or bear the divine image in its fullness. Maybe it is like this. The existence of specimens of the zoological species to which we belong is accounted for by the theory of evolution. God creates the physical universe in which evolution occurs, and in which human animals evolve from lower forms. The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis is not an account of how human animals came to be that is in competition with the theory of evolution. It is not about human animals at all.

Adam is not the first man; there was no first man. Eve is not the first woman; there was no first woman. Adam and Eve are not the first human animals; they are the first human animals that, without ceasing to be animals, became spiritual beings when God bestowed upon them personhood, which involves self-consciousness, free will, and moral sense, but also the sense of the divine and a call to a higher life. But the free divine bestowal was not the same for all: from some he withheld the sensus divinitatis and with it the power to know God and become godlike.

I know that this is not theologically orthodox. But it fits with my experience. I have always felt that some human beings lack depth or spirit or soul or inwardness or interiority or whatever you want to call it. It is not that I think of them as zombies as philosophers use this term: I grant that they are conscious and self-conscious. But I sense that there is nothing to them beyond that. There is no sense of the Higher. They sense no call to the task of self-individuation. There is no depth-dimension: they are surface all the way down. They are bereft of spirit. They may have moral sense, but it doesn't point them beyond this life. They may have conscience but it is only a product of acculturation and not a source of spiritual insight. They are human biologically but not normatively: there is a sense in which, ringing a change on Nietzsche, the death of God is by the same stroke the death of man: he suffers demotion and is after God's death back among the animals and in series with them, just the cleverest of the land mammals.

So the first conjecture is that not all human animals, even if biologically normal, are spiritual beings.

But it may be that a better line for me is the simpler one of saying that in all there is the religious disposition, but in some it is undeveloped or unmanifested, rather than saying that in some it is not present at all. (A disposition need not be manifested to exist; glass is disposed to shatter if suitably struck, but a particular piece of glass needn't shatter to possess (actually not potentially!) the disposition to shatter.)

The "perceptive interlocutor" (Steven Nemes) mentioned above responds (and these are his actual words):

To suppose that some persons lack the religious disposition is certainly not theologically kosher, at least not from the Christian perspective. This is more akin to certain varieties of predestinarian gnosticism to which early Christian theologians (e.g., Origen, Irenaeus, et al.) vehemently objected. These gnostic theories proposed that there were various different classes of human persons, some of whom were structurally determined to realize saving knowledge (gnosis) of Reality whereas others were cruder, baser, and doomed to live unenlightened lives in the body. The difference between classes was not choices they had made or anything of the sort; it was simply their ontological structure to reach enlightenment or not. The early Christians objected to this in two ways: first, it is denial of the freedom of the will of the human person, since some evidently are intrinsically incapable of choosing salvation; second, it is incompatible with God's goodness, since if he is good, he desires the salvation of all and works to accomplish it.

I don't disagree that these are among the theologically orthodox responses to my suggestion above. How good they are, however, is a separate question. First, if God does not grant to some class of persons the religious disposition, that is not a denial to them of freedom of the will. They can be as free as you please; they just lack that particular power, the power of achieving salvific knowledge. I am not free to fly like a bird, but it doesn't follow that I am not free.

As for the second point, there may be a confusion of damnation with non-knowledge of God. The suggestion above is that only some biologically human persons are disposed to seek God and possibly know God. That is not to say that these persons are predestined to a state in which they are conscious of God's existence but cut off from God.

God desires the ultimate beatitude of all that have the power to achieve it — but not all have this power on the above suggestion. If God desires the ultimate beatitude of all whether or not they have the power to know God, then God desires the ultimate beatitude of dolphins and apes and cats and dogs.

I suppose these are the two greatest problems for the quasi-gnostic position you consider above. Another problem would be that it might ethically justify mistreatment and prejudice against persons deemed to lack a religious disposition. After all, if they cannot sense God's existence and enjoy communion with him, how are they any different from animals? If God himself didn't care to make them such that they could know him, why should theists and those having the religious disposition care for them any more than for a dog?

I don't see any problem here either. Not all human beings have the same powers, but people like me and my interlocutor would not dream of using this fact to justify mistreatment of certain classes of people. (Analogy: I don't believe that animals have rights, but I don't need to assign rights to them to have good reason to treat them humanely

Interim Conclusion

Many if not most people in the West these days fail to manifest a genuine religious disposition. (Going along to get along by attending services etc. does not attest a genuine disposition.) While it does not follow that they lack such a disposition, absence of manifestation is defeasible evidence of the disposition's nonexistence. Supposing there is no religious disposition in some, the theist can, consistently with his theism, explain the fact in the unorthodox 'Gnostic' way sketched above.

