10 Ways God Can Be Simple

God can be thought of as the maximal instantiation of various properties.

0 Introduction

When deciding if some view is true, it makes sense to look at its prior probability—how likely it is before you look at the evidence. Simplicity and absence of arbitrary limits are important components of the prior probability of a theory. The theory, for instance, that there’s a small part of space that follows different physics is much less likely than the theory that there isn’t, even though they both explain the data equally well—we probably wouldn’t have seen the small patch if there was one. Thus, a boost in simplicity and non-arbitrariness can make a theory many, many times more likely—even though there are maybe infinite different ways that physics could be different in some patch of space, all of them are together much less probable than physics being uniform.

For theism to be plausible, then, God would have to be simple. Not in that he’s easy to understand but in that he is simple in his nature. String theory is very simple—positing strings with a simple mathematical description—though it’s quite complicated to understand. The best route to making God simple is finding some property that is plausible fundamental—say, goodness—and then arguing that God is what you get when you have that property without limits. If this is so then theism is quite likely—it’s what you get from an unlimited amount of some fundamental property. Fundamental properties are simple—they don’t break down into simpler parts. Theories that posit no limits on things are better than ones that posit arbitrary limits—prior to discovering the speed of light, the theory that it’s some specific value is much less likely than it having no value, because it’s a limit. Similarly, it would be odd to think that space just ends somewhere for no deeper reason. Thus, if theism is just what you get when you have one of the fundamental—and therefore simple—properties without limit, it’s much more probable than naturalism and its arbitrary, unexplained values of the various constants and laws.

I’m unsure about some of these. But I think there are enough of them that’s is pretty likely that one of them works (especially because I find a lot of them plausible). Furthermore, because if they work theism crushes naturalism on priors, you should think that probably one of them does. Let’s say that naturalism has a prior of X—if none work then theism has a prior of, say, .01X. However, if theism does work, it has a prior of tens or hundreds of times X. Thus, if we assume theism has a prior of 100X if one of them works—which is plausible, for it outclasses naturalism just like the uniform laws view outclasses the patchwork laws view—and there’s a 10% chance that one of them works, then theism, on average has a prior of over 10X, which is much higher than naturalism. Thus, if you’re not sure if these work, theism probably has a higher prior.

1 Unlimited Mind

Consciousness is fundamental—or so I’ve argued elsewhere. There’s no way to arrange matter so that it automatically becomes conscious. Suppose you have a mind and just don’t place any limits on it. I claim that what you get is God! Because he is unlimited there is no limit on what he knows or can do. But if he knows everything then he knows the moral facts, and thus understands at the deepest conceivable level why he should follow them.

You might worry—isn’t he limited in various ways. For instance, presumably his love of evil is limited. But this misses the point. It’s true that there are various properties in which he’s limited—but he’s unlimited qua mind. There’s an important sense in which limits on power or knowledge are limits on a mind and limits on other stuff are not.

I think this is probably the most promising route to establishing that God is simple.

2 Unlimited will

Okay, maybe you doubt that limits on power are limits on the mind in any important sense. But they’re clearly a limit on the exercise of will. So then theism can be thought of as the theory that there’s an unlimited exercise of will. Exercise of will is plausible fundamental—being part of mind—and so it’s therefore simple.

3 Unlimited agent

This one comes from Swinburne. His idea are that agents are pretty simple things. But agents have various properties—power, knowledge, and freedom of the will. God just has no limits on those, so he’s the simplest kind of agent. And he doesn’t have any extra parts, so he’s very simple.

I’m not sure if agents are fundamental, but this seems at least somewhat plausible.

4 A mind of infinite power

All of God’s properties can be derived from infinite power. If he has infinite power then he can bring any fact to mind, and so therefore he knows all things. If he knows all things, he would know he should act morally and thus do so. So if the other fancier options don’t work, just hold that God is just a mind of infinite power. This requires positing two things—a mind and infinite power—but is still pretty darn simple.

5 Unlimited goodness

Some things, like sex, my blog, and the self-indication assumption, are good. Other things like anthrax, terrorism, and the self-sampling assumption, are bad. So what if you have unlimited goodness. Well, arguably God is the best kind of thing, so then you get God. He knows everything because it’s good to know things. God has one fundamental property—unlimited goodness, or perfection—and all his other properties flow from it. Mark raises an interesting and technical objection to it—see here—but I still think this basically works.

6 Perfection

Lots of people think there’s this thing called greatness. It’s not just being good—it’s something more. They think a mountain is greater than a pebble and that God is what you get when you have unlimited greatness. I don’t think this is joint-carving—just seems like an arbitrary collection of other traits—but for those who do, this is one option.

7 Unlimited value

Some things have value. Happiness, friendship, and my blog have axiological value—the world is better because of them. Nature, my blog, me, and pretty girls have aesthetic value—the world is prettier because of them. Believing things based on the evidence and having access to information has epistemic value—it increases knowledge of truth. On this view, God is just what you get when you don’t limit value at all. He knows all because that maximizes epistemic value, he is maximally beautiful, and maximally valuable.

I think this is more plausible than maximal axiological value. Still, it’s a bit dubious. I’m not so sure if aesthetic and epistemic value are really joint-carving or the kinds of things that can apply to agents. Facts can provide epistemic reasons, but I don’t know if it makes sense to talk about an agent of unlimited value.

8 Pure act

Lots of people say God is pure act. This is common among classical theists. They say that change is the actualization of potential—when things go from the way they can be to the way they are. God is pure the way things are ness or something. I find this very confusing! But this is another route that some people like, so I thought it might be worth mentioning it.

9 Unlimited power

Power is the ability to bring things about. A being has unlimited power if they can bring about all possible things. Arguably, theism is what you get when you have a thing of unlimited power. Now, for it to have unlimited power it has to have a mind, because only a mind can freely choose between options, and thus is able to bring about anything—even things different from what it actually brings about.

10 Other

There are various other candidates for some simple property that might, when maximally instantiated, get you God. For instance, my friend James Reilly thinks God is what you get when existence exists in the supreme way of existing (I find this very implausible!) Other people think that God instantiates some other ineffable property. There are also probably a bunch I haven’t heard of—this category is for them.

All in all, I think there are quite a few plausible routes to making theism simple. As a result, theism has a decently high prior probability.