Or the theist can insist that the disposition is present in all, but in some so buried under the detritus of sin and social suggestions as to be indiscernible by the person himself or others.

On the other hand, if one is a metaphysical naturalist, the problem dissolves: there is no God and the religious disposition is an evolutionary quirk in some that bespeaks nothing.

The Poisoned Will of Jean Meslier

Before Voltaire, Meslier.

Jordan Peterson on the Problem with Atheism

Earlier this evening I was watching Tucker Carlson. He had a psychology professor on whose YouTube videos had been blocked by Google but then later unblocked. His name is Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto. I had never heard of him, and his performance on Carlson's show was not particularly impressive. Having viewed his The Problem with Atheism, however, I am now impressed!

My finding of this video is serendipitous in that it ties in with a discussion I was having yesterday with Malcolm Pollack. Malcolm is a naturalist and atheist in the Dennett-Dawkins-Harris camp. He seems to think that an objective, agreed-upon, and life-enhancing morality has no need of a transcendent foundation, and perhaps also that there is no need that the majority believe in any such transcendent foundation. In an earlier thread Malcolm wrote:

. . . one can accept the principle of equality before the law, based on a fundamental sense of shared humanity and liberty, merely as a stipulation, a premise one accepts because one thinks it leads to a just society, without belief in a transcendent foundation in God. It is simply a choice that a person, or a society, can make; we do that with all sorts of other premises and conventions.

I replied:

Can someone who emphasizes the biologically-based differences between groups and sees cultural differences percolating up out of those differences [justifiably] appeal to a "sense of shared humanity" sufficiently robust to support equality before the law?

It may be that the West is running on fumes, the last vapors of the Judeo-Christian worldview and that your sense of equal justice for all is but a vestige of that dying worldview. Can belief in that moral code survive when belief in a transcendent Ground thereof is lost? The death of God has consequences, as Nietzsche appreciated.

This is the question that Professor Peterson addresses with passion and skill and with a slam or two at Sam Harris. (3:03) Peterson's point is essentially the one that Nietzsche made: belief in and respect for the authority of Christian morality stands and falls with belief in the Christian God. The death of God-belief in the West among the educated classes leads inevitably to moral nihilism.

Malcolm thinks we needn't drag the Transcendent into it; we can just agree on some set of moral conventions that will guide us. Sounds utopian to me. We don't agree on anything anymore: so how can we agree on this? Because it would be the rational thing to do to insure human flourishing?

But why should one care about the flourishing of anyone outside of oneself and one's tribe? Peterson raises the question of why it would be irrational, say, to exploit others for one's use and enjoyment. Why is it irrational for the strong to enslave the weak? How is pure naked self-interest irrational, Peterson asks. (3:53)

Your move, Malcolm.

“Some of Us Just Go One God Further”

A revised version of an entry from 26 July 2010.

…………………

I've seen the above-captioned quotation attributed to Richard Dawkins. From what I have read of him, it seems like something he would say. The idea, I take it, is that all gods are on a par, and so, given that everyone is an atheist with respect to some gods, one may as well make a clean sweep and be an atheist with respect to all gods. You don't believe in Zeus or in a celestial teapot. Then why do you believe in the God of Isaac, Abraham, and Jacob?

What Dawkins and his New Atheist colleagues seem to be assuming is that the following questions are either senseless or not to be taken seriously: 'Is the Judeo-Christian god the true God?' 'Is any particular god the true God' 'Is any particular conception of deity adequate to the divine reality?'

The New Atheist presupposition, then, is that all candidates for deity are in the same logical boat, and that this boat is one leaky vessel. Nothing could be divine. Since all theistic religions are false, there is no live question as to which such religion is true. It is not as if there is a divine reality and that some religions are more adequate to it than others. One could not say, for example, that Judaism is somewhat adequate to the divine reality, Christianity more adequate, and Buddhism not at all adequate. There just is no divine reality. There is nothing of a spiritual nature beyond the human horizon. There is no Mind beyond finite mind. Man is the measure. This is it!

That is the atheist's deepest conviction. It seems so obvious to him that he cannot begin genuinely to doubt it, nor can he understand how anyone could genuinely believe the opposite. Belief in God is like belief in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or Ed Abbey's Angry Unicorn on the Dark Side of the Moon. You don't believe in any of those nonentities, do you? Well, Dawkins & Co. just go one nonentity further!

This morning I received a message from a Canadian reader, C. L., who asks whether Dawkins and friends are begging the question against the theist. That depends on whether they are giving an argument or just making an assertion. It also depends on what exactly 'begging the question' is. If they are just making an assertion then I say: Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur. But suppose they intend the following argument:

1) All gods are on an epistemic/doxastic par: they are all equal in point of rational acceptability. Therefore:

2) If one god is such that its existence is not rationally acceptable, then this is true of all gods.

3) There are gods such as Zeus whose existence is not rationally acceptable. Therefore:

4) No god is such that its existence is rationally acceptable.

This is a valid argument: it cannot be the case that the premises are true and the conclusion false. Does it beg the question? The problem here is that it is not very clear what the informal fallacy in question (pun intended) is supposed to be. If I argue that The Los Angeles Times displays liberal bias because its reportage and editorializing show a left-of-center slant, then I reason in a circle, or beg the question. That is a clear example. But suppose I argue that The L. A. Times displays liberal bias because all mainstream media outlets display liberal bias and The L. A. Times is a mainstream media outlet. Have I begged the question? Not so clear. Surely we don't want to say that every valid argument begs the question! (John Stuart Mill floated this suggestion.) On the other hand, it is impossible for a valid argument to have true premises and a false conclusion which suggests that he who accepts the premises of the second argument above has in so doing begged the question: he has at least implicitly committed himself to an affirmative answer to the question, 'Does The L. A. Times display liberal bias?'

'Beg the question,' I suggest, is not a very useful phrase. Besides, people nowadays regularly conflate it with 'raising a question.' See On Begging the Question. It is becoming a useless phrase.

Regarding the above argument, I would say that, while valid, it is nowhere near rationally compelling and is therefore rationally rejectable. What reason do we have to think that all candidates for divine status are on a doxatic/epistemic par?

In sum, either Dawkins is asserting or he is arguing. If he is asserting, then his gratuitous assertion can be met with a gratuitous counter-assertion. If he is arguing, and his argument is as above, then his argument is easily turned aside.

The fundamental issue here is whether there is anything beyond the human horizon. The issue dividing theists and atheists can perhaps be put in terms of Jamesian 'live options':

EITHER: Some form of theism (hitherto undeveloped perhaps or only partially developed) is not only logically and epistemically possible, but also an 'existential' possibility, a live option;

OR: No form of theism is an existential possibility, a live option.

Theist-atheist dialog is made difficult by a certain asymmetry: whereas a sophisticated living faith involves a measure of purifying doubt, together with a groping beyond images and pat conceptualizations toward a transcendent reality, one misses any corresponding doubt or tentativeness on the part of sophisticated atheists. Dawkins and Co. seem so cocksure of their position. For them, theism is not a live option or existential possibility. This is obvious from their mocking comparisons of God to a celestial teapot, flying spaghetti monster, and the like.

For sophisticated theists, however, atheism is a live option. The existence of this asymmetry makes one wonder whether any productive dialog with atheists is possible. It is probably no more possible than productive dialog with leftists. We live on different planets.

Companion post: Russell's Teapot: Does It Hold Water?

Belief Skepticism, Justification Skepticism, and the Big Questions

1) The characteristic attitude of the skeptic is not denial, but doubt. There are three main mental attitudes toward a proposition: affirm, deny, suspend. To doubt is neither to affirm nor to deny. It can therefore be assimilated to suspension. Thus a skeptic neither affirms nor denies; he suspends judgment, withholds assent, takes no stand. This obvious distinction between doubting and denying is regularly ignored in political polemics. Thus global warming skeptics are often unfairly tagged by leftists as global warming denialists as if they are willfully rejecting some well-known fact.

2) The skeptic is not a cynic. A cynic is a disillusioned idealist. The cynic affirms an ideal, notes that people fail to live up to it, allows himself to become inordinately upset over this failure, exaggerates the extent of the failure, and then either harshly judges his fellows or wrongly impugns their integrity. His attitude is predicated on the dogmatic affirmation of an ideal. Skeptics, by contrast are free, or try to be free, of dogmatic commitments, and of consequent moral umbrage.

Cynic: "All politicians are liars!" Skeptic: "What makes you think that scrupulous truth-telling is the best policy in all circumstances? And what makes you think that truth is a high value?"

3) One can be skeptical about a belief or a class of beliefs, but also about the rational justification for a belief or a class of beliefs. Thus skeptics divide into belief skeptics and justification skeptics. (See R. Fogelin, Walking the Tightrope of Reason, Oxford UP, 2003, 98) You can be one without the other. There are various combinatorially possible positions. Here are three of several interesting ones:

a) S doubts whether p is justified, but S does not doubt that p: he affirms that p.

b) S doubts whether p is justified, and in consequence doubts that p.

c) S doubts whether p is justified, and concludes that one ought to suspend judgment on p.

Ad (a). Suppose Tom canvasses the arguments for and against the existence of God and concludes that it's a wash: the arguments and considerations he is aware of balance and cancel out. Tom finds himself in a state of evidential equipoise. As a result he doubts whether belief in God is justified. But he decides to believe anyway. In this example Tom does not doubt or deny that God exists; he affirms that God exists despite doubting whether the belief is rationally justified. With respect to the existence of God, Tom is a justification skeptic but not a belief skeptic.

Ad (b). Like Tom, Tim doubts whether belief that God exists is justified. Unlike Tom, Tim transfers his doubt about the justification to the belief itself. Tim is both a justification skeptic and a belief skeptic.

Ad (c). And then there is Cliff. He thinks it is wrong always and everywhere and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence. Like Tim and Tom, he doubts whether the existence of God is justified and for the same reason: the arguments pro et contra balance and cancel. He reasonably takes evidential equipoise as entailing that there is insufficient evidence for either limb of a contradictory pair of theses. But, unlike Tom and Tim, Cliff infers a normative conclusion from his evidential equipoise: it is morally wrong, a violation of the ethics of belief, to believe that God exists given that the evidence is insufficient.

For now I am concerned only with the rationality of doing as Tom does.

Tom examines both sides of the question. He does his level best to be fair and balanced. But he finds no argument or consideration to incline him one way or the other. Now it seems perfectly obvious to me that our man is free to believe anyway, that is, in our example either to affirm the existence of God or to reject the existence of God. He is not psychologically compelled by his state of evidential equipoise to suspend belief.

But while Tom is free to affirm, would it be rational for him to affirm the existence of God? Yes, because for beings of our constitution it is prudentially (as opposed to theoretically) rational to believe beyond the evidence. Consider the case of

The Alpine Hiker

An avalanche has him stranded on a mountainside facing a chasm. He cannot return the way he came, but if he stays where he is he dies of exposure. His only hope is to jump the chasm. The preponderance of evidence is that this is impossible: he has no epistemic reason to think that he can make the jump. But our hiker knows that what one can do is in part determined by what one believes one can do, that "exertion generally follows belief," as Jeffrey Jordan puts it. If the hiker can bring himself to believe that he can make the jump, then he increases his chances of making it. "The point of the Alpine hiker case is that pragmatic belief-formation is sometimes both morally and intellectually permissible."

We should therefore admit that there are cases in which epistemic considerations are reasonably defeated by prudential considerations.

And now we come to the Big Questions. Should I believe that I am libertarianly free? That it matters how I live? That something is at stake in life? That I will in some way or other be held accountable after death for what I do and leave undone here below? That God exists? That I am more than a transient bag of chemical reactions? That a Higher Life is possible?

Not only do I not have evidence that entails answers to any of these questions, I probably do not have evidence that makes a given answer more probable than not. Let us assume that it is not more probable than not that God exists and that (in consequence) it is not more probable than not that I have a higher destiny in communion with God.

But here's the thing. I have to believe that I have a higher destiny if I am to act so as to attain it. It is like the situation with the new neighbors. I have to believe that they are decent people if I am to act in such a way as to establish good relations with them. Believing the best of them, even on little or no evidence, is pragmatically useful and prudentially rational. I have to believe beyond the evidence. Similarly in the Alpine Hiker case. He has to believe that he can make the jump if he is to have any chance of making it. So even though it is epistemically irrational for him to believe he can make it on the basis of the available evidence, it is prudentially rational for him to bring himself to believe. You could say that the leap of faith raises the probability of the leap of chasm.

What if he is wrong? Then he dies. But if he sits down in the snow in despair he also dies, and more slowly. By believing beyond the evidence he lives his last moments better than he would have by giving up. He lives courageously and actively. He lives like a man.

Here we have a pragmatic argument that is not truth-sensitive: it doesn't matter whether he will fail or succeed in the jump. Either way, he lives better here and now if he believes he can cross the chasm to safety. And this, even though the belief is not supported by the evidence.

It is the same with God and the soul. The pragmatic argument in favor of them is truth-insensitive: whether or not it is a good argument is independent of whether or not God and the soul are real. For suppose I'm wrong. I live my life under the aegis of God, freedom, and immortality, but then one day I die and become nothing. I was just a bag of chemicals after all. It was all just a big bloody joke. Electrochemistry played me for a fool. So what?

What did I lose by being a believer? Nothing of any value. Indeed, I have gained value since studies show that believers tend to be happier people. But if I am right, then I have done what is necessary to enter into my higher destiny. Either way I am better off than without the belief in God and the soul. If I am not better off in this life and the next, then I am better off in this life alone.

I am either right or wrong about God and the soul. If I am right, and I live my beliefs, then then I have lived in a way that not only makes me happier here and now, but also fits me for my higher destiny. If I am wrong, then I am simply happier here and now.

So how can I lose? Even if they are illusions, believing in God and the soul incurs no costs and disbelieving brings no benefits.

Addendum

Dave Bagwill hits me with a powerful objection, which I will put in my own way.

It may be that mere intellectual assent to propositions about God and the soul "incurs no costs." But how could that be true for those who live their faith? There are plenty of examples of those whose lived faith has cost them their liberty, their livelihoods, and their lives. As we speak, Christians are being driven from their homes and slaughtered in the Middle East by adherents of the 'religion of peace.'

This is a good objection and at the very least forces me to qualify what I wrote, perhaps along the following lines: religious belief and practice incur no real costs for those of us fortunate to live in societies in which there is freedom of religion.

How long freedom of religion can last in the USA is a good question given the leftist assault on religious liberty. Yet another reason to battle the leftist scum. Luckily, we now have a chance with Trump as president.

Just Over the Transom from David Gordon

Dear Bill,

I hope that you are well.

Your post on a bad reason for thinking atheism is not a religion was excellent. I'm taking the liberty of sending a link to a review of mine that argues along the same lines as you do: Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies. By George H. Smith. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1991. 324 pp.

Best wishes,

David

It would be intolerably self-serving of me to say that great minds think alike, so I'll just say that sincere truth-seekers sometimes converge in their views. One thing I learned from Dr. Gordon's review is that George H. Smith is the (contemporary) source of the idea that atheism ought to be defined, not as the denial of the existence of God, but as mere lack of God-belief.

A Bad Reason for Thinking that Atheism is not a Religion

Atheism is not a religion. But the following is not a good reason for thinking so:

Atheism (and here I mean the so-called “weak atheism” that does not claim proof that god does not exist), is just the lack of god-belief – nothing more and nothing less. And as someone once said, if atheism is a religion, not collecting stamps is a hobby. That really ought to end the discussion right there. Clearly, a mere lack of belief in something cannot be a religion.

Right, a mere lack of belief in something cannot be a religion. But atheism is not a mere lack of belief in something. If atheism is just the lack of god-belief, then tables and chairs are atheists. For they lack god-belief. Am I being uncharitable?

Suppose someone defines atheism more carefully as lack of god-belief in beings capable of having beliefs. That is still unacceptable. Consider a child who lacks both god-belief and god-disbelief. If lacking god-belief makes him an atheist, then lacking god-disbelief makes him a theist. So he is both, which is absurd.

Obviously, atheism is is not a mere lack of belief, but a definite belief, namely, the belief that the world is godless. Atheism is a claim about the way things are: there is no such thing as the God of Judaism, or the God of Christianity, or the God of Islam, or the gods of the Greek pantheon, or . . . etc. The atheist has a definite belief about the ontological inventory: it does not include God or gods or any reasonable facsimile thereof such as the Plotinian One, etc.

Note also that if you deny that any god exists, then you are denying that the universe is created by God: you are saying something quite positive about the ontological status of the universe, namely, that it does not depend for its existence on a being transcendent of it. And if it does not so depend, then that implies that it exists on its own as a brute fact or that it necessarily exists or that it causes itself to exist. Without getting into all the details here, the point is that if you deny that God exists, this is not just a denial of the existence of a certain being, but implies a positive claim about the ontological status of the universe. What's more, if there is no creator God, then the apparent order of the universe, its apparent designedness, is merely apparent. This is a positive thesis about the nature of the physical universe.

Atheism, then, is not a mere lack of god-belief. For it implies definite positive beliefs about reality as a whole and about the nature and mode of existence of the physical universe.

Why then is atheism not a religion? No good purpose is served by using 'religion' to refer to any set of action-guiding beliefs held with fervor and commitment. For if one talks in that hopelessly loose way, then extreme environmentalism and Communism and leftism are religions.

Although it is not easy to craft a really satisfactory definition of religion, I would say that all and only religions affirm the existence of a transcendent reality, whether of a personal or impersonal nature, contact or community or identification with which is the summum bonum and the ultimate purpose of human existence. For the Abrahamic faiths, Yahweh, God, Allah is the transcendent reality. For Taoism, the Tao. For Hinduism, Brahman. For (Mahayana) Buddhism, the transcendent state of nirvana. Since atheists precisely deny any such transcendent reality, contact with which is our highest good and ultimate purpose, atheism is not a religion.

"But aren't militant atheists very much like certain zealous religionists? Doesn't militant atheism function in their lives much as religion functions in the life of the religiously zealous?" No doubt, but if one thing is like another, that is not to say that the one thing is the other or is a species of the other.

And another thing. If atheism is not a religion, then, while there can be atheist associations, there cannot be, in any serious sense of the word, an atheist church.

Whether Atheism is a Religion

I have been objecting to the calling of leftism a religion. Curiously, some people call atheism a religion. I object to that too.

The question as to what religion is is not at all easy to answer. It is not even clear that the question makes sense. For when you ask 'What is religion?' you may be presupposing that it has an essence that can be captured in a definition that specifies necessary and sufficient conditions. But it might be that the concept religion is a family resemblance concept like the concept game (to invoke Wittgenstein's famous example). Think of all the different sorts of games there are. Is there any property or set of properties that all games have and that only games have? Presumably not. The concept game is a family resemblance concept to which no essence corresponds. Noted philosophers of religion such as John Hick maintain the same with respect to the concept religion.

If you take this tack, then you can perhaps argue that Marxism and secular humanism and militant atheism are religions.

But it strikes me as decidedly odd to characterize a militant anti-religionist as having a religion. Indeed, it smacks of a cheap debating trick: "How can you criticize religion when you yourself have a religion?" The tactic is an instance of the 'So's Your Old Man' Fallacy, more formally known as the argumentum ad hominem tu quoque.

I prefer to think along the following lines.

Start with belief-system as your genus and then distinguish two coordinate species: belief-systems that are theoretical, though they may have practical applications, and belief-systems that are by their very nature oriented toward action. Call the latter ideologies. Accordingly, an ideology is a system of action-guiding beliefs. Then distinguish between religious and non-religious ideologies. Marxism and militant atheism are examples of non-religious ideologies while the Abrahamic religions and some of the Eastern religions are examples of religious ideologies.

I am using 'ideology' in a non-pejorative way. One could also speak of Weltanschauungen or worldviews except that 'view' suggests spectatorship whereas action-guiding belief-systems embody prescriptions and proscriptions and all manner of prudential dos and don'ts for participants in the flux and shove of the real order. We are not mere spectators of life's parade, but are 'condemned' to march in it too.

To repeat: there are theoretical belief-systems and belief-systems that are ineluctably action-guiding and purpose-positing. Among the latter we distinguish two subspecies, the religious and the non-religious.

But this leaves me with the problem of specifying what it is that distinguishes religious from non-religious ideologies. To put it Peripatetically, what is the specific difference? Perhaps this: all and only religions make reference to a transcendent reality, whether of a personal or impersonal nature, contact or community or identification with which is the summum bonum and the ultimate purpose of human existence. For the Abrahamic faiths, Yahweh, God, Allah is the transcendent reality. For Taoism, the Tao. For Hinduism, Brahman. For Buddhism, the transcendent state of nirvana. But I expect the Theravadins to object that nibbana is nothing positive and transcendent, being only the extinguishing or dissolution of the (ultimately illusory) self. I could of course simply deny that Theravada Buddhism is a religion, strictly speaking. I could lump it together with Stoicism as a sort of higher psychotherapy, a set of techniques for achieving equanimity, a therapeutic wisdom-path rather than a religion strictu dictu.

There are a number of tricky and unresolved issues here, but I see little point in calling militant atheism a religion, though I concede it is like a religion in some ways.

But as I have been pointing out lately, if one thing is like another, that is not to say that the one thing is the other or is a species of the other.